How we work
At Bird, you will be fortunate to work with some of the smartest, curious, and driven people you will ever meet, on a relentless mission to revolutionize how businesses communicate with customers, impacting billions of people worldwide. It’s rewarding, demanding, and exciting work, and you’ll do and learn more than you can imagine. Bird is a great fit for self-starters with endless curiosity, a high drive for action, who work independently, and can handle the autonomy to get things done.
At Bird, everyone is an individual contributor first- just managing people is not a job here, which also counts for the management team and CEO. Everyone is hands-on, meaning we pick up the phone, model and pivot table spreadsheets and do whatever it takes to get shit done. Being a great manager at Bird translates into teaching people how to fish because, at a minimum, you know how to fish yourself. This is how we scale, and the people who embody this have great careers at Bird.
Great ideas come from curiosity and understanding about how our customers are looking to solve problems and how others have attempted to solve those problems before us. We apply first-principle thinking to everything that we do at Bird. Sometimes we do what others do, sometimes we make it just a bit better, and sometimes we come up with entirely new ideas. There is no one-size-fits-all for how we operate.
Ultimately, customer satisfaction drives how we feel about the work we deliver. This can be overwhelming, and if you are easily stressed, not flexible enough to change your perspectives frequently, don’t like talking to customers, or believe a lot of consensus and meetings are important to get things done- then this is probably not the best place for you.
We are transparent about what to expect
Decisions are guided by our values, which have evolved in the past and will continue to evolve in the future, as the company develops:
⭐ Customers, Customers, Customers
It’s that simple: our customers are the reason we are here. We are dedicated to their success, dive deep to understand their needs, and use their feedback to drive our decision-making. We win fair and think beyond what is expected.
We talk to our customers constantly, respond fast, and center our operating model around them. This means we adapt our approach whenever needed, ensuring we always focus on customer needs. It also means that while our mission and vision are always the same, our priorities are iterative. The iteration velocity is high to exceed customer expectations.
🚀 We Get Shit Done
Birds take ownership, are laser-focused on delivering results, and adopt a very productive way of working without compromising quality. We think in solutions rather than problems and are unafraid to roll up our sleeves, even if the task seems out of our scope. For example, our customer-facing teams don’t hide behind e-mails and pick up the phone first.
To remain focussed, we only have meetings when required and with as few Birds as possible. This is not because we don’t want to be inclusive or build consensus (we do!), but because Birds need to be able to focus and deliver on their priorities.
⚡ We Move Fast
Speed matters at Bird and some may think this speed is unreasonably high, but it’s a key contributor to our success. Trust us, once you’re used to our rapid pace, you never want to revert! For example: our product & engineering teams release multiple features per day. We ship fast and iterate quickly.
🔴 We Fully Commit
Working towards our vision is a marathon, not a sprint. We expect Birds to commit to the red dot, which we use to describe the key problem we are trying to fix. This means we’re flexible; Birds may be asked to jump in, lead, or support various teams and projects beyond their initial scope of work if that’s what the business needs.
We never compromise for the sake of social cohesion or hierarchy. Once a decision is made, even when disagreeing, we support it by diving deeper to understand and trust the rationale and ultimately own it - through words and actions.
🏡 We Work Smart
Bird is a remote company and remote work requires the ability to work smart and manage your time and workload well, independently.
Birds are expected to be available behind their desks during local business hours. This is very important because we operate as a global company across time zones and delayed deliverables impact the deliverables and working hours of others.
We pay attention to, and acknowledge notifications during off-peak hours and sometimes work extra hours to meet deadlines. This doesn’t mean we’re asking Birds to work more than 8 hours a day, but when you work towards deadlines or handle time-sensitive work, you shouldn’t be the blocker for others.
We care about well-being, and we all have personal commitments, so we encourage Birds to communicate clearly when they are away to prevent impacted deliverables and manage handovers effectively.
💡 We Innovate and Simplify
To offer our customers the best experience, we lead by example internally. That means we prefer to test drive and release our solutions rather than use external tools.
The possibilities with Bird CRM are endless, and we continuously improve how we work together. We don’t like manual, repetitive work as we believe that shouldn’t be what customers or Birds should spend their time and skills on. Instead, we dive deep, get to the root cause, and go for the scalable, ideally automated solution vs. the short-term patch.
Birds are curious, listen carefully, and learn from different perspectives, data, and industry sources. We constantly seek to disconfirm our convictions instead of focusing on confirming our beliefs - rooted in personal preference or past experiences.
💘 We earn trust
We diligently assess the implications and risks of our actions and hold each other accountable. We also always test our solutions to ensure their effectiveness. We earn the trust of our customers and fellow Birds by keeping our promises. Mistakes happen. After all, without mistakes, there is no learning or growth, and we expect Birds to speak up and take ownership to resolve them.
💙 One Team
We’re all on this journey together; one platform, one team. We are here to win, like a team of sports professionals. Birds bring a lot of positive energy and accept and support each other with advice and feedback, no matter where in the company hierarchy they sit.
Birds speak to each other rather than about others. When we disagree with decisions, we challenge them respectfully. We are persistent in sharing our opinions yet remain constructive. When Birds need support, they rally the troops and firefight together.
Hard work is recognized, celebrated, and rewarded accordingly as we win together. Our common passion for customers, technology, and drive to get things done unite us, and we are having a lot of fun along the way! 🥳