Stride Consulting Reviews

Pros

Stride is, without a doubt, the most unique place I have ever worked. There are a lot of things that make Stride an amazing place to work but I will just touch on a couple of them.

The first thing that really strikes me about Stride is the support that you feel from the leadership team. I feel that leadership understands my personal goals and is dedicated to helping me achieve them. And the side-effect of an amazingly supportive leadership team is a culture of support that permeates through the whole Stride team.

Stride is the first company I have worked for where the core values actually mean something. The values don't merely exist as text on a page, they are substantive and no material decision is made without consulting our core values.

As an example, one of our core values is to learn from failure. Of course, in order to learn from failure, you first must fail. The leadership team actively encourages you to become better by stretching your skills (both as a consultant and as an engineer), even if that means failing along the way. Practically, this means there are few (if any) bounds to personal and professional development.

I could go on with reasons that Stride is a special places (including great benefits, flexibility, etc.) but I will leave it with the above.

Advice to Management

Continue to be selective with hiring. Part of what makes Stride so unique is that team members of extremely skilled engineers, but they are also just awesome people.

Also, Stride has a very strong reputation continue to

Pros

Stride's core values are real (not just on paper).

Caring and nurturing environment that is helping me learn and grow. As a female developer, I feel really comfortable at Stride and at my client. I used to have a fear of public speaking but now really enjoy leading client retrospectives and speaking at meetings.

Meetings are actually interesting and productive (I did not think it was possible but it is).

Professional development and content generation time.

Company is very transparent and my input is valued (even though I'm pretty junior).

Great work/life balance with fun monthly socials.

Really great people.

Advice to Management

Try to figure out how to grow our teams at clients so we get to work with more Striders.

Keep evaluating our interview process to make sure we are not declining great candidates that don't have much experience but have lots of potential!

Pros

The ability to help shape the company.
The focus on values that are advocated for and defended strongly by top management
The buddy/mentor system that helps a create a sense of community among Striders who don't work together. The mentor also helps with advice on your career advancement.
A career roadmap so you know what you have to do to get promoted.

Pros

A commitment to employee growth supported by a generous budget for Professional Development and Content Generation.
A culture of collaboration and respect.
The opportunity to learn and work with a variety of technologies, at a variety of interesting clients around New York.
A management team that is truly attentive to the concerns of all employees, where all employees are empowered to make their voices heard.

Advice to Management

Keep up the good work!

Pros

Being a developer here is great. The VP of engineering does a really good job of championing us at the leadership level so management doesn't make our jobs suck. Management is also very dev friendly. Clients are screened heavily and lots of business gets turned down because devs don't want to work on those projects. The vacation policy is really good, hours are flexible, and pressure is low. The VP of engineering will come by and prod you to go home if you stay late. Everyone's smart and friendly. Pairing and TDD are the norm, and the company is big on being agile (XP and scrum mostly) so you don't end up with the problems a lot of more old school companies face. You can roll off projects when you get bored of them and work on new stuff periodically, in fact you are encouraged to do so. And if you have a serious problem with a client (code of conduct stuff), you can roll off immediately no questions asked. Compensation is competitive and promotions come with meaningful raises. You can get nominated for promotion by anyone (yourself, the client, your peers, your managers, your mom, whatever), and even if you don't get nominated you're automatically reviewed annually. The company is small enough that you can go ask the CEO for stuff and it's not weird. She's also super friendly. Oh, and we get 10 hours a month of investment time where you're paid to work on your own side projects, blog, learn stuff, whatever you want so long as you're investing in your skills or the company in some way.

Advice to Management

Improve your brand recognition among developers. It's well known among management types, but not among devs. The company's big bottleneck is growing the staff, not the client base.

Pros

Fun place to work with smart people and leadership that is interested in your professional development. Stride is a growing company which is great because there is a lot of flexibility in culture, process, and policy.

As a consultant you have a good deal of input on which project/clients you work on.

Stride has a very thoughtful review process. The matrix is decided upon by fellow Striders and constantly updated. Reviews include the creation of SMART goals which are short term goals that allow you to achieve a larger goal. Its been the most realistic improvement/review process I've seen.

Pros

Constantly learning and working with different technologies, including many on the cutting edge like Go and React. Getting to work at many different companies, seeing their strengths and challenges while gaining valuable interpersonal skills. Great work/life balance and awesome people to work with.

Advice to Management

Keep doing a great job making your employees feel like their opinions are valued and their lives outside of work matter.

Pros

- I love the team that I work with, it's a close-knit team with a family feel. Everyone is friendly, engaged in their work, and takes time to help each other out.
- Truly values work/life balance and works with you to meet your overall goals.
- Open-minded leadership & company culture, the open spaces we do quarterly are truly open and everyone has a voice.
- Mostly engineers & we get to work with tech teams all over NYC. I like the perspective we get from being closely engaged in the wider nyc tech community.
- Management listens.

Advice to Management

Stay open!

Pros

A genuinely agile and open company that gives employees a chance to help shape the company. Run by consultants for consultants - consultants are on the leadership team. Great work/life balance. A lot of passionate smart people to learn from.

Stride is a company that cares about the happiness of its employees and tries to put consultants in a place where they can learn and grow.

Advice to Management

Don't grow too big too fast! Stride works because we know all the consultants individually and where they would be happy, we'll lose that personal connection if we get too large.

Pros

You get to work on interesting problems for interesting clients
Your bosses care about your happiness and professional development
Management has a clear understanding of where the company is and where it is going

Advice to Management

Keep doing what you're doing!