What attracted you to work at your company? How did you know it would be a good fit?

Ardoq represents the evolved perspective of what EA should be. The company culture, vision, and bold pursuit of achieving its goals are all very attractive. This is a company that knows what it wants and is striving to get. We’re attracting the best group of people I’ve seen assembled. While we work with a single purpose, we can expand the vision of what we do as a company to help customers and prospects achieve their goals by providing cutting-edge software products and guidance.

What are you responsible for in your current role?

Ensuring the vision of the customer or prospect is accurately translated into action enabled by the Ardoq platform.

What are you working on right now that excites or inspires you?

Helping customers and prospects envision new or expanded ideas for how the respective companies can develop and use EA.

What do you value most about your company’s or team’s culture? What sets it apart from other places you’ve worked?

As a scale-up, working here feels similar to a startup’s energy, agility, and flexibility, but we have a mature vision. Plus, I love the “Let’s go!” attitude.

What’s one thing you would want a candidate to know about what it’s like to work at your company?

Everyone at Ardoq is accessible. They are eager to help in any way they can. All the way up to the CEO. There is a lot of energy here. It makes you want to be a part of it.

How has your company shown appreciation for your work? What kinds of employee achievements are recognized?

Aside from weekly call-outs for achievements across the company, we all recognize the potential and contributions of every team member. From people who are just starting to the founders and first employees—every one is appreciated and recognized for their contribution to the company's success and for making it the best place in the world to work.

What attracted you to work at your company? How did you know it would be a good fit?

I was drawn to Ardoq’s reputation for innovation. While unfamiliar with the Enterprise Architecture domain, I had experience working on a SaaS product and knew the challenges of having large organizations as a customer base. Although I’m not based in Norway, I could apply because Ardoq had seamlessly switched to remote or hybrid work due to the pandemic. During the interview process, I had the opportunity to meet with several developers and was impressed by their expertise. I managed to keep our cofounder (then CTO, now CEO) "entertained" enough to make him late for his next meeting!

What are you working on right now that inspires you?

This quarter, our team’s OKRs have been related to regrouping and catching up as we address some UI and tech debt while preparing to take on some bigger challenges in the next quarter. It’s been a time to slow down and regroup while we onboard a new product manager and full-stack developer – they need time to settle in and become more comfortable. I’ve also had a chance to dive back into code after a long period dedicated to hiring and polishing the onboarding process for new engineers.

What do you value most about your company’s or team’s culture? What sets it apart from other places you’ve worked?

In my first week in Ardoq, I managed to crash the production, and I’m still around to tell the tale! It was used as a learning opportunity, and now we are a lot more vigilant when a new engineer is encouraged, as part of onboarding, to make their contribution to the codebase in their first few days in Ardoq. Management and colleagues are very supportive, and it’s a high-trust environment where I’m not afraid to say, “I don’t know,” or “I need help with this.” Having the freedom to give my best and not be afraid of failure is really liberating and refreshing.

What’s one thing you would want a candidate to know about what it’s like to work at your company?

Returning to the high-trust environment: we have flexible working time. You have the option of using your accumulated hours as time off. In addition, during the dark winter months in Norway, people are reminded to utilize async communication and go out during the day and catch some sun rays instead of a screen glow.

As far as unique traditions go, on Fridays, we have “Ardoq WINS!” a company-wide meeting where we give shout-outs, celebrate each other’s success, and up our GIF game. Comic Sans is a celebrated font choice and bright colors are encouraged. Ending a week on a high note and sharing inspiring stories across all departments is an excellent way to wind down from the work week.

What are some ways your company or team supports and stays connected to people who are working remotely?

My team is distributed across six countries, three time zones, and one war zone! Deliberate overcommunication is the key. All of the meetings are recorded to be re-watched at a preferred pace. We have daily optional meetings with no agenda. People show up to talk about whatever comes along, and since we are in the work setting, work-related topics arise. The team gathers on-site every 6-8 weeks and plans visits to the Oslo office around company events. The whole company—European and US branches—went to Iceland last year in April, when the pandemic was over, to meet colleagues in person since we grew in numbers significantly during lockdowns.

What attracted you to work at your company? How did you know it would be a good fit?

What are you responsible for in your current role?

In addition to keeping the company aligned with strategy, I work to get that alignment across teams, ensuring we’re executing on that strategy. I speak to a lot of people to understand what’s going on in the company and find any uncertainties we need to address or things that just slipped through the cracks within a specific department. I’m also a sparring partner for the CEO as he works through ideas, and I’m closely involved in operations.

What are you working on right now that excites or inspires you?

We have a strong foundation, a great product, a growing market, and solid funding. It is an exciting time right now, planning how we leverage this and what we do now, one year or five years into the future. We have a plethora of opportunities that we are working on turning into realities.

What do you value most about your company’s or team’s culture? What sets it apart from other places you’ve worked?

We are bold, caring, and driven. It’s the caring part that stands out compared to other companies. We care a lot about diversity, with so many people from different cultures and backgrounds, and it makes a difference.

What’s one thing you would want a candidate to know about what it’s like to work at your company?

We’re a fast-growing company that changes all the time. So no matter what role you enter the company in, you will have a real voice and the ability to set the course and have a real impact.

What do you appreciate most about the company’s mental health and wellness benefits? Which ones have made the most impact on you?

We have a company tradition, every Friday, we celebrate the wins of the week, big and small. It could be as small as someone thanking a colleague for sending jokes when they’re recovering from a broken bone or something big like celebrating closing a huge deal.