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January 18th, 2013 by Simon Wilson

First Impressions: What More Could an Employee Want?

It’s been over five months since I started working at Clio. I suppose it’s fair to say that I have more than first impressions to share! 

Let’s start with an introduction. I came to Clio from a consulting job in the staffing industry because I was looking for an opportunity to build something long-term. My job here at Clio involves two functions: First, I work as a recruiter, helping to bring the best people on board to build an excellent product. This is a rather serious undertaking given the changes the software development world has seen recently and the demand in the market for quality. My second function at Clio is to work on employee retention, which involves fostering a culture where people feel great about coming to work. 

I’m often asked, “why do you work here” in interviews. My answer boils down to a couple of basic things:

• Clio’s a growing company. People who enjoy the challenges that entails do well here — it’s not easy to build great things with a team that’s growing as it builds! From a hiring standpoint, it’s interesting to get to work on solving team building problems at the same time as I get to contribute to the development of the product indirectly. Hiring is arguably the most important thing a company can get *right*… great products are built by great people!
• The folks building Clio understand how software development should be done. I came to the company from a consulting background, so I’ve had the opportunity to see what has worked and what hasn’t worked first-hand. Clio gets a lot of the big stuff right, which is believe it or not a really tough thing to do: We’re lean, we release software that works, and we’ve found a way to balance the entrepreneurial, agile style of modern software development with enough process to make sure we’re always moving forward. 

The maxim “good people always want to work with other good people” drives my work on a daily basis. In a way, I report to every person in the company, and that lets me keep my eye on the task at hand. The good people here need other good people to make their lives easier, and by contributing to that I contribute to the company in a meaningful way. What more could any employee want?