We’ve always given our employees the flexibility to work from home. We’ve learned that highly productive people can work from anywhere, and be trusted to do so. Once COVID-19 lockdowns came into effect, this went from an option to a requirement, and I’m impressed with how quickly the team was able to adapt to the new normal.
Given the uncertainty surrounding the safety and timing of going back to physical office spaces our team has decided to continue with a remote work setup for the foreseeable future. When our Vancouver office lease came up for renewal (with a hefty 80% increase!) we chose not to renew it. Those funds can now be used to support our team, our customers and to build even better products.
We sold off all of our extra office furniture at a 90% discount, to help people that needed to upgrade their own work-from-home situation. We then donated that money to charity, to give a helping hand to people that have much bigger things to worry about than an ergonomic chair. If nothing else, that process has already made this decision worthwhile.
Going remote-first is not something we, or most companies for that matter, have done before and I am not pretending to be an expert by any means. I look forward to learning from our experience and picking up guidance from the pioneers of this approach (Jason Fried literally wrote the book on remote work).
We are going to make a ton of mistakes. My promise to you is that I will share the good, the bad and the messy along the way.
Hopefully, our successes, and our screw-ups, provide valuable lessons for others looking to experiment with this new way of working.
If you’d like to be a part of the journey, you can follow along here