Hiring at relay.club

This looks like a long document. Do I have to read it?

It’s up to you. We’ve compiled every question candidates ask us. Chances are, you’ll find the answer to any questions you have about working at relay.club. If the document seems too long, we’d like to point out that we work asynchronously at relay.club, and you’ll only be effective if you can read and absorb long documents like this.

What does relay.club do?
- We offer a SaaS influencer management platform that matches brands with social media influencers.
What does the relay.club software do?
- Our customers search for influencers by keyword and other attributes, viewing profiles of influencers who are prominent on Instagram, YouTube, and TikTok. We provide a campaign management platform so our customers can contact influencers and track the steps to success.
What is relay.club’s history?
- (details to come)
How much money has relay.club raised? Who are some of the investors?
- (details to come)
Why do VC firms and investors like relay.club?
- (details to come)
What companies are similar to relay.club?
- (details to come)
Where is relay.club located?
- (details to come)
Where are relay.club’s clients located?
- Primarily in China, largely in the Shenzhen area.
Is any company reorganization or management change anticipated?
- We anticipate continued stability and no change in management as we grow.
What are the biggest technical and nontechnical challenges facing the company?
- We have a successful business built around an “agency” model where our influencer outreach team provides service to our customers. We want to enhance and improve our software so our customers can manage influencer campaigns themselves.
What products will I work on?
- Our core product is our SaaS platform for influencer search and campaign management.
What’s the team structure? How many engineers and managers are working at relay.club?
- We have four engineers, including one senior-level engineer, two software engineers, and one early-career role.
- Our VP of Engineering serves as our principal engineer, providing mentorship to our team.
- We use an outsourced code-review-as-a-service to provide feedback and guidance.
- Our CTO provides engineering leadership.
How many engineers do you plan to hire?
- We expect to double the size of our engineering team to provide additional product features as our customer base increases.
Why is the engineering team so small?
- We’ve built our software on a highly efficient tech stack (Next.js and Supabase) that doesn’t require a large team.
Do you require a visa or work permit?
- No. You are based in your home country and we presume we can legally employ you as a contractor (you’ll be legally employed under contract but this is a full-time, permanent job).
What programming languages do you use?
- Our web applications are written in the TypeScript flavor of JavaScript.
What technologies or frameworks do you use?
- React. All of our engineers are comfortable using React for front-end applications.
- Next.js deployed on Vercel.
- Supabase for a backend-as-a-service, providing authentication and other services.
- PostgreSQL for our relational database, accessed via a Supabase PostgREST API.
What is the team’s culture?
- Our top values are kindness and learning. We strive for a company culture where our work brings us enjoyment and where we are challenged by new things to learn. We’ve hired people for our team who are compassionate, helpful, and caring.
Will my career path lead to technical management or to increased individual technical skill?
- You may advance as either a technical manager (team lead) or an individual contributor (IC). Both paths lead to higher pay and high status because we recognize that everyone has different ambitions.
Is the career path more about meritocracy or seniority?
- Team members are recognized for their achievements not their years of experience.
Are you hiring for junior, senior, principal, or tech lead roles?
- We are hiring recent graduates or early-career developers for our apprenticeship program with an opportunity to learn from our experienced developers.
- We are actively seeking senior developers.
- For those who are interested in a tech management career path, our engineers will be promoted based on their accomplishments and expressed interest during their first six months at relay.club.
Are you hiring front-end or back-end developers?
- We hire full stack developers who can work on front-end components (in React), API endpoints (in Supabase), and our database (PostgreSQL). We recognize some of our developers have stronger specialization in the front or back of the stack. If you are asked to work on a project that requires experience you don’t have, you’ll have an opportunity to learn from experienced team mates.
What is the career path for tech management roles?
- As we double the size of our engineering team, the engineers who join us will have an opportunity to lead teams, if they choose to.
Is it a remote job or do I need to move to a specific location?
- We are fully remote and will hire engineers from around the world. You can work from anywhere. That said, we prefer to have our engineering team members within 8 time zones of Singapore.
Do I need to commute to an office?
- Our company has physical offices in China but our engineering team works from home.
If it’s a remote role, can I move anywhere I like? Would I still be able to work for you if I change locations?
- We prefer to have our engineering team members within 8 time zones of Singapore so we can meet easily for pair programming and other collaboration. However, you can work from anywhere if you arrange your schedule to collaborate as needed.
If all the members of the team are not in the same city, how often do they meet in person?
- Many of our team members have never met in person. We are always seeking ways to socialize and bond online. In the future (as travel restrictions ease) we will seek to meet once (or more) a year at a resort destination.
What would be the perfect starting date for the next hire?
- As soon as possible. We can complete the recruiting process as quickly as two weeks and new joiners can start as soon as four weeks after initial applications.
Would you be able to wait a bit longer after the perfect starting date? If so, how long?
