Pros
Before looking for my next role, I made a checklist of requirements and I didn’t settle for any place that didn’t fulfill all of the desires I had for a job. I wanted something with:
- social impact
- high level autonomy in my work
- projects that I could allow myself to become obsessed with and inspired by
- Work related to financial technology
- Work that would give me more exposure to cultures of foreign countries
- Something that would allow me to use my skills in both engineering and design simultaneously, since I did a lot of research in interaction design during college but followed the engineering track for my major
I interviewed at a lot of different companies to get a good sense of the market, got a number of job offers but turned them all down because I was already pretty happy at the company I was at. When I interviewed at Kiva, I became very excited because the role checked all of the boxes.
It is my understanding that although most tech companies retain employees for a few years, there are a good number of employees who have remained with Kiva for nearly a decade because it’s a very special place to work.
The organization went through a number of changes before I was hired, and it sounds like there were some conflicting opinions during the restructuring of the org, some growing pains, and a succession of a couple of new CEOs to take the place of the old, as well as some culture shifts… but I wasn’t there for any of that. Over the past 9 months of working at Kiva I feel that I’ve only seen the good parts.
I also had a chance to:
- Travel to Freetown, Sierra Leone and spend a total of almost three months out there by choice
- Wrote my first Medium article about my experiences in SL
- Help build and design digital identity technology intended to be used by multiple countries’ governments to further the goals of financial inclusion globally
- Attend meetings with managers and deputy governors from the country’s central bank, civil registry, managers and employees of various financial institutions, microfinance institutions, community and commercial banks, etc. to understand firsthand all of the problems that these people experience while trying to provide financial services to citizens of SL
- Give demos to many of these managers and employees
- Be a part of a PR event with the president of the country, which was aired on national news about digital identity in Africa
- Assist with creation of a public facing demo video to be shown at said PR event
- Attend conferences on identity and technology with our team
- Travel abroad with my team and bond over a shared common culture in a foreign country
- Assist with preparation for pilots in real bank branches
- Lead UX research planning
Other really minor perks:
- Flexible hours, unlimited pto, dogs allowed in the office, really kind coworkers who all want to make an impact
Cons
I don't know, I'm pretty happy here so I'm not in the mood to think about cons right now.
