Experiences Over Things
The greatest things in life aren't things.
We believe this whole-heartedly at NodeSource. One of our company's cultural values is deeply rooted in embracing life experiences with family, friends, colleagues and community. We are convinced that over the long term the people we aim to attract as employees (and even our clients) will share in this belief and will ultimately yield better results for not just our company, but the individuals themselves.
A New Workforce
Our research shows Millennials tend to favor experiences over things as well. As the swaths of Millenials enter the workforce, companies whose values are aligned with providing incredible experiences over free food, video games or an Amazon Gift card will have a competitive advantage. Working remote enables people to be closer to their friends and families or at least they have the ability to travel to see them more. These are values that we believe in and feel the net result will be a happier and more productive team.
At NodeSource, we do things a little bit differently. We are Distributed by Design™, meaning, our team is globally distributed from the beginning. We have no central office. This enables our teammates to spend more time with their families and their friends. It empowers them to travel and get out and see the world.
Rethinking Perks
Speaking of seeing the world, we are working with AirBnB to provide our teammates with a quarterly AirBnB travel allowance. Since our teammates are spread out the world over, we encourage cross-pollination amongst teams in various locations. AirBnB is a great fit for us because they do in fact have "business traveler" or "business friendly" destinations with hosts catering to business people. Moreover, a good friend of ours who was one of the first employees at AirBnB told me that there are programmer-friendly, developer destinations that he and his colleagues have used in the past for concentrated and focused hack sessions. This is perfect for our business.
A Happy Team Is a Focused Team
At our public launch on May 27th 2014 we at NodeSource (and our respective families) all flew into Amelia Island, Florida to come together for some quality face-to-face time and also attend JSConf. The time we spent as one big crew and also breaking off into smaller groups to hack on projects, hang by the pool or just talk shop was incredibly invigorating and has provided extra focus and energy to everyone at NodeSource. The results have been incredible improvements in the products we are building like our deployment tool, N|Ship.
The path to keeping people happy at work is never a smooth one, but we feel we are on the right track by keeping it simple by trying to provide the absolute best work experience one can have while working. Because if what you're doing is what you love, then you actually never work a day in your life.