Grow Your Career
At FormSwift

Vik

What brought you to FormSwift?

I worked at another startup with David, Ray, and Tristan, and co-founded the company with David four years ago.

What is your favorite project to work on?

Working on determining our hiring strategy for the next twelve months. I love it because it ties in everything - product strategy, marketing metrics and growth.

What do you like about managing?

I love seeing people grow and develop - excelling at their current roles and learning a ton from new ones.

Have you continued to learn and grow?

Always. In a company growing this quickly, I feel like I have a new job every three months and constantly have to learn new things. When we started, David and I ran everything. Now, there are hundreds of things that happen every day that I don't even know about. This is where culture and values come in.

David

What brought you to FormSwift?

I worked as a Software Engineer and designer at the same company as Vik. We both left around the same time and decided to start something new. We experimented, learned, and built a product that became useful to millions of people.

What has been your favorite project to work on?

The PDFJS migration of our PDF editor. We took Mozilla’s awesome PDFJS library, and moved our entire PDF editor to work on top of it. It was a massive amount of work but it set us up for huge improvements.

What has been your favorite company outing?

Our recent trip to Monterey was incredible. It was so humbling to have such an amazing group of people together. We were like a big family, set loose onto this town. It was a blast!

What is most important to you in building a team?

Structured way of thinking that helps us make the best decisions. No ego.

Ray

What is a big challenge in your role?

A big challenge in my role is balancing the pace of new feature development with improvements to reliability, scalability, and maintainability.

What has been your favorite project to work on?

My favorite project to work on has been improving our Free Write PDF editor codebase to make it easier to implement new features.

What brought you to FormSwift?

I was drawn to FormSwift by the speed at which the company is growing. The ability of the team to react quickly to the opportunities from that growth has been our biggest asset.

Describe a typical work day.

A typical work day for me involves helping spec out projects, reviewing code, researching future technical opportunities, and developing awesome new features.

What do you like about managing?

My favorite part of managing is helping people achieve their career development goals and enhance their skill set.

Elisa

Do you ever work remotely?

My favorite place to work outside the office is the outdoor cafe at the SF MOMA. It helps that we value output not facetime, so I've been able to to work remotely from all over the world.

What is one piece of advice your manager has given you that you really liked?

"Don't just execute, think about innovating." While the process we have now works well, there's always room for improvement and circumstances are always changing. Being encouraged to make processes more efficient keeps me on my toes and always thinking about next steps.

When do you work across teams?

Every day! I work with engineers, designers, data analysts and QA specialists. Because of everyone’s different interests and capabilities, it’s exciting to hear the ideas that they come up.

Tristan

Have you continued to learn and grow?

I started primarily as a backend engineer, but my JavaScript skills have gotten sturdy in my time here. Also I've had a chance to work on a bunch of DevOps stuff to the point that I'm confident with it, while before FormSwift it was a bit scary.

What is the greatest challenge in your role?

Coding and improving an online PDF editor is pretty challenging because it's fairly unique. Unlike working on a database-heavy or e-commerce app, there simply aren't thousands of people working on this sort of thing. When we run into a problem, we're largely on our own. This means often means diving into obscure open source code with little documentation or thinking about problems from new perspective to work around limitations.

Have you ever felt that seniority doesn’t matter?

Every single day. Really. When I worked with Ray and David at our last company I was actually Senior to them on the team there. Here, they are my bosses but it doesn't feel that way at all. We're all just on a team working hard to get things done together.

Brittany

What is most important to you in building a team?

I think a great working environment is where we can be honest with our concerns but also recognize and praise one another.

Have you continued to learn and grow?

Because my background is in more static types of design (catalogs, email newsletters, individual web pages), I am new to designing user experiences. I feel honored to have been entrusted with design that is more interactive than anything I have done before, and I am learning how to design an actual process that a user will follow. FormSwift has given me an incredibly open invitation to grow and learn, and the general attitude toward learning and growth opportunity is extremely encouraging.

Have you ever felt that seniority doesn’t matter?

The founders, David and Vik, are always quick to verbally recognize and praise other ideas from all different members of the team. Hearing them say something as simple as, "That is a really good idea" makes it clear that even the most senior members don't think that they have all the best ideas.

