Ceiling to Professional Development. Otherwise Pretty Good.
Pros
OpenRent is an incredibly successful business which is currently flourishing. They have really cornered the market and have been driven by a lean team of motivated and hardworking professionals who work in a very efficient manner. The company has an aptitude for hiring exceptional and talented people. I firmly believe being offered a job at OpenRent is a great testament to your character. For my role they accept graduates from all disciplines, many straight out of university, which I view as a socially responsible endeavour. This has made for a team that is always willing to share their knowledge and expertise, for which there is plenty. The organisation of the company is compelling; the flat leadership structure eliminates much bureaucracy, hierarchy politics and micro-management. Being able to communicate directly with the founders is a huge asset and gives a great deal of insight into mission-driven thinking and business acumen. Day-to-day communication is generally pretty strong; most collaboration takes place on Slack and in-person meetings are limited which is an effective use of time. It's pretty laid back which is nice. The role is interesting. Combining customer service with product work is very resourceful and I am surprised I don't see this more in tech. There's broadly freedom to work on what you want, however you will be most supported when working within the established processes. The benefits package is generous and what you might expect from a start up like this. A lot of thought and effort goes into curating the social events which does not go unnoticed.
Cons
The lack of management is a double-edged sword. Having the freedom to work on what you see as a priority is a strong advantage, however in my experience this is a damper on direction and motivation. There are members of the team who have a more supervisory role; they are great but I felt were often unequipped to support my professional goals. I think this speaks to a wider issue of OpenRent not knowing how to get the full potential out of everyone, and that achieving the most productivity across teams may require more tailored approaches. Perhaps my biggest gripe was not being able to learn SQL. To me this was a very natural upskilling opportunity in a role that requires understanding data. I was instead left to take considerable time from developers to help me achieve my aims. The reasons given for this barrier were man-made and resolvable, albeit with considerable effort. The wider sentiment towards data generally was unexpected; what I would describe as "user insights" was referred to as "noise" and thus prevented me from working on what I saw as important to the company. The product development flow was painted as an exact data-driven science when many decisions did hinge on guesswork and extrapolation. There was also an aversion to more traditional forms of user research which I struggled to understand. Another huge issue I know I was not alone in experiencing was what I would call an outright rejection of design as a concept. OpenRent is very visually outdated and it was painful to suggest or push through design changes. The website is not optimised for mobile either; there's a bit of a false dichotomy when looking at mobile vs desktop users, this is not a reflection of their device preference but rather their tolerance for bad mobile design which inflates desktop usage. OpenRent tries to champion challenging pre-existing assumptions and norms, but in reality the appetite for trying new approaches is very small. I made the decision to leave OpenRent based on my feelings of hitting a ceiling in my development and not being able to enact the change I perceived as necessary. I don't think I was always aligned with the company in my approach to work which ultimately became a barrier to my own progress, despite being motivated by the best intentions. I fed back experiences of this calibre multiple times but little was done in response.
