Moving Density to in-person

Today we announced that we’re transitioning Density to an in-person company. Below is the note we shared with our team.

Team,

Today, we're making a significant change to the way we work: we are consolidating our team and transitioning Density to an in-person company. We will be co-locating key roles and functions in our offices in San Francisco, NYC, Paris, and Syracuse.

As part of this change, 36 Denizens will receive an offer to relocate to San Francisco. 18 team members will be allowed to continue working remotely, and 15 roles are being eliminated. We will also open a number of backfills in San Francisco, CA.

Why in-person?

There are two reasons we’re moving to in-person.

First and foremost, this is what we do. Density builds products that measure the physical use of buildings for in-person companies. To best serve our customers, we need to live the same reality, not only imagine it. We do that by being in-office and using our own products day in and day out. If we love to use the products we build, our customers will love them, too.

Second, in-person is part of how we win. All of our competitors run remote teams. By contrast, in-person teams build higher trust, have lower coordination costs, and design better products. The best evidence of this is the sense of acceleration you have immediately after a team offsite. This becomes our baseline. 

Transitions

It’s not lost on me that requiring someone to move to the Bay Area is a big ask. Even though we’re offering relocation support and compensation adjustment, moving may not be possible or desirable for everyone. There will be a number of talented, hardworking team members who leave as a part of this transition. 

For them and their families, we are providing severance, COBRA coverage, and in some cases additional time to transition their work (should they be willing). We will also release a version of this message publicly to encourage other companies to recruit affected Denizens.

To those staying, this transition may be hard but it will make us more resilient, more focused, and extremely hard to beat.

Andrew