You can take it with you: #qzlife
How to maintain the culture as we grow
Quartz is moving to a new office in New York. We’re documenting it here because many of our questions apply to other startups. Our introduction explains more about what we’re up to. Follow our publication for updates.
I’ve been working at Quartz, where I write about culture and lifestyle, for almost two years. The company turned three in September 2015, so I like to think of myself as straddling the old and the new guards. I was one of the first hires during a growth spurt shortly after Quartz moved to its current office, at Park Avenue South. As we prepare to move to our new digs on Sixth Avenue, I’ve been thinking about what is important to bring with us.
When I started at Quartz, the founding editors, engineers, and multi-hyphenate employees essential to any startup would talk fondly of the early days on “Spring Street,” where Quartz had its first office in a small loft. I listened with the attention of a freshman trying to understand what the cool seniors seemed intrinsically to know: what made this place tick, what made it special, what made me—after five years of freedom freelancing for publications like New York Magazine, Vice, and Harper’s Bazaar—want to work there, and only there.
The short answer was: the people. But the people made it clear to me from the get-go that the culture they created was no accident, and it was up to me to help maintain it. Here’s how they did that.
Before I took my job at Quartz, I found its Tumblr: Quartzlife, better known as #qzlife. The site, I now know, is the beautifully photographed brainchild of Mia Mabanta, who works on marketing and revenue at Quartz.
“Quartz is a digitally native news outlet for the new global economy,” read the Tumblr’s tagline. “These are the people who build it.” I scrolled through photos of scruffy and smiling faces behind glowing laptops and office-made cocktails. They were simultaneously building something together and celebrating its growth. I wanted in.
In my first interview at Quartz, Lauren Brown—then an editor, and now the head of Quartz’s special projects—told me that Atlantic Media, Quartz’s parent company, had two core tenets, and required new hires to sign a commitment to them.
“It kind of sounds like B.S.,” I’m pretty sure she said. “But it’s real.”
Those values, which you can read here, are that we should consistently challenge ourselves intellectually, and always display what the Atlantic calls a “spirit of generosity.” As though the former were a foregone conclusion, Lauren emphasized the latter. She said her co-workers valued collaboration over competition—something special in New York media—and helped each other out when they needed it. I’m not sure if she said this overtly, but it clearly also meant: don’t be an asshole.
I’m pretty sure Sara Lerner—who oversaw Quartz’s operations in the early days, and just got a new job at Spotify—did say that overtly. I think the first email I received from Sara was addressed to the entire company, telling us whatever we were doing wasn’t so important that we couldn’t wash our own coffee mug. Sara constantly reminded us that, even as we grew, we still owned this place, so we better take care of it. She also was the queen of the desk plant, made sure our happy hours were in A+ locations, and implemented an informal Friday “creative mornings” speaker series—all of which improved our #qzlife.
Gideon Lichfield, one of Quartz’s senior editors, does this on a weekly basis. My first Friday on the job, as I wrapped up my maiden post for the site, he placed a drink on my desk. I think it was a Negroni. I didn’t know it then, but Gideon makes cocktails at the end of every Friday that he’s in the office. If anything, the ritual of it only makes it more special: a DIY tradition of commemorating the end of another week of working together.
In Slack, Quartz’s preferred method of online communication, we share cocktail photos and recipes with the London office, where science reporter Akshat Rathi has taken up the mix-master mantle in the UK. (I try to take care of drinks when Gideon is away in New York, though sometimes it’s just a beer run, which seems the very least a lifestyle reporter could do.) It’s up to us to make — and to maintain — our own traditions.
As Quartz prepares to move to our new office, I started thinking about what‘s important for us to bring with us. In an all-hands meeting this week, we heard all about the architect’s plans for our new space. While a physical place to reflect our values will be great, it’s still the people who will ultimately create the culture there. Back in 2014, Sara Lerner’s goodbye email left us with some parting wisdom, quoted directly in the list below.
I propose that we add these three tenets to our existing core values, the code of #qzlife:
Never stop pursuing quality. In your writing, designs, code, hires, decisions, lunch options. Everyone can be average, but it takes intention to be awesome.
Take ownership of the culture of Quartz. There are a million shitty places to work if that’s what you’re into, but so long as you’re here, help make it special. It doesn’t take much, I promise you.
Take care of each other. Be nice, be generous, listen to people when they have ideas and don’t be afraid to reject bad ones. If you’re in this just for you, I know a lot of douchebags running companies you can work for.
Onward!
