While remote work may have been thrusted on us all due to the pandemic, it’s a renaissance in itself. Employers must be empowered to hire the very best humans regardless of regions, create better diverse and inclusive work environments, and above all else curate a new form of work culture.
Here at Tangle, we like the idea of leading by example. With our founders leading the charge, we aim to reinvent remote work culture with Tangle as a spearhead into this new era. So how are we different? Let’s take a look.
Not Your Typical Interviews
Let’s start from the beginning. At Tangle, we find it’s best to get to know potential teammates with conversation like interview styles vs rapid fire questions that lean more towards the interrogation side. So a typical interview process is one where we connect to the candidate letting them know exactly who they will talk to, next steps, and realistic time frames. From there the informal interview will happen in a very casual video call (and if possible in Tangle). After that, next steps include meeting with a few random select members of our team to let the candidate ask any and all questions they may have outside of the interview process. But this is also a two-way street, so it’s a great way to make sure they feel like Tangle is a good fit for them as well.
4-Day Work Weeks
You heard that right, we have 32 hour work weeks that help rejuvenate our team instead of pushing for burnout, which can often happen with 40+ hour work weeks. We’ve found that our team not only feels happier and healthier, but we also are creating a culture that lets them know work should revolve around life, not the other way around. A common saying here at Tangle is, “We aren’t curing diseases, everything can wait” to allow teams to not feel the metaphorical doomsday clock that hangs over their heads for not pushing as hard as they can. Now don’t get us wrong we value hard work, but we acknowledge that we aren’t robots, and humans need care.
Core Working Hours
Operating on a 4-day work week already has benefits, but we decided to take that a step further and have core work hours. Meaning we ask all teams to be online in Tangle between the hours of 12pm – 4pm EST. This is something we value as those times then impact meeting schedules and syncs allowing the team to then flex the remaining of their hours how they see fit. Maybe someone just works the core hours and needs to take off early for a doctor’s appointment. No problem, they can pick up hours within their work week where they can.
Trust Based and Autonomy
Speaking of flex hours, at Tangle we operate on a trust based mentality and autonomy. This is to say, we trust that our team is working hard and they don’t need to be micromanaged. Take for example, if a member of our team has a migraine, and needs to sign off early, not only do we encourage them to do so (because good work often doesn’t stem from painful migraines) but we trust they will make up the time as they see fit. To us it’s important to respect and build this trust because we are all capable humans.
Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion
Since we don’t claim to be experts in DEI, Tangle’s founders had the foresight to think about budgeting and hiring a specialist in the area at the beginning this was established before hiring and included a yearly budget as a foresight not an afterthought. While we began looking for a DEI specialist when we were around 9 people, it was when we hit around 14 that we finally found our match. We wanted someone who wanted to get elbows deep and engage with our team. Transparency in DEI for us was a very big win as we believe it also helps to continue to hold us accountable.
Take a look at a snippet from our Handbook below to see just how we welcome any and all to our team.
Tangle is for the People
While DEI is an important pillar, once you are a part of the Tangle team, we can’t forget about how we take care of humans from the start. Early on we invested in People Operations, hiring an HR person when we were just a small team of 15, where some companies may wait until they hit a threshold of 20 or more. This was of big importance to us because we wanted our team to feel taken care of from the start.
Emphasizing Culture Even in Our Core
While Tangle started out as a platform made from frustrated game devs who wanted more out of their remote communication, finding a weak spot in what was lacking and filling it with culture has become our anthem. We want to cheer on those who need more connection, empathize with those who are camera shy or running on screen fatigue, and celebrate those who are looking for some balance in their remote work life.
Tangle makes for better connections and happier humans. We hope to lead the charge on this new remote work culture revolution. And regardless of what anyone says, we refuse to go back to the drab of sitting in an office, overworking ourselves and extinguishing all the amazing things we have learned from living in a remote work world.
Did you know Tangle was just named in Inc’s Best Workplaces 2023? Learn more about how Tangle can help the culture of your team and try Tangle today!
