A Best Place to Work in 2024: What Above and Beyond Means to Us

What does it mean to go above and beyond?

At Kiddom we ask ourselves that question every day, as we work to support the administrators, educators, teachers, and students who use us. We also think about it as we work towards our mission of helping every student find success through the right combination of technology, curriculum, and teaching.

But, we can’t possibly do that without supporting our team. After all, the Kiddom team is a group of driven and dedicated people who want to change education for the better. It is the hard work of each person at Kiddom that ultimately helps us all reach our goals.

So we also ask, how do we go above and beyond to support the members of the Kiddom team? How do we ensure they feel happy, appreciated, and empowered to accomplish everything they desire?

Kiddom Recognized by BuiltIn

That’s why we are honored to be recognized by BuiltIn as one of the best places to work. This is especially important as BuiltIn takes a real look at company benefits, salaries, and perks to determine winners.

We were scored on aspects like child care and parental leave benefits, culture, diversity, health insurance and wellness benefits, professional development, as well as vacation, paid holidays, and time off.

As you know there are required minimums for many of these, but who wants to be given the bare minimum?

It doesn’t make sense to ask our team to be at their best without providing them with the best. That’s why we go beyond to support employees with perks like unlimited vacation days, 10 paid sick days, paid parental leave for both biological parents and caretakers, and generous insurance policies.

Sure, something like unlimited PTO isn’t unheard of nowadays – but when was the last time you were encouraged to take vacation? That’s where Kiddom really goes above – you have unlimited vacation, we want you to use it! Kiddom members should spend time with their loved ones, engage with their hobbies, and explore new places. Plus, a refreshed team is more focused, relaxed, and productive.

As Vivian Ho, Senior Product Designer puts it, “The culture at Kiddom is super encouraging and the company really values their employee’s work-life balance. I also love that I can really make a positive impact here and that my voice is heard.”

So not only do we provide the benefits, we encourage team members to use them. But, that’s just the culture here. Allen Chung, VP of Engineering says:

“I’m quite proud of the engineering team that we’ve assembled at Kiddom. Of course, we all align around our mission to build technology to improve education, but how we accomplish that within the various engineering disciplines provides a wide variety of perspectives. We have our debates about which technologies and projects would be the most effective right this moment, but we approach these problems with collaboration and mindfulness. In fact, we look for this during our recruiting processes, and codify team impact within our career ladder.”

Not only is the Kiddom team supported by leadership and HR, we support each other as well. We come from diverse backgrounds, with different talents, experiences, and skill sets. But, we use those different perspectives to our advantage, to build technology that unlocks potential for all teachers and learners.

“As a startup, there are a lot of processes and norms that haven’t yet been defined. We’re fortunate to have engineers who bring their experience from other companies to give us a starting point, but we intentionally iterate to make it our own… I appreciate the level of autonomy and responsibility expected of our team.”

In the end, we are united by our common goals and support one another by going above and beyond not only for our customers but each other as well.