Camunda is going to become a “remote-first” organization - not just during the COVID-19 pandemic, but for good.
This will be reflected in the principles below:
Those principles are aspirational, i.e. we will not be able to live up to all of them all the time, and certainly not right away. But they define our ambitions and the direction in which we are going.
In this document, we will explain the motivation for this transition and explain the principles in more detail. However, we will not answer all the operational questions that would result out of them - those are to be answered in dedicated documents.
Everybody at Camunda is entitled to work remotely, for example from home, as much as they like and whenever they like. This holds true regardless of the personal leadership style preferences of their manager.
The only exception would be roles that by definition require a physical presence in the office, e.g. at the reception desk.
Being entitled to work remotely does not mean being entitled to work from everywhere though. These are the limitations that need to be observed:
When we advertise jobs or select candidates, we do not communicate or consider the candidates’ location as a selection criteria. This holds true regardless of the personal leadership style preferences of the hiring manager.
This principle is limited by:
Going remote-first is a profound transformation and it will only succeed if everyone is truly committed.
Managing and collaborating remotely translates into specific measures we’re going to take, which will be defined in dedicated documents.
Some key principles are:
To socialize remotely will become one of two building blocks for a successful team building (the other is onsite socializing) which will both be further described in a dedicated document.
We will continue to provide office spaces to make sure that everyone who prefers to work from an office will have the ability to do so.
The new primary mission for our existing offices is to provide distraction free, well-equipped, pleasant work environments for individuals. The primary mission is not to provide space for onsite collaboration.
In addition we will provide our people with the necessary tools to be productive while working from home by providing Remote Work Equipment to a reasonable extent.
Onsite interactions create a benefit we cannot achieve with remote interactions only:
The feeling of “truly meeting” someone builds trust and empathy. In a group, this leads to stronger identification, loyalty and engagement.
We need to be aware that our options to bring people together, especially when they need to travel for that purpose, are severely restricted during the COVID-19 pandemic.
We will set up a dedicated strategy for Onsite Team Building.
Camunda is a remote-first company, but that doesn’t mean our customers are.
If we feel that we should be onsite with a customer for sales, consulting, customer success, event marketing etc., we will go onsite.
Exceptions only apply because of acute circumstances (e.g., restricted travel due to pandemic)
Nevertheless, we do invest in our capabilities to win and serve our customers remotely, for example with
As an organization, we have managed the sudden shift to work from home very well. It was actually an opportunity to break with old habits that we as humans often consider necessary until we’re forced to develop new habits.
And we’re not alone. All around us, companies are moving towards a remote model and allow people to work from home as long and as much as they like. This is true for tech companies in Silicon Valley just as for conservative companies like Allianz or Siemens.
In some ways this is just necessary because nobody can say for sure for how long and to what extent our lives will be impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic.
But actually, it is time to realize a few fundamental truths:
Prediction: Up to 10 years from now, for any “non-physical” company (e.g. not in manufacturing) remote work will be the default and not the exception.
During the first years of Camunda, we had a clear preference for co-located work. We did not allow for home office unless in exceptional circumstances, and we required anyone who signed up with us to move to Berlin if they did not live there already.
When we decided to expand our business to other countries it became clear that we would have to employ people there, but we generally kept our preference for co-located work. This led to difficulties for both efficiency and culture, because those people that did not live in Berlin did not have the same same access to information and could not as easily participate in discussions, meetings or the famous water-cooler chats when they happened in Berlin and basically excluded everyone else.
That’s why in 2019 we decided that Camunda should more seriously turn into a “distributed organization”. There were some concrete implementations of this idea (e.g., moving the all-hands meetings online), but besides that it was more of an abstract idea and left room for individual interpretations. For example, many managers still prefered to set up co-located teams and hire only for that team’s location (e.g., Berlin) and would not allow their reports to work from home, or only to a limited extent. That was a problem because a lot of collaboration and socialization happens cross-functional, i.e. between teams and not just within them, and it reduced the talent pool those managers could recruit from.
We cannot know how long exactly COVID-19 is going to last, and even if it went away tomorrow, there could be new pandemics. It would be stupid not to learn from this one (“fool me once,...”). One learning is that we need to be always ready to suddenly work from home in order to practice social distancing. This would also reduce our dependence on physical offices, which can be a liability for example when our Berlin landlord decides to conduct huge construction projects.
So in summary:
Once we have achieved that, we will have a much stronger company with people that can enjoy their individual flexibility and empowerment thanks to a truly remote-first Camunda.
In order to become “remote-first” we need to be aware of three big areas:
We will look at each of those areas in dedicated documents and roll them out in Q4 2020, then learn and incrementally improve on them over the course of 2021.