Arista Networks is an innovative software-driven cloud networking company based in Santa Clara, CA. Since the company's inception in 2004, they've grown to be one of the biggest players in their market, and have won the awards to prove it.
But even with the rapid growth over the past few years, Arista hasn't lost sight of what got them here in the first place: awesome communication and desire to innovate.
"It is still easy to make decisions very quickly. We still have a lot of innovation. We are nimble and we like to innovate quickly and keep our own employees excited about the product and the company," Isabelle Bertin-Bailly said. Bertin-Bailly is Arista Networks' Vice President of Global Human Resources.
Responsible Business Practice, Cutting Edge Mentality
Ethically Sourcing for the Best Product Possible
Arista follows a set of principles they call The Arista Way. This is basically striving for customer success in every aspect of what they do, from the ground up, but doing it responsibly. The Arista Way consists of creating and delivering the highest quality product in the market while doing it in an environmentally and socially sustainable way. These values are something that Arista makes sure to educate every employee on, new or old.
"For every new hire, we go through it in orientation. So everybody is made aware on their first day that this is what we live by. We want to make sure that every employee understands that," Bertin-Bailly said.
The 4 areas of concentration of The Arista Way are:
The Culture at Arista
A Growing Company With Plenty of Room for Everyone
Arista has a very down-to-Earth work-life. It is based on the concept that their employees are real people with real lives, and that they aren't all the same.
"It's a very flexible environment," Bertin-Bailly said. Arista employees are pretty much free to work in environments that suit them best. There are even a ping pong table and a foosball table in the office, for blowing off some steam. And according to Bertin-Bailly, the tables get quite a bit of action. So much so that they are in the process of getting more.
"When we think about the work environment, we like to have a good work-life balance. So we have a lot of activities," Bertin-Bailly said.
Some of those activities include:
They always try to keep it fresh, to make sure that everyone is engaged and having a great time. "We try to change what we do to keep the employees engaged in those events," Bertin-Bailly.
Arista links sustainability with employee engagement with events like a tree planting initiative. They even link their product into this initiative, with employees planting a tree for every one of Arista's customers. Things like this help get employees out of their normal routines to do something good together.
The Benefits at Arista
Rethinking Benefits
There are so many benefits to being an Arista employee. Of course, there is a great benefits package that includes health care and all that good stuff, but there are also great things such as helping to make your community a better place to live through a wealth of volunteer opportunities. Also, there is an awesome annual picnic every year along with holiday events that employees get to attend.
The company makes a big point to get its employees interacting outside of regular working time. "We have a Friday snack bash, as we call them, where we get to know everybody and spend time with their colleagues," Bertin-Bailly said.
A huge benefit for incoming engineers is a highly effective mentor program. Every new engineer has a mentor assigned to them. What is so great about this little perk is that it offers a really easy and organic transition into working for the company. That mentorship is where the new engineers get to learn the software and systems better. "They have somebody that they can go to to ask questions at any time and somebody that they feel very comfortable reaching out to. I've got a lot of feedback from the engineers that this really helps them get up to speed more quickly," Bertin-Bailly said. This also helps with the culture of the company, in getting the new engineers to meet each other and become friends faster.
Arista makes sure that all of their locations are LEED-certified and rewards its employees for taking steps of their own towards sustainability. For example, their headquarters in Santa Clara includes such environmentally friendly features as:
