FloQast Company Culture & Values

Describe your company culture in one word. What made you pick that word?

We have what I would describe as a very “connected” culture at FloQast. Having coworkers who genuinely care about helping each other and our customers is inspiring. Our everyday conversations include questions like “What can we do to help you?” and “What can we do right now to make this better?” 

I cannot count the times I’ve asked someone from DevOps to hop on a call with me to debug a deployment issue. We have a strong sense of togetherness in research and development.

That said, our product development cycle is enriched and made possible by voices across all our departments. You remember when Megan from Sales joined your ideation session to highlight those feature request patterns. Or when Sheerod in accounting helped you understand that process better. Or when James from IT helped you publish that Microsoft app that takes over 10 external reviews and iterations. It’s not just product and engineering; it’s product and engineering working with sales, accounting and customer success, marketing, legal and everyone else that keeps this village running. You remember everyone’s contributions to the project and how they helped you, and you want to celebrate them.
 

How long have you been with the company, and what professional growth or development have you seen in that time?

It’s so wild; I was introduced to FloQast in 2019 thanks to a BuiltIn LA email. Now, over four years later, everything has come full circle. I now feel like I can write a short series on all my humbling and fulfilling experiences, but I’ll stick to some highlights.

I started as a Software Engineer on a small team, still in the ideation phase and figuring out our product-market fit. I remember entering the office daily, cranking out code, and developing a new module to integrate with our app. Shortly after, we built a functional prototype and demoed it to our executive team and many others in the org. That trial-by-fire experience is one I’ll never forget. It gave me more confidence in my abilities, and I became emotionally invested in our company and customers. I’m thankful for everyone who helped get our product, FloQast ReMind to market. It’s an irreplaceable feeling, knowing that something you built is helping others solve real problems.

In 2022, I moved into the Software Engineering Manager role, leading the technical development and people management for my own teams. Ironically, the higher you go, the more you realize just how much other factors contribute to your team’s success. As an individual contributor, I was more focused on my own output, and often, I just assumed I was successful whenever my code hit production. As a manager, I learned that the lifecycle is much longer — there are so many ways you can influence results beyond coding. Knowing how to organize productive team conversations, when to coordinate engineer efforts and how to communicate the impact of your decisions are all productive tools in the engineering manager’s belt.

I’m an advocate for the customer, my team’s livelihood, and our work product; it feels like running a small company. Bringing this all together through our “connected” culture is one of the most rewarding experiences of my career.

Describe your team culture in one word. 

Ownership. I see a culture of ownership pop up all across FloQast, and so many of us appreciate it as a key part of our FloQast experience.

When you own something, you feel a healthy pressure to set things up for success and  take a special interest in the result. In engineering, it’s not just the seniors who own software delivery projects. We rotate that ownership around to every engineer on the team so that everyone has opportunities to stretch and show what they’re capable of.

Our ownership culture is a natural product of transparency and autonomy. It starts at the top when, every quarter, everyone in the company sees the same slides that are presented to the board of directors. We know the key numbers. We’re aligned on the vision and the goals. And then we’re given the autonomy to go and do the things in our areas that will help us reach our goals.

And we’re all literal owners of FloQast’s success through the stock option program. We know that the value of our slice of the company increases as we take care of our customers and attract new customers by solving the problems they care about.

What is one way your company ensures all employees feel included in the company culture, even with remote employees?

One advantage I’ve found is the mix of synchronous and asynchronous communication. If you like to think out loud and bounce ideas off others, there are Zoom meetings. If you like to take time to organize your thoughts, there’s Slack. So many of the conversations happening across the company every day are easily accessible for anyone to join or catch up on later.

My favorite channels are the ones that celebrate our wins, like signing new deals with customers. Each thread has a story attached of people across departments working together to win. Having a continual feed of what winning looks like at FloQast reinforces the culture for everyone following along.

What is your favorite part about working remotely?

I love that I can work for such an exciting company from anywhere in the United States. As someone who has had to hire a lot as we’ve grown engineering over the years, it’s such an advantage to be able to have access to a huge talent pool and be able to hire the best fit regardless of location. It’s a fun dynamic to work alongside people from almost every state.