A Peek Into Buffer's Open Culture With Hailley Griffis, Head of PR

I think that’s a thing that’s very surprising to people. They’re like, “Oh, well, you believe in remote work,” and it’s like, “Yeah, but we don’t believe that, like, meeting in person isn’t valuable,” you know. We believe in making sure that everyone can work and live wherever they feel happiest and most productive, but we also know that meeting in person is very special and can, like, forge stronger relationships.

Today on Outside The Valley we have Hailley Griffis, Head of Public Relations at Buffer. We discuss the culture of transparency and openness within Buffer, including how it affects the company’s marketing and hiring, how remote work affects Hailley’s productivity, and more.

We also dive into Buffer’s internal processes, and talk about the most unique parts of them. This includes “internal applications” for new job openings, asynchronous all-hands meetings, why Buffer started offering paid sabbaticals, and more.

Finally, we also talk about Buffer’s annual State of Remote Work Survey! Check out the survey here and please take a few minutes to fill it in!

If you’re enjoying the podcast, please consider leaving a review on iTunes!

The podcast is also available on your favourite players: iTunes, Google Podcast, Castro, Overcast, Spotify, Stitcher, Player.fm, and Tune In.

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Topics also covered on the podcast episode:

04:25 — How Hailley convinced her previous company to allow remote work
06:33 — Advantages of remote work for Hailley’s productivity
11:30 — Why Buffer has a super transparent culture (and how this affects Buffer)
13:55 — Why Buffer gives internal team members opportunities to apply for new job openings
20:03 — Do you need to have experience in remote work to have a job at Buffer?
23:36 — Buffer’s onboarding process and what’s so special about it
28:50 — What are some unique internal communication processes within Buffer?
35:00 — Why Buffer started offering paid sabbaticals
41:12 — Buffer’s unique all-hands meeting
50:15 — Hailley’s most surprising finding from the last State of Remote Work survey

Mentioned resources:

Full transcript:

Jovian: Hello, world. Welcome to another episode of “Outside The Valley,” a podcast where we interview remote start-up leaders, remote workers, remote work advocates, and companies who thrive outside of Silicon Valley. This is a podcast where remote companies share what works and what doesn’t, so you can do it right.

“Outside The Valley” is brought to you by Arc, the remote hiring platform that helps you hire remote software engineers and teams easily. I’m your host, Jovian Gautama.

Today on “Outside The Valley,” we have Hailley Griffis, the head of public relations at Buffer, one of the most popular social media scheduling tools out there. So, we discuss the culture of transparency and openness within Buffer, including how it affects the companies in several aspects, including marketing and hiring.

We also talked about other stuff, including how remote work affects Hailley’s productivity. We also dive into Buffer’s internal processes and the unique parts that they have that we think other companies can learn from, including the concept of internal applications for new job openings, asynchronous all-hands meeting, why Buffer started offering paid sabbaticals and more.

Finally, we also talk of Buffer’s annual state of remote work survey. It’s one of the most comprehensive annual survey out there when it comes to remote work. If you are a remote worker, even if you only work remotely one day per week, you can help Hailley and Buffer out by filling in the survey. It’s a very short one. I myself have filled it. It’s very quick, and you can find the link to the survey in the show notes. So, without further ado, let’s just jump to our episode with Hailley Griffis. Here we go.

Hello, Hailley, welcome to the show.

Hailley: Thank you so much, Jovian. I’m excited to be here.

Jovian: Awesome. So, Hailley, I guess a lot of our listeners today, most of them have already known about Buffer. Take it out of Buffer is a really cool start-up, a social media scheduling tool, but it’s also more than that. So, we are joined with Hailley from Buffer. So, Hailley, let’s start this with a bit more about yourself. So, can you give us a bit of introduction about yourself, and how did you end up at Buffer?

Hailley: Yeah. So, I am originally from Canada. I studied communications in school, and I started working on social media, like, immediately when I was in university. I was just very interested in it. It wasn’t very popular back then. It was, like, 2012, and a lot of companies weren’t doing it. So, I started managing social media for companies that I was already working at, like a clothing store and stuff like that. I just got very interested.

When I graduated university, I wound up being a social media manager freelance, and I used Buffer for that. So, I actually used Buffer for four years before I ever worked at the company. I also did freelance public relations, and then I got hired at a tech start-up in San Francisco doing public relations as well since my degree was in communications.

So, I had just always kept an eye on Buffer, and when I saw that they were hiring for public relations, I was like, “This is it. I’ve been using this tool for four years. Like, I love this company. I’m going to apply.” So, I applied, and I went through all the interviews, and, you know, a whole remote interview process. I never met someone at Buffer while I was interviewing, and then I got the job, and yeah. And I’ve been on the team for almost four years now.

Jovian: Yeah, that’s great. And is Buffer your first remote job?

Hailley: It’s my first all-remote job, but I had done a lot of remote work, so, like, freelancing, you’re technically remote. And then the company that I had been at before Buffer, I convinced them to do a remote work. I was like, “Hey, I can do all of this from my laptop,” and San Francisco is so expensive.

So, I was, like, “Can I, you know, travel for a week while working still?” And, you know, I was trying to push the unlimited vacation policy into, like, “What if I just worked?” They’re, like, “Yeah.” It was an interesting situation, but we had a couple of days remote, and then I had, like, one week per quarter, I think remote at that other company. But Buffer was my first full-time remote job.

Jovian: Yeah. I find that interesting. How did you convince your previous company to have a remote policy?

Hailley: Well, they didn’t have one, and then they said…We were starting to hire people in different cities, so, like, that’s technically remote. And so I would go to my boss, and I was just, like, “Hey, everything that I do can be done remotely. You know, we work remotely on Tuesdays and Thursdays already, so, like, two days…

Jovian: Oh, I see.

Hailley: [inaudible 00:04:47] already working remotely.” And I was, like, “I want to travel this week.” I think it was before the holidays. One year I was, like, “I want to go back to Canada and spend it with my family, but instead of taking time off, why don’t I work for a week, and then I’ll take time off. So, like, that way, I’m not taking as many vacation days,” was kind of how I wound up selling it that time, but then it turned into a remote work policy. Not that I’m advocating for not taking vacations at all, but that was just what it worked out for me.

