Workplace of the future - Page 6
We aspire to live by our values at Buffer. This means turning our values into behaviors that positively impact how we treat each other, how we interact with others, and how we see the world. Even still, having values isn’t enough. Especially if we want to create the inclusive organization that we’re striving to become. So to complement our values, we’
Working at Buffer takes many forms. For some, it’s working from home (sometimes surrounded by kids and/or animals), from a coworking space or co-living space or perhaps it’s from a coffee shop. (Psst – we just did a big ol’ survey of more than a thousand remote workers to learn more about these trends in our 2018 State of Remote Work!) When it comes to supporting our teammates, it’s a part of our company values to live and work where you’re happiest and most productive. That means we help fin
Editor’s Note: We are so grateful to Deborah Rippol, Buffer’s former and beloved People Success Manager, for all of her contributions to our hiring processes and this post. She had a key role in creating and refining our hiring process, and her expertise continues to positively impact Buffer. P.S. We’re hiring right now; we’d love to hear from you! At Buffer, we try to keep a beginner’s mind: always experimenting, pushing the boundaries of the future of work and aiming for a “what if” mentality
The end of 2017 brought lots of joy at Buffer. It was the best financial position we’d seen ourselves in in a few years and the team was excited to celebrate. Our CEO, Joel Gascoigne , and Director of Finance, Caryn Hubbard added to the celebrations with the wonderful news that they had managed to set aside money for Buffer to donate to charity. The whole Buffer team [https://buffer.com/abo
At Buffer we regularly hold what we call ‘Snackchats’. These are short & informal presentations of something that we want to share with our team which help to build on our engineering culture and help each other to grow as engineers. Anyone on the team has the opportunity to give these talks ? Once a discussion has been proposed, a day/time can be picked ready for people to grab a drink (and snack!) to take some time out of their day to learn something new. These have been happening at Buffer
Our daily routines can make a huge difference to how healthy, happy and productive we are. I’ve recently tried adjustingmy own routine in the hopes of getting more done and wasting less time in-between tasks or activities. While it’s important to understand how your own brain works and what routine [http://blog.bufferapp.com/youve-got-25000-mornings-as-an-adult-8-ways-to-improve-your-mornin
Hi there! This is an out of date post that we’ve kept around for transparency purposes. Go here to view the latest version of this post. What comes to mind when you think of remote work? In our experience, it’s not only one image. Remote work comes in many different shapes and sizes. We are a fully distributed team at Buffer, meaning that we have no office and everyone chooses to work from where they’re happiest: both geographically (we have teammates across the world) and functionally (we hav
This month I celebrated my four-year anniversary of joining the Buffer team – or “Bufferversary,” as we fondly call them. All work makes an impact on you, as you learn new things, make friends, and grow in your confidence at the job. I’ve been lucky enough to have many memorable roles, and I’ve taken something from all of them. But my work at Buffer? That’s something else altogether. It’s mind-boggling to think of the impact Buffer’s culture and values [https://buffer.com/resources/buffer-valu
Lately, every engineer at Buffer has been keeping a closer eye on accessibility. Regardless of the platform Buffer is housed on, be it iOS, Android or the web – we consider it part of our craft to ensure that anyone can use the things we make. Aside from the fact that it opens up Buffer to more users, we also subscribe to the belief that it’s simply the right thing to do. For iOS, that means it’s on Andy and I to recognize
Bias creeps into almost every area of our lives and decision-making, whether we know it or not. It’s not that we’re bad people, determined to pre-judge others. Rather, it’s our brains taking shortcuts that have been created over centuries. That makes it pretty tricky to undo effectively, but there are ways. When I last talked about performance reviews at Buffer here on the blog, I shared that one practice we’ve tried during the review process is t
In mid-2019, we moved our community from Slack to a new online home! We still run our Community Host program there. Learn more about our customer community here. Over the past two and a half years, our Slack community has become our central hub for Buffer users and fans to meet, learn and grow together. It’s a vibrant place full of incredibly smart, kindhearted, supportive marketers, and we’re constantly looking for ways to better su
If you had asked me a few years ago to picture my future, as much as I’d have liked it to include remote Portuguese Islands, a puppy, a surfboard, and a laptop, I’d probably never have come up with that. It probably would have looked more like business suits and handshakes. I’m really glad it went in the direction of the puppy and the laptop instead. This is the story of how my journey of working remotely led me to traveling the world with my dog, Eca, and what I’ve learned along the way. Ho
