Culture is what happens when the boss is not in the room.
That’s the perspective shared by Rohit Gupta, founder and CEO of Auditoria.AI Inc. Gupta believes that for a company to thrive, workers need to feel free enough to act boldly, and executives need to know that they will be held accountable for their work.
“Culture isn’t a switch that you can toggle on and off. It’s a belief system,” Gupta said of his corporate finance-focused startup. “As one of the founders, it’s my responsibility to be a steward of the culture.”
Auditoria.AI
- Size Category: 25-50 employees
- Category rank: 2
- Score: 96.13
- Top local executive: Rohit Gupta, Founder and CEO
- HQ: San Jose
- Bay Area employees: 32
- What it does: AI-automated corporate finance
- What employees say: “I am happy to be part of this growing company and tight knit group of people who go the extra mile to support you and the customers in whatever capacity is needed.”
- Tip that Auditoria is doing to try to retain employees and attract talent: I’d like to think that people come to work because of the quality of work that they have, but also a purpose and a belief system. When we’re able to articulate a purpose behind why the company exists, and why we’re making a difference in the world, that makes a world of difference. — CEO Rohit Gupta
Gupta has worked at companies large and small. He previously worked at Oracle Corp. both before and after the database giant acquired his first startup, Palerra Inc. Both types of companies need to maintain a strong sense of community, Gupta said.
“In a larger company at times decisions take longer, just because it takes time to generate consensus,” Gupta said. “Whereas in a startup, there’s a much lesser number of layers that you’ve got to go through for getting to a decision.”
Gupta shared his thoughts about what makes Auditoria one of the best places to work in Silicon Valley. This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
What is Auditoria’s approach to remote work and the return-to-office? We have a flexible policy, where employees can choose when to come in and when not to come in. (Our) employees like the flexibility of working from home and coming in for certain days of the week, or maybe a few days a month. That responsibility and flexibility has helped Auditoria, because employees don’t misuse it. They’re able to effectively set up their schedules, engage (and) come in when the need is there. Sometimes employees are working on a project that requires the ability to stand in front of a white board and scribble out things. That’s when coming into the office is required.
Do you plan to continue that flexible policy? Do you think it makes your workplace more attractive? I think so. This is going to be the way of work for the foreseeable future, at least in high tech. Trying to fight against it, or trying to come up with a different approach, is going to be a challenge for companies. I’d like to think that this will help with talent retention and attract new hires.
What are things that make Auditoria one of the bestplaces to work? Our collaborative nature — people are willing to help each other out. It doesn’t matter if you’re a new person, if you get stuck with something, you reach out on Slack or on Zoom, and somebody’s always there to help you out. I love that. We need that ability to collaborate without judgment,without fear of asking questions.
The second thing that separates Auditoria is what I call customer and colleague empathy. People truly care about making our customers successful. If somebody has a bad day, you tell them, “Look, you don’t need to be on the front line, somebody else will handle it for you.” If a customer has an issue, and they need some help with some aspect of the software, we have people that will jump in and help out, no matter how late it is. That’s prettycool to see.
The third one, which I’m really proud of, is that there’s no micromanagement. It allows free thought, it allows people to come up with ideas on their own. We’ve had to be very careful with the executives that we’ve brought on board — we want people to encourage diversity of thought, diversity of action, the ability to make recommendations that might be out of the box. It is something that in the bigger picture helps us, because it makes for a much more compelling work environment.
I like the idea of colleague and customer empathy. Because sometimes people are just having a bad day. Right! And you don’t realize it, that somebody’s got a family member who’s unwell, or a pet who’s unwell. You can tell that something’s off. At that point, (it’s nice) having somebody else that can step in for you, to take a few hours off, take the day off.
Does Auditoria offer any unusual or unique amenities, perks or benefits to employees? We offer tuition reimbursement for ongoing learning, reimbursements for a variety of amenities, including Internet access. One other thing that we offer to all our employees is a paid subscription to Calm. That is something that, particularly through the pandemic, has helped improve stress and (offer) relief, whether it’s to improve your sleep habits, help you participate in yoga, etc.
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