Jovian: Yeah. I think some of our listeners are also trying to figure out how to convince their company to have a remote work policy. I think one of the…as advice out there, just start small, like, [inaudible 00:05:27] two days or three days and then try to prove them, “Hey, I can finish things even when I’m not in the office.”

Hailley: Yeah. I think another way is to get away from time tracking and get towards, like, accomplishments and project management, Because I think that’s one of the biggest problems is that people are like, “Well, I can’t see you working so you might not be working.”

I think in most cases the question shouldn’t be, “How many hours are you working?” The question should be, “Are you completing your goals, and, like, moving things forward the way that you’re supposed to be doing, the way that you would be doing if you were in an office with your managers sitting next to you? Are you doing, like, the same level of work even if you’re at home?” And in most cases, the answer is yes because there are a lot fewer distractions at home.

You don’t get up to get coffee and then end up in, like, a 30-minute conversation with someone that you’ve never met before in your office or something like that. So, I find I’m more productive at home and once people realize that…And, you know, people who run companies don’t feel the need to track everyone’s time and, like, see them to believe that they’re working, that sort of trust element, then I believe remote work can be really successful.

Jovian: What’s the best thing that remote work gives to you or that fascinates you the most? I’ll give you my example. So, I used to work in the office in ARC, like, co-located and then a couple of months ago, I started to work full-time remotely, and I’m not less busy. I still have a lot of things to do, but I found it interesting that I just got more clarity in thinking. Like, I just have the time to just sit down and think, and I’m still busy. Like, I still do the same…or probably even busier after I go remote. I’m just curious, in your case, what makes it tick for you?

Hailley: Yeah, that’s really interesting. I find similar…I find I have a lot of clarity. I’m one of those people that in high school, if you were given an assignment and, like, you were…like, you can be in a group, or you can be alone. I was always, like, “I’m gonna go be alone,” and I would work better alone than I would, like, being surrounded by people. So, I think for me, I’ve just always known that working in my own environment and not necessarily sitting next to someone just makes me more productive.

So, I think for me it was definitely productivity. I wasn’t expecting to get so much done, but I find I get way more done at home because there are so many fewer distractions. Yeah, the flexibility is absolutely incredible. Like, I can go…You know, post offices have strict hours. I can go to the post office but still get all of my work done. Or maybe I start a little earlier. I had a meeting with someone in Europe this morning, so I was starting work at 7:00 AM, which is totally fine with me because I will just finish work a little bit earlier or, you know, take a break in the afternoon. So, it’s that flexibility is huge, and then I think it really impacts the productivity levels.

Jovian: Got it. Awesome. So, let’s move on a bit to your company, Buffer. So, what fascinates me about Buffer is the level of transparency and openness the company has, not only internally but also externally. I mentioned to you before the call that I found it’s really hard to do research for this podcast in due because everything that Buffer does is just out there. Not only it’s out there, but it’s also well-written. I was, like, “Well, what’s the point of this podcast? These people can see there because there’s a lot of information there.” But, yeah, I want to dive a bit into this culture of openness to the point that…Correct me if I’m wrong, I guess you guys still publish your revenue every quarter. Is that correct?

Hailley: Yeah. Our revenue is published quarterly, and our salaries are still in a spreadsheet online. So, you can go find the spreadsheet and see our CEO’s salary, even if you don’t work at Buffer.

Jovian: Right. So, my first question about this, like, why bother doing all this? Yeah.

Hailley: Yeah. This has been going on…Like, this transparency or this level of transparency has been going on at Buffer for a really long time. It all really stemmed from our CEO, Joel Gascoigne, who, when starting Buffer, had started other companies previously, and he was always looking for information about other companies and, like, start-ups and, like, what are they doing? What’s working? How are they finding success?

So, he’s always been blogging and sharing his experience just from the standpoint of sharing your experience if you’ve failed or if you’ve succeeded or whatever you have done is helpful to others who might be going through the same experience. So, he was always blogging and sharing revenue. You know, when you’re starting out and it’s, like, a couple of dollars a month, no one finds it strange, but all of a sudden when it’s, like, millions of dollars, people are like, “Oh, wait a second. This is kind of weird.”

So, that culture of always sharing, of always being very open, was started with our CEO, and then later, when we defined our values, we decided one of our values as a company was defaulting to transparency. And so, that culture has really lived on in terms of us asking ourselves, can we make this transparent?

What else can we make transparent? Our salaries are online. Our revenue is online. Our equity breakdown was online. Like, everything. Vacation policies and stuff like that. So, yeah, it’s all available for anyone to learn from. I think that’s the biggest thing. If anyone else has a company and they’re, like, “Well, I don’t know what to do about a vacation policy,” you can read all about our mistakes and that this is what we ended up doing with the vacation policy or things like that.

Jovian: Yeah. I think Buffer, honestly, it takes it to the extreme when it comes to transparency, which is great. And Buffer is a pioneer of the open start-up movement. I think there are a lot of smaller start-ups or even bigger start-ups. I think, like, ConvertKit and transistor.fm, which we use to host this podcast, by the way, they post their revenue on Baremetrics. So yeah, I just found it fascinating.

So, this culture of transparency, like, publishing your revenue, publishing your salary, how has it affected Buffer in general internally or externally? Externally can be in terms of marketing. Internally can be in terms of hiring. Like, how does it affect these in general?

Hailley: There are so many ways. So, for one thing, and this is one of the things that I know a lot about since I do public relations at Buffer, we do get a lot of press. We get mentioned a lot for our culture and for the transparency that we do. So, one of the best examples of that is when we first made our salaries transparent. We first put them in a spreadsheet online. There was quite a bit of press coverage, and then what happened is that we got a huge influx of applicants that were applying to open positions.

So, that’s, like, a really clear benefit of we’ve been really transparent, and as a result of that culture, we’ve reached more people, and then those people have wanted to apply for Buffer.

So now, we have a larger pool of applicants every time we put a job posting up, which is really good because it is a competitive job market. So, that’s always a benefit.

One of the other things is that internally, it creates this really big culture of trust. You trust that you’re getting the information that you’re getting because you are, and, like, you’ve learned through experience that if anything is going on, you’re gonna learn about it.

