We've already been doing this for more than ten years, so we've realized it's a marathon, not a sprint.
We work hard, but we do it for a sane number of hours every week. We use our own products obsessively, which means we both understand them in our bones and can get even more done. We provide paid vacation and take all federal holidays off to recharge. Everyone is trained to do customer support so we all can get to know our customers better.
Where we are
We're fully remote but have the occasional meeting or work session in coworking spaces around the SF Bay Area. We consistently share information within the organization so everyone has context.
What we like
We like (in no particular order) jigsaw puzzles, potato chips, archery, escape rooms, TikTok, kayaking, crosswords, jackbox games, movies, Bananagrams, BBQ, cooperative games, coming up with game show ideas, sandwiches, Jeopardy, ridiculous holiday parties, birthday surprises, stuffed animals, and did we mention, food?
We’re doing well, and doing good
We’ve been in business for over a decade and in addition to having millions of satisfied users, we're also profitable. So we get to do things like giving back a portion of our profits to support education in Burma and bleeding edge carbon capture research .
Our core values
Earnest
- We look for authentic people who have sincere convictions.
- We are self-aware and comfortable with who we are. We should not be dismissive of others for having different convictions than our own, so long as those convictions are genuine and moral.
- We appreciate when you stick your neck out to advocate for something with your genuine belief.
- It’s much easier to be critical of ideas than to be the folks who bring the new ideas. It’s easier to be a critic than a creator.
- Being earnest generally correlates with being optimistic and being tolerant.
Opposite Value: San Francisco's very own "dismissive hipster"
Collaborative
- We look to create an environment where working together is more enjoyable and creates better output than working alone.
- When you're working on something hard, consult with someone else on the team.
- We value institutional knowledge and spend extra time and effort to document our work and share our learning with the rest of the team.
- Look out for these anti-collaborative behaviors - it's everyone's responsibility to correct these behaviors when we see them (h/t Hacker School). We'll all occasionally exhibit them, so the correct response is an acknowledgement, a quick apology, and then everyone moves on.
- Well, actually - interrupting someone to make a minor non-material correction, usually of the form "well, actually, James Madison wrote most of that document"
- High-friction skepticism - it's fine to question assumptions, especially in light of new information, but it should be done in a way that minimizes conflict. Our expectations should always be that the other people on the team are competent, reasonable, and operating in good faith.
- Feigned surprise, except when used to set up deadpan humor in non-work-related discussions
- Interrupting someone else who's speaking, in general
- Elk pissing - Making changes to someone else's work that do not materially improve it, for the sake of leaving your own stamp on it (like an elk marking territory)
- Playing devil’s advocate for fun instead as a problem solving technique
- Arguing some viewpoint you don’t actually believe in (argument as a verbal sparring sport)
Opposite Value: Individualistic, cowboy, "no bullshit", high conflict/high friction
Focused on the process
- We aim to evaluate the outcome of projects and initiatives based on how we executed them and how well we made decisions with the information we had at the time, rather than how they ultimately turned out.
- Luck and things outside our control have a significant role in the outcome of everything. We acknowledge that reality and try to appropriately attribute their contribution to our successes and failures.
- We believe that a strategy that has a better expected value and is executed well, but that ultimately fails, is better than a strategy with a low expected value or with poor execution, but that ultimately is successful by chance.
- Though we may not be able to control luck, we control our reaction to it. Bad luck is an explanation, not necessarily an excuse.
- We analyze and take responsibility for the parts that are in our control.
- Meeting deadlines and doing the right things are part of being focused on the process.
- Continually updating the process after a project regardless of the outcome is being focused on the process.
Opposite Value: Results-driven
Thoughtful progress every day
- We analyze options and use data to shape our decisions.
- We believe it’s important to learn from our past mistakes and successes by reviewing what we’ve done.
- We aim to make thoughtful progress every day without analysis paralysis.
- We try to find the smallest progress we can make to confirm or reject our hypothesis.
- We are okay with redoing or changing our minds as we uncover new information.
- For every project, we start by clarifying the intention and exploring alternatives including “Do we need to do this at all?”
- We make our actions more thoughtful by soliciting input and documenting our decisions at every step, not by digging deeper without input.
Opposite Value: Move fast and break things.
Benefits
Just like most tech companies, we offer competitive salaries, paid vacation, and a fun environment. We also help you take care of your teeth and plan for the days when you'll be toothless!
- Full health insurance
- Generous vision and dental benefits
- 401(k) with company contribution
- Sane work hours, flexible PTO, and all federal holidays
- Laptops, monitors, and other remote work equipment
- Book Club books
- Annual conference budget (whenever that happens again)
- Boomerang swag and other surprises
Open roles
If what you've seen so far sounds fun, here are the positions we're looking for. All positions are full time.
Boomerang is looking for an experienced UX designer with strong writing skills to help us create brilliant productivity software for millions of users around the world.
