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Thank you for sharing your feedback. We’re sorry you feel this way about your experience at Instrumental – we appreciate your honesty. At Instrumental, we value open communication and strive to #work-with-joy – which means continuously improving how we work and what we can change together to make it better.
As a startup, our agility is a core part of our success and is intentional in how we operate. We understand that shifts in strategy can feel disruptive – so we pursue them carefully, but also fearlessly. We always seek and incorporate feedback from across the team before making strategy shifts so they can represent our best knowledge as a company, not just our leaders. Any significant change is explained to the whole company with a detailed rationale and presented as a draft for further refinement – which often does happen based on feedback from team members like you.
Integrity and honesty are non-negotiables at Instrumental – and we aspire to be as transparent as we can because enabling every team member to understand the context of the challenges we’re working on encourages the best ideas to emerge. We work hard to refine our metrics and ensure they are communicated clearly to avoid miscommunication. As a company, we set aside time in our bi-weekly all-hands meetings for employees to ask questions and raise concerns, with or without anonymity.
Sam and I believe that one area we have complete agency over as a company is how it feels to work at Instrumental: we strive to create an environment where every team member would reflect on their time at Instrumental and be thankful for how they developed and grew. Developing our careers ladders has been an iterative process, and our team has invested significant time over the last two quarters leveling up our ladders so that every team member at Instrumental can see a clear growth path. We do promotions on a twice-annual schedule. In our last cycle, nearly 20% of our team was promoted in recognition of their ownership, accountability to goals, and hitting development milestones. We prioritize creating a positive, engaging work environment where everyone feels heard and valued. We are committed to continuing to level up in this area.
Building a diverse leadership team with the right expertise is paramount at Instrumental. We are deeply committed to selecting leaders who bring a combination of industry experience, exceptional leadership skills, and a proven track record of success. It is true that a majority of our leadership team, regardless of function, has a technical background – this is a competitive strength as our core mission is to solve a huge problem that creates $8T of waste annually by building cutting-edge technology and embedding it deeply within the daily workflows of our technical users. Our interview process for leaders is thoughtful and continues to evolve, ensuring that the leaders we bring on board possess diverse skills and strengths. A leader’s performance matters, and we take action when needed – usually supported by 360 feedback from the team.
We genuinely appreciate your input and are committed to fostering an environment where everyone can thrive. Our leadership team is available to listen to your feedback one-on-one if that enables you to be more detailed about your specific concerns. Our team is here to support you.
Anna