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Before I worked in a remote team , I was a freelancer and never needed to collaborate with teams very much. The way I used my calendar back then was pretty basic; maybe a birthday here and there. But when I joined Buffer in 2015 that suddenly changed. The more I grew as an engineer and the more I leaned into leadership and ultimately transitioned into management , the more I noticed how essential cal
Editor’s Note: Thanks for checking out this post! We’ve released our updated 2021 pay analysis here. You can’t improve something if you don’t know that it needs to be improved. That was very true for us four years ago when we first started looking into equal pay at Buffer. We have long used a salary formula to determine all of our salaries – the same role in the same part of the world receives the same salary. That m
Transparency is one of our defining values at Buffer. We are excited to debut a new revenue dashboard!
One of the most conversation-provoking perks we’ve ever launched at Buffer is our Dependents Grant. This benefit provides a $3,000 USD stipend to teammates for each person who depends on their salary (including spouses, partners, children, grandparents, aunts, uncles, etc.). When it first launched in 2016, the grant was designed to show support for Buffer teammates as they navigated various life situations. “We we want to help our teammates feel taken car
This team communication regarding COVID-19 is part of our COVID-19 Response Series. You can see all the messages in the series here . * Shared: March 4, 2020 * Posted by: Courtney Seiter, Director of People * Title: We are postponing our planned June retreat in Athens We are postponing our planned June retreat in Athens Hi team; I have some tough news to share: In light of the COVID-19 situation developing across the world and out of an abundance of cautio
This team communication regarding COVID-19 is part of our COVID-19 Response Series. You can see all the messages in the series here . * Shared: April 3, 2020 * Posted by: Joel Gascoigne, Buffer Founder and CEO * Title: Launching the COVID-19 Customer Assistance Program Launching the COVID-19 Customer Assistance Program Hey team, I’m glad to be sharing an update with you on how we’re planning to continue and expand the ways we’re helping customers get throu
This team communication regarding COVID-19 is part of our COVID-19 Response Series. You can see all the messages in the series here . * Shared: March 26, 2020 * Posted by: Joel Gascoigne, Founder and CEO * Title: An assortment of thoughts on our approach during COVID-19 An assortment of thoughts on our approach during COVID-19 Hi team, As we come towards the end of another week in this pandemic, and many more places implement stay at home orders, I want t
This team communication regarding COVID-19 is part of our COVID-19 Response Series. You can see all the messages in the series here . * Shared: March 18, 2020 * Posted by: Caryn Hubbard, Director of Finance * Title: How we’re positioned to handle this new economic climate How we’re positioned to handle this new economic climate Hi team, The last couple of weeks have been atypical and unprecedented, unfolding in ways none of us could have imagined. Public
This team communication regarding COVID-19 is part of our COVID-19 Response Series. You can see all the messages in the series here . * Shared: March 30, 2020 * Posted by: Courtney Seiter, Director of People * Title: A note on COVID-19 sick time and time off A note on COVID-19 sick time and time off Hi team; the People and Finance teams wanted to share a special note with you about time off during the COVID-19 pandemic. First, Buffer’s Flexible Time Off P
Ever since the world got turned upside down by COVID-19, it’s been “business as unusual” for everyone – Buffer included. I sent this update out to Buffer’s investors one week ago. I hesitated on whether to share it more widely, as I know a lot of companies have been impacted more severely in these times. That said, I believe it makes sense to lean into our company value of transparency, since there may be some companies this could help, and it shows Buffer customers that we will be around beyon
One remote work best practice that we live by at Buffer is asynchronous communication. This concept simply means that work doesn’t happen at the same time for everyone. Communication and collaboration are complex issues, especially for remote workers – in our last three years of State of Remote Work reports they have been in the top three struggles for remote workers. Ensuring good asynchronous communication practices is one of the ways that we address this struggle at Buffer. Asynchronous com
This team communication regarding COVID-19 is part of our COVID-19 Response Series. You can see all the messages in the series here . * Shared: March 12, 2020 * Posted by: Courtney Seiter, Director of People * Title: Buffer Guidelines for 2019 Coronavirus (COVID-19) * Note: We’re grateful to Human Made for sharing their guidelines openly via their handbook ! Some of this language was borrowed from their
