Our “New Normal” — The Future of Work @ Thanx After COVID-19

Dear Thanxers (Present and Future) —

At Thanx, we’re committed to attracting and retaining top-notch talent. We believe our people are a true differentiator for our business and we’re proud of the culture we’ve created (reflected, at least in part, by our Core Behaviors), the average tenure and promotion track-record of our team, and the impressive careers of our alumni. Over the last few years, our approach to talent has evolved; we’ve become a truly remote-friendly work environment. Prior to COVID-19, already 40% of our company worked outside of the San Francisco headquarters, and 25% were truly “Work from Home” if you exclude those who worked primarily from our Denver “hub”. From our Executive Team to our Engineering Leads, from our Customer Success/Support org to our Account Executives, nearly every team at Thanx was spread geographically and already adapting their operating style accordingly with a heavy reliance on Google Hangouts and Slack. But we were largely still an office-based company with remote workers bolted on — we were “remote-ish”.

Instead of treating COVID-19 like a temporary (though currently indefinite) adjustment, we’re now looking at it as an opportunity to evolve; this unique period has impacted everyone differently and for us to remain a long-term destination for the best talent, we need to adapt accordingly. In a recent survey of Facebook employees (which aligns quite well with what we’ve learned talking personally with Thanx employees), 50% of employees want to return to the office as soon as possible while 40% of employees want to work remotely full-time (more than ¾ of which would explore doing so in a new geography). Across both groups, more than 60% of employees value greater flexibility in their work environment than they had previously. Beyond our current teams, candidate pools are changing rapidly; expanding the geographies where we recruit and the effort we dedicate to remote hiring (and onboarding) could be a massive boon to our ability to access more talent and further embrace our Core Behavior of “Encouraging Diverse Perspectives”. If there’s anything we’ve learned from our remote work trailblazers at Thanx, it’s that our special culture is not tied to our office; it’s something we have co-created as Thanxers and it can be just as strong spread geographically when we commit to it.

Speaking of “remote work trailblazers”, it’s worth highlighting a few here: Darren (CTO) was actually our first remote employee in his three-year secondment to Pasadena while his now-wife attended medical school; Adam (Engineer Lead) deserves a special “thanx” for leading the way as our first dedicated remote hire; and let’s not forget Molly (former Sales Manager) who continued to fearlessly lead her team of Sales Development Reps even after moving from San Francisco to Missoula (MT) back in 2016. We’ve learned a lot from all of you!

So as Hubspot said in a recent blog post, “we’re going to drop the ‘ish’ 2021”. Going forward, Thanx will be a “Remote First” company, offering a hybrid “Distributed x Hubs” model that treats employees equitably no matter where they choose to work and supports those decisions with unique adaptations to ensure both populations can thrive.

Our “New Normal” — Distributed x Hubs

Starting in January 2021, we will embrace a “Distributed-First” culture (using “distributed” instead of “remote” because none of us want the isolation that remote implies). We will ask all current (and future employees) to self-classify as one of two categories and we are committing to every role at Thanx being eligible for either classification. Relative to our pre-COVID model, this approach will offer all employees with far greater flexibility while also creating the stability we need to establish a sustainable “new normal” that lasts far beyond the impact of COVID-19.

• ThanxHome employees will work the majority of their time from a Thanx-approved “home office”. We will work with every @home employee to certify that their working environment is safe and sets them up for success. @home employees will receive a stipend for their home office and will be expected to work at least 70% of the time from that Thanx-approved destination.
• ThanxHub employees will work the majority of their time from the Thanx office in San Francisco or in other approved “hubs” where there is sufficient density of employees excited about office-based work. @hub employees will have a dedicated desk and everything they need to thrive at the office. We will resume office perks such as the snacks, occasional lunches, expensable late-night meals and transportation, and regular social activities, but @hub employees will not receive a stipend for their home office. @hub employees will be expected to work at least 70% of the time from the office — one company-wide day each week will be “Work from Home Encouraged” for all @hub employees.

