Why Work at Fog Creek?
Fog Creek is a small software company that has made a big impact with our products. The company was founded with the idea that if you hire amazingly talented people and give them interesting problems to solve, they’ll create great things and do amazing work.
From there, products were born and careers made, but it wasn’t until last year that we made it a priority to define our values. Does that mean Fog Creek was value-less for 17 years? Of course not! The interesting thing with company values is that they exist whether or not you define them. They’re in your everyday practices, language, habits and norms. Regardless of the fact that we had not — in recent memory — discussed our values, they were already clear to Creekers who had been around for a few years. But relying on oral tradition that changed from person to person put prospective employees and new hires at a disadvantage.
So about a year ago, we set out looking to capture and define the values that already existed, and the natural first step was to survey all Creekers about their own experiences. Results from this survey (comprised of open-ended questions) revealed two key phrases that are at the core of everything we do at Fog Creek.
Put People First
This one seems like a no-brainer given that the company was created to be a great place to work. For us, this goes beyond the people-friendly policies we espouse. What good is free health care for your family if we were to create a work environment that made it impossible to take the time for yourself or your family when someone is ill?
Work-life balance at Fog Creek means that you won’t be seen as less committed to your work when you take time to deal with the stuff that comes up outside your job. You won’t owe Fog Creek the hours you spend taking care of your life.
We’ve learned a lot over the past 17 years, but one thing that hasn’t changed is that freedom and autonomy with support from all levels of an organization creates an innovative and safe space for our people.
But people doesn’t refer only to Fog Creek people. Outside our employees, this mindset extends to our customers, users and community. In fact, our Support team has their own set of values that include “advocate for the customer” and “consider the long-term impact of your work.”
“Put people first in all we do, from our policies within our company, to defining our role in the communities and industries where we participate, to where we invest our resources. Practice and promote taking care of our well-being, and support each of us living full, healthy lives. Nurture the talent of colleagues, both with resources and by structuring our work to enable personal and professional development. Enable everyone to regularly have significant impact.”
Make a Welcoming Workplace
The two words repeated most in the survey responses were respect and gratitude — not surprising to anyone who currently works at Fog Creek. Regular company practices and rituals like Kiwi Bravos, along with meaningful social rules, have built these values into our culture before we ever attempted to define it.
Respect is vital in any workplace, but it is particularly necessary when working on distributed teams using Slack and other tools to communicate. Without face-to-face interaction with over half of our team every day, we have to be intentional about creating a safe space for everyone to connect. We strive to be an environment where people are comfortable sharing their ideas, asking questions and speaking their minds. We create that environment by treating each other with respect and giving our coworkers the benefit of the doubt.
That extends to our physical environment too! Recently Fog Creek moved into a brand new office, which enabled us to evaluate how we could create a space that would cater to the various work styles of office employees, and a space that would be inclusive of guests and remote employees when they visit.
“Make a welcoming workplace by being kind and caring to one another. Build habits that enable everyone to do their best work without regard to location, context, or background. Enthusiastically support every role in our organization equally. Explicitly encourage an inclusive, diverse culture and do the work to make our company more welcoming and supportive of more kinds of people. Regularly and explicitly show our gratitude to our colleagues, customers and community.”
Do you want to help us build a culture that puts people first and enthusiastically welcomes everyone? Are you interested in contributing to the success of products that make work better and the Internet more fun? Check out the current openings on our team. If we don’t have an open role that fits your skills right now, stay up to date with us!
