One year at Mantle

• exciting to reach that 1 year point:
• being able to get shit done fast
• wide breadth understanding of the codebase
• actively know what the priorities of the co. are, what we want to build next
• building product, coming up with ideas with the rest of the team
• trust from others on the team
• reflecting on all the new hires, the growth in the company, when i joined the company the revenue was zero

I just passed my one year since joining Mantle. LinkedIn posted a crappy first anniversary post, so I decided I wanted to do better than that, albeit a few weeks later. One thing Jordan, Mantle’s CEO, mentioned to me is that it’s not a coincidence that since I joined we went from zero revenue to where we are now. Hahah. Tongue in cheek aside, it has been an action-packed year full of personal growth, impressive product being built, and a company on an exciting trajectory up and to the right. It’s also been a fulfilling challenge breaking down my years of built-up norms working at quite a large tech company and adjusting to just get it out there and in to customer’s hands kind of mentality. Every few months we hire someone new, reach a new milestone, or feel a new growth painpoint, all of which make each day truly exciting. To tackle something completely new, or adjust our approach. I’m reminded of that feeling of being early on in a new adventure - already a year of effort into it, and who knows how many more.

Over that time you get to know what the priorities are, where the business is going, and what kind of tradeoffs are preferred. It allows you to be very independent, since everyone can be on the same page. Because of this, it’s quite easy to take an idea all the way to production without involving anyone else. This makes it incredibly quick to deliver new features to our customers. Even when a customer asks for help or would like some new functionality, there’s no one stopping you from building that and getting it into their hands. Now that’s customer service.

This being a software job, one year of experience brings the ability to easily navigate and understand the significant 500k lines codebase, making every new feature, bugfix, or building a completely new product evermore easier and second nature. The way to get a wide breadth of understanding of any codebase is just to get in there and start fixing bugs, ask questions about how things work (or are expected to work), and reading a lot of code. Becoming proficient with your tools at hand and the practices of the team make it easier to deliver the right amount of product, quality, and speed.

After enough experience working with the team, the amount of trust built up with the team really allows you to perform in a high capacity and make the right decisions and tradeoffs at the right times, including when to engage with the team. At the start, I frequently overcommunicated to help make sure I’m pointing in the right direction, understand the priorities, and how things work. With a track record, that overcommunicating is way less important, as you know what’s needed, and the trust from others to do the right thing is there.