Best Places to Work: Nerdery #1

Mpls-St. Paul Biz Journal, 2010, medium business category, story by Trevor Born

Not surprisingly, a 24,000-square-foot office space filled with nearly 150 employees proudly proclaiming themselves as nerds houses some novel workplace practices.

Employees at Bloomington-based Sierra Bravo Corp., which does business as Nerdery Interactive Labs, or just The Nerdery, attract no attention when they arrive to work in shorts, T-shirts, sandals or baseball caps. If they're hungry, a free breakfast of cereal, bagels, toast and other breakfast items awaits in the kitchen.

For the sleepy, there are free bottomless quantities of energy drinks, coffee and soda.

They'll probably walk past at least one dog in the pet-friendly office en route to their cubicles - which can be closed off with partitions or totally open, depending on preference, and which contain computers customized with each employee's preference of software and operating system.

Plus there's the refrigerated beer kegs, showers, resting area, scattered chess boards, daily hacky sack circle and occasional massage therapist or dog pedicure specialist.

"We try to have a lot of the creature comforts," Nerdery President and Co-founder Luke Bucklin said. "We sometimes joke, 'What are the things that make people want to go home, and how do we fix that?' "

The quirky office atmosphere grew organically from a small group of friends who started and grew the company, said Mike Derheim, another of the three founders (along with Mike Schmidt) and chief financial officer. The biggest problem now, it seems, is how well the approach has worked.

The company has grown significantly each year since its founding in 2003, from 18 employees in 2006, to 40 in 2008, to 140 at the end of August, including 15 new hires in June and nine in July. It projects $14 million in 2010 revenue.

So while having a legion of collaborative nerds specializing in almost every design platform sitting in one office is the driving force behind the company's rapid growth, the growth also creates new problems for maintaining an organic and personal workplace culture.

"The hardest thing about growing is trying to preserve that environment where everybody feels like they're important here," Derheim said. "We've had to add a lot of process and procedure on things that used to be up to individuals to decide. We have to balance delivering to our customers and not giving too many strict guidelines."

Nerdery management takes a hands-off approach and encourages employees to shape and perpetuate the office culture. And employees have run with the opportunity.

Last summer, a software developer started the "Pentathanerd," an annual form of nerd Olympics featuring a quiz, Rubik's Cube competition, chess and foosball. Employees also organize game nights, with an after-hours board game and company-purchased pizza.

"We've even got people staying after work to give presentations on new technologies for free," said Vice President of Software Development Tom O'Neill, who is in charge of hiring. "A guy did a pair of hour-long presentations about [the iPhone platform] iOS4 just because he wants to help out and he's an evangelist for the technology."

Employees stay involved in the company's strategic direction through peer-selected committees pertaining to specific programming languages, job roles or departments - like the PHP Committee and Front-End Development Committee - that can then bring issues and ideas to management.

Managers can't serve on committees, but the company provides food for the meetings and facilitates the yearly mock-election, which, in true Nerdery fashion, is complete with campaign posters, voting booths, balloons and "I Voted" stickers.

The committee system is a scalable way to maintain inclusivity, a crucial need for a quirky company that won't stop growing.

"We sort of expect to see new faces now, because there's literally new people every week," said Production Process Manager Gillian Reynolds, who is going on two years working at The Nerdery. "But somehow, it's still tight-knit. It still feels like a family."

#1 Medium Company

First-time winner

Score: 92.04

President and co-founder: Luke Bucklin

Full-time Minnesota employees: 102

Business: Partners with advertisers, marketers, designers and others to build Web sites and social media tools

How to get a Rockin' Workplace

Tip 1: Create an attractive and pleasant environment that employees can stand spending large chunks of time in.

Tip 2: Understand employees' personal and professional goals and try to integrate those goals and help employees achieve them.

Tip 3: Promote a collegiate atmosphere where employees are personally interested in what their peers are doing and excited to collaborate.

Tip 4: Allow people to become very, very good at one thing if that's what they want to do. Don't make the singular goal be rising through the ranks of authority.

-Nerdery/Sierra Bravo team members

tborn@bizjournals.com | (612) 288-2112

Media Contact

Mark Malmberg
Communications Manager
Office: (952) 948.1211 x1069
Cell: (612) 850.3178

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