it’s been more than a year since george floyd was murdered. more than a year since companies all over the nation made statements indicating their support for black lives matter and a commitment to racial justice.

since last year, we have grieved the losses of many more black people. we watched as a police officer was convicted of a murder that was seen in broad daylight by many around the world.

our work as a nation, as companies, and as individuals is not done. at magoosh we will continue to do the work. we know that it’s action, not words, that count most.

last year, we wrote about our progress and next steps, and we owe you an update.

so what have we done at magoosh since june 2020?

#1: we’ve donated $50,000 to organizations that support movement towards justice for the black community.

we decided to make meaningful donations to a few organizations (as opposed to smaller sums to a lot of organizations). we identified four categories to support, making a donation to one organization in each category:

• organizations that support longer-term police reform
• organizations that train young black organizers and advocates
• organizations that promote racial justice through education
• bail or legal defense funds to support arrested protestors

we also prioritized organizations that are grassroots, are black-led, employ community-based solutions, employ evidence-based interventions, are geographically diverse, and have strong ratings on charity navigator, guidestar, or great nonprofits or have a connection to a magoosh employee who can vouch for the organization’s effectiveness.

we chose the following four organizations and donated $12,500 to each:

• families for justice as healing: fjah is a small grassroots organization connecting formerly incarcerated women and girls working to end mass incarceration. they are led by black women and young organizers based in roxbury, ma.
• black swan academy: bsa’s mission is to empower black youth in under-served communities through civic leadership and engagement, giving them a comprehensive set of tools needed to succeed in life and become active social catalysts in their communities. they are based in washington, dc.
• hip hop for change: hhfc empowers black youth to express and advocate for their vision of justice and change by engaging with the history and culture of hip hop. they are based in oakland, ca.
• national bail fund network: this fund network supports over 70 local bail and legal defense funds to support protesters who have been arrested. the fund is nationwide.

#2: we put more intention and resources into our journey to make magoosh a more equitable and inclusive organization.

• we started employee resource groups (ergs), with the goal of creating spaces where marginalized magooshers can be in community with others who share some of their lived experiences. our ergs are a strategic part of our plans to make magoosh more inclusive and create a greater sense of belonging. we support the work by allocating time and budget for employees to engage in these communities as a part of their normal workload. i’m fortunate to serve as the executive sponsor for our black magooshers all together (bmat) erg.
• we implemented a recognition and compensation plan for our erg and dei committee leads. the work to lead an erg is not only logistically challenging, but emotionally taxing as well. in addition to allocating time for our leads to work on their groups, we compensate them, provide a dedicated professional development stipend, and are formalizing a sponsorship program with their executive sponsors to support their professional advancement. we are also working to add committee work to performance and leveling conversations this year.
• we hired a full-time director of diversity, equity, inclusion and belonging. desiree morton has already worked with our deib committee, people ops team, and erg leads to help us build a more cohesive approach to deib at magoosh. she’s played a major role in ongoing erg support and developing the recognition and compensation program for those doing this work. in addition, she’s challenged us to develop more inclusive management and leadership practices and helped us prioritize educating ourselves about the challenges under-represented employees and students face. i’m beyond grateful to have desiree on the team as a fierce advocate for those who most need that advocacy and support and to help magoosh better fulfill our mission and truly become the kind of workplace i envision.
• we updated our approach to test prep content development by revising our style guides to promote inclusive language, and we gave content creators resources and guidance to draw on diverse histories, perspectives, and representation in our materials. we are auditing and fixing insensitive issues within our existing lessons and marketing content so that it is culturally aware, diverse, and inclusive. we also know that to make the most effective materials, our content creators must come from a wide range of backgrounds and identities, which is why we are committed to fair and unbiased hiring practices and have goals to increase the diversity of our content creators. we want our students to see themselves represented in our content and our instructors, and will continue to focus and invest in these areas moving forward.
• we published our diversity report, and are working on our next one. we want the diversity of our team to represent the diversity of our us student base. several years ago, we set explicit diversity goals across 4 dimensions:
  • gender
  • race
  • first in family to go to college
  • grew up in a non-english-speaking household (primary language).

currently, over 50% of our team identify as women, 19% are from underrepresented groups (including 9% who identify as black and/or african american), 17% are the first to go to college, and 28% grew up in a non-english-speaking household.

we plan to be transparent with our progress, and invite you to hold us accountable.

#3: we’re leveling the playing field in test prep.

• this has always been our mission, but we’ve committed ourselves to learning more about inequitable experiences that our students face before, during, and after their studies with magoosh, including how standardized testing upholds systems of oppression against marginalized communities. in practice, this includes setting time aside for every single magoosh employee to learn about inequality within the education system, and also time to incorporate that learning into our work of building quality and effective test prep that’s affordable and works for every one of our students.
• we’re committing to measuring and sharing the equity impact of our products. specifically, if we want to level the playing field, we need to be sure that our test prep supports our most marginalized students in a meaningful way. we have begun this work with data collection and goal setting prioritized alongside our growth and innovation goals. we look forward to being transparent about the impact we’re having.
• we continue to partner with organizations to provide free and low-cost test prep to students such as smash scholars, oliver scholars, and mcnair scholars.

our values make this work possible

doing this type of work requires a great deal of commitment and investment. we are fortunate that we can lean heavily on our values including challenge > comfort, change > status quo, and learning > knowing to continue to do what is right for our employees, students, and communities. the work will be ongoing, and we know that, even with the steps we have taken leading up to and during this past year, we have a long way to go. we’re here for it.

author’s note: i’d like to acknowledge that this article is the result of a massive team effort. i’d like to thank desiree morton for her significant contributions to the content of this post as well as our reviewers alan day, hannah baker, jessica wan, naomi tepper, trish do, viva asmelash, and all the other magooshers who have made this post (and this work!) possible.

the post the journey continues for our racial justice work — 2021 update appeared first on magoosh 2022年足球世界杯举办地.

george floyd. breonna taylor. tony mcdade. ahmaud arbery—four black americans who were senselessly murdered at the hands of police officers and vigilantes this year alone. these murders, among so many others that have occurred over the years, are unequivocally unacceptable. this should not happen.

we at magoosh stand with those protesting and with the black community against racism and violence. we know that the u.s. systems that claim to support all individuals actually oppress and harm the black community. we also acknowledge that racism has existed for many decades prior to this moment and sadly will exist into the future. the fight is long and difficult. we’ve been taking action, and we’ll continue to do so.

the work we’re doing today

we’re donating to organizations that uplift the black community and fight against racial injustice.

we’ve committed $50k towards organizations that uplift the black community and fight against social injustice. more broadly, we donate at 1% of our revenue each year using a combination of employee donation matching and corporate philanthropy towards organizations that help with education equity and access. later this year, we will share the organizations that we chose to support and why.

we’re building upon the diversity, equity, inclusion, and belonging work already started.

we’re committed to creating a diverse and inclusive environment. representation matters.

we know that in order to achieve our mission, the makeup of our team needs to represent the diversity of our student base. several years ago, we created specific and measurable diversity goals among several axes including race. since then, we’ve heavily audited our hiring process: we increased the number of black and under-represented applicants in our pool through active sourcing, anonymized and standardized steps in our hiring process, and shared with candidates what each interview would entail and how it’s representative of the role.