Mario

Tell me something about yourself.

I swam with leopard sharks last year!

What is one piece of advice your manager has given you that you really liked?

“Always copy and paste.” It’s not only funny, but useful and valid advice. It also showed me that environment at a startup isn't as stressful as I thought it might be.

What is the greatest challenge in your role?

Every programming problem is unique so you have to always be able to approach problems from different angles, which makes it difficult but interesting.

What has been your favorite project to work on?

Recently I was working on transferring some old SEO pages to be compatible with CloudCannon. It was fun because I got to see the progress I was making instantly. I also have an upcoming project where I'll get to add a feature to freewrite which will be exciting since it is a big task and will make a difference in the product!

Jon

What has been your favorite project to work on?

Working on the 'Careers' page has been great. It's one of the first projects built on top of a new front-end infrastructure. It was rewarding to focus on a project that will help grow our team.

What is a big challenge in your role?

When building A/B tests, it can be challenging to let go of designs or components that don't perform as well as expected.

What is most important to you in building a team?

Curating a team with a variety of skill sets and backgrounds. A diverse team can help cultivate unique solutions to difficult problems.

Tell me something about yourself.

I'm a lifelong musician and have licensed soundtrack music for TV and commercials.

Krish

Tell me something interesting about you.

My biggest gift is my inability to gain weight, irrespective of what I eat.

How would you describe working at FormSwift?

It's a place where growth is exponential. One can learn as much as they want to here. Opinions are heard. Everyone is extremely helpful. And it's a youthful environment which is a plus!

What is one piece of advice your manager has given you that you really like?

30% feedback! I love how this process ensures that projects get completed much faster and more efficiently.

What is a current project you're working on?

I worked on optimizing the search results in the Document Library section of the product. I analyzed the faulty searches and devised a keyword logic solution.

Max

What is your favorite place in San Francisco?

Bamboo Asia.

Name a few of your hobbies or what you do for fun after work or on the weekend.

When I get home after a long day of coding in the office, I like to unwind by coding at home.

Have you made a mistake where you "failed fast" but was able to bounce back?

One time I put tomato soup in the microwave and shortly after the soup started to splatter on the inside of the microwave. Luckily I reacted even faster than I failed and was able to cover the tomato soup with a paper towel to reduce splatter and retain heat.

What is a current project you're working on?

Currently I am working on building out the infrastructure for new front end application using Next.js. It's been incredibly rewarding building a new application from the ground up.

James

Name a few of your hobbies.

I've been swimming my whole life so I love to follow the sport and incorporate swimming into my workouts as much as possible. I also enjoy reading (especially sci-fi and fantasy books) and cheerinig on the Dallas Cowboys and Lebron James (Yes, I am a bandwagon Lakers fan now).

What has been your favorite company outing?

Our company trip to Napa was an awesome experience. I got to bond with everyone on the team while enjoying beautiful scenery and great food. It's always great to see the higher levels of camaraderie around the office after we have events and trips.

What is a current project you're working on?

I really enjoy working on projects that combine quantitative and qualitative aspects of paid acquisition. One that I particularly enjoyed was an analysis of the effect of certain words used in our ads. I was able to use qualitative hypotheses and tests to load data into a model that told us how often certain words ran and how effective each one was. It's always a nice change of pace to use AdWords, Excel, and SQL together for a single project and it really forces you to learn the nuances of each as they apply to FormSwift's structure.

Ronnie

Chad

Tell me about your background and how you ended up working at FormSwift.

I'm an island boy from Hawaii who came to California for college. Initially I started my work in engineering, but eventually became drawn to online marketing. I love the evolving nature of the industry and how an engineering background supplements an online marketing skill set.

Name a couple of your hobbies.

I'm a huge martial arts enthusiast (particularly Judo, Jiu-Jitsu, and MMA), so I love to watch and train in my free time. Surfing and hiking are always on my list as well.

What has been your favorite company outing and why?

My favorite has to be my first company happy hour at Karaoke. I was a new hire and am not big on singing, but it was a fun friendly atmosphere and I ended up having a blast!

Do you feel like you've continued to learn and grow?