You know everyone’s salary. You know why you’re getting paid that way, so there’s no fear of like, “Am I getting paid less because I didn’t negotiate?” So, it’s this huge culture of trust, and then it’s created an environment where people are very interested in Buffer, and then we are able to reach more people. So, whether that’s for marketing purposes or we end up with a greater hiring pool. Like, it had very tangible business benefits.

Jovian: Yeah, I can see how it is definitely…especially when you are hiring. It’s a great baseline to build trust, especially when you hire remotely, right? Everything, even since the first episode of this podcast, it’s basically about that trust, especially when you are hiring remotely. I think this podcast thing should be just, like, trust your employees, something like that.

Hailley: Yes.

Jovian: That’s it. Episode is just like me talking, “Hey, you guys trust your employee,” that’s it. But, yeah, I think that’s one of the…I feel like that’s one of the most obvious result, especially when it comes to, external effect of this. Speaking about, I think it’s a good segue to talk about the hiring process at Buffer.

So, I’d love to dive a bit into Buffer’s hiring process. So, on the Buffer open blog, which we can talk about later, there’s an article about Buffer’s hiring process, and I won’t get too deep into details of this. But there are some parts of this that I found really interesting that I don’t think a lot of companies do. And the first part is whenever Buffer is hiring for someone new, you will share the role internally first. I’ll let you elaborate a bit more about that.

Hailley: Yeah. So, anytime there’s an open role at Buffer, we will share the role internally before we share it externally. One of the reasons for this is because there are a lot of incredible people that work at Buffer and people are always growing and learning new skills and many people have evolved in their roles or, you know, they do side projects, or they do volunteering so they have a lot of experience. So, we want to give teammates the opportunity to continue developing their skills and talents and to apply them to a new job if it fits them.

And we just like to be able to give people that time to talk about it with their lead. So, we usually leave it open for, I think, about a week, maybe a little bit over a week for the team to apply internally before it ever gets posted outside. And the reason is that we want…Yeah, we just want to give our team the opportunities to grow, and we want to make sure that people feel like they have enough room to expand within Buffer.

Jovian: So, let’s say Buffer is kind of looking for a product marketer, so you will share this internally in Buffer, and I can apply. For example, if there’s a social media manager, they can apply to be a product marketer. Like, is the process kind of like the same?

Hailley: It’s a little different. It’s a little different. The way that it would go about, let’s say if our social media manager did want to apply to be a product marketer is that she would go to her manager and say, “Hey, I’m interested in the job opening,” and then he would be, like, “Okay, that’s great,” and then we do go through an interview process with them internally.

So, I was just talking to someone this morning. So, she went from being an engineer to being an engineering manager. So, she stepped into, like, the people management role, and she went through a modified interview process that we would have given an engineering manager had they applied. So, she had written up her reasons for being interested in the job. That was all within her, though. That wasn’t required, but then she did do an exercise that we gave to all of the engineering managers that we hired because I think we hired quite a few last year.

And so, she went through the same exercises that they did without knowing them in advance, and she went through an interview with two other engineers that she had worked with them for a few years, so that’s a little bit different. But she did that before moving into that position. So, we do a modified interview process for people within Buffer if they’re applying.

Jovian: Good. Have you ever had a team member who, like, move cross-department, for example, from marketing to engineering, something like that?

Hailley: We’ve had teammates who moved from a couple of different places. I think we had someone move from…Where was he? Product research to design. He moved from, like, product research over to the design team. Yeah, we’ve had a couple of moves. It’s not as common because usually when we hire people, we want them…

We’re looking to hire people who enjoy the work that they’re currently doing. So, we’re not looking to hire people who would be, like, “Well, I’ll do this for a little while, but this isn’t really what I want to do.” Like, that’s not usually the kind of person that most people would be, like, “Oh, yeah,” but, you know, if they’re looking to move out of the role quickly, they may not be a good fit.

Jovian: Is this policy as always in Buffers as like the early days of it, or is it some kind of new?

Hailley: Yeah, this is new in the last few years. Yeah, this is new in the last few years, and I think it comes from a place of having more teammates with more experience too. When we were a little bit smaller, maybe it wasn’t practical to do that because people would be like, “Well, you know, there are only 20 of us, and we all know what we’re doing.” And if anyone was interested in a different role, they would probably speak up.

But now that we’re much larger, we’re about 90 people, it’s hard to keep track of everyone and what they’re doing, and there could be people that are qualified especially the engineering manager role. I think that one is a good example because we do have lots of engineers and we do have lots of engineers who have people management skills, so they could easily fit into that if they’re interested in one of the other times, like a different…I think it was like a year later when we opened it, we did have more applicants. So, yeah, it’s a newer process for us, but I think it comes with being a larger team.

Jovian: Yeah, I do find this fascinating, though, because I do think it is a common practice. I assume, actually, I guess a lot of start-ups do this, but in a very informal way, especially when you’re small, right? Okay. You want to try, you know, to be the product designer, and yeah, let’s try like a couple of months, see how it goes. But I guess by having this process codify, you basically tell people that, “Hey, it’s okay. You have a voice. It’s okay if you want to try other stuff if you really feel like it.” So, I think it’s a good practice. Actually, I myself, I started in this company as a business development, and then I talked to myself,” I want to do marketing,” because I kind of get tired of talking to strangers, you know, in the sales sense. No. And then, I moved to hosting this podcast, which is cool.

Hailley: I love it. Podcast hosting is a good fun career part for anyone, I think.

Jovian: It is. Okay. So, still on the topic of hiring. So, this is something that I have asked several guests in the podcast is…So, some remote start-ups and most companies, they actually put a large emphasis, a big emphasis on if a candidate have an experience in working remotely. Some of them is almost like an absolute requirement, but some start-ups are pretty lax about it. That means that they believe they can train it. And what’s Buffers stand on this?

Hailley: Yeah.

We ask people if they’ve worked remotely before, but it is not a requirement. So, we want to know more about their work habits and about their interest in remote work.

So are you good at self-managing? Are you good at setting your own deadlines? Do you have an idea…? Sort of if you were working remotely, where would you work? Would you be working from home? Do you have, like, a coffee shop or a co-working space you want to work from? Like, what will your setup look like?

