Balbix
Santa Clara, CA
Grade: A
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Summary: Check off all the dream boxes for many tech workers; Work in AI, Cybersecurity and in Silicon Valley for a company backed by former Cisco CEO John Chambers. Great benefits and worker recognition opportunities.
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Intro: Candidates are attracted to Balbix because it is in the white-hot cybersecurity space and based on its unique, cutting-edge artificial intelligence-based technology.
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Impact statements:
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Advancement Opportunities:
Balbix has a unique opportunity for personal development, given that it is at an early stage and largely engineering-focused. The company is just recently expanding the marketing and sales teams, so there is plenty of opportunity around achieving and surpassing key growth metrics. From an engineering perspective, Balbix requires our engineers to interact with customers on a weekly basis, which they wouldn’t have the opportunity to do in a larger company. This really speeds up an employee’s advancement as they develop into management roles and helps them better understand their end users’ need for success. Teams get to work alongside customers to solve a problem, allowing them to work faster and smarter. And, unlike
other large security companies, they have opportunities to speak with industry analysts, which helps to raise their industry visibility profile. Example: Balbix is a top sponsor and the #1 analyst’s (Gartner) primary cyber-security event this year, and two-thirds of our booth staff will be engineers – not sales or marketing people.
Measuring satisfaction:
Balbix management prides itself on being actively involved with every team and aspect of the business. Face-to-face interaction between team members, management and executive staff, as well as bi-weekly all-hands happy hours, keeps the company aligned on company goals, progression and satisfaction.
The Balbix office is designed as an extremely open and collaborative floorplan – all employees share side-by-side desk space, including the founder/CEO. The office is on the 10th floor of high-rise building and offers a 270-degree view of Silicon Valley (all the way to San Francisco on a clear day) – and shades are never rolled down! The kitchen area has two cappuccino machines and a well-stocked refrigerator and counter and healthy foods + enjoyable beverages from Perrier sparkling water to espresso coffees to small-batch IPA beers.
What’s more, Balbix also has an outdoor greenspace where employees frequently get fresh air and a change of scenery.
Creative meeting places:
Balbix augments it traditional all-hands meetings with a happy-hour social with beer, wine and cheese tasting twice a month along with frequent outside-of-the-work place gatherings at local establishments. Balbix carefully selected its office location in the highly popular Santana Row retail and dining center in San Jose, providing easy walk to many fine dining and activity spots.
As a result, employees are encouraged to take a break and spend time with each other in a casual setting – walking out for a morning coffee, midday meal, or after-work beverage. We found that this has developed a sense of comradery within the team. We hold our summer and holiday team-building events at top-tier venues like the Fairmont Hotel in downtown San Jose.
Perks:
- Bi-monthly happy hour socials.
- Lunch provided for the team 3 times a week with the team members having their say as to what will be served.
- $100/month reimbursement for health club and related wellness expenses.
Fun:
Balbix team members participate in frequent billiard tournaments (there’s a pool table in the main kitchen/break area). The largest space in the office was dedicated and specially designed to encourage employees to take a
mental break every so often. Team members also take daily walks together into Santana Row for coffee/tea. This has established not only friendships, but encourages our team members to partake in healthy activities both physically and mentally.
How corporate vision is communicated:
Leadership is committed to providing regular, real-time updates on customer status and sharing all news, progress and momentum as it happens. Given the open office design and central location of kitchen/cappuccino machine/pool table, updates get shared multiple times a week between exec-staff and team members.
Empowering employees:
One example is how the engineering team works closely with external partners – such as managed security service providers and technology vendors – to design and validate the capabilities of Balbix’s software platform. Most traditional security companies have very large and siloed partner and ecosystem teams that tell the engineering team how to integrate with them. At Balbix, the software development team gets to tell the partners – especially given the innovative nature of the product offering – what they need to build for providing optimal solutions for customers using our solution.
Leadership commonly acknowledges individuals who have gone above and beyond the call of duty in two ways:
- In-person recognition with internal team members during regular, company-wide staff meetings.
- Digital communications internally and to customers highlighting their particular efforts.
Ensuring well-being:
- Balbix knows that people need downtime from work for a healthy work-life balance. E believe in compensating employees for when they spend days working far beyond what they should be doing, and thus have an unlimited vacation policy.
- Just as in 2017, the company will give everyone the Christmas week off in 2018 (in addition to each employee’s planned/unplanned vacation time).
- Another well-being example is the monthly reimbursement for health/wellness expenses, up to $100/month.
- Along the lines of work/life balance, Balbix grants all employees flexibility to coordinate their work schedules around the needs of their families or even their preferences for time, which many engineers use to spend with their young children in the morning before coming to the office.
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Closing company statements: The combination of the Balbix leadership team’s proven track record (4 companies founded, 9 companies acquired, highly successful IPO) and the explosive growth in the cyber-ecurity market (expected to grow from $138 billion in 2017 to $232 billion by 2022), there is great opportunity for personal growth and career success at Balbix. Balbix’s technology tackles some of the most urgent issues in cyber-security today (avoiding critical breaches) in a way that has never been done before (avoiding breaches before they happen). While many organizations claim that they’re on the cutting edge, Balbix is living it every day and it’s exciting for employees to ride that wave. Here at Balbix, employees have the opportunity to get real hands-on experience to drive both personal and company growth. The company culture implements transparency, provides leadership opportunities for all individuals and supports each employee’s needs for work/life balance and benefits. The employees are the backbone of the company, and as such Balbix works hard to give them strong recognition, reward and memorable experience in return.
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