Culture

Cockroach Labs has been investing in early career recruiting since we first started the company. In 2016, only a year after the company’s inception, we brought on our first intern. Since then, we’ve steadily built a program driven by a passion for diversity and inclusion, creativity, and unique perspectives.

The Roacher spotlight series is a celebration of our Roachers, their stories, and the wisdom they can impart to their peers. In this post, we highlight Raydijah Walters from our People team.

At Cockroach Labs, we value not only our company’s collective culture, but sharing a view into the culture driving teams across the company. In the Meet the Team series, you’ll meet wonderful Roachers who help Enable Every Developer to Build World-Changing Applications. This entry is part two in our feature of the East Sales team, where we sat down with Matt Vaughn, Brad Lewis, and Anthony DiMaggio. See part one to meet Vincent Giacomazza, VP of East Sales.

Company values show up in some facet of our roles every day, whether we’re making a hard choice or determining priorities. They help guide our team towards shared business goals and, in doing so, shape company culture. With many technology companies having faced working remotely in the past months, culture has become a greater priority and a shared responsibility. Getting everyone on the same page about culture begins with defining values.

At Cockroach Labs, we value not only our company’s collective culture, but sharing a view into the culture driving teams across the company. In the Meet the Team series, you’ll meet wonderful Roachers who help Enable Every Developer to Build World-Changing Applications. This entry is part one in our feature of the East Sales team, where we sat down with Vincent Giacomazza, Vice President of Sales, East.

The Roacher spotlight series is a celebration of our Roachers, their stories, and the wisdom they can impart to their peers. In our inaugural post, we sat down with Jen Murphy to tell her Cockroach Labs story.

Building a great company culture includes offering strong benefits to employees and great benefit programs that are comprehensive, transparent, and clearly defined. Cockroach Labs excels at this in many regards, and our Parental Leave and Family Support are no exception. CRL understands that every family is unique, recognizing the importance of extending eligibility to not only the birth of an employee’s biological child, but also to any employee who is in the process of adopting or fostering. The support is robust, starting before a parent’s leave period and continuing well after the employee returns to work. With that said, I would be remiss if I didn’t outline what’s “on the books” to support our employees as they prepare for their new addition: - Comprehensive planning and checklist in preparation for leave - $500 baby bucks to put towards essentials - Benefits support through Cocoon and family support resources through Cleo - 12 weeks Parental Leave + 2 weeks paid PTO - Flexibility to utilize leave all at once or in 1-week increments within first 12 months - ReRoachmate pairing upon return (fellow parent Roacher to meet with) - 12 weeks of Family Fridays upon return (20% of time dedicated to spending with family) - #little-roachers Slack channel for parents to share, discuss, and support each other With a parental leave program for all parents, we make it possible for parents of every gender to share in the joys and responsibilities of welcoming a child. The fact that parents have up to a year to take leave after welcoming their new family member allows Roachers and their families flexibility in arranging childcare, too. That said, policies are only meaningful if they are supported, normalized, and championed. And this is the difference between simply describing our Parental Leave policy and actually telling my Parental Leave journey and experience. So here’s my story..

Last year, Cockroach Labs introduced its first rotational product management program for aspiring early-career product managers. The goal of the program is to dissolve hidden barriers and train future product leaders as oftentimes, product management can appear to be a heavily gated career field -especially as it becomes increasingly popular across the technology industry. I was hired in September 2020 and I was overjoyed to have been selected to participate in Cockroach Labs’ program as an early career professional and learn about such an innovative product offering under the direction of the skilled product team here. Since my start, I’ve had the wonderful opportunity to work with talented members and customers across teams.

As you may already be aware, Cockroach Labs has had a presence in Toronto for several years. Today however, we’re happy to announce that we’ve signed the lease for our first dedicated Toronto office at 33 Yonge Street. We’re very excited about this milestone, as it's the culmination of a lot of hard work we’ve been doing in the city over the last few years.

Adam Storm

Augt 26, 2021