So, we talk to them a lot to make sure that it seems like it’s a good fit and that they’ve thought about it. Most of them have. I think remote work is a lot more common now and even, like, work from home days for places. So a lot of people have experience with this and have a setup. But we’ve hired people frequently that have never worked from home before, but that were just interested, and they said, “I think I’ll be good to, you know, put on pants every day and make sure that I’m doing my work.”

Jovian: Yeah, that makes sense. But, like, some people have to go into… Even it they’re working from home they have to go to this…I think to do this, or I’ve [inaudible 00:21:27] Buffer that the rituals that they have to do even when you’re working from home but…I’m in work mode now.

Hailley: I’ve heard a lot of those. I think a popular one that I’ve heard a few times is people like…So, me, I’m currently in my home, and

I’ve heard of people who work from their homes as well, and they will, you know, get dressed, make their coffee, whatever it is in the morning, and then they’ll leave. They’ll walk around their block, and they’ll re-enter their home, and they’re, like, “Now, I’m at work.” And then when they’re done work, they’ll leave their home, walk around their block and then come home. They’re, like, “Now I’m at home.”

And so, I think that one’s a little bit different. I’ve heard of quite a few people doing this, and I think it’s really interesting. I personally don’t do that, but I love that people do that.

Jovian: That’s actually hilarious.

Hailley: I know. I love it, though. I think it’s a smart brain trick, you know.

Jovian: Right. For me, I have this work from home pants. So, this is not as comfortable as the sweatpants, but not as rough as a denim or jeans, but this is the right amount to make you, “Hey, you actually have to work. You cannot sleep.”

Hailley: Yeah. You can’t be too comfortable. I find that too. If I’m too comfortable, then I’m, like, “It’s the weekend.” But it’s, like, “No, it’s not the weekend, you know, you have to work.”

Jovian: Totally. Totally. So, yeah. Now, moving on. After your hiring process, let’s move on to the Buffer’s onboarding peers, so after someone got hired. Actually, before I move on to the onboarding process…So, on the topic of onboarding, so I found this super fascinating because a lot of people think that in remote companies and [inaudible 00:23:00] teams like onboarding is almost a make or break if this company is a good fit for onboarding candidates and vice versa.

I talked to Hiten Shah from FYI a couple of hours. And so, basically, he sees this onboarding process as, like, the person opting in to the company as much as possible. So, a lot of companies have…or like through the onboarding process. I want to kind of, like, be short here. In your opinion, what do you think that you think Buffer does differently or just very good at on the onboarding period that you think other companies can learn from?

Hailley: I think one of the biggest things that we do is we give people a lot of information in advance. So, we’ll email them, like, before they’ve even started and just be, like, “Hey, we’re so excited for you to start. On day one, here’s what you can expect. You can log into Slack. We’ll say hi to you.” This is, like, “Here is some tools.” We make sure they’re all set up with their tools so that on day one, they’re not, like, “Well, what do I do? Where do I start? How do I get something done?”

So, I think one of the biggest ones is giving people a lot of information. We do a whole paper document through, like, Dropbox Paper, where they can go through and check everything off week by week for our onboarding process.

But one of my favorite things that we’ve been doing at Buffer for a really long time now is we have a buddy system.

So, when you join, you get three buddies. You get a culture buddy who’s gonna help you with Buffer culture, any questions that you have. A role buddy, like I’d mentioned before, which is someone that knows the role that you’re doing and can help you be successful in it, and then your leader buddy, who’s usually your one-to-one lead, who you do one-on-ones with in there. They’re there to support you in your job as well and to do regular one-to-ones with you, help you with any big questions you have too.

So, I think that our buddy system is one of my favorite things because you’re not walking into an office where you can, like, make a friend immediately and then just go ask that friend a question. You know, you’re walking into a virtual office, so you might not know anybody, and it might be intimidating. So, we’re kind of giving you those immediate office buddies that you can ask any of your questions that you might have to, and that way, people don’t show up very confused.

Jovian: So, the leader buddy is basically the team lead?

Hailley: Yes.

Jovian: Okay. So, yeah, I think both [inaudible 00:25:14], that’s the same thing. They have two buddies. They don’t have the leader buddy, but they have the role buddy, like this person that will take you from your day-to-day, like help you set up with the tool, so you want that, and the culture buddy, I don’t know what they call it, but basically someone to ask question like, “Hey, do we really have unlimited vacations like [inaudible 00:25:34]? Something like that. So, yeah. I find it interesting.

I think for us, we currently just have the normal buddies, like just one person to do both the cultural thing and also the role buddy. And of course, for us, the team lead is more like she is just there, or he or she is just there and just helping with that. Yeah. Cool. So, you guys have, like, 45-day periods when it comes to onboarding?

Hailley: Yes, yes. So, that’s the first 45 days if someone is on the team at Buffer, and we just like to be able to set that person up for success and, like, use that 45 days to get them really ramped up. So, that’s all of their documentation is sort of like, “Here is what you should be doing in the first 45 days.” We’ll set goals with them.

You know, their team lead will set goals with them and we’ll just make sure that they’re on track and that they’re really, like, starting their journey off in Buffer properly. That’s not a period of time where, like, at the end, we’re like, we decide if or not we’re gonna hire you. Like, that’s not it at all.

When you’re hired, you’re hired, and then the first 45 days are just to support you in your time getting hired and to help you succeed really and set goals and just have a much bigger system.

Jovian: Do you guys have some kind of process to kind of re-evaluate this onboarding sequence? Some onboarding sequence sounds like marketing emails. This onboarding process, from time to time, like, do you guys have some kind of intro meetings? Say, “Hey, is this thing still makes sense? Do we update it? Or something like that.

Hailley: Yeah. I’m sure that our people team does. They’re the ones that work on all of our internal processes.

But something that we do is we’ll ask people after they’ve onboarded if they had any feedback for us, and if they do, then we’ll make changes.

And then usually we have…I think the last person I was a culture buddy for someone recently, and she was like, “Oh, I didn’t know what this was.” And I was like, “That’s a really good point. We should make sure that that’s in there,” you know. So, things like that. Just making sure that we’re constantly iterating on our process and updating it, especially as we’re hiring people.

