Working at Mattermost¶
The mission of Mattermost, Inc. is to give all organizations the power to achieve their highest priorities through modern communication. Our vision is a world more connected to what matters most.
Our company maintains the Mattermost open source project, providing powerful, easy-to-use, self-hosted team communication across web, PC and phones.
We also provide Mattermost Enterprise Edition, a secure, modern, enterprise messaging solution as a fully supported commercial extension of our open source software.
While our headquarters is in Palo Alto, California, we use Mattermost software to work remotely around the world in partnership with our community.
Top 10 reasons to work for Mattermost:
- Join an outstanding team: Work with thoughtful, talented, high performance people who care about results.
- Build on the cutting edge: Develop in Golang, React, React Native and other technologies changing the world.
- Work remote: No commute, freedom to travel, complete control of your environment.
- Be recognized: Working in open source, your contributions are public and echo on throughout your career.
- Growth: Join a growing open source project, a growing business, and a growing company.
- Do good: Build open source software benefiting thousands of companies, institutions, schools and non-profits.
- Improve a product you use every day: Work on a team with deep empathy for users and customers.
- Focus on results: Output matters, not hours worked. Enjoy life and don’t burn out.
- Learn, Master, Teach: Building new skills, becoming experts, and training others is core to our culture.
- Friends around the world: Build relationships with staff and contributors in dozens of countries.
Working Remotely¶
We’re headquartered in Palo Alto, California, and like many open source companies a large portion of Mattermost, Inc. works remotely from around the world.
This gives us tremendous advantages:
- Access to top talent. We can hire from anywhere.
- More comfort. People have 100% control of their surroundings.
- No commute. Removing a 30-60 minute commute saves 250-500 hours a year.
- Time zone coverage. We can more easily support global customers.
- Results-focused culture. Output matters more than hours at a desk.
We run as a distributed, high performance team using a few principles:
1) Work from anywhere with good Internet¶
Working from anywhere means more time with loved ones, no commute, and controlling everything about your workspace.
The one requirement is having a strong internet connection for occassional video or audio conferences. Ethernet connections are preferred over Wifi, since Wifi can have interference.
2) Be explicit¶
Working remote means it may take time before a person reads your message and responds, so make sure you are clear.
Communicate relevant information in the first message:
- Avoid “Are you free to talk?” and “Can we talk about something at 3pm?”, instead use “Can we speak about ulimit issue Customer X is having?”
Write unambiguously:
- Avoid “I think the answer is Yes”, instead use “Yes”, “No”, or “I think the answer is Yes, I’ll confirm with Steve and let you know.”
Likewise, we emphasize written communication. Reading is faster than listening and it reaches more people, which means more happens in less time.
3) Follow through¶
When working on problems, make sure to be clear about next steps, and either follow through or create a ticket to track the work.
4) Hang out¶
We have warm-ups in some meetings to learn more about each other. It’s part of a culture where we get to know each other.
Find time after meetings and video conferences to get to know your teammates. Ask them about their weekends and how their life is outside of work.
When you meet in person at off-sites and events, build on those relationships.
5) Be the change you want to see¶
When something’s not clearly documented, take the initiative to figure out what’s going on and update the documentation for the people who come after you.
Learn, Master, Teach is a model we use to pass on training after you’ve been trained to help grow everyone at the company.
Paid Time Off¶
1) Time-off¶
Our culture is high trust and results-focused. No need to ask anyone when you plan to be away, just plan ahead and let teammates know in advance.
When you take time-off, please remember:
- Block off time on your calendar so it’s easy to see when you’re away.
- For meetings you’ll miss, message the chair with any status update.
- Post in the Standup channel dates you’re away and who’ll be your backup
There is no limit to how much time-off you can take. We strongly recommend a minimum of 2 weeks per year.
2) Holidays¶
Please take off holidays relevant to your culture, resident country and preferences. Please just follow the TIME OFF process in 1) above.
We’re headquartered in the US and have a large Canadian contingent, so below are holidays we’re expecting people from those countries to take off:
US & Canadian Holidays remaining for 2016:
- US & Canadian Christmas Day (12/25/2016)
- Canadian Boxing Day (12/26/2016)
US & Canadian Holidays for 2017:
- US & Canadian New Year’s (1/1/2017)
- US & Canadian New Year’s Day Holiday (1/2/2017)
- Canadian Family Day (2/20/2017)
- US & Canadian Good Friday (4/14/2017)
- Canadian Victoria Day (5/22/2017)
- Canada Day (7/1/2017)
- US Independence Day (7/4/2017)
- US Labor Day, Canadian Labour Day (9/4/2017)
- Canadian Thanksgiving (10/9/2017)
- US Thanksgiving (11/23/2017)
- US & Canadian Christmas Day (12/25/2017)
- Canadian Boxing Day (12/26/2017)
It’s up to meeting chairs to decide whether to reschedule if few people can attend (e.g. if there are a lot of US or Canadians in the meeting).
3) On-call rotations¶
We have an “On-call” schedule for key staff to support customer escalations and for sales. Should your on-call schedule fall on a holiday or during time-off, you can trade with teammates of similar qualification, or if you are called in because you are on-call during a holiday, you’re encouraged to take time-off on a non-holiday in exchange.
Benefits¶
General Benefits¶
1. Flexible hours
Results matter more far more than hours in an office. Your time at Mattermost is flexible. Go see the dentist, visit a friend, walk your dog–no need to ask permission.
If there’s something urgent going on at work, just let teammates know your status.
2. Work from anywhere with a strong internet connection
The comfort of home, freedom to travel, no commute–learn more about our remote work policies.
3. Paid time-off
Just as flexible as our working hours, learn more about our paid time-off policies.
4. Additional US and Canadian employee benefits
Mattermost uses professional employement organizations in the United States and Canada and are able to offer additional benefits to US employees and benefits to Canadian employees.
