Recent posts
Olark’s Accessibility Journey: how our people and our values pushed us to build better products for all
May 20th is Global Accessibility Awareness Day (GAAD)! To celebrate, we are sharing Olark’s story: how we went from finding a couple of accessibility issues in our bug tracker to developing a WCAG 2.0 AA compliant chatbox and fostering a team committed to doing more to make Olark accessible (with a lot of work ahead of us).
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From 0 to 10: Making the “right” decisions
This post is the fourth in our 10 year anniversary series. Want to catch up? Read the series intro, Olark’s origin story, and our road to a co-created culture.
Why you (yes, you, the CEO) should be talking directly to customers
In 2013, four years after co-founding Olark, I was waiting for some friends to order at a Starbucks in Mumbai when a woman approached me and commented on my Virginia Tech t-shirt. I was jet-lagged, but energized — being in a new place always gives me energy — and eager to connect with people. So, even though I was just barely finding my footing after only 8 hours in a city that couldn’t have been more different from Palo Alto, I struck up a conversation.
Starting remote employees on the right foot
I’ll never forget the second day of my first remote job. The first day was the usual — signing all the things, attending all the things, logging into all the things. But when the second day arrived, I had no idea what to do.
From 0 to 10: Our bumpy (but worth it!) road to a co-created culture
This post is the third in our 10 year anniversary series. Want to catch up? Read the series intro and Olark’s origin story.
Dos and don’ts for building a remote team: Lessons from a hiring manager
Most of us have had at least one bad hiring experience — a recruiter who got too aggressive (or, conversely, ghosted), an interviewer who showed up unprepared, or even an unpleasant post-hire moment when we realized the job wasn’t what we’d been led to believe. But as someone who’s been part of this process for more than a decade, I’m still shocked by some of my friends’ and colleagues’ hiring horror stories. Who are these people, I wonder, who are so blasé about hiring? Do they not understand the stakes?