Jovian: Go it. So, feedback at the end of the onboarding, I think is super important.

Hailley: Yes.

Jovian: Yeah. So, since [inaudible 00:27:49], I also want to move on some cool intro processes that you guys have in Buffer. So, I want to talk a bit more, in Buffer’s culture, about how you guys think in terms of giving criticism and feedback. A reason why I asked is because when it comes to remote teams, right, especially when it’s bigger remote teams, it’s not easy to take nuances. It’s not easy when you are like 10%, 20% remote teams, especially when you’re bigger, like 50, more than 50 people. So, I don’t know if you have some kind of certain, not rules, more like certain guidelines based on your core value. How do you guys go about, “Oh, you should go this way when giving criticism or feedbacks?”

Hailley: Yeah. We are very specific with that, and I think one of the reasons is that communication is so important to us, and especially as a remote team, a lot of our communication is happening asynchronously or happening via text. Like you said, it’s very easy to misunderstand things. So, we do a couple of things just because we want it to be very, very clear for everyone.

One of the big things that we do is that on your Slack profile, there’s an option for you to choose how do you like to receive feedback?

Do you like to receive feedback in a call, in an email, or via Slack in the moment, like as it happens? So, we have a couple of options. So, that’s, like, right on your profile.

So, even if, let’s say, you know, we both work together, and I have some feedback for you, you have some feedback from me, even if we’re not even on the same team, you will be able to go to my profile and see how I like to receive feedback. So, that’s just, like, available to everyone. And then the other thing is all managers have conversations with the person that they’re managing just to kind of, like, dig into that, like how do you want to receive feedback? Should I just…you know, weekly in our one-to-one if there’s anything that comes up?

So, that’s another thing the managers are very in the know about how people like to receive feedback. And then we also do have, I guess kind of, like, guidelines internally. So, there are different levels of feedback that we wanted to make sure people were very clear on.

So, one of them is if it’s peer-to-peer, if, like, someone notices something and they’re like, “Hey, Hailley, I’ve noticed that you’re spelling this word wrong when you email people, and I just wanted to share that. Like, that’s not how you spell this word” or something like that, that’s what we call corrective feedback.

So, that can happen at any level of Buffer, and we just want to encourage people there are any, like, small corrections they want to make, then they’re welcome to reach out. And then we just have the different levels, so like feedback, usually, if it’s not, like, small corrective feedback, it will usually come from your manager, so you always know exactly who to expect it from, and you know the exact system. And then, you know, we have it specifically in places like higher levels.

If there’s something that, like, we really need to talk about, there’s just different labels, right? So that people know exactly what level they’re on and if it’s, like, something smaller, maybe they’re like, “Okay, I really should be putting a plan into place to fix this,” or something like that.

Jovian: That is super fascinating, especially on the Slack profile thing. That is [inaudible 00:30:55]

Hailley: Yeah. That one is my favorite.

Jovian: Yeah. That is super smart because…I don’t think people think about it a lot. Like, how would you like to receive feedback, right?

Hailley: Yeah.

Jovian: I just started thinking about right now, like, “How will I like to receive feedback?

Hailley: Yeah. Like, do you think, like, via Slack or in a call maybe or via email? Like, do you want it all written out, or do you want to, like, jump on a call and talk to someone about it?

Jovian: I think I prefer talking to someone. I don’t know. I think I prefer talking to someone. I think it’s because I am this kind of person when I see written like [inaudible 00:31:28] bias more onto this on the colder tone.

Hailley: Yeah.

Jovian: [inaudible 00:31:34] written stuff when I was…I prefer feedback…It doesn’t even have to be synchronized. You can just record [inaudible 00:31:43] thing and then a couple of minutes video and then let me know. I think I prefer that. Wow. I never thought about that. I wonder if it also makes sense, even a co-located company, right?

Hailley: Oh, for sure. I mean, I think that feedback is such an interesting discussion, and it’s something that’s so sensitive to people. Like, you’re probably always going to have to give feedback because we’re all growing and learning all the time, but if you don’t want to receive feedback then that can be very difficult, and, you know, you don’t want people to be stressed out at work. You want them to be happy so that they’re just doing their good level of work.

But I think it’s just a good conversation to have no matter if you are, you know, in-person or if you’re remote. But that is very interesting. I think for some people, the reason they would want an email, or they would want it all written out is because they like to see fully. Like, they want to read it fully and process it and then maybe read it again and then process it and then have a conversation. Like, they need to, like, think about it before they talk to someone about it, which I think is interesting.

Jovian: Yeah, that is super interesting. It also reminds me of a tweet that I saw recently, basically at a conference. And on that conference, you can pick a couple of name tag. It says, “Don’t speak to me.” “Only speak to me if you know me” and “feel free to speak to me anytime.” And no one picked the last one, but everyone either don’t want to speak to anyone at all or [inaudible 00:33:00]. Like literally…

Hailley: Oh, that’s hilarious.

Jovian: That’s super hilarious. So, yeah. In terms of…You know, there’s several tiers of feedback, so I guess even though my question initially was about criticism, but I assume on Buffer, like constructive criticism is also one of the feedback tier. And do people…? Or if a new hire just joined Buffer, is this one of the documents that they have on the employee handbook, so to speak?

Hailley: Yes. So, they have sort of information about the different levels of feedback, and they check off and sort of go through the exercise with their manager, figuring out how they like to receive feedback.

And we do check-ins with people when they first start. So, like, we’ll do a first couple of weeks check-in and then a first month and then, like, a 45-day check-in just to be like, “Okay, here’s what’s going well and here’s some areas we’ve noticed for improvement.”

One of them…you know, just because they’re not always negative things, but they’re just always, like, “Hey, I know that working remotely is new to you and we’ve noticed that you’re working really late,” and, like, “We want you to have healthy work hours.” So, you know, one thing for us is just, like, “Let’s set some times where, you know, you’re not working all the time. If working late is what you want to do, that’s fine, but let’s make sure that you’re taking breaks and not just working constantly.” So, different things like that that we’ll talk about with people.

Jovian: Right. Yeah. This is super fascinating because what I like about these podcasts, I can learn from other people, and then I poked my team members, “Hey, we should do this. We should do this.” They just ignore me.

