Join us as we share what we’re learning as we build a company that approaches work from a fresh perspective. We write about workplace culture, our finances, and our business decisions and strategies.
I’m happy to share that Tyler Wanlass recently became Buffer’s VP of Design. 🎉 Tyler has been on the Buffer team for over five years now, initially joining as a Product Manager before he transitioned to our first Head of Design. Throughout 2020, while we were hiring for a new Product leader, Tyler took on that role in the interim and did an incredible job. I’ve been impressed with how he’s juggled so much, operated at a high level, and contributed at layers from
Since we first kicked off a 4-day work week in May 2020, people have had a lot of questions about it. What day are we taking off? How long will we continue this practice? Is everyone really working four-days a week or are some people working more? Some of the answers to these questions have changed over the last few months, and I’m sure some will continue to change and evolve as we learn more about operating within a four-day work week. A little while ago, I decided to answer questions about o
Here are all of our numbers from our 2021 pay analysis, along with more on the positive impact that transparency has had on the gender pay gap for us.
In this post, we share an overview of our compensation philosophy and a simple explanation of our salary formula.
Our Engineering team is the largest team at Buffer. It has a lot of moving pieces and is composed of several smaller teams. As with any large team, we’re keen to make sure no one individual lacks guidance or an opportunity to grow. In this post, I’ll share a little bit more about how we’ve done that through a new program at Buffer that we’ve already had a lot of success with, our Engineering Mentorship Program. Why a mentorship program? Over the years on our Engineering team, we’ve had great
Towards the end of 2020, the Buffer engineering team held a two-day hack event where the team explored ideas that aligned with both our personal and company values . Whilst we strive to bring our personal and company values into the things that we build, sometimes it’s good to take a step back and really focus on those things that are important to us. These two days of hacking allowed us to do just that, building out a collection of projects that clearly embedded
In March and April of 2020, work and life as we knew it was changing. I surveyed our team members (all 84 of whom are spread out across the globe) to understand the best way to help them cope with so many things shifting at once. I especially wanted to hear from parents about what could help them as many schools were shutting down and partners or spouses were also required to work from home. The results? Most people wanted more time to get through the new challenges they faced. As a remote or
Note: This is the quarterly update sent to Buffer shareholders, with a bit of added information for context. We share these updates transparently as a part of our default to transparency value. See all of our revenue on our public revenue dashboard and see all of our reports and updates here . We've emerged from a cha
This post was originally published on Joel.is . Sometime in late 2018, the concept of having a support network clicked for me. This was the year that I started working with Mandy, my second Executive Assistant. Caryn, who I worked with in that capacity for around a year and a half, had transitioned to lead Finance. The gap without this type of support helped me to reflect on the most ideal setup. The journey to a support network The first time around that I w
In July, we shared that we were looking for a product leader to help us take Buffer forward in our next phase. After speaking to an incredible group of talented folks in product, I’m happy to share that Maria Thomas has joined us as our new Chief Product Officer. We’re now a 10-year old company , and in the past year, I’ve done a lot of reflection on the purpose of the company an
Note: This is the quarterly update sent to Buffer shareholders, with a bit of added information for context. We share these updates transparently as a part of our ‘default to transparency ’ value. See all of our revenue on our public revenue dashboard and see all of our reports and updates here . Before I get into the
Today marks ten years since I launched the first version of Buffer. What started as a landing page to gauge interest, and then a very basic product that I worked on alone, has become so much more. Buffer is now a leading social media management platform and a team of nearly 90 people working remotely worldwide, with our own approach and culture. Reaching this milestone means a lot for me, and I thought it would be interesting to reflect on each year of the Buffer journey. As you’ll see, things
Note: This is the quarterly update sent to Buffer shareholders, with a bit of added information for context. We share these updates transparently as a part of our ‘default to transparency ’ value. See all of our revenue on our public revenue dashboard and see all of our reports and updates here . It's been quite the y
Making and communicating decisions across an organization can be a challenge anytime. Making decisions during a pandemic is a whole new level of challenge. When the impact of COVID-19 started to grow, we at Buffer, like many others, needed to move as quickly as possible, gather a lot of information, and make big decisions that would ultimately impact our team, our customers, and our business. This presented a unique challenge. A lot of the decisions spanned the entire company and needed to be
We've been building Buffer for coming up to ten years now. We’re currently a 90-person fully remote team with over 70,000 paying customers and $20M in annual revenue. We’re proud to be a leader in the space of social media management, and to operate long-term as an independent and profitable business. As a company, we’ve rallied around serving small businesses. We’re also passionate about challenging suboptimal approaches to how work happens and how employees are treated. Our current 4-day work
We used to have a system called "transparent email" for all internal communication at Buffer. That stopped working for us, here's what we do now.
We’ve decided to conduct a long-term pilot of the 4-day workweek. See our results so far and what we're adding next.
As April comes to a close, and we look ahead to another month where our global team is living in various forms of lockdown and isolation, I decided that for the month of May, Buffer will operate under a 4-day workweek (at full pay) across the whole 89-person team. We’re in a period of time where there’s a layer of added anxiety and stress in all of our lives. At Buffer, we’ve been encouraging taking time off, and relaxing productivity expectations, in addition to shifting internal deadlines, bu
Many companies have a regular All Hands meeting. Generally, this is a company-wide gathering for all employees (‘all hands on deck’) to hear from the organization’s leaders and discuss the state of the company. At Buffer, the All Hands meeting is a key element of our communication and culture. As we grow, there’s an increased need to hear regularly from our CEO and leadership team and get on the same page about strategy and direction. Every month we alternate between a presentation-based All H
“When spring comes, snow melts first at the periphery, because that is where it is most exposed”Andy Grove This quote comes from Andy Grove , Intel’s former CEO, and which I was reminded of in the most recent book I finished reading, Seeing Around Corners by Rita McGrath. The idea is that snow melts first from the edges, at the periphery. This is where the first c
I have always assumed that a remote company must have a lower carbon footprint, but is that true?
No one knows how to work during a pandemic, and we’re all grappling through it together. So in the spirit of sharing, here are all of the internal messages we’ve shared with our team and shareholders during this time.
Here’s a look at how we’ve evolved the process of onboarding teammates at Buffer -- what we've stopped, started, and are doing next.
For the past few years, we’ve been on a journey to make sure our Buffer swag – the branded merchandise that goes out to teammates, customers and the world – reflects our Buffer values . Branded merchandise has a vast footprint on the environment — in terms of production, shipping, employment practices, and distribution — so we treat these decisions with care, always remembe