Rethinking our ideas means we’re growing

Companies are an expression of the people they’re made up of; they re-shape themselves and evolve every time you bring someone new onboard.

In 2021, we added 12 people to our now 36-strong team. Having 33% new faces on a Zoom call has been challenging: it means the company we were in January is definitely not the company we are in December (and we don’t know what the Wildbit of next year will look like either).

2021 was also difficult because it was yet another year where we didn’t all get to meet one another in person. This definitely had an impact ​​on our morale, motivation, and feeling of connection to each other—for both old and new team members alike.

Growth and change are hard to embrace. Some of Wildbit’s longest-tenured team members might even remember me saying “We are never growing past 15 people” a few years back—but plans change, businesses evolve, and we need to be able to rethink our ideas if we want to move forward.

(If you have 15 minutes to spare, I recommend this talk ↓ about the importance of not getting stuck on a narrow path.)

Change also brings new energy and new ideas. Every new person brings with them their journey and merges with our collective one as a team; together, we feel inspired and challenged to continue our path of pursuing excellence.

Goodbye to a challenging yet formative 2021. And cheers to whatever new adventures 2022 brings on.

🎉 some highlights we’d like to share

Throughout 2021, the Wildbit team kept doing what we love with people we respect and like being around. Here are some highlights we thought you might enjoy: 

• People-First Jobs has been growing steadily: head over there if you’re looking to find (or hire for) a role in a people-first company next year.
• The first-ever comic book about email deliverability brought readers a lot of joy and paw-some dog puns. Go take a look, cowpoke.
• Accessible Palette was born from a designer’s frustration with how colors work online: this (free) tool can help make the web a little more accessible for all its users.
• As people kept grappling with the ‘Great Resignation’, returning to work, and balancing remote vs. hybrid vs. in-person settings, we shared our experience as a remote-first company that runs a 4-day workweek (we even ended up on Good Morning America and CNN).
• We also implemented location-agnostic pay and took a people-first approach to hiring. If you’re bringing people on your team next year, we hope you’ll find some of our learnings useful.

Thank you for being with us in 2021, and we’ll see you next year. 

💚, Natalie and the team @ Wildbit