• we also have policies that combat pay disparity such as structured approach to salary and equity and share those policies with candidates, including posting the salary range on the job description. these changes among many others have helped us attract and hire more black employees who contribute to our mission and who help inform our policies.
• earlier this year, we engaged a 3rd party company (peoplism) to conduct a diversity, equity, inclusion, and belonging audit to further review all our processes including hiring, performance, pay, and more. with the audit now in hand, we’re planning further changes to support our employees, especially those underrepresented in tech.

we’re committed to fully living out our mission.

over ten years ago, magoosh was founded to level the education playing field and solve for the inequities that have prevented so many underserved individuals from achieving their educational aspirations. we’ve created one of the most accessible and affordable test preparation products to help students overcome the barriers of standardized tests—and we know these barriers disproportionately impact black students.

• we offer free and heavily discounted prep to non-profit organizations many of whom serve the black community, such as smash scholars, oliver scholars, and mcnair scholars.
• currently, we estimate that we serve 10,000+ black students each year. we’ll continue to serve this population and challenge ourselves to do more and do better.

there’s more work to do going forward

we’re examining how we can do better for our employees, students, and community.

we know we’re lacking in a number of areas, and here’s some of what we need to do:

• create employee resource groups for black employees (and other groups).
• better support our black and minority students by ensuring that our products are inclusive and by hiring instructors who are also black and minority and who more accurately reflect the diversity and experience of our student base.
• proactively partner with organizations that are already experts in and actively pursuing diversity and racial justice work within our communities.

lastly, and possibly most notably, we have no black or under-represented minority representation in senior leadership. we recognize that diversity in our leadership team may be the most impactful way to create lasting change across all groups: employees, students, and community.

we’re actively working on these areas and know there’s a lot more work to do as well. we look forward to updating the magoosh community on our progress.

what else are we doing (and what can you do)?

we realize each person experiences these tragedies and the associated trauma differently. as individuals and employees—particularly those of us with racial or ethnic privilege—we aim to do the following:

• we need to listen to voices in the black community and amplify and elevate those voices.
• we need to educate ourselves and learn to become better allies—this burden should not be on the black community.
• we need to educate others, especially white and non-black people of color.
• we need to discuss race and its implications at work and in our work.

many of our employees are taking additional independent and collective actions. if you’re looking for guidance you can start with this resource compiled by the magoosh diversity, equity, and inclusion committee. if you know of other actions or causes that support the black community, or if you need support in providing test prep to black and under-represented communities, we’d love to hear from you. please reach out in the comments below or email us at help@www.catharsisit.com

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nearly five years ago, i wrote about how we don’t negotiate salaries as a means of fostering fairness across our company and taking tangible steps to reduce wage gaps that are unfortunately inherent in the tech sector.

a quick google search, however, will reveal that the dialogue is still centered around tips, tricks, and hacks for how candidates should approach salary negotiation, with few questioning how negotiation itself simply rewards the ability to negotiate (disproportionately favoring men and non-minorities) over fairly compensating the value of one’s skills and experience.

we still don’t negotiate salaries to this day, and our company culture continues to thrive in part because, and not in spite, of this stance. we’ve since twice been named one of the best places to work in the bay area (2017, 2019) and, in a q4 2018 cultureamp survey of our employees, 100% of them agreed that they feel respected at magoosh and that their wellbeing is generally cared for.

although (to our knowledge) we remain one of a handful of tech companies who’ve adopted a no-negotiation policy on salary, we’re hopeful that founders who are passionate about growing strong and diverse startups will consider following suit. if you’re interested in learning more about the how of a no-negotiation policy, and the ways in which we’ve improved our framework to support our employees in receiving equal pay for equal work, you’ve come to the right place.

putting a fair salary system in place

ideally, two people in the same role, with the same level of experience, should be paid equal amounts and evaluated by similar performance metrics. but this is sadly often not the case, especially for women.

as a first step in addressing the lack of fairness around salary, we created salary tracks (or ladders) for each department/function at magoosh, including:

• marketing
• content
• academic support
• product support
• engineering
• product / data / ux
• operations (hr / recruiting / business ops)

we realize that many of the functions above could be split into more detailed functions, but to keep our process manageable and sustainable, we group similar functions together as long as our third party compensation data suggests that people within those roles are paid similarly at the same level. for example, we’ve found that product, data, and ux functions are paid similarly based on the most recent compensation data we received, but if that were to change, we’d separate those tracks.

for each job function, we have two salary tracks, one for individual contributors (ic) and one for managers (m). within each track are levels that correspond to role responsibility, scope, and title, and step increments between levels that indicate smaller advancements in professional growth. these tracks ensure that all ic1 marketers get paid the same, all m3 marketers get paid the same, and so on. guidelines and examples about what constitutes an ic1 vs. ic2 vs. m1, along with the entire salary track, are shared with all employees by function, so they know the skills and experience they need to reach the next level, as well as how much they’ll get paid when they do level up.

validating and updating salary tracks using market data

once you have a salary system in place, how do you actually determine what constitutes fair pay for each role? enter market data:

every year (usually q3), we use third-party data to determine market compensation for each level within a job function. we choose to use radford and optionimpact. we currently target a 65th pay percentile for companies of our stage, up from the 50th percentile a few years ago, and we may adjust that upward in the future. if the market rates increase for similar companies (based on geography, company stage, etc.), we provide salary increases to our employees.

in both 2017 and in 2018, every full-time employee received a market increase. on average, mid-level employees received a 20% increase solely from the market adjustments during this 2-year period (e.g. someone earning $100k in 2016 would receive $120k in 2018). in addition, employees may have received additional increases due to an increase scope and performance.

how to set and share salary levels objectively for new hires

for every job opening, we publish the salary range, so candidates can see not only the job description but also the compensation prior to applying. we also share our no-negotiation policy early in the hiring process, so candidates can opt-out if they choose.

when we initially draft a job posting, the hiring manager estimates the level of the role using the job description and our leveling guidelines. during this process, they sanity check the anticipated level for the new role with their manager and the hr team. we then include the pay of the surrounding levels as the salary range on all job descriptions (so for us, there’s also a method to creating the range).

for example, the job description for our currently open senior product manager role includes a salary range of $150,500 – $168,500, depending on experience. on our salary track for individual contributors, this correlates to a level of ic3.3 – ic4.0, and the hiring manager’s target level for this role is ic3.7.

