Buildkite

May 18, 2024

"It's cheap as chips," Pitt said. "Best money ever spent." Related stories Buildkite also spends on remote activities meant to foster connection. There are virtual gatherings for doing puzzles or quizzes about music or movies. The company has held cooking events where it pays workers to buy ingredients, and colleagues make a meal together over video. But for all the fun meant to boost camaraderie, Buildkite's culture is serious about working from home, Pitt said. Advertisement Workers are given a budget of 3,000 Australian dollars to trick out their home offices. The company asks new hires to take pictures of their setups to ensure they have a quiet space with a proper desk and chair to avoid ergonomic fails. "We don't foster a work-from-the-couch, work-from-the-kitchen-table type environment," he said. "We encourage people to throw some paint on the walls, buy some plants, buy some new artwork, just to change it up." Workers also need high-quality equipment: A poor camera or mic, Pitt said, is the digital equivalent of having something stuck in your teeth. 'It's easy to look busy' Another way the company tackles remote work for an employee base spread around the world is to cluster some functions. Buildkite uses what it calls "timezone bubbles." So, for product and engineering, workers need to be plus or minus four hours from Sydney's time zone. For sales and marketing, it's the western US. Advertisement That helps to ensure coworkers are generally online simultaneously and not left waiting for responses from colleagues. For all the work Buildkite has done to establish norms around having what Pitt refers to as 135 small offices around the world — one for each employee — he sees Buildkite's embrace of remote work as a long-term experiment. "I'm eager to see how this thing plays out," he said. For now, it seems to be working. The company is on track to hire 50 people in 2024. Rather than dwelling on where workers work, a big focus is on developing trust, Pitt said. He thinks one of the reasons some bosses are demanding workers be back in the office is because they don't trust their teams. But, Pitt said, "it's easy to look busy." Advertisement Pitt said building trust can be harder when people aren't face-to-face. Playing games with colleagues is the "shortcut" he's found to developing that faith in colleagues beyond completing projects together, he said. That's part of why he occasionally gets workers together. After the last all-worker event, the number of employees who reported feeling more connected to their teams and the company more than quadrupled. Now, Buildkite runs employee sentiment surveys every couple of months. And when it dips below a certain level, the company will announce another gathering. It's important to keep trust elevated because that's when workers do their best, Pitt said. "Trust is a big part of being able to come up with creative ideas on things," he said. Advertisement And, Pitt said, if workers care about the mission, it doesn't matter whether they work in an office or from afar. "People will want to do the work because it's fun and it's what they want to do with their lives," he said. Read next