Our team members are our most valuable resource, and our opinionated approach to culture is a crucial and intentional part of our strategy for winning. While we look to hire people with a wide diversity of background and talents, we’re looking to hire those who will share our commitment to certain ideals, values, and principles. Working at a startup brings more autonomy, more ownership, and more opportunities for upside. But on balance it also brings more challenge, more expectations, and a more “get stuff done” attitude. It’s a tradeoff, and it’s not for everyone. The goal of this document is to help you understand whether it’s right for you.
Our expectations on Work/Life harmony
At Visor, we believe that the typical work-life balance isn't a one-size-fits-all concept. In essence, we're not just about work or life, but a harmonious blend of both that coexist and are seamlessly intertwined.
During your workday, we encourage you to integrate your personal life into your schedule. This could mean taking a break for a gym session, running an errand, or stepping outside for some fresh air.
On the flip side, we also acknowledge that there will be times when the demands of your work necessitate additional hours, even during nights and weekends. As a startup, we are in a marathon, not a sprint to ensure preventing burnout. But, we're not walking the marathon — it’s about picking a pace that is sustainable. While team members incorporate “life” into their work day, they are also expected to work professional life at times into your personal schedule, such as monitoring email, slack, and other communications systems in evenings and during weekends, and responding to things that may be urgent.
The Visor team is generally online between 9am to 6pm EST. But, team members should manage their own schedules. For example, if a team member stayed up very late to make progress on an important project, they should consider having a slower morning start the next day. We treat team members with trust and autonomy to manage their time successfully and reward those who go the extra mile.
In recognition of the hard work required in our fast-paced environment, we offer unlimited time off and you’re required to take it (at least two weeks)! This is our way of ensuring that you have the opportunity to recharge and maintain a healthy work-life harmony.
You’ll love working at Visor if: You are passionate and energized by your work and don't mind working late nights and occasionally on weekends. You are eager to find a place where you are surrounded by like-minded individuals who put in the extra work and hours to build something great.
What we are looking for in candidates
Leadership & Initiative
At Visor, we hope for our team members to actively seek out leadership opportunities within their domains. We expect our team to not just fulfill their responsibilities, but also contribute to building our business by proactively take steps to pursue opportunities without waiting to be told what to do.
With one of our core values being continuous learning, we create an environment where team members are treated with the autonomy to seek out growth and development opportunities that can help propel the entire team forward. If you are the type of person who thrives on being proactive and bringing novel processes or projects forward, Visor could be a great fit for you.
You’ll love working at Visor if: You enjoy being expected to come up with work of your own choice that will help the company grow. At Visor, just fulfilling one’s assigned responsibilities is below the minimum expectations.
Example: Rob knew that the company was about to make a number of engineering hires and expected that it might be challenging to onboard them without proper documentation. On his own time, he set up a shared internal guide for how to document code, updated the Github project to include dependencies for building documentation from inline comments, and began with a few examples. On Monday, he asked a few colleagues to join the effort to document the modules they had written. When the new hires were made, he evaluated how well the documentation helped them get started and began compiling resources to assist future hires. After a week of the new hires beginning to work, he checked in with them again to make sure they had all resources they needed to succeed.
Growth Mindset & Humility
Here at Visor, you will thrive if you have a growth mindset. It's about taking risks, embracing challenges or failures, persisting in the face of setbacks, seeing effort as the path to mastery, learning from criticism, and finding lessons and inspiration in the success of others. In our dynamic and fast-paced environment, a growth mindset is crucial. It encourages continuous learning, innovation, and adaptation, which are essential for success in our industry. We value team members who embrace a growth mindset, who are not afraid to step out of their comfort zones, and who are always ready to learn and grow both personally and professionally.
This also means we are looking for candidates who are humble. Those who are receptive to constructive criticism and willing to learn from others, regardless of their position or status. Those who are able to admit when one is wrong or has made a mistake, without shifting blame on others and viewing it as a growth opportunity. And those who are open-minded and value the contributions and perspectives of colleagues. This doesn’t mean one should always downplay your own strengths or never advocate, but finding that right balance between ego and being humble no matter your title or previous experience.
You’ll love working at Visor if: You are someone who is comfortable admitting when you’re wrong or made a mistake, persisting despite failure, treating feedback as a gift not an attack, and being asked to do things you have no experience doing before.
Example: Felicia, Head of Marketing, leads a new marketing launch campaign alongside her team that doesn't achieve its MQL targets. Instead of blaming the team, she sees this as an opportunity to grow and improve. She requests a post-campaign debrief with her team to understand what went wrong. She's open to feedback and ideas from her direct reports, and committed to applying the lessons learned to future campaigns, such as refining the targeting, messaging, or channel mix.
Passion: Role & Visor
We are looking for team members who are passionate about their craft. In other words, work is fun for you because you are passionate about your role and Visor. We want to make Visor your dream job, and in order to do that, it needs to be a place where work doesn’t feel like work because it is enjoyable. We strive for people who experience a sense of fulfillment from their work and who are intrinsically motivated to excel in their career. That makes putting in the extra hours or effort as part of the startup grind that much more rewarding.
We are also looking for people who are bought in to our company and our mission. We want folks who uphold and embody the core values of Visor in their actions and decisions, and align their behavior with the organization’s principles. This means putting the “team” before the “I”.
You’ll love working at Visor if: You are so passionate about your domain and Visor’s mission that work is enjoyable and fulfilling — and due to this, putting in extra hours to deliver exceptional work is rewarding to you.
Example: Rebecca is on the product management team, and she likes to always refine her craft and apply it to her work. She has a stack of books about product design and team management on her reading list and likes to get through about two per month. When she reads on nights and weekends, she takes notes on ideas she’d like to apply to her work with Visor. Sometimes she learns something so valuable that she’d like to share it with the team, so she documents it in the Handbook or sets up a lunch & learn session. She also commonly sets up coffees with other product managers she knows in town (or seeks out new ones she could meet with) in order to trade ideas.
Our thoughts on taking a stance on political, social, environmental, and cultural issues
We’re laser-focused on our mission, and that also means that we generally avoid Visor getting involved in other missions or causes. It is company policy not to make statements or take stances on issues unrelated to our mission, including issues of political, social, environmental, or cultural significance.
We have a strict framework to refer to in order to be intentional with what issues we decide to take a stance on.
Several factors will be consider that include the following questions:
- Does the issue directly impact our core mission here at Visor? It is company policy not to make statements or take stances on issues unrelated to our mission, including issues of political, social, environmental, or cultural significance.
- By taking a stance or position on an issue, can Visor have an impact on meaningful progress and actions relating to the issue? Consideration must be given to whether Visor has the resources and influence to effect change.
- Can we develop clear actions and commitments relating to the issue? We recognize that words are meaningless if not followed by actions.
Ultimately, the sole decision maker to speak up on these matters will be our CEO and founder after carefully reviewing the framework above.