Welcome New Remote Employees with a Personalized Video

Successfully onboarding and welcoming your new employees is an important challenge. And when you’re hiring remotely — as we are, temporarily, during the COVID-19 crisis — that challenge is heightened. This month, two new employees joined Atomic Object’s Ann Arbor office as part of our Accelerator program. I wanted to find a way to replicate […]

Atomic Welcomes Two Developers

Earlier this year, Atomic gained two developers — one in Grand Rapids and one in Ann Arbor. I asked each of them to share a little bit about themselves and their favorite things about Atomic so far. Anjali Munasinghe Anjali is no stranger to Atomic; she spent the summer of 2019 working as an intern […]

Evolving Onboarding to Play Nice With Our Brains

Onboarding is complicated because new hires need to take on massive amounts of information coming at them from multiple vectors. You need to get the new hire inculcated with knowledge about culture, performance, and how your business runs. The new hire wants to understand expectations, their team, and the responsibilities and limits of their position. […]

Creating an Equitable, Respectful, Values-Based Hiring Process

I’ve spent some time recently restructuring our hiring process for software developers. The goal of this project could probably be copy+pasted by any tech company actively hiring developers these days: We want to hire competent, talented, and diverse software developers to be great Makers at Atomic Object. To accomplish this, we need to ensure that […]

How We’re Hosting our Remote Company Standup Using Zoom

Every workday at 10 a.m., Atoms gather for a company standup meeting. We stand in a big circle, sharing updates on current projects, company milestones, or social events. We also use this time to present Protons & Neutrons. Afterward, we all take a big stretch and go about our day. Though short, this ritual is an […]

How We Practice Open-book Management at Atomic

I recently got to hear Jack Stack tell his inspirational story of working for, purchasing, and turning around a failing division of International Harvester. The new entity that he helped create, SRC Holdings Corporation, is 100% Employee-Owned and still thriving today. Jack helped enable the turnaround at SRC by taking the time and effort to […]

Atomic Welcomes a Delivery Lead, Marketing Specialist & Developer

Last Fall, Atomic gained a Delivery Lead and Developer in Grand Rapids and a Marketing Specialist in Ann Arbor. Now that they’ve settled in, I asked them about themselves and what it’s like working at Atomic. Kaitlin Diemer Kaitlin is the newest Delivery Lead in Atomic’s Grand Rapids office, where she’s been working on a […]

Three Crucial Times To Gather Client Feedback on a Project

The relentless push to improve is core to our culture at Atomic Object. We spend a lot of time focused on professional development and introspecting about how we can better develop software products. Over the last few years, we’ve also been sharpening our approach to gathering client feedback — we believe it’s essential to our […]

Who is the Modal Atom?

Planet Money ran a podcast earlier this year on “The Modal American.” The concept focused on evaluating the mode of a population instead of the average. For their analysis, NPR grouped Americans together based on characteristics like age, sex, income, etc. After that, they identified the most common occurrence for their set of characteristics. The concept […]

Connecting Values to Behavior with a ‘Standard of Performance’

We often refer to Atomic as a values-driven organization. We are loud and proud about our value mantras. We give recognition within the organization when someone exhibits our values. We are careful to hire people who are aligned with our values. But how do you consistently and comprehensively tie together values and behavior? How can […]

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