GetUWired: A Typical Day in the Log Cabin
By Ella Willson, copywriter at GetUWired
If you want to know what it’s like to work at GetUWired, come to one of our company meetings.
Every single meeting, people express how much they love their jobs, especially the new hires, who didn’t know a place like ours existed. Happy tears are not uncommon – both from employees and members of the Leadership Team expressing their appreciation for this company and their co-workers. (Want a good cry? Watch a 6’4”, 300-pound man get choked up over the support we gave him through a family health crisis.)
Why do our people love their jobs so much? It all starts with the philosophy that “People don’t work for money.” Yes, we get paid well and have great benefits, but what really keeps us passionate about our work is the feeling that we are part of something bigger, that what we do matters, and that our hard work is appreciated. And that WE are appreciated for the people we are.
Here’s a typical day at GetUWired:
We walk into our office (which happens to be a log cabin in the woods) full of creative, intelligent people from all kinds of backgrounds. We’ve got video game designers, musicians, writers, poets, a champion clay shooter, a former monk, hunters, and several veterans.
We take a seat at our desks or any of the open workspaces in the cabin. In nice weather, you’ll see us all piled on the front porch at picnic tables or in hammocks with our laptops. There's always a buzz of activity, as our departments are always communicating with each other on projects, strategizing and talking over ideas.
At lunch, we all eat together in the atrium or at the picnic tables. Then we play games like Frisbee and corn hole (our CEO is a corn hole pro, for sure) while one of our engineers rocks out on his banjo.
At the end of the day, people trickle out after 5 p.m. A lot of us stay late to work on new projects or even just to hang out. Sometimes we have game nights. When duty calls, you’ll see us staying until late into the night to finish up something for a client. We don’t complain, and most of the time, we don’t even have to be asked. We CARE about our clients because we CARE about GetUWired. Our success is everyone’s success.
GetUWired operates under a shared vision that we created as a team in 2014. Over two days and several boxes of doughnuts, the entire staff came up with a set of core values that truly reflects the spirit of GetUWired. Creating our vision as a team serves two purposes: to show the employees that their input is valued, and to create core values that actually mean something to the staff – something we can actually live by.
The leadership style at GetUWired is very much inclusive and egalitarian. The four members of our Leadership Team – CEO Melissa Allen, Founder Lee Goff, Director of Business Development Dobbin Buck, and Lead Developer Bobby Brown – work together democratically to make sure all decisions are right for every layer of the company, not just the top tier. They regularly ask for input from the staff on important issues, and they’re always eager to hear our suggestions – which get implemented more often than not.
The Leadership Team goes out of its way to make sure employees feel appreciated, honored and listened to. Our opinions matter. As we grow, they’ve been committed to making sure our culture stays the same no matter how many people we have. Other companies lose that as they grow, but we haven’t. The leaders of our company proactively tackle the issue, because they know how important our culture is to our company.
From fun quarterly events like whitewater rafting to employee-designed T-shirts to having each others' backs no matter what, GetUWired is a tribe. Every member of our team is an integral part of the GetUWired machine. We flourish personally and professionally because we get to work in a supportive, positive environment where we are encouraged to learn and try new things without fear of failure. It all starts with great leadership and ends with great results.