Work From Anywhere: 2019 vs Now

This spring marks the four-year anniversary of the 2020 pandemic—when just about everyone’s work lives were either interrupted, cut short, or shoved into overdrive. Just like everyone else, our little corner of downtown Spokane was shaken up as all 146 employees were asked to stay home with no end in sight.

Before everyone was sent home, our office culture was structured around building community. Our sweet downtown location and modern office (yes, we have exposed brick) was helping us attract and retain smart and talented people. Inside this small office, we had in-person “standups” each morning to set daily objectives and keep communication flowing. Open office layouts, complete with collaboration areas, were designed to support different kinds of work and different ways of working. Casual attire was the norm, although pajamas were a no-go (unlike today’s usual work-from-home daily duds). You could take a break and blow off some steam in the rec room equipped with a video game station, arcade-style basketball hoops games, and a mini four square court. And our legendary Snack Wall—with 20+ wall-mounted snack dispensers—was always open for business.

That’s all to say that before 2020, Two Barrels had not really entertained the idea of remote work—at all. But, although we definitely didn’t know it at the time, making the quick pivot to having people work from home was a move that has helped us grow from a company of those 146 employees to our current team of 912 people. We’re now spread over 30 states, supporting hybrid, on-premise, and remote positions, and never going back.

Work From Anywhere

We are now complete converts to having a big chunk of our workforce working remotely—and we’ve committed to tackling all the oddities that come along with that. We call it “work from anywhere” and, as you can see from our team photos, that’s what we do.

The transition was by no means smooth, and we’re still implementing new ways to keep our far-flung and growing team connected. Here’s how we’ve made it work for us:

Outfitting the Home Office

Security and privacy is pretty important to us, so we decided to take on the burden of providing secure computers for all new employees on day one. We also know that it’s not always possible to build a functional home office from scratch. Since we want our employees to be productive, we’ll out send new furniture and hardware when you hit the 90-day mark, and we include work-from-home allowances in employee paychecks every quarter after that so people can continue to upgrade their space (or create their own personal Snack Wall).

Work-Life Balance

Working from home means that your work is always technically right there with you. It can be hard to step away from work when you’re not actually stepping away from work—if it’s on your phone or on the same laptop you use to watch movies and unwind, then you’re tempted to just check your email or reply to just one more message notification.

We battle that issue by making it a non-issue. We send you a laptop so you aren’t using the same one you use on the weekends for work. And you can’t get work emails or phone calls on your smart phone, so you won’t be checking them when you’re off the clock.

Flexible Schedules

One of the unforgettable things that the 2020 pandemic taught us was that without flexibility, teams and morale break. While some people might think that a project with one teammate in Spokane and one in Maine could spell disaster, we made it into a recipe for success. As long as you’re coordinating with your team and available during meetings, we don’t care if start work at 7 or at 10. This means you can be free when your kid gets home from school, you can make space for doctor appointments, or you can sleep in every morning, if that’s your thing.

Maintaining Structure and Community Across the Country

Our office culture has always valued structure and face-to-face interactions, so we were adamant about carrying that into this new era. We still have daily standups, we still get together in person whenever we can (our Austin marketing team just went bowling), and we maintain daily structure with Scrum and Agile methods.

Working on Location

We continue to have have positions that ask people to work at our different offices, whether that be Spokane, Salt Lake City, or Austin. But we’ve been able to create a better environment on that front, too.

We own most of our office buildings, so while most people were working at home, we used the early months of the pandemic to re-imagine how the spaces could work better for us. And we renovated the spaces that needed it. So the people who need to be here on-site have updated spaces and equipment, and we can accommodate the people who either want to be on-site (we know that toddlers don’t understand “work hours”) or need to drop in when their internet or power is out.

Conclusion

We’ve found a good balance between our hybrid, on-premise, and fully remote teams—and we have no plans to go back. Our journey highlights how important flexibility is to us and how easy it can be to support comfortable work environments. Our employees are happy because we make remote and on-premise work rewarding, and we’re happy because we can hire smart people all over the country.