during the hiring process, we have several candidate assessments: an anonymized take-home assessment and one or two in-person assessments. we use those to help us determine (1) whether we should hire the candidate and (2) what initial level to set for the candidate.

we’ve worked hard to ensure our assessments are reliable and valid, but in full transparency, our assessments aren’t perfect, and we have unfortunately incorrectly leveled individuals. we can fix under-leveling issues relatively quickly because we re-assess levels every 6 months, but over-leveling is more problematic. in these situations, employees end up at a given level much longer than average. they can often feel that their growth has stagnated when, in reality, they were over-leveled to begin with but have been growing. this is something we’ll continue to work on.

how to fairly approach salary increases and employee promotions

our hr team runs a committee-led leveling process every six months. during this process, a manager can advocate for a potential leveling increase for an employee. we know that some managers may be more aggressive about pursuing increases for their team while others less so. for that reason, our hr team periodically looks at the data to identify trends among teams and also encourages managers to bring up employees for leveling even if managers are unsure about the employee’s case.

the leveling committee always involves hr and will also involve managers or executive leadership, depending on the proposed levels being discussed. during those meetings, we don’t look at the time an employee’s spent at a given level but rather at their work output. we review past examples of others who leveled up, and our leveling guidelines, to help mitigate bias as much as possible.

under our system, an increase in level corresponds to an increase in salary, but not necessarily a title or responsibility change (more on that below). it’s important to note that we don’t share or encourage anticipated “time to level up” for any of our roles, as growth is dependent on a number of individual and company factors that are impossible for us to predict.

three more benefits we don’t negotiate

at the risk of sounding like a scrooge of a founder, our no-negotiation policy extends to other compensation-related benefits as well. some companies provide negotiation loopholes, leading candidates to think, “if i can’t negotiate on salary, then maybe i can negotiate on x.” we try to close those loopholes so that we can generally strive for fairness across our employee base.

job titles are tied to levels within our salary tracks, so there’s no room for negotiation on titles. for example, all m4s have the title “director,” no matter whether they work in marketing or engineering.

equity is also non-negotiable. we use an equity formula based on job function and level. we then offer refresh and promotion grants once a year, so if an employee does level up, they can earn more equity.

pto is already flexible, and you can read more about our processes to support that here. items of note: employees take 4-5 weeks of pto on average and hr helps managers flag employees who haven’t taken enough pto.

in defense of fair pay

simply put, offering equal pay for equal work – and providing transparency around the process – is not a radical stance. as an employer, i believe that treating my employees (and by extension, my company) well includes compensating them fairly and without bias, and our stance on not negotiating salaries stems from this belief.

equal and transparent pay supports your business bottom line by helping you attract and retain best-fit candidates. when hiring managers set and openly communicate fair salary tracks for new roles, it eliminates the need for competitive negotiation and levels the playing field, as candidates are paid on merit, not on their ability to negotiate.

we realize that a no-negotiation policy can turn some folks away, especially if they erroneously believe we won’t pay a fair wage as a result. we also know that some companies use no-negotiation policies to purposefully lowball candidates. honestly, my previous thinking (when we were smaller and couldn’t afford to pay more) was that we didn’t want to compete on salary; we wanted employees to choose magoosh mostly for our mission and learning opportunities.

while i still want candidates to be passionate about our mission and environment, i’ve realized pay and passion need not be mutually exclusive. we still use our no-negotiation policy as a way to maintain pay equity and support our diversity, equity, & inclusion goals (by directly supporting those who are less likely to negotiate). but we also want to pay competitively and want employees to feel good about their compensation.

as a startup founder, i can also understand the many reservations around this approach and am happy to talk through concerns and questions – just drop a note in the comments below.

in the meantime, i continue to encourage other companies to reassess their approaches to salary and to consider alternative practices that could increase pay parity, and ultimately, employee satisfaction.

tech companies, it’s time to stop treating equal pay for equal work as a luxury you can’t afford. pay equity should be a starting point for your employees, not an aspiration.

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below is an overview our our general hiring process for any position. (you can also read about it in more detail in our full magoosh hiring process blog post.)

• application review
• questionnaire
• phone interview
• reference and background checks
• in-person interview

the engineering exercise comes at the questionnaire stage. we’ve sought to create an exercise that’s both representative of the skills a candidate would use at magoosh and helpful to us in assessing the candidate’s experience.

the questions

we ask candidates to complete two questions: a programming question and an architecture/design question. for the programming question, we give the candidate a file and ask them to write code that is ready for production and code review. for the architecture question, we describe a challenge that we’ve faced and ask the candidate to share how they would approach that challenge.

the first iteration of the exercise was far from perfect—we received a number of questions, and we’d see submissions we didn’t expect. it didn’t take us long to realize our instructions left something to be desired. over time, we’ve taken candidate feedback and edited our instructions to make the exercise more clear. for example, we previously didn’t explain that we wanted production-ready code, so some candidates solved the programming question by writing a quickly thrown-together script. we plan to continue improving the exercise as we get more feedback.

timing

originally, we estimated both questions would take a total of three hours to complete, so we asked candidates to set aside a three-hour window to complete the exercise. we received feedback both from candidates and from people we had hired that the short window created unrealistic stress, which is not what we wanted. based on that feedback, we now ask candidates to complete the exercise within 24 hours. that way, all candidates have the same amount of time but there isn’t an unrealistic time pressure to complete the exercise exactly within three hours.

grading

our most senior engineer, zack mayeda, grades the engineering exercises. with the help of others, he’s created a rubric and grades against the rubric so that each exercise is graded on the same criteria. our hiring team also anonymizes as much of the candidate’s information as possible before handing the exercise off to him, so he can evaluate the work with as little bias as possible.

testing our test

when designing our exercise, we knew it would be impossible to create a process that was 100% perfect, but we still wanted to run a test to see if it was at least directionally accurate (one of our core values is data > intuition). so, i asked two talented senior engineers from another company to complete the exercise and then put their submissions (stripped of their names and information) into the queue along with other candidates’ submissions. if those engineers scored poorly, then we could be fairly certain that there might be something wrong with our exercise or rubric. fortunately, they both scored very well, which gave us some confidence that our exercise was a useful competency test. (as an aside, zack was very excited about the candidates, until i told him that they weren’t actually applying…sorry, zack!) all this said, we still acknowledge that our exercise isn’t perfect and will probably generate some false negatives and false positives. again, we’re dedicated to continuing to improve the process based on feedback we receive.

feedback

if a candidate does well enough on the exercise, we move them forward to the phone stage of the interview process. during the phone interview we may ask questions about why they made certain decisions. if a candidate doesn’t do well on the exercise and doesn’t make it to the phone interview stage, we’ll let them know we’re pursuing other candidates and give them the option to receive feedback on their work. we know feedback makes us all better, so we offer it to all candidates—not just those who make it all the way through to the end of the interview process.

