Athene's founders set out to create an engineer-friendly corporate culture that would nurture loyalty and cultivate outstanding software. The company auditions recruits, gives employees private offices instead of cubicles and enforces a work-life balance. Athene's recruitment process features a series of intensive interviews with key managers, including Johnson, as well as potential peers. The company's Technical Advisory Board, a group of six PhD-level mathematicians and statisticians from universities and institutes around the world, often screens r sum s and conducts phone interviews with prospects. Employment, academic and criminal background checks are conducted on everyone.
Most prospective hires embrace the opportunity.
We've had people write poems and do martial arts demonstrations. We've had race car drivers and firefighters. Of course, sometimes people just stand and read their r sum s, and that tells us something about them too. They help retain the employees already there. Athene employees take the auditions seriously.