Hailley: Well, setting up the Slack profiles one is pretty easy. So, we did it in the middle of an all-hands. Like, in the middle of an all-hands, someone said, “It’d be cool if we knew how people like to receive feedback,” and our director of people was like, “I hear you. I’m setting this up right now. Everyone can just go do this immediately.” So, it happened very quickly for us.

Jovian: Yeah.That is super fascinating. Yeah. I want to touch back on that just a little bit, but I want to move on to the next topic in terms of, you know, culture and processes about sabbatical. So, I found out that Buffer recently offered a sabbatical for 80 employees. Can you share a bit more about that and what made you guys decide to offer these perks?

Hailley: Yeah. So, we’ve been thinking about sabbaticals for a while. One of the reasons is that we are in a really lucky and incredible position where we have a very high retention rate. So, we have people that are celebrating their seven years working at Buffer. They’re celebrating their six years working at Buffer really regularly. That’s a really long period of time for someone to work at one company, and we just want to be very conscious that it’s important for people to take breaks for their creativity, to recharge, to rest.

So, we started doing a sabbatical program. We just launched it this year, where once you’ve been at Buffer for five years, you can take a six-week sabbatical, and then if you don’t, when you hit your six-year mark, seven-week sabbatical, seven-year mark, eight-week sabbatical and then it resets once you take it.

So, that was just something that we’ve been very interested in internally since we do have people that have been on the team for longer. On a different note, our CEO also took a sabbatical, or he took a break to recharge. It wasn’t a planned sabbatical where sabbaticals and more planned. He took a few years ago, and he was very open. There’s actually a blog post about the burnout that he experienced and why he needed to take that time off.

And I think it’s very helpful to have a CEO who is so open about those experiences and he just doesn’t want the rest of the team to ever have to go through that. And, you know, he’s been talking about it a lot more, and then we have this program set up internally now where once you’ve been on the team for five years, you can start taking six weeks sabbatical

Jovian: Got it. So, it all came from Joel, and he just experienced this burnout, and then he is thinking that I think…So, basically, he’s thinking that it will be great if team members can take a paid sabbatical after a couple of years.

Hailley: Yeah. I think a lot of it came from Joel. I think our people team was working on this internally, but I think it was helpful to have a CEO who is so supportive of that as well. But, yeah, I think they were sort of the two parts to it.

Jovian: Yeah, a sabbatical is a big thing that I don’t think it’s easy to push if you’re not the founder or from up top yourself. I cannot imagine me proposing to my boss. I mean, not only here, but, like, if I worked at our company and some boss say, “Can I have, like, three months, a couple of weeks paid sabbatical?” It’s almost crazy.

Hailley: Yeah. And it’s really difficult because, you know, for us, we’re 90 people like I mentioned, and the cost of people taking time off is big in terms of, like, six weeks off of someone. If someone has been on the team for five, six, seven years, they’re probably in a position where they’re impacting a lot of really good things at Buffer.

And so, to not have access to that person for, you know, five or six weeks is a big cost. But what we realized is that the cost of losing them completely due to burnout and them just not being able to continue at Buffer is a bigger cost.

So, it makes a lot of sense to just make sure that people are happy and healthy and they have all of the brainpower that they need to continue doing their work. And if they want to stay at Buffer, they can, and they don’t have to leave because of burnout.

And so, that’s one of the reasons behind the sabbatical because I know what you mean. It’s very difficult to be like, “Hey, I think we should pay people to take six weeks off once they’ve been at the company for a long enough time.” But, you know, we believe it is a bigger payoff to make sure that everyone is healthy and happy.

Jovian: I’m laughing because, on the start of our call, we talked about pushing the remote work policy to your boss [inaudible 00:38:58] pushing, like, sabbatical, “Hey, boss. What if [inaudible 00:39:01] weeks paid sabbatical? What do you think? Like, what the [inaudible 00:39:05].

Hailley: You could be very pushy, I mean, but slowly. But yeah, you can be very pushy about a lot of culture things. Luckily, I mean, or maybe this isn’t luckily, but I do think that people, especially in the tech workforce, there is a higher demand for people in those roles. And I do believe that people have more power now because there are a lot of places that are hiring in technical positions and that are hiring just in tech in general for people that have experience.

And so, it started becoming called the talent wars where there are more companies hiring for these positions, than there are people. So, I definitely encourage people to remember that they have a lot of power when they’re applying to jobs and when they’re in roles where they are, you know, making a lot of impact. You know, asking for different things like benefits, I think it’s not impossible because people do have a little bit more power than they think they do. Right.

Jovian: I mean, mostly talking about people with experience in having able to persuade, you know, pushing this in a positive way in general or more like a specific role. Was that like people ops kind of thing?

Hailley: I think anyone.

It definitely depends on your company culture a little bit, but obviously, you have the highest negotiating power after someone has offered you a job, so, like, right before you start talking about those benefits is important.

But I think even if you’ve been in the company for a long time, having a space where you can talk about benefits, even if you aren’t on the people or the HR team is very important. So, hopefully, there’s a place like that on your team, and if there isn’t, maybe you can kick off those discussions.

Jovian: Yeah, I totally agree with that. I think most people would just at least ask, I guess because sometimes your boss is probably open to it and then [inaudible 00:40:46]

Hailley: Yeah. Talk to your manager. Yeah. And I think coming at it from a position of, like, research and there is so much research around burnout and people needing to take vacations or around, like, how remote work makes people more productive and still has a huge trust factor. There is so much research that you can present. So, I think, like, showing up to any of those conversations with a lot of information is a really good way to go about it.

Jovian: Awesome. So, now I want to move on to all-hands meeting in Buffer. So, I know that Buffer do all-hands meeting a bit differently. Can you share a bit more about that?

Hailley: So, our all-hands meetings are all remote. We do them every other month, and we try to get as much of the company as we can. That’s obviously difficult since we…I think we’re in 18 different countries now, so we have time zones, just like every…You know, all these times zones It’s hard to find the time when everyone is awake. So, one of the things that we’ve done is we record our all-hands as well first.

So, usually, it’s the people in the APAC region that unfortunately are usually trying to sleep during all-hands, so we’ll record it, and then they’ll do a little watch party where they’ll watch the recording of all-hands together, so they still get that feeling of, like, being a team.