tl;dr

1. • at magoosh, we believe your engineering exercise should be representative of the work you’d do at magoosh
   • our exercise assesses multiple types of engineering work: coding + architecture
   • we give everyone the same time constraints and try not to make those time constraints too stressful
   • when grading the exercise, we focus on the work not the person
   • we give feedback to anyone who wants it
   • we’re constantly trying to improve our exercise

interested in working at magoosh? check out our open positions.

if you don’t see an open position that’s perfect for you, please submit your resume via the general application.

learn more about our philosophy and culture here.

the post behind the scenes: the magoosh engineering exercise appeared first on magoosh 2022年足球世界杯举办地.

we think we’ve stopped the attack, but we’re continuing the monitor. the site should be working for most students and we’ll continue looking into the issues.

july 24, 9:15am pdt

unfortunately, we’re still experiencing issues and intermittent down time. it looks like someone is flooding our servers with “fake” traffic, also known as a dos attack. our team and partners are trying to determine how to stop the attack.

july 22, 12:00pm pdt

we had an unexpected outage today, and i’m truly sorry. we know how important your studies are and that many of you have upcoming tests or blocked off time today to study, and we let you down. we don’t have all the details, and we’re not 100% sure we’re in the clear, but i wanted to share a little bit about what happened.

first, here’s the timeline (all times pacific daylight time on saturday, july 22nd):

• 2:00am: our site became slow
• 5:30am: the site was entirely down
• 6:30am: the site was back up but very slow again and intermittently down
• 11:00am: the site was back up

we host our servers with amazon via amazon web services. we also use a company in australia to help us work with amazon. they monitor our servers and try to make sure everything’s running smoothly.

so what happened?

there was a problem with the server our database is on. our database is where we store all of your information, such as which questions you’ve answered, when your account expires, etc. every time you submit an answer, flip a flashcard, or take any other action on our site, we store that in our database so we can keep track of your progress and provide that information back to you. the database server had connectivity issues which ultimately impacted your ability to use the site. we have automated backups that should kick in when something like this happens, but unfortunately they didn’t work either. we don’t exactly know why the issue happened and why the backups didn’t work yet, but we’re looking into it.

our engineering team and our partners in australia decided the best course of action would be to completely replace our database and database server. this meant we’d need to take the site down entirely for about 15 minutes while we set up the new server and copied over the new database. we took this action around 10:45am and the site was back up by 11am.

ideally, the site would have never gone down, or if it did, we’d have identified the solution earlier. we’ll look into why this happened and see how we can prevent it in the future. i’m truly sorry for disrupting your studies, and if you want to share your thoughts or need a little extra time on your account or need anything else, let us know by emailing help@www.catharsisit.com.

thanks,
bhavin
ceo, magoosh

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in the past year, a number of companies i admire—including moz, treehouse, and buffer—have had to make layoffs. hoping to shed light on the issue, those companies chose to be open about their cuts and published articles here, here, and here about their struggles. three businesses making layoffs may not seem like a big deal, but they represent only a small portion of the layoffs that happened last year. and with most layoffs going unannounced, the truth is we still have only a small glimpse of how widespread the problem really is.

at magoosh, a startup based in the bay area, we’re vastly aware of the uptick in layoffs happening around us. but rather than shutting our eyes and waiting to see what happens, we’ve made it a priority to understand why cuts happen and actively work to avoid them. taking a cue from moz, treehouse, buffer, and others who have written on the subject, i’d like to share our own thoughts on layoffs: what we’ve learned about why they happen, how we approach risk-taking at magoosh as a result, and how we implemented our own layoff-preventing practices.

by having more open conversations about layoffs, it’s my hope that we can promote more understanding around them and collectively start making better business decisions at the intersection of risk-taking, growth, and hiring.

layoffs can happen for a number of reasons. every company is different, after all. so, let’s focus on one prevalent reason that has widely affected companies in the tech space.

startups, especially silicon valley venture-backed startups, are encouraged to chase growth. growth can take the form of more users, more revenue, or more of something else.  the hope is that high growth (often unprofitable growth) will lead to more funding which will lead to more growth and so on. at some point the company, usually after it has a very large user base, will focus on profit with the thought that high growth at first could lead to more long-term profit. but there’s a natural tension between growth (i.e. market share) and profit, and it’s a tension that has existed long before the dot-com bubble in the early 2000’s. in fact, the harvard business review published an article on the subject as far back as 1975.

vc firms have investors who are expecting a 6x return on their investment over a period of 10 years. in order to achieve that level of success, vcs need some of their companies to achieve massive outcomes (100x or higher), given that most of their portfolio companies will fail or return very little. because of this, vcs are incentivized to invest in startups that aim for big growth—startups that are willing to lose money month-over-month in order to grow the top line faster.  when founders take vc money, they are implicitly promising they will chase growth, not profit.

targeting growth (over profit) can be a smart approach for many companies, especially companies in a winner-take-most market. for example, facebook, twitter, snapchat, and the like would not have reached their levels of success if they focused on profit early on. however, most companies are not facebook, twitter, or snapchat. and most companies don’t realize what they’re getting into with the growth-before-profit approach. too many of these companies—energized by silicon valley’s seemingly free-flowing cash and pervasive “growth at all costs” message—end up chasing growth (to get that next round of funding), when in reality they should be focused on nailing down their value prop and developing a path to profitability.

the growth-focused approach can be painful when it doesn’t work—and for most startups it doesn’t. every founder anticipates some level of failed experimentation (“this product might fail, that’s fine”), but what they don’t usually think through is the people side of the product. in other words, when you raise a lot of money and hire a lot of people to build a product and then it fails, you’re not only faced with dropping a product, you’re faced with laying people off.

example: when failed experiments lead to layoffs

i’ve looked up to moz since the early days of magoosh (2011). i’ve read many blog posts, especially the ones by their founder rand, on how to approach content marketing and how to approach building a company.  moz and rand have played a big part in magoosh’s growth and my own growth.

so, in late 2016, i was sad to learn that moz was announcing layoffs. from their ceo, sarah bird:

this is the gut-wrenchingly painful part. the hardest part of my job is asking people who have put their hearts and souls into moz to part ways. to align the organization with this strategic shift, we will be asking about 28% of mozzers to leave. they are a part of the moz family and it is heartbreaking that they will not be working alongside us in the future.

moz had raised $29m to-date, a small early round, then $18m in 2012 and another $10m in 2016. while i don’t know the specifics, i suspect they raised the $18m round based on the success they had up to that point, and on a big future vision of becoming more than an seo company—eventually becoming the leading provider of tools for all inbound marketing. this was a big experiment and a big risk. and after four years, they realized the risk didn’t work out the way they hoped, which led to laying off 28% of their staff.

