2017 marks the tenth year that Comalatech has been building software solutions inside the Atlassian ecosystem. A decade may have passed, but our core company values are still going strong. From the start, Comalatech has been committed to giving back to the communities we call home. But, as a distributed team that works in cities across the globe, giving back comes with its own set of challenges.
The Challenges of Giving at a Remote Company
Our team spans the planet, from Vancouver, to Brisbane, to Barcelona. With such a distributed group, giving back together is nearly impossible; we would all love to run a charity 5K together, if we weren't 17,000K apart. And, with no physical office to share, the company bake sale would be poorly attended.
The challenges of distance and timezones are no different from our day to day work, so we meet them in the same way - disciplined communication, and teamwork. For the former, we use Atlassian Confluence to create our annual giving plans, a place for every team member to advocate for charities to support. Using Confluence along with our text chat app, HipChat, we can have the conversations that other teams might have around the water cooler, or in a boardroom. As for teamwork, management has created an open supportive environment where anyone is comfortable expressing their opinions, and so people are encouraged to share their own personal causes, resulting in a diverse set of charities we support.
We're Committed to Pledge 1%
At the end of 2015, Comalatech followed the lead of tech companies like Atlassian, Sales Force, and CA Technologies to make a vow regarding our corporate giving - we committed ourselves to Pledge 1%. For our objective we chose to pledge 1% of our profits to charity. We are such big believers in this movement that we are once again committing to Pledge 1% in 2018, and we would encourage other business in our space to do the same.
As 2018 dawns we're excited to grow Comalatech even larger, each new team member bringing with them a fresh perspective and background. But, no matter who joins our team they will be sure to share our corporate values, including a commitment to giving back to our communities. We can't wait to see which new causes we're going to support next year.
Originally posted: November 28, 2017
