Culture

What’s it like working at Switchback? (Switchback is the parent company of Compass)

100% remote

Our communication is mostly async.

We minimize meetings to maximize deep work.

We don’t dictate when or how you work, either.

Instead of obsessing over inputs, we obsess over outputs:

• We track our velocity and are always looking for ways to go faster.
• We’re early adopters of many AI tools.
• We’re looking into how to streamline our CI/CD.
• PR authors merge after QA-ing their changes (no PR review purgatory)

Transparent

Our repo is open-source, but transparency extends beyond code. We’re open about our business goals and roadmap. We’re open about expenses and pay. We share guides on how to replicate the hardest features we’ve built. We’re open about our strategy for winning over users.

If you’re used to corporate secrecy, working here might feel like a relief. You don’t have to walk on eggshells or sugarcoat the truth, even when it’s not pretty.

Outcome-oriented

We set company goals, like getting profitable by December 31. But we also set quarterly and weekly goals. To help us get there, each teammate sets a weekly “commitment.” A commitment has a clear outcome that can be considered Done or Not Done. For example, finish the logout feature (PR#1) by 11AM on Friday.

Teammates draft their own commitments, and we refine them during our standup meetings.

This is how we take responsibility for our outcomes; Each teammate has to plan, estimate, and deliver.