Closing Our Office

Three years ago, we wrote this blog post:

A few months ago, all seven of us were sitting side-by-side in a small co-working office. We had enough space for our desks and computers, but that was about it. Not exactly ideal. So, we decided to do something about it and started the search for a new office.

We went from tiny coworking spaces to a full-sized office, and spent months working to make it feel like our own. We filled it with furniture, snacks, new team members, and friends. We had company game nights and weekly Everybody Meetings and coffee breaks there. We appeared on TV there. We celebrated 10 years of being a company there. And we had a pretty fun last holiday party there.

But all good things come to an end. At the beginning of 2020, our entire team (like much of the world) started working from home, not knowing when we’d be able to return to the office. We switched to virtual meetings and game nights, perfected our at-home setups, and tried to plan for the eventual reopening of Lickability HQ.

Finally, in the early summer of this year, our team was fully vaccinated and ready to see each other again. We implemented our COVID safety policies, moved some furniture around, and invited everyone to come into the office if and when they wanted to. And while it was nice to see each other again and spend time in our old spot, it was clear by the end of the summer that the future of Lickability looked a lot different from pre-pandemic Lickability.

Adjusting to working from home after spending every day commuting into an office with the rest of your coworkers is tough. But adjusting to going back into the office after spending over a year working from home is just as hard. So as excited as we were to be able to reopen our office, we quickly found that we weren’t getting nearly as much use out of it as we used to, with a lot of the company choosing to continue working from home most days of the week.

When our lease was up in September, we decided not to renew it. Instead, we’re committing to making Lickability a great remote place to work. We’re continuing to help our team members build setups they love at home, planning virtual team lunches and other ways to stay connected with each other, and looking into options for drop-in spaces so we can meet up (or just get out of the house) occasionally. And we also just made our first fully remote hire!

It’s bittersweet to say goodbye to our office—moving into that space was such an important part of Lickability’s history, and we have so many good memories there. But this is an important step forward for us, and we’re excited to see where it takes us.