Culture at Xero Australia

It depends on the team but my experience has been generally really good. It doesn't feel like there is a massive hierarchy, cooperation and teamwork has been really good even in these trying covid lockdown times.

Everyone within Xero is very friendly and we try to make sure there is plenty of fun going around. There is a big emphasis on feedback and trying to enable people to grow, but to do so in a constructive manor. Generally the product space is split up into smaller teams/pods that have a mix of developers, designers, product owners. These pods generally fit under a specific product. Then there are a bunch of architects and managers scattered in places that make sense depending on the specific needs of the individual product / teams. As a grad we have a grad team lead who manages us through the whole grad year as we rotate between different teams and then we have a buddy from the team we are currently in that looks after us on a more team specific basis. Teams generally have their own work schedule and organize themselves in a way that is unique in the team (i.e.: Xero doesn't dictate a single way to do the work, there is a bit of autonomy). Teams will work on a set of products that are owned by them but also cooperate with other teams who work on dependent products. There is generally an office-wide social activity at the end of Friday but some teams also run their own social gathering occasionally. During lunch on Tuesday there's usually a sport/yoga activity planned in this office.

The structure of the company is relatively relaxed. You can easily communicate with the leaders team. There are a lot of team activities. We have internal hackathons, board games, Friday drinks, etc.

Generally very social and open to change. However, every team is different and every person is different. e.g. some teams have more "traditional" culture and processes, where some are more up-to-date.