But I think there are a lot of ways that our all-hands is a little bit unique. Yes, it’s all done remotely through Zoom, so sometimes we’ll have, like, 70 people in Zoom doing all-hands, which is a really big Zoom meeting, but we’ve never had any problems, knock on wood. And yeah, we start by doing celebrations.

We’ll talk about people’s life events or promotions, so like, “Oh, this person got married, and this person got promoted to this and, you know, this person had this go on,” and then we’ll do updates from different parts of the team, different leads on the team, and then we’ll sometimes do breakout sessions.

So, Zoom has this great breakout rooms feature where it will automatically pair people up, and we can set a topic, like, for example, if we’re talking about the retreat, we can be like, “Let’s all do breakouts for five minutes to talk about…Or, you know, maybe 10 minutes to talk about something cool that you want to see on the retreat this year, and then let us know afterwards.”

And so, you’ll do a breakout, maybe with five people. You’ll have a chat. Come back in. But I think it’s mostly just different because it’s all remote, all-hands, so, you know, we’re not usually in-person together. We’re all on Zoom, listening to someone talk.

Jovian: So, I want to backtrack a little bit, so on the all-hands meeting. So, let’s say the meetings start, 70 of you all in the same Zoom meeting.

Hailley: It’s a lot.

Jovian: It’s a lot. And so, it starts with…I assume Joel starts to kind of, like, open the meeting. Is that correct?

Hailley: We have different all-hands hosts. So, we have started asking people from the team, no matter where they work, we’ll just chat with someone and be like, “Hey, do you want to host all-hands?” And so, we’ll start. Something that we’ve done in the past that I really love is we’ll start with a teammate who plays music, so, like, maybe someone is on the guitar, or someone is doing entrance music, like you’ve walked into a party and there’s music. And that’s what it feels like in all-hands, which is quite cool.

And then the host will jump in and just sort of, like, welcome everyone and we’ll usually give it a minute or two to make sure everyone has joined, and then they’ll open us up, and there’ll be like, “Hey, you know, welcome to all-hands. Like, let’s start with celebrations,” and then we’ll go into other things. But yeah, I think our last host, she was on the customer advocacy team, so it could be anyone.

Jovian: That is awesome. That is awesome. So, I want to talk a bit more about…in the meeting. So, usually, I think there is the company updates on the monthly meetings. What are these, other than celebration part? Like, in the company-related stuff, what are the updates? I’m curious because I think there are lots of cases, especially when the remote team is kind of new or everyone’s communication channel is not [inaudible 00:44:36] type. There could be a case where, for example, the customer support team, they probably don’t really care about what’s the update on the sales team. I’m curious, like, how do you guys structure these updates, if that makes sense?

Hailley: Yeah. We try to structure them so that it’s like high-level information that could be useful to everyone. So sort of like, “Hey, customer advocacy, you know, this is how we’re doing, and also we’re changing a tool. So if you’re trying to get access to this, it’s not available anymore. We’re changing to this tool, and this is why we’re doing it.” Or like, “The product team has been working on this change, and we’re really excited. It’s going to go live on this day, and, like, marketing team is going to work on promotion, and here are the docs for that.” So, we try to make sure that it’s useful to everyone, hopefully. But I can definitely understand being in one part of the company and not necessarily being interested in everybody in the company.

Jovian: Right. Yeah. That angle of try to make sure it’s something that’s useful for everyone, I think it’s super important because what the sales team found interesting is probably not interesting for the marketing.

Hailley: Yeah. It’s definitely high-level, like, successes and updates that are just like, yeah, bigger picture things.

Jovian: True. Cool. So, yeah, I found this all-hands fascinating. So, next thing I want to talk about is the Buffer’s retreat, right?

Hailley: Yes.

Jovian: Retreat has been from everyone. Almost everyone who I’ve talked to is one of the most vital thing that the remote companies can do because that’s the one time or two times of the year that you guys gather together, meet people in person, which is totally different. So, my question will be two questions, and the first is how do you guys go about organizing retreat? The second one, what are the special things on the retreat that you think very special to Buffer, and again you think that other companies probably can learn from?

Hailley: Yeah, so first off for how we go about organizing the retreat. We used to just have, like, anyone on the team. Someone would plan it, and, you know, we’d all show up when we were smaller, and that became a lot more difficult as we grew.

So, we now have someone on the team, and she is fully dedicated to planning and organizing our retreats. She works on our people team, so, you know, she has other things that she does sometimes, but I think she’s very focused on the retreat and our on-sites, which are our meetings of, like, team by team. Like the marketing team does an onsite and the people team does an onsite. So, those are like mini-retreats for each team that also happen. And so, we do have one person who is constantly planning.

She’s in touch with hotels. She is planning travel. She’s working on visas. She’s making sure that everyone is able to get where they need to be for the retreat. So, I think that’s one of the ways that we are able to do it. I know that some people have gone to like… I think outside agencies can plan that for you. But I do think it would be a lot more difficult if we didn’t have someone specifically dedicated to it because it really is a full-time job.

And then in terms of what we do on retreat that’s unique. I think there are a lot of things. One of them…I mean, it’s just really great to see everyone in person, especially people that you’ve never met before, so

I think that’s a thing that’s very surprising to people. They’re like, “Oh, well, you believe in remote work,” and it’s like, “Yeah, but we don’t believe that, like, meeting in person isn’t valuable,” you know. We believe in making sure that everyone can work and live wherever they feel happiest and most productive, but we also know that meeting in person is very special and can, like, forge stronger relationships.

So, meeting everyone in person is always really great. We do a lot of team building activities, so we’ll do like a game show, or we’ll do…Usually, we arrive on the weekend, and then Sunday night is sort of, like, a welcome hour where Joel will give a speech, our CEO, and then we’re working Monday through Wednesday. Thursday, we usually take completely off, so we will tell people like, “You have $250 to do whatever you want to do today if you want to, like, go skydiving or go walk around or eat or whatever it might be.”