I've grown a ton when it comes to online marketing and data analysis. A simple example comes in working with Microsoft Excel - I had no idea how many tools were built-in to allow you to format, visualize, and manipulate vast amounts of data. Only when you work directly with it can you realize the power that it gives you to perform many different tasks. The greatest challenge likely lies in being able to analyze an extensive portfolio of data and come to an objective conclusion that can be used to grow the business. It's important to be able to identity the biggest levers that will provide the biggest impacts for growth.

Mike

Tell me about your background and how you ended up working at FormSwift.

I've worked with a few startups in the Bay and have found that I enjoy being scrappy. When looking for my next opportunity, I was sold on FormSwift's culture of being data driven and taking risks. Our view on how product should be built was aligned and it's been a big factor in my professional development.

Where is your favorite place in San Francisco?

I don't go often, but I love Devil's Teeth Baking Company in Outer Sunset. Get "The Special", you won't regret it.

What are some of the greatest challenges in your role?

I think removing my own biases and knowing when to make the right assumptions can be challenging at times.

What is a current project you're working on?

I enjoy working on split tests. From ideating and making hypotheses to backing up decisions with data, I find it enjoyable to incorporate both right-brained and left-brained thinking.

Alex

What you do for fun?

I really love spending time exploring San Francisco, even though I'm from the city originally, I'm still discovering new places to see and things to do. I've also recently gotten into rock climbing and love to go climbing with my coworkers, Pamela and Krish. I also love to go on hikes around the Bay Area with my dog, Niles.

Do you feel like you've continued to learn and grow?

Definitely! One of my favorite things about working at FormSwift is that I am always learning new things. I regularly get to work on projects where I have to do something I've never done before. Since starting here, I have been able to work with almost every part of the codebase. I almost always learn something new during each project I work on.

Where is your favorite place in San Francisco/Bay Area?

Golden Gate Park.

Pamela

What's your background?

Studying Cognitive Science at Berkeley, I became interested in exploring how human behavior/psychology feeds into design. After a couple of summer internships, I became so intrigued with the decisions and thinking behind how products are created from the pixel up that I was determined to find a company that could complement my drive and curiosity. Formswift won me over with their emphasis on learning and growth. I've never hesitated to ask or give feedback, I feel encouraged to try riskier ideas, and I've been given a generous amount of resources to reference and read up on!

Where is your favorite place in San Francisco?

Mt. Tamalpais (next to Muir Woods.) During the drier months, the grass becomes golden. You're so high up that the clouds are beneath you. You can see the beach, you can see little people, you can see the sky blend into the background. :')

What is your favorite project you have worked on in the past?

Read about it here!

Tina

What you do for fun?

After work, I enjoy watching reality dating shows (for all the right reasons). I also like attempting to grow plants, though the only plant I've managed to keep alive is my lucky bamboo (it's actually lucky!).

Do you feel like you've continued to learn and grow?

I've definitely continued to learn a lot, since I am constantly working across the whole stack. I didn't have too much backend experience before coming here, so working on new API endpoints really solidified my understanding of the application end-to-end. I also recently learned about the infrastructure behind our applications, through Docker and Terraform projects.

What is one piece of advice your manager has given you that you really liked?

The emphasis on importance of a minimum viable product. In my features now, I try and boil down the elements to just the essentials, communicating with product and design to see what is necessary (or even an alternative) to achieve the end goal.

Colin

Keely

What's been your favorite happy hour?

I particularly liked the first Happy Hour I went to. It was an escape room, which was a great way to get to know everyone. If they'd started us on time, we would have beaten it, and we'll definitely win next time!

What is one piece of advice your manager has given you that you really liked?

To look for "culture add" in candidates when recruiting, instead of thinking of it as "culture fit." It's a great way to emphasize searching for candidates who can bring new perspectives to the team.

What do you do for fun?

I ride horses a few times each week, which takes up most of my hobby time and energy. When not doing that, I tend to read (a lot) and bake. And, of course, can't forget keeping up with the office Bachelor(ette) bracket.

What is most important to you in building a team?

Finding people who are always looking for opportunities to grow and can bring unique viewpoints and ideas to the table.