You’ll collect and analyze user feedback and plan and execute user research, developing a narrative about what we should learn from it but presenting it without an agenda. You’ll take these learnings to design intuitive and engaging user interfaces that align with our business goals and help our users be more productive in their inboxes.
It will help to be relatively technical; not necessarily to be able to ship and scale a feature on your own, but capable of understanding why a technical bottleneck exists and able to help in coming up with ways around it. You need to have a love for productivity software and at least a liking, if not a passion, for email. And you need to be excited about reading the latest academic research papers in UX and in productivity.
In addition, the perfect candidate for this position is a skilled copywriter, able to discern exactly what information a user needs to know and when they need to know it. You should delight in the way that the words you write shape the user’s understanding of the product and appreciation for the experience it gives them. You should also be flexible enough to adapt your writing to our house style.
Responsibilities
- Design various stages throughout development lifecycle, from user journey maps and user flows to written specifications and wireframes
- Write copy for the product (in-product language, error messages, communication with the users, and work with marketing and support to develop supplemental page copy).
- Collaborate with engineering and product teams to create new, impactful features.
- Collect, organize and analyze customer feedback from support emails and product analytics.
- Employ both qualitative feedback and quantitative data to guide design decisions, focusing on user needs while also propelling business growth.
- Conduct usability testing and user surveys to identify areas of improvement for existing products or test out new designs and prototypes.
- Plan and design A/B tests to measure the impact of improvements and to experiment with new features.
Qualifications
- Either of the following:
- BS or MS in computer science, design, psychology, human computer Interaction, or related, with 5+ years experience as a UX Designer or similar role
- OR 7+ years experience as a UX Designer or similar role
- Have held a 3+ year tenure as a UX designer or similar position at the same company
- A compelling portfolio showcasing a diverse range of projects, with a focus on direct contributions and measurable impact to a live product with a meaningful user base
- Strong track record of successful collaboration with product management, visual design, and engineering teams
- High level of proficiency in design tools and methodologies, including but not limited to Figma, wireframing, workflow diagramming, and prototyping
- Deep understanding of and empathy for users
- Excellent writing skills
- Exceptional communication and presentation skills, with the ability to articulate complex design concepts in a clear and persuasive manner
- A passion for productivity tools and helping teams work better together
- Perfectionist tendency and a sense of ownership and pride in everything you ship
- Good at prioritizing and organizing across multiple projects at once
You must be located in California, Oregon, Washington, Texas, Colorado, Utah, New Jersey, Massachusetts, or North Carolina, with candidates in the SF Bay Area preferred.
To apply, send a resume, cover letter, and a portfolio or a case study to i.want.to.work@baydin.com.
Base salary: $85-140k
Description
Email, task management, and personal productivity software are a never ending stream of exciting, customer-life-changing challenges. Boomerang recently acquired GQueues, and we’re looking for veteran engineers who are excited about that intersection and want to use knowledge gleaned from years of working in software development teams to help us make both products better.
We have apps that millions of customers use every day (and pay for), and the infrastructure to support them efficiently and reliably at a reasonable cost. Our technology choices prioritize solving real user problems - when possible, we try to minimize complicated architecture and dependencies, but when it was necessary, we built a proprietary hybrid machine learning architecture.
We need your judgment and experience to help us shave months of development time off critical projects, help us keep the servers alive a few extra nights a year, and share that judgment and experience across our engineering team.
The right candidate is already able to work at an expert level in one of the languages or frameworks we use at Boomerang/GQueues. You'll be able to share stories of mistakes you've made and learned from in past work, and you'll be able to identify the same mistakes as they are being made here. You already know how to interface with a product team, support team, marketing team, and leadership team to make everything run more smoothly. You’ve spent time over the past couple years exploring how AI can make you more productive, and it has.
You can differentiate between when new platforms, frameworks, and design patterns solve real problems and when they're just shiny objects, and even more importantly, know how to communicate that knowledge to everyone who needs to know it. You're comfortable expressing your thoughts clearly in writing. You're collaborative and enjoy teaching people what you know, but also are receptive and open when someone else is in a position to teach you.
In return, you'll work in an environment that welcomes responsibility, where your work will help millions of people focus on the most rewarding parts of their jobs, and as part of a friendly, fun, elite team.
Requirements
- BA/BS Degree in Computer Science or related major, 5+ years of industry experience in a software development environment
- Deep knowledge of at least one of the following technologies (the more the better!):
- HTML/CSS/JS, with jQuery
- Solving CSS/JS multi-browser compatibility problems
- Front-end performance optimization
- Python + Django
- Deep understanding of back-end technologies and databases (NoSQL is a plus)
- Experience with Google Cloud a plus
- An interest in productivity software
- An appreciation for boring technology
To apply, please send the following to i.want.to.work@baydin.com:
- Your resume
- A link to your Github (if available)
- A cover letter that includes a paragraph about why you’re excited about what we do
Salary: $135K/yr - $200K/yr