Mission: While we’re primarily focused on bringing quality and value to our clients, we’re also committed to creating a world-class environment for our employees. We are a completely distributed company with thousands of core and network team members located all over ... Read more
Working with Toptal, taking an incremental, agile approach, CSR was able to build a team and solution that transformed their operations and delivers an innovative solution to their customers. http://glassdoor.com/slink.htm?key=vQE4G
What outcomes will the blended workforce make possible?
http://glassdoor.com/slink.htm?key=vQF8K
Why Toptal?
Toptal connects the top 3% of freelance talent all over the world.
We solve an extremely difficult, real-world problem: the talent shortage. Many companies — both large and small — face challenges with finding top talent, from candidate qualifications, to team dynamics, to economics that fit their financial scale. Our unique solution for hiring elite independent contractors addresses all of these concerns.
With experience as a lead engineer at Fotolog (acquired by Hi-Media for $100m) and Slide (acquired by Google for $228m), as well as experience with his own start-ups, Taso brings top engineering knowledge and management experience to Toptal. While running a small engineering consulting firm, Taso recognized that while many of his co-workers overseas were just as good as his friends and colleagues at Google, Facebook, and other companies with distinguished engineering talent, it was simply very difficult for such companies to connect with the right engineers remotely. Toptal was thus created as a solution to the sky-rocketing demand for top engineers in Silicon Valley, the US, and Europe despite the shrinking local graduation rates of such engineers. Taso was recently selected by Forbes as one of its 30 under 30 in Enterprise Technology.
Breanden has been an engineer, founder, CTO, and consultant in industries ranging from aerospace to financial services to high tech. He has a BSE in Chemical Engineering from Princeton University, where he was previously asked to speak at TEDxPrincetonU, giving a talk on time optimization and resource management. As a Toptal co-founder, Breanden frequently writes about scaling a hyper-growth and distributed company, and he has been featured on the blog of Tim Ferriss, The Huffington Post, and many others. Having been on both sides of the hiring equation as an engineer and team lead, Breanden combines his technical expertise and management experience to ensure that clients, developers, and team members at Toptal continually strive for excellence as the company rapidly scales.
An Intense Meritocracy
At Toptal, we value people for their contributions, not their time spent in a chair. We track goals reached, not hours worked, and we don't have useless meetings. We are a fully remote company, and we work from wherever we want, whenever we want. No one here is a 9-5er, and we foster a culture of relentless problem solving, direct feedback, and constant collaboration.
We are deeply invested in ensuring Toptal is a place where you're always surrounded by world-class talent and can grow and learn. Toptal's distinct working environment is one of novelty. We've created a culture that prides itself on extreme innovation — continuously pushing the boundaries of what's possible in both software and business.
We’re global, and that’s how we like it.
Being fully remote allows us to work with the best people from around the globe with unparalled flexibility.
Having the ability to travel is a luxury, and we enable that. We support your choice to travel or reside anywhere you like. Work from anywhere, work from everywhere!
Check out a few of the places where we’re currently working.
Our Community is Booming
The Toptal community is active around the globe with localized events, conferences, and through Toptal engineers and designers everywhere.
Helpful (12)
I have been working at Toptal full-time (Less than a year)
Pros
During the interview process I worried this would be too good to be true. Well, it's the real deal. I'm grateful to be a part of a successful and growing company that's an industry-leader bringing inventive and disrupting ideas. It's dedicated towards constant self-improvement and has a thoughtful growth plan.
✔ PEOPLE: Being fully remote I was shocked at the relationships I quickly built and continue to develop across my team and the organization. Everyone is readily available and willing to help each other.
My team communicates very well and help each other out wherever it is needed.
*Toptal is FILLED with people that truly care about their work and come up with impressive, innovative ways to better the environment, our goals, our processes, and any other area they can envision.
✔ CEO: He's not yachting or making decisions from the golf course. He's on the ground, contributing daily. He's involved and cares about this place. He's very intelligent, passionate, and strategic. He is a very direct communicator, but without direct communication you'd be left with ambiguity and inefficiency.
✔ CULTURE: Quickly reinforced what I was told during the interview process. This is a culture of collaborative and driven individuals. We show up and work hard while building relationships along the way. A very straightforward and blunt communication style which contributes to an open, "carefrontation", and efficient work environment. We have team outings so you get in-person with your team and occasional virtual happy-hours too!
✔ WORK: The job descriptions are purposefully created to lay out a lot of what pertains to a job, but what they don't tell you... because of all the innovative ideas and strategies you get to do a lot of interesting work. You're driven to think of things from new angles and contribute to conversation driving improvements in processes, strategy, and innovation. You'll be challenged here.
✔ FLEXIBILITY: I can work from where I want. Some days I need the quiet concentration of my home office and other days I enjoy sitting at a local cafe. I have coworkers that enjoy working on their patios and others that travel the world full time.
*The PTO? I thought my last employer was generous and lax about time off, but Toptal proved that wrong. When I recently took time off I mentioned that I'd check-in on slack and was told "NO, enjoy your time off. It's YOURS." The PTO is the real deal.
Cons
✘ Toptal isn't for everyone. If you just show up to work just for a paycheck you won't succeed or like it here. Toptal is for people that care about what they do, are driven for a greater purpose, and want to have impact.
✘ Remote work requires someone that is a self starter and passionate so they can stay on the ball. It also requires a strong ability to communicate proactively.
Advice to Management
✵ There are people here that really care and appreciate the proactive and fresh ideas you're bringing to the table. The new initiatives to further our culture and company are thoughtful and inventive. Thank you! ✵
Helpful (73)
Application
I applied online. The process took 4+ weeks. I interviewed at Toptal (New York, NY) in November 2016.
Interview
1 - The first interview is a brief (about 20 minutes) behavioral interview. Nothing to be scared of here. As long as you are who you say you are on your application and you can speak English you will be just fine.
2 - Next, you are given a link to an online coding challenge, which you need to complete within two days. It consists of 3 problems which should be solved in 90 minutes once you start. My particular problems varied in difficulty. The first one was very easy, the second was medium and the last one was hard. You need to think about efficiency here, as they give you the specific time and memory requirements for your code. So move fast, but code efficiently.
3 - If you pass that, you will have a live interview with a Toptal engineer over Skype or Hangouts. You will be asked to share your screen so the engineer can see you code in your own preferred environment. I had two questions and they were both very simple. The catch is that they are timed. I had 15 minutes to solve each of them, which turned out to be more than needed.
4 - If everything goes smoothly, you will be given your final project specifications. How long this takes you will depend on your experience. But I'd say you should expect to spend about 20-30 hours on your project. You have 2 weeks to complete it, but start early so you're not rushing at the end. If you have any questions, clarify them with the developer who you will present to. Don't just assume everything on your own. The presentation consists of showing off what you built and then being asked questions about it. My interviewer asked me to see my code and how I implemented some of the features and also asked questions to make sure I actually understood how things like APIs and HTTP requests work.
5 - If you pass the presentation, you are in!
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