In terms of organization culture, Unbank Ventures is a very open and creative-minded organization. Students like me, who came to America from ‘foreign’ countries, usually feel very pressure and uneasy when they first start working in the United States. When I first came here to San Francisco and joined the company Unbank Ventures, I was so nervous because I worried about not understanding what my boss says or not being able to do what I am suppose to do. But, the people who work here were so friendly and always willing to lead me. The culture is not strict at all and not very organized with some fixed rules.
The culture is not dull. There are always a lot of things going on and I don’t have to do the same thing everyday. What I am doing now as an intern is sales and operations. One task that I should complete each week is to do a research on approximately 1,000 companies, find emails of CMO, business development manager, or CEO of the companies, and send them four emails each to promote our products. It sounds like the work is always the same and boring, but it is not. Unbank Ventures decided to use couple CRM programs to make everything easier so that I don’t have to do it one by one. They also hired a sales-specialist to help me more with my tasks. I felt like this organization is very open to know things and tries to be creative all the time.
People in this organization, as mentioned, are very nice. The company has three interns including me, and they are always willing to teach us how to do things in orders. Their attitude toward interns like this is very helpful because it makes our work easier. If the people were annoyed by interns keep asking questions, those interns may not learn many things and not be productive enough. In contrast, interns in Unbank Ventures are not afraid of asking questions because the workers actually like us asking questions.
One thing that I think is not an advantage of the company is that we don’t have our office; there are no fixed office for us. Only two fixed seats are allowed for Unbank Ventures and the rest of workers must seat in one of the open-spots. There are about 60 companies in my workplace (sharing the same workplace) and Unbank got one of the smallest number of desks. Whenever I have a question, I have to bring my laptop to where my coworkers are because I sit on one of those open seats. If we can get more fixed seats, it might be helpful to make a better condition or culture of the company.
Unbank Ventures doesn’t have many people working for the company, maybe less then 10. It sounds like having few people is one of the shortage of the company, but it is not. Having few people makes us closer to each other. Working isn’t fun for everyone, but at least for me it’s fun because I have these people who now knows me well.
It has been more than a month since I came here. I am getting used to both the culture of the city and the culture of the firm that I am working for. I am grateful to these kind people and willing to pay it back by working as hard as I can. I hope I can help them a lot as well until I am done with the program.