CAREERS @ YOURQUOTE: We’ve A Fab Team of 24, A Cute Office in Bengaluru & Guess What? We’re Not Hiring!
YourQuote‘s office is in the most happening part of Bengaluru, Indiranagar. Feel free to drop by on Saturdays & interact with our team. Who knows, you might become a part of it! :)
MISSION
At YourQuote, we are on a mission to make the world express freely in their mothertongue and feel heard. We are bridging the content demand-supply gap using technology to garner a community that loves to both express and read.
At its heart, YourQuote is a tech-product company and our entire team functions in synergy with data and technology. Backed with a million dollars in September 2017 by IDG Ventures, Infosys cofounders Padma Bhushan Kris Gopalakrishnan & Shibhulal and Atul Goel (Founder, Fun Cinemas & Essel City Group), YQ is at the forefront of tech platform businesses of India.
Our flagship app YourQuote, available on Google Play and App Store, enables over 1.5 million users broadcast their writings, audios and video performances in 18+ languages. It’s the largest writing platform in India. YourQuote has pioneered the branded open mics space in India by organising 550+ open mics across more than 92 cities in India, giving a platform to over 15,000 artists to perform live in front of a large audience and have their videos recorded and broadcasted on YouTube and other channels. Besides, YQ also organised a first-of-its-kind Language Festival in Bengaluru in 2018, spread over 2 days and 100+ artistes of 8+ languages.
Over 20 million original posts have been broadcasted on the app with more than 60% of the userbase as content creators, the highest in the industry, what makes YourQuote the largest community of creators in India.
CORE BELIEF
In this world riddled with depression and loneliness, we believe there’s no nobler and better mission than to provide everyone with a safe space where one can express freely and feel heard, which provides one with both: a sense of identity and belonging (via community).
We are super happy to be building YourQuote in the exact way we had always imagined building a company, with a driven and committed team, a fun work culture and appropriate velocity and focus.
OUR CULTURE
We are on a mission to build one of the most inclusive and respectful workplaces in India and we are obsessed with our culture.
Inclusive Workplace
We do not discriminate on the basis of gender, caste, class, sexual orientation or physical challenge. Folks from all underrepresented communities are especially encouraged to apply. As an organisation, we are actively seeking more women and differently-abled folks to apply for the openings below. Don’t hesitate to apply if you believe you suit the bill.
Safe & Sensitised Workplace
We have a strong Internal Committee for Prevention of Sexual Harassment (POSH) for all genders. Besides, we take gender sensitisation on priority for everyone in our team as well as the community that frequents us. The staff is sensitised to make sure you feel comfortable and your transition from your previous workplace/college to YourQuote seems as smooth as cake. Feel free to write to me if you want any more information about our POSH policy.
Fun-loving & Non-Hierarchical Workplace
There’s no silos, the organisation runs flat. No cabins, no appointments. From CEO to interns, everyone is accessible to everyone. No sirs, madams. You call people by name and we love humour, as long as it’s tasteful and empathetic.
THE OFFICE HUNTING STORY
It took us almost 20 days before we zeroed in to our current office.
From residential properties to claustrophobic 1BHKs, none of the 40 spaces we saw made sense to us. It drove us to contemplate on renting a coworking space, which wasn’t aligned to the culture we wanted to build and prevail. We wanted to have a very open, well-lit and playful space, which fostered creativity and helped us serve our community better.
On a chance encounter, Farooq, the broker (and now a teammate — he’s one of the best hustlers we know in B-town!) discovered this to-let board in Jeevan Bhima Nagar, just next to Empire in 80ft Road in Indiranagar. He talked to the landlord and scheduled for a tour the coming day. The next day, we were dazzled! It was, what should I say, just right.
1640 ft, 3 rooms — one workspace, one studio cum mini-audi, one creative lab along with a reception area and a dining space, besides free parking and 24x7 access to the terrace. Perfect for the kind of team we wanted to grow.
The thing that appealed to us the most was the lighting and having an in-house audi, which allowed us to host open house and open mics avidly.
OPENINGS
We have openings for the following full-time roles:
a) Senior Backend Developer (3–4 years of experience, Python(django))
b) DevOps Engineer (1–2 years of experience)
c) iOS Developer (1–2 years of experience)
How To Apply
Write a letter at harsh@yourquote.in that tells me why you want to join YQ and for which of the position above. Talk about your ambition, your life so far and your observation about YQ, and what ties all three together.