Over the last year my role at Buffer has changed from an individual contributor to a technical leadership role. While the amount of time I spend coding and doing architecture hasn’t changed much, the way I go about the tasks has changed significantly. Instead of being focused on a project from start to finish, I move around projects as needed. Sometimes a team will get blocked on a tricky problem or need to make a decision that could impact other teams or request technical mentor-ship to level u
The end of the year is a wonderful time to focus on reflection and self-care. These are things we’ve been very mindful of at Buffer in the past few years. Everything from encouraging more vacation time to having summer hours have been top of mind for us in creating a company focused on healthy and happy employees. Often times the year flies by so quickly that people don’t take enough vacat
There is a lot of imagery that comes to mind when someone says “working from home.” A quick Google Search yields results that are anything from someone working on the floor surrounded by pets, to people holding babies during calls, to someone working in pajamas. Source: Ray Wenderlich A lot of these things (the pajamas and family at least) are things you can’t always do at a regular office. Sometimes the pets
Until pretty recently, we didn’t have a “product process” at Buffer when it came to how we built the product. Initially, we were proud of our super lean approach with an engineer or two collaborating with a product manager and figuring it out as they went along. This worked well when we were smaller, but as our team grew and we wanted to build more ambitious products , timelines started to get unrealistically long and we were shipping cars all in
I recently had a video call with Buffer’s Director of People, Courtney . She asked me, “How is it feeling to work in your timezone?” That might seem like a rather odd question, but the reason why she asked is illustrated below: That’s me, over on the right. Right now, I’m the only person in Australia working in a company of 70+ people, spanning 12 different timezones. After reflecting on what it’s like to work in a one-person timezone, I thought I’d share
It’s pretty difficult to get excited about research, right? It’s not exactly the most flashy subject and I don’t really know any kids who dream of doing customer research when they grow up. Yet, if you dig into the practices of the most successful companies of the past few decades such as Amazon , Airbnb , and IBM [https://www.amazon.com/Who-Says-Elephants-Cant-Dance/d
Hi there! This is an older post that we’ve kept around for transparency but that means that sometimes the information is no longer accurate. Head to our homepage to view our most recent posts. Imagine working at a company where on your first day the CEO says: “We are really excited to have you here. Now, how can I use my personal network to help you get your next job?” That’s exactly how Jon Bischke from Entelo kicks off the first day for his employees on day on
Have you ever been curious about other people’s processes? How they start their day, how they work remotely, or how they focus their energy levels? I definitely have, and I know so many people who feel the same way. After all, what better way to learn than by looking at what is working for others! We’re fortunate to have access to an incredible community at Buffer, and over the years we’ve collected actionable advice from this community during our weekly bufferchat on Twitter [https://buffer.c
The ability to change one’s mind, change course and try again is one of the things I like most about working at Buffer. It’s totally normal to share about not just successes but also times we didn’t know the answer, mistakes we’ve made and experiments we’ve tried that didn’t quite turn out like we thought they might. So even though the last time I wrote about performance reviews it was to share why we don’t do them, it’s not actually that weird (at least at Buffer) to return to the topic only
Like many other tech companies, we used to have an unlimited vacation policy as a way to encourage employees to take vacation days when it felt best to them. When unlimited vacation didn’t seem to be working, because it’s hard to tell how much time unlimited really is, we switched to a minimum vacation policy this time last year. With our unlimited policy, the highest percentage of vacation days was in the range of 5 – 10 days per year, closely followed by the 10 – 15 days range. It wasn’t quit
The “Buffer Bootcamp” is a rite of passage that’s long been a staple of our culture at Buffer. This is the 45-day period that all new teammates at Buffer have embarked upon as they joined the team. Traditionally, the “bootcamper” has acted as a freelancer/contractor for their first 6 weeks, working on a probationary basis – no healthcare benefits, equity, or team retreats just yet. They generally receive lots of hands-on coaching and feedback as they learn the ropes of Buffer. It’s been a tim
There’s this powerful myth that exists in the working world: the more you work and less you rest, the more you will get done. It turns out that our bodies and our brains don’t quite work that way. What’s surprising is that the opposite is in fact true. If you rest more and work less, you’ll be more productive, healthy, and creative. Not to mention, one author believes more rest can positively impact climate change and gender equality — I’ll elaborate on all of that below. We gave this a try a