And then Friday we do mostly team-oriented activities as well. So, I think a lot of the sessions that are more team-focused are very interesting because they’re sort of getting the whole team working together, and we’ll work on cultures or value. We talked about feedback at one of our sessions, which is really great. But yeah, and we’ll play games. So, there’s a lot of elements I think of Buffer’s retreat that make it very special, but one of them is just showing up in person, and having everyone there is pretty incredible.

Jovian: Yeah, I found this…I can’t just talk a lot about the [inaudible 00:49:04], but I do find it fascinating, but I think for the listeners out there, you actually can find a lot of these in Buffer’s open blog. Actually, Hailley, can you share a bit more about the Buffer’s open blog?

Hailley: Yeah, it’s our blog about culture and transparency, so we share a lot of lessons and things that we’ve learned at Buffer and a lot of information. So, it’s open.buffer.com. We write new posts every week, and they’re from different people on the Buffer team. So you can go on there to learn a lot more about the company, like read different stories about what we’re trying, different culture experiments we tried, summer Fridays.

This past summer, you know, everyone took half of the day off on Friday for August, so we sort of shared our experience. And we do share a lot of data and numbers, and so it’s not just our stories, but a lot of it is, like, information and data. Like I said, our salaries are on there. Our revenues on there. All sorts of stuff.

Jovian: Yeah. So, it is super fascinating. I think the latest post you have is, like, about swags, sustainable swags. I think my manager just shared this in Slack yesterday. My last topic for today is about the [inaudible 00:50:16], like the famous state of remote work survey from Buffer. So, every year, Buffer publish this data from [inaudible 00:50:26] survey. And it started since 2018. Is that correct?

Hailley: We did one in 2017.

Jovian: Okay. 2017. And can you share a bit more about the motivation of why would you want to do this?

Hailley: Yeah. So, I think I started that one in 2016, and then I collected the responses, and I published it in 2017. So, one of the reasons that I wanted to kick this off and that this was important to us at Buffer is that I did feel like there was a ton of information out there on what it was like to be a remote worker several years ago. Now, I feel like you can find that everywhere, but this was, you know, a little bit more new or less talked about a couple of years ago. There wasn’t a ton of data when we were looking for data, and we had access to all of these remote workers that read our open blog, and that followed us on social media.

So, it was a situation where we thought this is a report that we can release, that we know a lot of people in this industry and we can make sure to get really good contacts and get really good data and then it will benefit us when we were talking about remote work and, hopefully, it can benefit other people as well. So, it just came from a place of, we were already connected in that community, and it was a topic that we wanted to keep writing about and sharing more information on. So, it was interesting and important to us to get more data there if we could.

Jovian: Yeah. So, it’s been a couple of years now, and what was the most surprising findings that you found in these surveys? Something you personally find surprising. Yeah.

Hailley: So many. I think one of the ones for me that I was very surprised with was how many people work from their homes. Because I think there’s a really big culture of, like, co-working spaces see, like the industry of co-working spaces in the news a lot, and you’re like, “Oh, yeah, co-working spaces. Those are huge.”

But last year…So, we had 2,500 people respond to the survey, and 84% of them worked primarily from home. So, I think a lot of people that are remote workers are working from home, and I found that really shocking. I was like, “Oh, I thought more people work from co-working spaces, but it was 8% of people that worked from co-working spaces, and then coffee shops was next at 4%. So, it was just interesting to see where people were working from because I wasn’t really expecting that.

Jovian: And so, you are currently collecting new response for the…So, will it be 2020s [inaudible 00:52:53] survey?

Hailley: Yes. Yes. So, we’re working with AngelList on this one, which I’m very excited about, and we are just in the process of collecting responses to the survey. So if you work remotely, even if it’s just, like, one day a week and you count as a remote worker…And yeah, I can send the link to you, Jovian, and maybe you can put it in the show notes or whatever is easiest.

Jovian: Yep. Definitely. So, for the listeners out there, if you’re still listening to this, thank you so much. And you can find the survey in the show notes if you want to fill it. I personally have filled it out myself.

Hailley: Thank you.

Jovian: Yeah. Cool. So, you can fill out and help out Hailley here because, honestly, Buffer’s data from [inaudible 00:53:38] is a pretty cool report and it’s something where I can actually learn how other people works and the reality of remote work out there instead of just think that we saw in the media and [inaudible 00:53:56] so I always find fascinating.

Hailley: Well, thank you. I’m glad that you are responding and you’re reading it. Yeah, there’s a lot of fun stats in there.

Jovian: Yeah. Yeah. Actually, I got to be honest with you. I think the survey is, like, shorter than I thought it will be.

Hailley: Yeah.

Jovian: That was my first survey, so I was like, “Yeah, I thought this will be longer.”

Hailley: Well, we’re trying to get a lot of responses, so I don’t want to make it too long because you want people to reply. So, yeah, it will just take you a few minutes, maybe even less than that.

Jovian: So, yeah, Hailley. I can just talk for hours and hours [inaudible 00:54:28] about Buffer and about remote work. But I know that your time is running out. And where can listeners find you online?

Hailley: Yeah, so I’m everywhere on social media as at Hailley Mari, which is H-A-I-L-L-E-Y M-A-R-I, and you can find Buffer as at Buffer everywhere too, and then the open blog is a place I can definitely recommend if you want to learn more about Buffer or if you want to learn about anything that we talked about. We have a lot of blog posts, and we keep it updated and share lots of information there at open.buffer.com.

Jovian: Cool. Don’t you also have a podcast? You can plug it in here.

Hailley: Oh, yeah. So, I also do a podcast about tech travel and books, and my co-host and I speak about that on “Make Work Work,” and it’s makework.work if anyone’s interested in listening.

Jovian: I totally love the name. Okay. Hailley, thank you so much for your time today.

Hailley: Thank you, Jovian. It was great to be here. I appreciate you thinking of us for this.

Jovian: Awesome.

And that’s it for another episode of “Outside The Valley,” brought to you by ARC. We created this podcast with the hope that in each episode, you can learn something new from other remote start-up people. So, if you have any feedback or suggestions, please don’t hesitate to reach out to me at Jovian@arc.dev. It’s J-O-V-I-A-N@A-R-C.D-E-V. Or you can find us on Twitter @arcdotdev. See you next week with another episode of “Outset The Valley,” and ciao.

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