NOTE: Strong reference from our team-members and trusted entrepreneurs and start-up folks matters a lot to us. It can make your hiring really fast. We do strict background checks before hiring, so be as transparent as you can in your application.
NOTE 2: We aren’t hiring writers. Our entire team — uses YQ — writes, so we are sorted for now. Please don’t send applications for that!
NO CVs PLEASE. FLUSH THEM IF YOU WISH.
Out of the 31 folks who are working with us now, none of them were asked to send their CVs. As founders, we are averse to folks who work for their CVs and are instead after folks who truly believe in what we are building and possess an unmissable skill or life experience that will make our product fly. A conversation is enough to figure that out.
Our belief stems from the very fact that to turn a mere idea in our head into a movement that it has become now, we didn’t need CVs but a journey riddled with failures (the infographic below will tell you). Life experience over bullet points, always, hence.
What Do We Look For?
> Make sure you have used the product (the app) for long enough to understand what we do, where we stand currently and what we might be doing. A strict no to those who use the app at the time of the interview.
> Humility trumps everything else. We like folks who know their weaknesses, who are aware of their privileges and there’s no air of entitlement around them.
> Commitment to YourQuote’s cause: We run every new joinee through something that is internally called as “Prem Test”, where they are given some tasks to volunteer and help us out for some time (ranges anywhere between 1 week to 4 weeks).
The test goes back to Prem, our first joinee and now the Head of Community, who volunteered with us for almost a year in our pre-funding days. He believed in our mission so much that he quit his job in Standard Chartered Bank and started working full-time with us, without a salary, months before funding. Well, we don’t expect Prem’s level of commitment from every new joinee, but at least an assurance of some of commitment to the YQ cause convinces us of your candidature.
> Prior Experience of Building/Scaling/Managing: We rarely hire freshers since we don’t have time to coach anyone and are on the look-out for experienced folks, at this stage of fast growth. I’m sure as we expand further over the next year, the vacancies for freshers will come.
> Fast Learners: To maintain the fast rocketship growth, we expect our team to be very agile and sharp. We will check you on how fast you learn, and how fast you execute.
WHY YOURQUOTE?
Scale & Opportunity of Learning
YourQuote is operating at a scale where over 100k users use the product everyday, and over 1.1M users use it monthly. Your work will be impacting the lives of one of the biggest community of creators and you shall be bombarded with live feedback. For any joinee, this is a rare opportunity to understand how things work at scale, how growth is driven by data and product tweaks, and how consumer psychology works first-hand.
Fast Growth
We are one of the fastest growing platforms in India, and joining us right now will offer you unparalleled career growth and learning curve that will equip you as you set on your entrepreneurial journey years down the line. Fast growth of the company also implies faster hikes in compensation compared to other companies in the market.
Diversity of Talent
Our diverse team comprises past entrepreneurs, liberal arts mavens, folks from social sciences and literature background, sharp coders and data scientists, ex-U-19 FIFA Organizer, a state-level cricketer, former IAS aspirants, artists and doodlers, spoken word artistes, designers, novelists, poets and musicians from all across India, from different socio-economic backgrounds, from Kashmir to Kerala. The result is an office that’s a melting pot of ideas and cultures.
Our team members speak 15+ languages, play 20+ instruments and 10+ sports. We also have a YourQuote band called The YourQuote Collective & The Frontseat Boys. You will not find such a healthy mix of left and right brain anywhere else.
Perks?
I can sell perks such as our relaxed leave policy or the team-picnics/trips we do or the sports we play or how the workspace becomes a jampad every weekend, or so many events that we host, but I won’t do any of that. Those are the wrong reasons to join.
We are looking for hustlers, the doers and the builders, who believe in the mission of making the entire world express freely and for whom, the product and our community come before anything else. Trust us, if you believe in our mission, are an active user of the product and respect our culture, we will make you our own and you will become a part of a family that works, eats and chills together. Just to give you a window, we chill by coming up with events such as this: Hike Mic 1.0: An Open Mic On Top Of A Mountain
DOCUMENTARY
Want more? Do watch this documentary to know who all will get a chance to work with you, if you decide to join. We’re waiting for you. :)