running a startup is a constant exercise in risk assessment. sometimes big risks pay off and sometimes, as in moz’s case, they don’t.  and the truth is that those layoffs—while difficult—were likely the right decision for moz in the long-term. moz’s experience is just one example of what many startups go through. it’s why many layoffs happen and will continue to happen. so, what can companies do? are layoffs an inevitable consequence of taking risks?

at magoosh, we approach business and risk-taking differently. we raised a small round of capital to get us off the ground at the beginning, and since then we’ve made it a point to spend only the money that we have, using funds from our most-successful product lines to expand into new product lines and markets. it’s made us a stronger company and it’s insulated us from the rising tide of layoffs throughout the bay area, while allowing us to still take calculated risks.

so, what do our business decisions look like in action? below, i’ve outlined some scenarios that many companies face. then, i explain how a vc-backed growth-focused company would approach each scenario and compare it to how we would approach that same scenario at magoosh.

scenario 1: launching one (or several) new product lines

magoosh is an online test prep company, and we periodically add prep products for new exams. for instance, we recently launched an mcat prep product for aspiring doctors, and we have plans to add more exams in the future. let’s see how the approach to adding exams differs.

vc-backed approach:

• identify the exams the company wants to pursue and focus on those that have very large market sizes.
• build a model for the growth trajectory of those exams and determine how much capital is required and do some light validation (e.g. surveys, etc.).
• launch and build as many exam products as possible, staying within the capital constraint, and hire people to work on those products.

magoosh approach:

• identify the exams that we want to pursue, focusing not only on those that have a sizeable market, but also those that could quickly be roi+.
• validate demand for these exams by building an audience first, before potentially building a product. this validation can take 6-9 months.
• only create products for the exams for which we successfully built an audience.

tradeoffs:
the vc-backed approach can lead to faster growth since the products are created earlier. if there’s a first-mover advantage, then the benefit of faster growth could be significant, and as we discussed before, faster growth can also help the company raise their next round of funding. however, if many of the new products are not successful, the vc-backed approach could lead to significant lost capital and could result in layoffs for the people hired onto some of the new teams.

scenario 2:  developing a new growth channel—outbound sales

at magoosh, we recently decided to experiment with outbound sales. we had seen some indication of market interest based on inbound group purchase requests and believed this channel had more potential. let’s see how the approach to experimenting with outbound sales could differ:

vc-backed approach:

• determine the potential of outbound sales and then hire an individual or several individuals to grow revenue, depending on capital available.
• continue pursuing outbound sales for 2-3 years even if it’s losing money, that is as long as there is some positive signal. if it pays off then it could pay off in a big way and grow top-line revenue in the meantime.

magoosh approach:

• identify outbound sales as an opportunity and potentially hire a contractor or intern to pursue it rather than hiring someone full-time.
• if we decide to hire someone, explicitly let them know that this is an experiment so there’s more risk in this role than there would be in other roles, and look for a more significant positive signal before hiring others onto that team.

tradeoffs:

if the outbound sales is successful, the vc-backed approach will almost certainly lead to faster growth. and some experiments need time in order to demonstrate a return, so the magoosh approach of hiring a contractor or intern may not provide enough time to assess whether outbound sales was successful. the magoosh approach, however, leads to lower capital expenditure and provides more clarity on the uncertainty of the future of the role. the vc-backed approach could lead to layoffs if the new channel is not successful.

in both of the scenarios above, the vc-backed approach can lead to faster growth, and if successful,  is likely better overall. our company’s approach protects against lost capital and layoffs, meaning it’s better in the failure case (which, in the world of start-up experiments, is the most likely outcome), as it can still lead to profitability. and even though our approach can mean slower growth, we think of it as a long-term approach worth carving out time for.

for what it’s worth, our approach hasn’t kept magoosh from attaining high-growth or profitability. we became cash-flow positive in 2012 and continue to grow quickly year-over-year, even achieving a top 100 place on the inc. 5000 in 2016.

perhaps, some might say, we could have achieved that more rapidly if we had employed a vc-backed approach to growth, but i believe making time to build a risk model to mitigate the chance of layoffs was the right move for us in the long run. and i believe if more vc-backed companies acted as if they were chasing profitability, even if in reality they were chasing growth, they could mitigate their own layoffs because they had at least created some artificial constraints for themselves. constraints are difficult to abide by, though, so at magoosh we’ve developed our own framework to keep us on track.

over the years, we’ve developed a framework for how we approach risks, especially as they relate to people. when a manager wants to hire for a new role, we go through the following questions:

• what’s the expected benefit of this role?  estimate which metrics will move, by how much, and by when.

• is the work experimental in nature? if yes, what happens if the experiment doesn’t work out?

• what is the time-frame for this role? what will this person be doing in 6 months, in 1 year, in 2 years? if the person’s work/project will end or will no longer be a company priority, what will we do? should we hire a contractor instead?

these questions help us understand the expectations and risks associated with each role. we then try to communicate these expectations and risks to each candidate (aligning with our value of communication > efficiency). we realize this approach can make it harder to fill positions. because we’re upfront about the potential risk in our temp and experimental roles—while they may not actually be that risky in reality—people might turn down those roles in favor of full-time positions elsewhere that they perceive as being less risky. we’re comfortable with that trade-off, though. if the experiment doesn’t work out for any reason, we know the person opted into the risk.

our approach has its own issues. while we try to take risks, our risks are generally smaller than those of the companies that have raised a lot of capital. this means we’re less likely to see the massive 100x successes. for now, it’s a tradeoff we’re comfortable with, as we believe it’s an approach that works best for our company and our team.

now that you’ve read all about our approach to risk-taking, layoffs, and hiring, i need to make one thing clear: we’re not so naive to think magoosh is immune from layoffs. we recognize that for any number of reasons—changes in the market, the end of the gre as we know it—could lead us to make our own tough cuts. that will always be the reality. but i believe the existence of layoffs—the fact that they will always happen in business—is not a good enough reason not to take steps to minimize their potential. if we didn’t at least try, we would not be doing right by our employees or our company.

i’ve shared what we’re doing; now i’d love to hear from you as well. if you’re using other tactics at your company, or disagree with any of those we’re using here, please leave a note for me in the comments. let’s continue to make this an open discussion, so that we can all—magoosh included—get better at understanding, preventing, and addressing layoffs.

thanks to aj shankar (everlaw), joel gascoigne (buffer), tawheed kader (toutapp, now marketo), andrew cronk (re-factor) and greg mcverry (review talent feedback) for reviewing and providing feedback on this article.

header image designed by mark thomas

the post growth, profit, and consequences: what founders should know about the rise in tech layoffs and what we’re doing to prevent them here appeared first on magoosh 2022年足球世界杯举办地.

writing about diversity and inclusion (d&i) makes me uncomfortable. i’ve been told a compelling article should be bold and opinionated, but the truth is, my beliefs are oftentimes loosely-held and nuanced. the topic of diversity is no exception. yet here i am writing an article about it.

