Behind the Flame: Jack Bridge

Welcome to Behind the Flame, a series created to showcase our incidentios.

Meet Jack Bridge, Management Accountant here at incident.io.

Q: What has been your favorite incident.io memory so far?

I started working as a contractor for incident.io, and then the opportunity and offer came about to move from temp to perm. It was something a few months in I was looking and hoping for, so I was greatly surprised!

Q: What is the value that most resonates with you?

Raise the pace. Working in an operational team, you have to move quickly to solve problems and sort subscriptions for customers.

Q: What is your favorite benefit?

Last Friday of the month: getting time off every month consistently, not having to pick and choose which months you're to have time. It forces you to take some time to relax and reset before the next month. It’s definitely the best benefit I've ever come across that a company offers.

Q: What is your favorite Slack channel?

#food. When I was working as a contractor and not a permanent employee or in the office full time, I remember it being one of the earliest channels I joined. You’re able to get restaurant recommendations around London, with a wide variety of cuisines.

Q: What piece of advice would you give yourself if you could go back to your first day?

Getting involved in everything. It can be overwhelming when starting a new job and in the beginning, I tried to pick and choose what to focus on. However, I think just really diving into everything, embracing everything about incident.io from the first day will help you down the line.

Q: What advice would you give to candidates interviewing with us?

Even though I missed out on the formal process as I moved from contractor to permanent, I think learning and having a really good understanding of the values will help push you through any interview and help understand what incident.io is all about.

Q: How would you describe the culture in three words?

I would describe the culture of incident.io as connected, fun, and transparent.

Q: What incident.io employee would you want to be stuck in a lift with?

Probably Meg Batterbury [Senior Talent Operations Specialist], she's got an array of topics she can talk about; we could easily go at least a day in there chatting about various shows or celebrity gossip.

Q: What does last Friday of the month mean to you?

My favorite benefit that I've ever had working across any company is being forced to take time off, which has allowed me to put in more regular time meeting up with friends and family. Even if you're not doing anything, you have that time to reset before going again for the next month.

Q: What are you most looking forward to with the journey here at incident.io?

I am most looking forward to the Christmas party, but more seriously I am looking forward to doing a software migration. We're making the move onto bespoke software which will hopefully make everyone's lives a bit easier.

Q: What is something you are proud to have worked on?

Tidying up our spending hygiene, as with most early-stage startups, you just need to raise the pace, move quickly and things just need to work. There is a point where you transition and start to have more control and oversight of the spending of the company and implementing software tools like Cledara, it’s improved our approach with this.

Q: What is it like being part of the Finance team?

We’re a team of two, which I enjoy, and we encompass our values of Raise the pace and Trust by default. We are regularly working on separate projects, Alex Spink [VP of Finance] often more at a strategic level and myself working more operationally. Those values allow me to work quickly, and get stuff done, without the frequent contact and having a larger team around us.

Q: How does the Finance team collaborate with different departments?

We have to collaborate with most teams, regularly collaborating with the Data team to ensure that our metrics, such as our ARR, are reported accurately and correctly. Working with the Engineering team to ensure that our setups are working as we sell slightly different packages. Our Customer Success and Sales team often help us with following up on outstanding payments. We have a lot of touchpoints across the company with a lot of collaboration.

Q: What is something that surprised you when you joined incident.io?

I think a lot of companies strive towards it, but it has to be the level of transparency. A lot of companies claim to be transparent, but the reality can often be very different. Most of the time we know things at the same time as the Founders and everyone else in the company, it’s a great culture to have.

Q: If you were to work in another team for a day, what team would you join and why?

I’d pick Engineering. I've always been very interested in learning to code, I think that would be a great skill to have and I solve a few of my problems in finance with a little bit of coding knowledge, as well as just the typing speed.

Q: How can you see the Finance team growing over the next 6 to 12 months?

The future of the Finance team is that we are going to grow. We're still a team of two, which for a company of our size is probably about right, but as we continue to grow we’ll likely take on a couple more people on the operational side and perhaps eventually branch out to have a team in the New York office.