The fine print:

• Given the continued uncertainty caused by the pandemic, we will not require any employees (regardless of classification) to return to a Thanx office prior to May 1, 2021 — and we may further delay that date as needed to ensure the safety of our teams. We offer you this long-term view to offer some stability during this turbulent time.
• Employees will be able to change their classification once per 24 months (we need some level of predictability to identify the right real estate plan since these are generally longer-term leases).
• Thanx approved “home offices” must be in the United States / Canada. Employees will be expected to work in PST through EST time zones; managers will approve specific availability expectations.
• “Work from Home Encouraged” for @hub employees will be the same day every week (tentatively: Wednesdays) to ensure the @hub experience achieves critical mass and predictability. This means @hub employees will get up to one additional discretionary day every two weeks to work away from the office.
• Office items purchased with a stipend are the employee’s to keep. Computers and other “core” items purchased by Thanx will be required to be returned when an employee departs Thanx.

The “Distributed” Comes First in “Distributed x Hubs”

Our intention with this change is to embrace a “Distributed-First” culture without losing the in-office experiences that many employees value for their own happiness and productivity. But to make it work, we will absolutely need to join together to adapt and create new pillars of our culture that shine with an increasingly-distributed workforce. A recent Wall Street Journal article reported “Now, as the work-from-home experiment stretches on, some cracks are starting to emerge. Projects take longer. Training is tougher. Hiring and integrating new employees, more complicated. Some employers say their workers appear less connected and bosses fear that younger professionals aren’t developing at the same rate as they would in offices, sitting next to colleagues and absorbing how they do their jobs.” To avoid these strains, we have to make meaningful changes beyond the location where we sit on weekdays — we need to evolve the way we work.

A couple changes to get us started:

• Promotions and career progression will be location-agnostic. In fact, career advancement for managers will require a track record of building and growing strong distributed teams — we will invest in training to uplevel our managers in these skills.
• “One Attendee, One Camera” meeting policy. Even when @hub employees return to their desks and even if there are five @hub employees who opt to take a meeting in a conference room, we will expect everyone to have their laptop open so long as there is at least one @home employee on the call — this promotes a better “balance of power” across geographies and has proven to enable more voices to contribute at all-hands forums. Yes, that means for Team Meetings, @hub employees will likely take the meeting from their desk!
• Documentation and written memos. In order to thrive in a distributed world, we cannot rely on ad hoc, synchronous communication. So we are going to invest (even more) in improving our documentation, meeting preparation and follow-up protocols, and even explore the use of written memos (not quite to the extent Amazon has gone) to ensure everyone is on the same page via asynchronous forms of communication. This means we will need to train existing employees to express their thoughts through concisely written words, and we will evaluate new employees in part on their ability to do just that.
• Virtual onboarding. All new employees will be onboarded via video chat so that we ensure the experience is consistent across both employee types. The assignment of “Thanx Buddies” and other new employee traditions will be location agnostic (just as it is function-agnostic today) and we will expand these “welcome” programs to create more opportunities for organic interaction regardless of geography.
• All-company annual “kickoff”. We will continue to do our best to bring the entire company together for an annual work+fun gathering (finances and safety considering — which means it might not happen in 2021). We hope to add many others mechanisms for in-person co-working and socializing in the future.
• Salary adjustments by geography. We use a rigorous approach to compensation to ensure that our approach is equitable and eliminates as much subjectivity as possible. Thanx does not ask for previous salaries in the interview process and strives to compensate all employees at the median for role/level; compensation is reviewed twice-annually. As we have done previously with compensation outside of the Bay Area, all non-SF roles will be a) benchmarked to Bay Area salaries and b) adjusted for geography (taking into account cost-of-living and local job market dynamics) — this is the same for both @hub and @home workers in non-SF geographies. This is the only fair way to ensure that all employees are compensated equitably. If an existing employee relocates, her salary will be adjusted according to this same model (in either direction, as appropriate). Employees can petition work directly with our People team to understand the impact on their compensation when contemplating a new permanent address.
• Embrace that we aren’t going to get it perfect on day one. With our founder/CEO and co-founders all based in San Francisco and all likely to be @hub employees, we have to acknowledge that we aren’t going to be able to make it a 100% consistent experience for both classifications on day one. But we can acknowledge this reality and work hard to gather feedback and solicit more ideas for how to steadily move in this direction over time. Starting with today — if you have feedback or thoughts, submit them through “CEO Hotseat” anonymous Q&A, schedule CEO Office Hours, or talk to your manager in your weekly 1o1 (and talk to the People team ASAP if you are not currently having consistent, weekly 1o1s as is our policy).

Thanx.

— Zach Goldstein, CEO and Founder