- Yes, if you cannot start immediately, we are open to discussing a delayed or postponed start date.
What is the salary range?
- We try to pay at the highest end of the typical salary range for software companies in Asia. Our COO will ask you to reveal your current salary and ask for your expected salary. If your expected salary is much higher than your current salary, we are open to hearing your reasons for asking for more than you’ve received in the past (underpaid in the current position, changing location, changing family or life circumstances).
If it’s a startup, is there any equity? If so, how much percentage?
- You can ask our COO about equity compensation.
How many weeks of vacation per year?
- We have no fixed limit on vacation time. We expect you to let us know how much vacation time you need at the time you negotiate your compensation. It is up to you to schedule your agreed vacation with your manager after you join.
Will I get hardware to do my job?
- If you need a new computer, you will receive a new top-of-the-line Mac laptop before your start date. If you already have a laptop that you are happy with, you may request a large monitor or computer chair instead. If you stay less than one year, you will be expected to return the laptop to the company.
How does the rest of the company see the work of the engineering team?
- Our engineering team is viewed as the “company superpower” that will provide the software that allows the company to scale. Our influencer outreach, marketing, and sales teams are eager to contribute ideas and test features that the engineering team creates.
What is the company’s perspective on work/life balance?
- We want you to enjoy the work you do. It is up to you to estimate how much time your work will take and let us know your capacity. We want you to balance work you enjoy with other responsibilities and experiences you enjoy, such as your family, friendships, and community life.
Do I need to work from 8 to 5, five days a week, or is it up to me to create my schedule?
- All our engineers manage their own time. We only expect you to deliver the work you agree to when you make estimates and set timelines. You can schedule your work hours around kids’ school hours or gym visits. It’s up to you.
What are your core working hours? Can you accommodate flexible working hours?
- We have no core working hours. Our engineering team is distributed across Asia. We work asynchronously as much as possible. The hours you choose to work are up to you.
How often will I have to work nights or weekends? Will I have to work overtime?
- We don’t ask you to work nights or weekends, or overtime, ever. We consider it a failure of planning if any project requires more than 30 hours per person per week. If you choose to work extra hours (due to enthusiasm or interest) we expect you to compensate yourself with time off work.
Will I have pager duty or on-call hours?
- No, we have no pager duty. As we grow, we will hire worldwide so there is always an engineer available for emergency response during ordinary working hours. We have an organization goal that engineers should be able to respond to any system failures and resolve downtime during ordinary working hours.
Will I have a lot of meetings?
- We have very few scheduled meetings. You’ll meet once a week with the CTO for a one-on-one meeting. We have two all-hands company meetings (on Mondays to review company metrics and Fridays to review work in progress). If you’re in an incompatible time zone we will record the meetings for you. You’ll also meet with people on your project but we aim to work asynchronously as much as possible, except for pair programming.
Is there a daily standup meeting?
- No. A daily standup would be impractical across time zones. You’re expected to ask for help with blockers or code reviews using Slack channels or direct messages as you need help. You’ll report on your task status once a day on Slack.
Do you use agile processes? What project management tool?
- As needed, each project adopts scrum or kanban processes to manage workload and track progress. We track projects and tasks with the Kitemaker issue tracking application. Most of our engineers have had past experience with Jira, Pivotal Tracker, or Shortcut and prefer the tools we use.
What is a typical day for an engineer at relay.club?
- You start at any time of day you like. Check Slack for messages, discuss any issues with team members, and then work heads-down and focused for several hours. You may collaborate asynchronously with others on design documents or product requirements. You may be asked to join a meeting with team members but generally we try to work asynchronously. You will update tasks in Kitemaker to report on progress, open branches and create pull requests in GitHub, and participate in code reviews.
What is the management style of the company?
- Company managers are very casual and laid back. We are “servant leaders” in that we see a manager’s job as finding ways to remove blocks and support our team members to do their best work. We ask for regular updates and status reports, and we are available to help solve problems, but we expect team members to take the initiative, identify and solve problems, and provide status updates.
How much initiative can I take to achieve my assigned goals?
- We expect you to take initiative. Our engineers propose the ideas that will achieve our goals. If you can develop consensus with team members, you can pursue any ideas you have.
What is the average length of time an engineer stays on the team?
- We strive for a retention rate that is very high compared to other companies, even in a highly competitive labor market, due to our efforts to foster workplace satisfaction. We’re still a new company so most of our engineers have been with us less than a year.
What kinds of personalities should I expect from the other engineers?
- Expect to work with people who are smart (but humble), kind, helpful, and caring. We hire to build a company culture that focuses on kindness and empathy.
Which countries do team members come from?
- We come from a diverse worldwide multicultural background. Our engineers include:
  - a Chinese woman (who attended university in the US)
  - an American man in China
  - a senior engineer in the Philippines
  - an early-career engineer in India
  - our VP of Engineering in Australia
  - our CTO, an American living in Indonesia
- Our founders are two Americans living in China. Our marketing, sales, and influencer outreach team includes people from Russia, the Philippines, and China.
