A closer look at companies executing leadership excellence

Despite the Brotopia reputation of many Silicon Valley tech companies, not all startups in the San Francisco Bay Area operate like a frat house. In fact, Heap has earned the #1 spot on Glassdoor’s 2019 list of Best Places to Work in the small-to-medium sized business category.

Heap provides a data management technique that automatically captures every web, mobile, and cloud interaction—like clicks, submits, transactions, emails—and retroactively analyzes data without writing code.  If you work in the data engineering field, you just saved 60% of your time cleaning and organizing data in preparation for analysis.

Heap’s mission is to power business decisions with truth. The company applies the same philosophy to its ever-evolving culture as well. To stay close to the truth of its culture, Heap uses frequent pulse engagement surveys to track employee sentiment. Bi-annual 360-degree performance reviews provide team members with deep, forward-looking feedback on their own career growth. New hires complete surveys within 60 days of joining to capture fresh, impartial impressions on whether the culture is walking its talk.  The, ah-hem, Heaple Committee (Heap People) gives the leadership team qualitative feedback on where improvement is needed.

In a recent interview with Glassdoor, Heap CEO and former Facebook Product Manager Matin Movassate stated, “Hiring well is the single most important thing we can do at Heap. I try to repeat this mantra as often as I can.”

He went on to describe how the company puts its values into action:

“In fact, one of our company values is centered around how to hire well: ‘Emphasize Slope Over Y-Intercept’. This means we value potential (“slope”) over past experience (“y-intercept”) in evaluating candidates. We believe potential is best predicted by finding people who are low-ego, ambitious, smart and intellectually curious.”

Kudos to Movasatte for breaking the Silicon Valley bro-code and recognizing that culture is a product of what the leadership measures, rewards and ignores.  To learn more about Heap’s culture and values in action, click here.