A bot sent me a Slack message and other observations from my first month at Algolia
When I first joined Algolia at the end of February, I was excited to see how a company built on culture would live its culture on a day-to-day basis. Having worked for a variety of companies — agencies, big corporations & everything in between — I knew that how a company defines its values and how it lives them can come with varying degrees of separation.
At Algolia, we have five core values — grit, humility, candor, care and trust. I’ve only been at the company a little over a month but I’ve already seen these cultural elements manifest in-person and virtually.
As a few examples:
- Care: our CEO personally checking in with new hires, including me, a few weeks into our roles here with integrity and honesty
- Grit: my colleague Tim Carry in his late night work sprints ahead of a (April Fools) product launch and his massive dedication to detail
- Candor: how our marketing team learns openly and discusses ways to improve for next time when projects haven’t had the outcomes we’d anticipated
Also, I’ve seen another, so far unspoken or undocumented, (until now) Algolia value that’s come to fruition in my time here that I’ll call: “Four Offices, One Company”.
Algolia maintains corporate apartments and travel between offices is encouraged so employees achieve facetime and culture infusion of being embedded within each office. I’ve been to our San Francisco HQ three times since starting and I’ve encountered new faces from our Paris office both times.
At lunch time, Algolians eat collaboratively in the common areas. In SF, on Tuesday/Thursday, Algolia caters lunch from local restaurants/diners for more collegial food consumption. Eating together might sound basic and a bit old school, but it discourages folks from eating at their desks, siloed by their massive computer screens — which is an unhealthy activity in and of itself. I seriously love mealtimes at Algolia as they’re a ton of fun.
From the perspective of a new hire, it is clear that Algolia understands that for true cohesion as a team, it’s necessary to be in front of one another not only in the offices and at meetings — but also the side trips for coffee and happy hours after work as well. That’s where the true bonding and deeper level relationship building happens — when you’re outside the four corners of office environs.
Let the bots help, too
Algolia uses Slack as one of our internal collaboration tools. I was surprised about 3 weeks into my time at Algolia when a Slack bot pinged a colleague (who I hadn’t met yet) and myself and said basically, “Hey there — I’m here to introduce two colleagues who otherwise may not speak directly. Schedule a 1:1 today!”.
What?! An AI bot was prompting me to get face to face (or via video conference) with a new Algolian? Madness! I totally dug it.
After I spoke to Julien, I reached out to Yvonne, our people operations manager, and praised her for signing up for this service that enabled this face to face collaboration. She surprised me when she said it was written internally by Baptiste, one of our software engineers in the Paris office. My jaw was on the floor. This approach of overcoming distance using a Slack bot was the first time I have seen it. I think it’s ridiculously cool!
It’s outstanding to me that the company has so many measures in place to boost collaboration and morale, both in person and between offices. So cool!
We’re always interested to hear: what does your company or organization do to bring employees together?