why? because i believe it’s important for myself and other ceos to frequently step back and take a hard look at how we run our companies and to share how we’ve failed, how we’re working to improve, and what we’ve learned in the process.

i’m the first to admit our company is still very early in its diversity journey. in fact, the more i look into d&i initiatives, the more i realize there’s a lot we don’t know and a lot of work we still need to do. that said, i still want to share with you how we think about d&i at magoosh and what we’re doing to create a more diverse and inclusive team—even if it’s uncomfortable to talk about. i hope it might support another team’s roadmap to diversity, that it communicates to magoosh jobseekers that we value d&i, and that it inspires more open conversations in the tech industry about our journeys, struggles, and failures in striving toward a more diverse workforce.

i started actively thinking about diversity in early 2015 after attending a panel at the lean startup conference about diversity in tech led by eric ries (founder of the lean startup movement), freada kapor (one of our investors) and a few others. about 15 minutes into the panel, eric shared a story about his aha moment in d&i. his company had been failing in the “diversity department,” he told the audience, but he attributed it to a pipeline issue. to challenge this assumption, he and his team decided to run blind application reviews (in which he couldn’t see the name of applicants) and the results surprised eric. he realized he would move different candidates forward when doing a blind application review compared to traditional application review. in other words, bias was largely creeping into his hiring process and he hadn’t even realized it. his anecdote hit hard. sitting there listening quietly, i was overcome with a sinking feeling. i realized bias—my bias— was likely creeping into our process.

i went back to magoosh with a plan to change our hiring methods. we would implement new strategies and seek out diverse recruiting channels. no problem, i told myself, we have this diversity thing figured out. i no longer had to feel like my company was one of those companies, blinded by its own biases.  that’s when—confident i was close to solving our own diversity issues—i reached out to freada and asked where we should start posting our new open positions. she responded the same day.

“bhavin–i guess i don’t understand the disconnect here.  you seem to be asking for a simple list (i.e. silver bullet) of where to recruit so that you’d end up with more diversity.  if the issue were simply about recruiting somewhere differently, everyone would know about it and every tech company would be more diverse….

instead this is a much more complicated and nuanced problem.

there are dozens of methodologically rigorous studies that document even well-intentioned people harbor all kinds of racial, ethnic and gender bias, especially when it comes to stem fields.  if i just send you a list of schools (which are easy enough to find without my help), none of these biases will be addressed.  resumes with african american or women’s names will be unconsciously judged differently.

a real commitment to diversity is not a check-the-box exercise.  there are things to do on the recruiting side (e.g. what’s the language in the job description?), hiring side (e.g. where you post or do in-person recruiting), interviewing (e.g. do you do structured interviews or free form and how do they each stack up if you care about diversity?), evaluating candidates (e.g. does rank of school matter?) then onboarding.

this is not one email or one meeting…it’s a decision to evaluate your practices and your work environment so that you can recruit and retain diversity.”

in other words, i didn’t have diversity figured out. i was asking for a simple solution to a complex problem—a problem that would require me to start rethinking magoosh’s hiring initiatives from every angle, not by doing a quick check-the-box exercise.

freada graciously offered to come chat with me and our leadership team. she answered our questions, shared some research, and identified strategies that we could implement. after the meeting, we began holistically evaluating our hiring process. our team took a long, hard look at our process and saw we were doing some things well and some things poorly. we came to realize committing to diversity and inclusion would be an ongoing process that would require quite a bit of effort.

since then, we’ve committed to continuous improvement of our hiring process, and i want to share what we’re doing today to keep getting better. each item below is a work in progress—we know there’s more we can do, and we continue to think about how to create a fairer and better hiring process and a more inclusive culture. in aggregate, here’s what we’d aim to accomplish with the practices outline below: 1) to encourage candidates from diverse networks to apply to magoosh; 2) to decrease our own unconscious bias; and 3) to create a fair system for hiring and growth at magoosh. take a look and i welcome you to share your thoughts and questions at the end.

what we’re doing to encourage candidates from diverse networks to apply to magoosh

diversifying our applicant pool

many of our hiring managers, myself included, don’t have diverse networks. we’re currently working on building our networks, so we can share open positions, details about our company, and more to people from diverse backgrounds. for a few positions, we also experimented with the rooney rule, holding off on phone interviews until we hit certain target percentages for applicant pool, and we hope to use the rooney rule for all positions in the future.

creating inclusive job descriptions

when freada visited magoosh, she shared that women are less likely than men to apply to positions in which they don’t meet all the criteria. she also told us both women or men may be discouraged from applying based on certain words in the job description. we made a few changes:

• in our job postings, we now say “you have many of the following” instead of saying “requirements”. we also added a sentence that says, “please feel comfortable applying, even if you don’t meet all the requirements for the position.”
• our hiring managers and recruiters know to avoid certain words that might discourage certain candidates from applying (e.g. we’re looking for a “finance guy”)
• we run our job postings through textio, a site that provides you with feedback about language in your posting. it tells us how much of the language in our job descriptions is gendered, how much of it might discourage someone of a different race, etc., then gives us a score based on those factors. we target a score of 65+ for each posting.
• we added a sentence to the bottom of all our job descriptions that states, “we are an equal opportunity employer and value diversity at our company. we do not discriminate on the basis of race, religion, color, national origin, gender, sexual orientation, age, marital status, veteran status, or disability status.”

what we’re doing to decrease our unconscious bias

conducting blind questionnaire review

we’d love to have a blind review process for all cover letters and resumes, but unfortunately, our applicant tracking system doesn’t support that yet. however, we have been experimenting with blind review for candidates’ questionnaires—a later step in our process. when possible, our recruiter provides the questionnaire responses to the hiring manager without the candidate’s name, so the hiring manager isn’t unintentionally biased in some way.

using rubrics for interviews and questionnaires

a few years ago, we were recruiting for a position that was bringing in a high volume of applications. multiple people were grading the same questionnaires, and they quickly realized there were a number of discrepancies between each assessment. one of the individuals decided to introduce a grading rubric to address the problem. the hypothesis: if they predefined the criteria they were looking for in the role, then assessed each questionnaire based on that criteria, they could lower the chance for bias to creep in. ideally, two graders reviewing the same responses and using the same rubric would reach the same conclusion. overall, it proved to be a successful strategy, so other magoosh hiring managers began using rubrics for questionnaires and for the in-person interview as well. now, grading on a rubric has become a standard part of how we evaluate candidates.

asking structured in-person interview questions

we do two culture/behavioral interviews for all in-office, full-time hires. we use the same set of questions for each candidate, and for a given open position, we’ll use the same set of interviewers. each interviewer then independently completes a scorecard based on our in-person interview rubric, and then we debrief. this approach ensures candidates are being asked the same questions, and it prevents one interviewer from biasing another one.

what we’re doing to create a fair system for hiring and growth

providing guidance on what to write in a cover letter

we’ve found that some people know how to write cover letters and others don’t. we’ve also realized that one’s ability to write a cover letter isn’t necessarily a predictor of how well that person would do in the role. in our application, we now provide guidance to all applicants about what we’re looking for in a cover letter to ensure each candidate knows exactly what we’re looking for.

creating a salary framework

a few years ago, i wrote about our approach to non-negotiable salary. our salary framework is an extension of that principle. in short, we aim to place each of our employees in a specific role (e.g. product manager) and at a specific level (e.g. level 3). there’s a fixed salary associated with each role and level. we hope this results in equal pay for equal work.

