Thumbtack Local Communities

By: Shari Whalen and Alysia Young

Thumbtack’s culture has always centered around community. Pre-pandemic (back when “offices’’ were a thing), you’d find Thumbtackers in San Francisco, Salt Lake City, Toronto, and the Philippines, sharing stories at the office coffee bar, crafting #loveit notes for their peers at the stationary center, or most famously gathered around family-style tables sharing a meal, a laugh, and quality time together.

Community at Thumbtack may look different these days, but it’s still just as much a part of our culture. Since announcing our move to a virtual-first working model, our team of Thumbtackers now lives in areas far beyond our pre-pandemic locations. In fact, nearly 56% of our U.S. hires since July, have been in states outside of California and Utah. We couldn’t be more excited to plant our flag across the U.S., Canada and the Philippines.

New Local Communities
Today, we have 17 official Local Communities (cities with 5+ employees) around the world. Where are they? Atlanta, Austin, Boston, Chicago, Denver, Los Angeles, Miami, Nashville, NYC, Orlando, Phoenix, Raleigh, San Francisco, Salt Lake City, and Seattle as well as Toronto and Manilla. That’s a big reach!

Even More Ways to Connect
Thumbtack is enthusiastically building a new version of community in our virtual work model to ensure Thumbtackers around the world have a shared sense of togetherness and purpose. Our first step is to bring people together. In Local Community Slack channels, Thumbtackers within a given market get to know each other virtually, share local anecdotes, foodie recommendations, and general watercooler chats. We’re also bringing people together (drumroll, please….) in real life!

Led by a Community Ambassador, each Local Community has opportunities to get together for Thumbtack-sponsored days of fun and togetherness. Whether it’s sweating-it-out on a group hike, attending a local sporting event, sharing a meal at a well-loved local restaurant — or anything else the Local Community cohort dreams up.

September & October In-Person Events
In September, our Denver Thumbtack team met at a favorite local brewery, Blue Moon, to meet their community colleagues for the first time — finally putting a real face to folks they had only interacted with virtually! According to those who attended, they felt “a greater sense of shared community and purpose” with their fellow Thumbtackers. Win!

Pictured above, our Denver Local Community meeting in-person for the first time at Blue Moon Brewery. Thumbtack CLO Melanie Margolin, who is now a Denver native thanks to Thumbtack’s virtual-first model, planned an amazing event for our Denver Thumbtackers!

Most recently, our largest communities — San Francisco and Salt Lake — each gathered for local picnics. Many Thumbtackers saw each other for the first time since we all went home back in March 2020, and others met folks they had been working with on Zoom IRL for the first time!

Not even the rain could stop our San Francisco local community from showing up and having a good time at Spark Social SF.

Nothing but smiling faces with our Salt Lake City local community after a team train ride around Hogle Zoo!

Thanks to Thumbtack’s Covid Health & Safety protocols, including proof of vaccination and pre-event testing, these large groups were able to safely gather for an incredible and much-needed day of fun, laughs, and memories with their local peers.

We especially loved seeing our Thumbtackers open up and let loose during the events in our interactive & act-it-out ice breakers. The constant laughter within each group was fun to see!

During a team ice breaker, Bay Area employees gather around in random groups reciting names and acting out fun facts.

What’s ahead
The future for Local Communities at Thumbtack is bright. As we grow, we’ll continue to empower our local geos to get together in person, and we’ll find new ways to foster strong communities virtually. We’ll also create opportunities to make big impacts to where we live and work through community service and engagement.

Thumbtack’s culture has always centered around community — and we’re just getting started redefining what community means while we embrace the flexibility to work virtually.

If you read this and see yourself at Thumbtack, check out our open roles at https://www.thumbtack.com/careers/.

Shari Whalen, Employee Expereince Team Lead, is based in San Francisco and coordinates Thumbtack’s Local Communities Program in addition to global, virtual engagement events.

Alysia Young, Head of Thumbtack Employee Experience, is based in Atlanta, GA and leads the in-person elements of Thumbtack’s Future of Work program, including Communities, Team Events, Camp Thumbtack, and Libraries.