Teamwork makes the dream work, and we'd be nowhere without our talented, dedicated team of employees.
To give you a glimpse into the day-to-day happenings of our team, and give you a chance to meet the brains behind the operation, we're highlighting a new Beautiful.ai employee each month. Every employee brings their own unique ideas, skills, and perspective to the company and contribute to the overall business in different ways. To show you a behind the scenes of each department, we're interviewing members of the team on all things presentations, remote work, and everything in between.
For this month's interview we caught up with Ben Janik, VP of Engineering. Ben heads up Beautiful.ai's team of Engineers that build the product and features that help our users work more efficiently and tell their story better. Today it's his turn to tell his story. Let's get into it.
Q: How long have you worked at Beautiful.ai?
A: I joined in May 2017 as one of the first employees.
Q: What is your role and what does it entail?
A: VP of Engineering. I do a little of everything, but mainly I make sure the product works well at all times. Aside from that, my time is spent on the strategic and tactical details of product, engineering, quality, and security, as well as people management and cross functional collaboration.
Q: How do presentations play a role in your day-to-day responsibilities?
A: My team is constantly making slides in order to build and test the product. So we literally make presentations all day every day.
Q: What do you love most about working at Beautiful.ai?
A: Being a startup, we get to move quickly to deliver value to our customers, without politics and process slowing us down. We also have enthusiastic users who generally love what we create for them, which is a really meaningful part of a job for me.
Q: What is your favorite Beautiful.ai feature?
A: This is like asking someone which is their favorite child! I’ve been a big part of everything we’ve built. I guess I’d say Team Slides or Analytics, as both are pretty novel departures from what is possible with a traditional presentation tool.
Q: What is something exciting you’re working on right now or something work-related you’re proud of?
A: I’m excited about our SOC2 Type II audit which is wrapping up. It has been a ton of work that I’ve done over the last two years to help us sell to enterprise customers.
Q: What was your first job?
A: My first job was building websites when I was 14. They were simple sites and I had basically no idea what I was doing, but I seemed to be helping out local businesses who understood computers and the internet even less than I did at the time.
Q: The best career lesson you’ve learned so far?
A: Help people as much as you can, even if it isn’t “your job.” We’re all in this together and your success is my success.
Q: How would you describe your job to a class of Kindergarteners?
A: I make the internet fun!
Q: Favorite remote work activities?
A: I like being able to improvise my schedule in the morning rather than having a mad rush to get out the door. My dog appreciates having a walk when I have a break from meetings instead of first thing in the morning.
Q: When you aren’t working, what do you like to do for fun?
A: I’m a big skier in the winter (I’m a way better skier than you).
Q: What is one thing you cannot live without?
A: Coffee is the easy answer here.
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