Learn about our culture & values, how we play as a team, and what we look for in future Databox Playmakers.
Many companies talk about their awesome offices, cool events and great perks. We can, too. But when you come to work for Databox, you not only get to work in great environment, but you also become part of an incredible team.
We’re dedicated to connecting culturally diverse members of our global team via online events and keeping the processes, business, and communication transparent across the entire organization. This helps create an ownership mindset and everyone to understand their impact on the success.
International team means different time zones. While that sounds scary at first, the challenges of time differences can be easily overcome by a team’s transparent communication, use of project management & communication tools, and committing to regular stand-ups and check-ins.
Playing ping-pong with emails won’t cut it. Being part of a remote team means everyone has to be on the same page and have the ability to reach out to colleagues quickly and easily, so committing to using a business communication platform is a must. Our weapons of choice are Zoom and Slack. Since Databox is a growing company, we quickly learned that we also need dedicated channels for individual teams and regular Zoom meetings that make daily or weekly check-ins super easy and way more personal. Our favourite ways of keeping our work communication organized include using a Slack bot (we named her Lucy) for daily standups, respecting each other’s time and work process, and transparently communicating in team channels so no one feels left out.
We document everything: ideas, project plans, updates, obstacles, outcomes, quarterly reviews, and postmortems (evaluating the success of a finished project). Having access to all information is crucial for all team members, so writing it all down can benefit how you progress as a team. It also makes transitions to other roles and onboarding easier.
Our main tools for collaboration we’ve been using since day 1 are:
🔹 Confluence is our main documentation tool. We use it to create, comment, and store all kinds of company and team documentation.
🔹 Slack is our main internal communication and collaboration tool used by everyone on the team.
🔹 Asana is our project management tool that helps us manage all projects across all teams. Depending on the team, we use Asana for recording tasks and projects aimed at implementing new functionalities, maintaining our product at a high level, and resolving bugs and support tickets reported by our customers.
🔹 BlogIn is an internal company blog where everyone can post and share company updates, news, and knowledge. We use it for posting regular team progress updates and future plans, as well as introduction posts for new team members.
🔹 BambooHR is an HR tool we use to manage our time off, hiring processes and all employee information.
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Data Platform
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Engineering
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Data Science
Customer Support
At Databox, transparency means being as open as possible and sharing information company-wide to avoid the feeling of top-down communication. We believe it helps increase team engagement, recognize people for their contributions, and share overall progress with all team members. With a large part of our team working remotely, transparency is also crucial for keeping everyone equally involved, which is why we put a lot of importance on ensuring all information is shared in a mutual virtual environment and thus available for everyone.
How we do it:
🔹Communicating quarterly team plans, updates, and reviews openly by posting write-ups on our internal company blog
🔹Using Slack daily allows us to contact any team member at any time, which gives team members the feeling of open communication
🔹 Sharing and regularly updating all relevant documents in our Confluence team workspace, which is available to everyone
🔹 Using dashboards and scorecards in our Databox app to keep track of finances, marketing, sales, etc.
We try to avoid top-down control in all aspects of our work, from access to documents and sharing team updates to basic stuff like absences and vacation days. Having all important information available to everyone gives people a sense of transparency and inclusion, which is what we strive for. It also helps keep information circling and minimizes the risks of a task or important update being forgotten.
Depending on the team, we combine daily success reports with an in-person (or virtual) standup meeting, typically held every morning, during which each team member quickly shares what they will be doing that day and whether any obstacles are holding them back. By having daily standups, all team members are aware of each other’s tasks so there are fewer chances of something urgent popping up during the day that could potentially disturb the workflow of a team member. This also creates a designated time and space to raise important issues that need to be dealt with and give the team members a heads-up about someone else needing their assistance or something “urgent” that needs to be dealt with by the end of the day.
The most important thing about a hybrid work model such as ours is the intentionality and effort directed to creating, fostering and nurturing culture when people are working in multiple places. As with our team, where more than 60% of Playmakers work remotely and others closely together in our Ptuj office, we’re especially aware of the importance of establishing a remote-friendly environment that gives an equal opportunity to all members to contribute and collaborate at their full potential.
Looking past work-related activities, our culture shines the brightest when we have fun – from bonding on virtual and on-site team-building events to socialising on Slack within different interest groups. We regularly meet over Book Club and Podcast Discussions, stay active with our Around the Equator challenge, share recipes and cooking tips, discuss parenting and share silly photos of our pets.
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