Are you hiring for diversity and inclusivity?
- As an international organization, with team members from 5 countries (so far), our team is multicultural and diverse. Our team members believe that individual differences are more significant than cultural differences. Women are well-represented on the engineering team and we actively recruit to improve gender equity.
Is relay.club a company where employees contribute to their community?
- Kindness is a shared value and we encourage team members to actively support their communities in whatever form is most meaningful to them. It’s up to you to choose how you wish to support your community but you’ll have our encouragement and support.
Is there any specific project I’ll be working on?
- Our needs change from quarter to quarter (and even month to month). We’re hiring to focus on current needs so we’ll discuss the kinds of projects you’ll be working on during the hiring process.
Can I bring new ideas about how to achieve the business goals or is everything set in stone?
- We actively seek to recruit product-oriented engineers who take an active role in solving business problems. Each quarter, one or more product projects developed by engineers are added to the product roadmap along with projects developed by the company founders.
Is there a good relationship between the founders and the engineering team?
- Yes, founders (serving as product managers) and engineers are collaborative partners on all projects. Engineers seek to understand our product objectives and often propose business solutions including new features and projects. Founders support engineering concerns such as code quality, testing, and tech debt.
How do you handle tech debt?
- As a startup, we’ve built applications quickly to find the product market fit that drives revenue. As we improve features, we try to improve the quality of our code base, improving as we go. As we add new features, we deliver clean code that is well tested and maintainable.
How do you balance speed and code quality?
- Code quality is a priority for our organization because we recognize we cannot grow and scale without robust, maintainable, and well-tested code. At times we rapidly prototype (“spike”) new features with throw-away code but for any production feature our “definition of done” includes code reviews, end-to-end testing, and documentation. Our founders respect the need for engineering to produce robust maintainable code and every project is estimated with enough time to deliver quality code.
How will I grow? How will you recognize my progress toward my goals?
- You’ll meet weekly for a one-on-one meeting with the CTO to discuss your achievements, workplace satisfaction, and professional development. You’ll be encouraged to keep a “brag document” of your achievements that you can review for performance evaluations or goal setting.
What ways can I expect to learn and grow?
- You’ll put together a plan for learning and advancement with the CTO during your weekly one-on-one meetings. Learning and professional development will be part of all projects you work on. That includes improving your soft skills as well as studying technical topics. We provide a budget for courses, certifications, and conference participation. We allow you to spend time learning during work hours.
Is there a budget for courses or attendance at conferences?
- You’ll have a budget of $75 per month to spend on tutorials, courses, or accumulate for conference participation.
How will I keep up to date with new technology?
- We actively search out and consider new technologies through a technology assessment process. We look for opportunities to try new technologies that could have an impact on our development process. When we try new technologies, we share our learning with other team members through tech talks or recorded videos.
Do you have a training program for new engineers?
- We have developed an apprenticeship program to help new engineers become familiar with professional software development practices and technology.
How will you define my success as a relay.club engineer?
- Collectively, we expect you to collaborate with team members through code reviews, contribute ideas for process improvements, and make an impact on business goals with the projects you develop. Individually, we expect you to learn and grow, developing your technical knowledge, improving your ability to make an impact by solving business problems, and developing your soft skills to improve your contribution as a team member.
What do I need to accomplish in the first month, six months, or year at relay.club?
- Our job description describes what we expect you to accomplish at each milestone.
How can I have standout success in six months?
- Organize and lead a project with significant impact on the business.
What is the biggest challenge for a new engineer?
- Getting to know the tech stack, our application and the code base.
How do you deal with underperforming engineers?
- We don’t have underperforming engineers, only underperforming managers. As managers, it’s our job to make sure every engineer is supported to do their best, whether it’s improving soft skills or technical proficiency.
Are there any expectations for my personal habits (is there a dress code)?
- We’re all working remotely so really, we just expect you to wear a shirt during video calls. Beyond that, just show respect for your teammates by being on time for meetings and notifying them when you are unavailable.
How do you make sure team members are working productively when working from home in a casual environment?
- Our managers don’t feel a need to supervise anyone’s productivity. As long as team members are taking on work, delivering their best, and getting the work done, we are happy.
What do you like most about relay.club?
- We have a casual and informal workplace culture with great team members who tackle any challenge with enthusiasm and creativity.
What are typical comments from new engineers after their first month?
- “I like the async setup and people are really helpful.”
- “It’s way better than my previous job.”
- “Work in relay.club engineering is wonderful.”
- “Everything is fine so far. I am happy here.”
Can I talk to the engineers to ask what they like or dislike?
- Absolutely. Just ask our COO or CTO to schedule a call with a working engineer.