“stay” interviews

most people are familiar with exit interviews in which an hr person asks an employee for feedback after that employee has already decided to leave. in mid-2015, we decided to conduct “stay” interviews or, as we call them, check-ins. our hr manager meets with every employee in the company to get feedback—both positive and negative. she then shares company-wide and department-wide themes (without sharing individual names) with me and the other team leads. we believe that getting this feedback is helping us take steps to create a more inclusive culture.

it’s hard to quantify exactly what impact these changes have made, but i can say that in late 2014, we had 18 employees who were 30% women and 70% men. today, in early 2017, our team of 30 full-time employees is 60% women and 40% men, including two women on our five-person senior management team, and four women people managers out of a total seven people managers. that said, we are still very underrepresented in certain areas and have much progress to make. i hope that by committing to the practices outlined above, and by expanding into more, we can eventually achieve and sustain our d&i goals.

diversity and inclusion requires consistent and relentless focus. we’re still very early in our journey—we have a long way to go and a lot to learn, but i’m grateful that we started down this path and that our team is constantly thinking about how we can get better.

in early 2016, we signed the kapor founder’s commitment, in which we committed to a series of actions that support diversity and inclusion in our company. you can learn more about the commitment and how your own company can commit to diversity here.

now that i’m done sharing my thoughts, i’d love to hear from you. as i mentioned previously, we still have a ways to go in our diversity efforts. if you have any ideas about how we can continue to increase the number of underrepresented minorities at magoosh, let me know in the comments.

thanks to cat perez (healthsherpa), sydney thomas (precursor ventures), and the magoosh team for reviewing this article.

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at magoosh, we value communication. to that end, we want you to know what to expect with our hiring process. the entire process can take as little as a 3 weeks or much longer depending on how quickly you respond, how quickly your references respond, and our internal schedule. along the way, we’ll do our best to keep you updated. and you should always feel free to reach out to us if you want to know where you stand in the process or what the hold up is! i’ve outlined our general process below.

in an effort to continue learning and growing, we will be experimenting with some process changes in hopes of creating a more streamlined and enjoyable experience for our candidates. for some positions, the phone interview stage may come before the take-home assessment (omitting the intro call stage altogether). 

step 1a: application

you apply for one of our open positions on our jobs page. we review your resume and cover letter, looking for signs that you have the experience needed for the position, and more importantly, that you’ve done a little homework about magoosh. we’ll typically get back to you within 2 weeks and hopefully much faster (unless the position says otherwise).

step 1b: intro call

this step only applies to select in-office positions. if we like what we see in your resume and cover letter, we’ll schedule an intro call with you, likely with the hiring manager or our recruiter. the purpose of the intro call is for us to see if you meet the core requirements for the role, and for you to learn more about magoosh and the position. before we ask you to tackle our questionnaire, we want to make sure you have a good understanding of what we’re looking for and that you’re still interested, hopefully excited! the call usually takes about 30 minutes.

step 2: take-home assessment

next, we’ll send you a take-home assessment with some sample tasks and questions related to the role and to magoosh. these take-home assessments can take an average of 1.5 to 3 hours, depending on the position. the assessment is also a great opportunity for you to get a sense of what type of work you might be doing in the role. if you’re not excited about completing the assessment, you likely won’t be excited about the position—and that’s definitely okay! just let us know that the position isn’t for you. hiring is about finding a mutual fit.

in an effort to treat candidates as fairly as possible, we grade each assessment anonymously against our rubric. this just means the hiring manager won’t know whose assessment they’re grading, and at this stage, you’re assessed solely on the quality of your work. we recognize the investment our candidates put in at this stage of our process. we value that investment and want to make sure we’re pulling our weight! we grade each assessment carefully and thoughtfully, often with more than one grader to ensure fairness. once you complete the assessment, we’ll typically respond within a week.

step 3: phone interview

assuming there’s a mutual fit after the assessment, we’ll move on to the phone interview (think of it as a mini-interview for both of us)! the phone interviews usually last about 60 minutes during which we’ll ask questions to gauge your fit for the role and how you might add to our culture and values. and you’ll also have the chance to ask us about the role and about magoosh. we’ve definitely had applicants decide magoosh isn’t for them after phone interviews, and that’s also okay! again, for us and ideally for you, this process is about finding a mutual fit. this is the last step in our process for remote positions.

step 4: in-person interview

this step only applies to in-office positions. you’ll typically have three to five interviews over a 4-to-6 hour period.

• one or two competency interviews: you’ll take on more sample tasks that you would do in the position. we also may ask you how you would think through some challenges we’re currently facing.
• one or two culture interviews: the purpose of these interviews is to see if we share the same values in how we approach work. here’s a guide that will help you prepare for our in-person culture interview.
• reverse interview: this is an opportunity for you to ask questions to another magoosher about what it’s like to work at magoosh (e.g. what are typical hours like? what do you like most about working here? what do you like least about working here?). we’ll try to pair you with someone who has either been in a similar position or has the same manager as you would have.

after the in-person interview, we’ll typically get back to you within 2 weeks, many times sooner.

step 5: reference and background checks

this step only applies to in-office positions. after the in-person interview, we do reference and background checks. this is the last step in our process for in-office positions. for the background check we want to make sure you are who you say you are. for reference checks, we want to talk with people who have worked with you before so we can learn more about you from someone else’s perspective. these take about 1 week. if we make you an offer after the reference and background checks, we’ll ask you to get back to us within 1-2 weeks.

for remote positions, the entire process takes about 2-3 weeks and for in-office positions, it’s about 5-7 weeks. we’ve also had applicants make it through much faster for both, so it really depends.

learn more about the team already working at magoosh:

team page

and find out why we love our jobs so much:

magoosh wins happiest company award!