We just released our annual State of Remote Work report, and one of the most consistent responses is that when we ask remote workers if they’d like to work remotely (at least some of the time) for the rest of their careers, 98 percent of them said yes. A further 97 percent of people said they would also recommend remote work to others. So what is it about remote work that makes people want to do it for the rest of their careers and recommend it so stron
We think a lot about work culture at Buffer. So at the end of the year, it’s always an interesting exercise to think on how the work world has evolved and the work culture trends we see on the horizon. Here are five of our predictions for 2020. They’re unscientific and pretty biased by our point of view, but that’s part of the fun! 1. The growth of ‘conscious companies’ Is the purpose of a business simply to make money? Up until recently, that question could be answered pretty simply: Yup! Bu
As 2019 comes to a close, there are a lot of fun, interesting, and important numbers for us to look back on at Buffer. One of my favorites is looking at the number of books we’ve read as a team – 1,541 books this year! One of the coolest perks we have at Buffer team is that all team members (and their family members!) get a free Kindle and all the Kindle books they want to read—any book, anytime, no questions asked. It’s always interesting to see which books are most popular on the team. We ha
With more and more people working remotely at least some of the time, more employees are experiencing that things change when there’s no office. Dynamics, habits and workflows change in a remote organization. Some changes are obvious, but others are subtle. As an employee in a fully remote company for the last few years, I’ve learned a few things that have helped me make the most of remote work. Here are some of the my biggest lessons. 1. Over-communicate by default How do you know if your
Back in 2016, we shared the tech, bags and products that our team found essential for remote work. This year, it’s time for an update and many new additions to our original list. Here are lots more gadgets, gear and other essentials our all-remote team can’t live without, including: * Daily backpacks * Travel bags * Monitors, trackpads and computer accessories * Headphones * Cell phones and cases * Laptops * Journals and pens * Home speakers * Gaming systems * Other work/life essenti
Friday has become somewhat of an “experiment day” at Buffer. Different areas of Buffer have tried Fridays with no Slack , have reserved Friday afternoons for personal development , and have even taken Friday afternoons off . Using Fridays to try new ways of work has become such a part of our culture that we recently tried our first full-te
“Hackathons” are pretty common at tech companies. During these events, engineers and others collaborate on a project with a goal is to have a usable piece of software to demo after the event – and eventually ship to customers. It’s a fun challenge to do a hackathon when you’re a remote team , which is why we’re especially proud after having recently hosted our third. Through every iteration, we’ve tried to improve. And after this third edition, it feels like
Growing a team is an exciting prospect. More people means more capacity, more skills and more progress, right? But scaling a team often comes with its own special challenges and pitfalls. It’s been said that every time a company triples in size, everything breaks . We’re now a team of 90 at Buffer and have learned quite a [https://medium.com/slite/how-slite-buffer-and-doist-manage-remote-first-teams-2b9
Buffer’s People Team spends a lot of time thinking about perks. One of our biggest and most important perks is maybe the toughest to quantify: The freedom to work whenever, wherever, and however we like. Being a diverse, distributed team impacts our perks philosophy deeply. There’s no one-size-fits-all approach; we all work differently and are motivat
Less than two years ago, I had almost zero published articles with no audience of readers. However, this never stopped me from considering myself an aspiring writer. I knew I liked writing a lot and always wanted to share my thoughts. My biggest challenge was not knowing where and how to start . I was lost because I thought I had nothing original to share with the world . This was a
The biggest difference between remote work and co-located offices is where work happens. According to our State of Remote Work survey for 2019, 84% of remote workers work from their home. That means that most of us work and live in the same place. This results in the biggest struggle remote workers have: Unplugging after work. In this post I’ll share the four biggest lessons I’ve learned on how to create rem
I am the kind of person who really thrives on lists. On the blog, we’ve written about lists as both a key element of a daily success routine as well as a vehicle for accounting for your productivity each day . Personally, I make lists of tasks every day in Todoist, and I also keep an ongoing list of my goals. There’s one group of lists I make in particular that I classify as “career lists.” There are fi