When spending 4500 hours surrounded by advocate marketing experts, you learn a lot. Mastery, you ask? That number of hours is far from enough for one (like me) to achieve mastery, but you sure get to learn a lot about real advocacy, about marketing and about so much more.

The other day I was on GlassDoor. And was looking, almost comparing two pages:

• Shopify's review page—the current company I work with,
• and Influitive's review page—the previous company I worked with.

I found the differences inspiring, so I wanted to contribute, and share relevant aspects of my experience. After all, I have worked with Influitive for 1.7123287671 years. Yet I was now staring a bit blankly at the GlassDoor review textbox. So I decided to guide my thoughts by answering these three questions:

1. Why did Marius join Influitive?
2. Why did Marius stay with Influitive?
3. Why did Marius leave Influitive?

Why did I join Influitive; why the engineering team here?

• It's the passion and the drive that I joined Influitive for. Joined the company feeling a match between Mark's passionate, innately curious nature—yet humble—and mine. I joined Influitive finding alignment with its core values and finding inspiration in the problem we were building the AdvocateHub to solve.

• Joined the engineering team at Influitive for the strong focus on shared learning and honing craftsmanship that I have noticed for years before, while participating in the monthly Ruby Hack Nights organized and hosted by Influitive.

Why did Marius stay with Influitive?

• In short, I stayed because of the strong match in values, in the whys answered here, and because of its people. And speaking of values, here are my top three:

  • Craftsmanship: it permeates at all levels—weather it's called this, or quality, or something else—and that is one of the deciding factors for new hires.
  • Culture: found myself at home in Influitive's ever redefining team culture: either part of the team at boardgames, or part of the team giving back to the community with meetups, workshops etc, or part of the team that's "playing well with others" when integrating with other vendors.
  • Growth: Influitive is a startup where people grow. Growth drives both the company, and its people. And growth happens fast at Influitive.

Why did Marius leave Influitive?

• Again, Influitive is a startup where people grow, and we grew fast.
  Part of a startup like Influitive, you're never just a Software Craftsman, or you're never just a Data Scientist. You are always wearing many hats, need to be comfortable with that, and always find where you can contribute best.
• Learning more about what I love to do, I've developed a curiosity driven by and towards data, and data-driven products. As such, we both agreed that Influitive can thrive better with a more senior Data Scientist, one that can grow a Data Science team, while I can thrive better in a team that already has more experience in data, that I can continue growing with.

Looking back, these are the reasons that first bubble up.

One thing is certain: the experience earned together with the fellow Influvians plays a key role in me being where and who I am today. This article (built on the actual review) is just a small manifestation of paying it forward. So if you are considering taking ownership of a role at Influitive and have specific questions, do reach out.

Make your own idea. Build your own story.

Photo: ©MSDS Studio—Shopify Toronto Office