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many founders and vcs espouse the mantra hire fast, fire fast. there’s a sense of urgency to fill every open position, because every day a position is open is a day that work isn’t getting done. and if you make a hiring mistake, well, you can always fire that employee and try again with someone else. sounds like good business, right?

but there’s a problem: employees are people, not resources. they are people with lives, obligations, and financial needs. yes, you should focus on doing what’s best for your company, but you should also treat people with the respect they deserve.

an all-too-common anecdote (based on a real story)

saasco, a bay area startup,  just raised a $7m round of funding and is hiring fast. they found aaron, who lives in cleveland, oh, and who had been searching for software engineering jobs in the bay area. saasco interviewed aaron giving him a coding test and technical design question. they even flew him out so he could meet the team over lunch. all went well. aaron got the job and relocated with his wife and kids (relocation expenses paid). the change was disruptive and expensive (due to the high cost of living) for his family , but he had a high-paying job at well-funded startup, and he and his family would adjust.

six weeks into the role, the founder calls aaron into his office and fires him. aaron wasn’t delivering results. he was used to a slower pace with more structure, but saasco was a bit chaotic. employees needed to make progress without being guided; the company needed to hit their metrics to raise their next round of funding. aaron was struggling with the ambiguity and others were getting frustrated. the company paid aaron a week of severance, and the founder knew he made the right business decision to let aaron go.

was the company right in letting aaron go? probably. could they have handled the situation better? definitely. these types of occurrences happen all too often. this “churn and burn” culture is not something i (or magoosh) want to be part of. so how do we approach it?

hire slow

slow doesn’t mean what you might think it means.  when hiring, you should move candidates through the process as quickly as possible. and when you find someone who’s a good fit, you should move quickly and make an offer.

hiring slow means that you should be thorough. don’t make the hiring decision based on a snap judgement. create a structured process that tests for job and culture fit and fights against your biases. google’s senior vice president of people operations has written quite a bit on the topic.

a thorough process is fairer to potential employees. you’re doing the hard work of assessing fit up front, so that hopefully you won’t need to let them go. we’ve iterated on our process many times, and we’ll continue to do so. you can read more about our hiring process in detail here.

fire fast, but humanely

occasionally, you’ll need to let people go to protect your company and your other employees. after all, one person who’s not a fit can negatively affect everyone else. however, you can let people go and treat them with respect. here’s how:

1. share your stance on firing with employees before they join.

when new employees join companies, they often assume they have some level of job protection, maybe for a year—it’s an implicit understanding especially for those who have not worked in a fast-paced startup culture. but if you believe in firing fast, then you should explicitly let the new hire know about your approach. even better, let them know what percent of people have been let go in the first 3 months. let them opt into the risk of joining your company. don’t rely on the employee’s understanding of at-will employment. don’t lie by omission to get them to join.

2. communicate expectations clearly and regularly

after you hire someone, spend time crafting a 3-month plan with them. share what you expect them to accomplish and how you will measure their performance. if you don’t know all the specifics, then share your general expectations about performance and values. have weekly one-on-ones (and daily check-ins in the first week or two) to share feedback and to give them time to ask questions. your job is to help the new employee be successful, so early feedback is critical.

at magoosh, we’re now better at this then we used to be, but we still have a lot of room for improvement. (i’m sure many magooshers reading this didn’t have a clearly laid out 3-month plan when they joined—sorry!) we now try to do the following:

1. provide specific culture and competency feedback during weekly 1-on-1’s.
2. regularly (every 2 weeks or so) communicate how well the new employees are doing in their role.
3. solicit feedback from new employees about their experience at magoosh and what we can do to help them succeed.

3. offer a reasonable and well-defined severance. 

for any number of reasons, things may not work out. but remember, when you fire someone, it’s your fault. if you had a better hiring process, you could have identified that this person wasn’t well-suited for the role or the company. now the employee has to find another job, which takes time. we took inspiration from rand fishkin of moz and offer one month of severance (assuming there were no egregious behavior issues). think of severance as a “hiring penalty”:  you pay it because you didn’t invest enough time in the hiring process, and it’s your incentive to make the hiring process better.

here’s a link to a google doc we share with candidates during the hiring process which outlines how we approach the first few months, the intro period:

in the fast-paced startup culture — where every day matters — it’s easy for founders to hire and fire quickly. however, step back and evaluate the consequences of those actions. the people you hire are not disposable resources. sometimes a relationship between an employee and a company doesn’t work out, and that’s ok. let them go, but do so humanely and then improve your hiring process for the next hire.

read more by bhavin:

why we don’t negotiate salary and neither should you

how being named the happiest company made me less happy

the post hire slow, fire fast (but do it humanely) appeared first on magoosh 2022年足球世界杯举办地.

at magoosh, our culture and values define how we approach our work, interact with students and each other, and much more. contrary to popular belief, culture isn’t about whether or not you drink blue bottle coffee, are good at foosball, or like certain movies. a good set of values is a decision-making framework—values should help team members make decisions between two good options.

in true nerd fashion, we’ve turned our values into inequalities—we are test prep experts after all! the left side represents the magoosh way, and the right side represents another good way, just not our way. knowing what you aren’t is as important as knowing what you are.

done > perfect

• we have a bias toward action. we don’t delay for perfect tomorrow what can be done well today.
• we believe in the pareto principle. we try to achieve 80% of the impact with 20% of the effort.

data > intuition

• we run experiments to test ideas and gather data. we’re scientists!
• we collect feedback often since we don’t read minds…well
• we confirm (or disprove!) our intuitions with data.

passion > [something]

• we love what we do–helping students is too much fun to be considered work.
• we enjoy thinking about magoosh and our students whether at work or home.
• we help our teammates and students in times of need, even if we have to leave a dinner party to do it.

challenge > comfort

• we tackle tasks that we’ve never done before.
• we understand the best progress often comes from uncomfortable situations.
• we challenge ourselves to learn new skills—we are always students.

communication > efficiency

• we set clear expectations and don’t oversell to students, partners, and teammates.
• we let people know when we’ve completed a task, closing the “communication loop.”
• we follow up and send reminders–we don’t pass the buck.
• we value direct, person-to-person feedback and communication.

friendly > formal

• we respond to and talk about colleagues, customers, and partners in a friendly and positive tone.
• we take responsibility for our mistakes and don’t harp on the mistakes of others.
• we trust each other and don’t engage in politicking.

change > status quo

• we will always be a work in progress.
• we adapt to difficult and unplanned situations with a positive attitude.
• we constantly re-evaluate our priorities.

learning > knowing

• we independently seek out learning opportunities
• we have a growth mindset and believe that weaknesses can be turned into strengths
• we believe in potential and give magooshers opportunities to grow and change roles

accessible > exclusive

• we are available to help and support our students and teammates.
• we encourage ideas from everyone—the best ideas can come from anywhere!

wow > profit

• we wow customers and each other with service even at the expense of short-term profit.
• we go above and beyond in our work and never say, “it’s not my job.”
• we readily share and give credit.

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by no means is this our last and final list. it’s done but not perfect, and we know there’s room for change. however, these values help us collectively make hundreds of decisions every day. we not only trust each other to follow them, but we also hold each other accountable when we don’t. i’ve even been able to adopt some of our values in my personal life—i now make faster decisions (though still slower than many on the magoosh team…still working on that), and i’ve learned to embrace change and unplanned situations.

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