Each week, I have six or seven conversations with candidates for our Technical Projects Experience interview. When we go through their questions for me, many ask what I’m looking for in an engineer.
Most of it would not surprise you: ownership, empathy, user focus, kindness, competence. There is one other attribute that we don’t talk as much about internally.
And that’s ambition.
Ambition has many forms. There are countless examples, including in tech, of personal greed triumphing over collective success. So at the outset I clarify that we’re not looking for ruthlessness or psychopathy; Machiavelli has no place here.
We’re also not interested in careerists or professional climbers. If your primary concern is the title on your LinkedIn, we’re off to a bad start.
So what kind of ambition do we look for?
Why does that matter for Juniper?
I mean, that seems like a nice thing to look for at any company. Why does it matter so much here?
Because if you look around our space, you won’t find much inspiration. If your drive is to be “the best X in autism (or recurring care)”, then you can get there without too much ambition.
There will be much to do, but it feels almost inevitable that we end up checking all of the boxes. And there’s no reason for it to be particularly great. Not for clinics, not for patients, and not for American healthcare.
“Good enough”, “best in class”, “industry leading”: these are all relative. When the existing options are poor, relative greatness isn’t much of a bar at all.
We are in a fortunate position.
We have clear product-market fit. We have growth potential that far outpaces what we can build and support right now. We have ample funding and significant revenue (both gross and in growth rate) for our size.
If this is your first early stage startup, I cannot fully communicate how rare that is and how grateful I am for this position. We have fires, but they are not existential.
We don’t wonder whether we’re building something people need or want. We don’t worry that we can make money. We don’t worry about layoffs. That is (surprisingly) rare.
This is both a blessing and a curse.
Success is a blessing because what we are doing is clearly working.