Support & Continuous Learning

Support is a big word at Fog Creek. We support our products, we support our customers, and most importantly we support our employees.

One of the ways we support our staff is through our investment in continuous learning.

“I have the opportunity to learn something new every time I come to work. If there’s something I want to become an expert on, I will be given the room and the time” — Rachel Sharp, Fog Creek SysAdmin

We give each of our employees $3,500 a year and 3 paid vacation days to use to cover the cost of attending a conference — and that’s not just for coders or technical employees, that’s for everyone on our staff. When they return to the office (or to their remote office if that’s the case) we encourage our employees to share what they’ve learned with a write up or a tech talk. Our team members can even use their dev dollars to bring speakers to the office for workshops, and when they do, we triple the budget, since it’s benefitting so many people on the team.

Why do we go to these lengths to support our employees? For one it means we’re often able to promote from within. For example, members of our support team have gone on to become SysAdmins, Project Managers and Developers, and two of current Sr. Engineers started their careers at Fog Creek as interns in 2007 and 2008. And while we want everyone to stay at Fog Creek and do the best work of their careers, we also know that enhancing and improving our team’s skills has helped them go on to succeed later in other organizations as well.

On a philosophical level, we do it because we believe the employee/employer relationship should be reciprocal. Our job is not just to pay our employees with hopes that they, in return, will do what we say and make us look good. Rather we give our employees the tools they need to succeed at work and in their careers and in return they feel trusted and supported enough to come up with big ideas that we can then…you guess it…support!

It goes back to our core belief: We hire the most skilled, capable people, treat them with genuine respect, and give them the means to succeed. If that sounds like something you might be into, check our our open jobs!