Company with a great mission on a way to succeed, but with lots of improvements to be made
Pros
Encouraging place to work and absolutely approving of the CEO. Hamish cares about every single person on an individual level like no other founder would. Startup atmosphere, great company if you’re into teamwork and showing that you care about health. Great startup if you are proactive, fast learner, genuinely into following health news and improving the product according to what’s current. You’ll feel encouraged and get shoutouts every time you do something well, get constructive feedback, have opportunity to feed back others regularly in 121s and 360s and just in general thrive in the career you choose here. There is opportunity to progress within your role, so if this is why you’re applying - definitely go for it!
Cons
My main fears with this company are : - That it’s too comfortable for its own good - I worked here for around a year and have not felt challenged or excited about a single project. In that vein, if you come from bigger startups / corporate , you’d really want to work for a small startup with a few smaller projects going on to make the most out of Thriva. It’s also not the place if you like to ‘live for your job’, which is great as you can have your work life balance. Just saying it’s not for those who’d get excited being the first and last to leave and expecting that kind of ‘putting it all in’ management. Personally that’s a pro, not a con, but there’s no Apple kind of drive here. - ‘Truly caring’ - yes, this should absolutely be part of the mission. It’s also its weakest link that can be pushed into faking as no one would truly care about every single thing they do equally. Also it excludes those less knowledgable about the company , new starters within their first few months because they might be caring the most but can’t yet demonstrate it. a) In terms of hierarchy, you might need to get used to people only giving feedback to your managers, rather than face to face, which to me always contradicted the above as I never felt cared for on a personal level. Hope that makes sense, but it’s like every constructive or non constructive feedback would come in your 121s and then you’d be left thinking why could people not express themselves. Alongside with feeling comfortable, truly caring also depends on your mental health state of the month. I did go through a low period here, and again people just didn’t know how to address it on a personal level. Which is because it’s a happy place to work, but people being able to speak their mind , rather than having it funnelled through a Direct Manager would have helped. The above makes Thriva to be a fair weather company, rather than a place where people can have uncomfortable conversations. - That it’s not working fast or hard enough on diversity: This again is something I had at the back of my head since the hiring process, but have really expected much more work on since 2020. The company is still the whitest place I worked at. Again, if you’re British, white, in your late twenties, into being comfortable at work and into healthcare, perfect for you! However, the company is still not going out of their way to hire talent from different cultures / races. Don’t get me wrong, for a white company, they’ve done education sessions for BLM and try to understand different cultures, just need to work on actually implementing this. Another thing that again could be improved and sped up is promoting women - this has improved to some degree in the past half year since the last neutral glassdoor review, but women empowerment in general within the company is something that should be looked at. So rather than ‘here’s a promotion’, looking into what edge are women bringing to each and every team. And when looking into hires in product, b2b, sales in general using that edge to diversify the product to target the female customers as well.
