At Metal Toad we cherish our company culture. Learn more about what we think is important in building a strong culture.
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The importance of teamwork in the workplace
We live in a world full of technology, new applications, new functions, different types of entertainment... All projects becoming very successful and evolving more and more.
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My Promotion to UX Designer
I’ve been working at Metal Toad for almost eight months, I joined the company as a Graphic Designer and Video Editor, and now I’ve been promoted to UX Designer. In my new role, my responsibility is to solve business and user problems with elegant and intuitive UX design solutions.
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Takeaways from 2020
This was a bizarre year that delivered a mix of stress and opportunities. I found new hobbies, new tricks for remote working, and new ways of managing business. Below are some highlights of 2020:
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How Insperity made Metal Toad's Remote-First Work Policy possible
Recently, Metal Toad announced its Remote-First Work Policy.
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Great Work Is The Floor
Account management is often considered a branch of sales, but in reality great account management involves your entire organization.
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Metal Toad launches Remote-First Work Policy
“If you want the best talent, limiting yourself to the talent that’s available in a single city (let alone a single country) is shooting yourself in the foot.
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Value of Values
Metal Toad is a values based business. I’m not sure if this makes us unique within the software developer community but it does make us an outlier within the organizations that I’ve worked for over the years.
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Effects of Siloing
In my first blog on this topic, I covered the root causes of siloing. This time around, I am going to provide a few positive and negative effects that siloing can produce, starting with productivity.
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How to Run a Great Hackathon (and Why You Should Do It)
Working at Metal Toad is all about innovation. It’s why I was drawn to this place—a place that celebrates the unusual, gets excited about new ideas, and constantly seeks out the latest emerging tech.
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The Giving Toad: Living Our Values During the Holidays
One of my favorite parts of working at Metal Toad is the spirit of generosity here. Everyone is always eager to help others—whether responding to a fellow Toad’s question in our Slack #help channel, offering clients an idea for optimizing their business, or volunteering in the community.
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Silos in Tech
What is siloing? In order to better discuss how engineers and teams become siloed, as well as the positive and negative effects it can have on a team, I should define what I mean when I refer to a siloed engineer and a siloed team.
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How To Be a Rebel at Work
I saw the What Rebels Want illustration make its way across Twitter recently, and it immediately resonated with me. This illustration perfectly captures how I feel and how I work, and what I strive for in my roles.
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What is Culture?
At our company we are known for having a great culture. You can feel it when you walk in: people are at ease, they obviously enjoy what they do and the people they work with. But what drives a great culture? What continues to sustain it and how do you know it when you get there?
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Discovery is Like Onboarding
I recently started working at Metal Toad. Metal Toad has one of the best onboarding processes I have ever experienced — thorough documentation, there are more people happy to help me than I can count
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My daily use of the Five Levels of Leadership
Over a year ago, I read John Maxwell’s “The Five Levels of Leadership”. Since then, I’ve grown increasingly reliant on it’s simple model.
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Open Source HR, because we need this.
Uber, Google, Yahoo, Amazon...it's hard to find a tech giant that hasn't been in the news for an employee relations crisis. HR has always been a challenging career, but lately, it's felt damn near impossible.
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DevOpsDays PDX
Last week, I attended my first DevOpsDays PDX!
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Why Culture is So Crucial at Metal Toad
Since the start of my finance and accounting internship at Metal Toad, the first thing that I noticed is its unique and influential culture. The combination of friendly staff and a cozy working environment make Metal Toad a community-like company.
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The Importance of Tchotchkes
One of the most interesting things about agency culture is the freedom for employees to show their personality. To be quite honest, I think there is no better example of this than someone’s tchotchkes.
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"It Matters”: Design, Leadership, and Living By a Different Code
Recently as a leadership exercise, our COO Tim Winner asked the leadership team to “come up with the title of your book.” This book, he explained, would be about who we would become as leaders 20 years from now.
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The Vulnerable Leader
I am scared. I am scared to write this and I am intimidated because my writing will be out in public to be read, critiqued and, in my mind, judged. I am nervous because this is real and it is vulnerable and guess what… I’m telling you, and myself, that it is okay.
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Why I Love Being of Service at Metal Toad
It may be selfish, I’ll admit it — but I love pleasing others through acts of service. While I work hard and don’t derive my self-confidence or self-worth from it, I certainly derive a whole lot of happiness from it! And who doesn’t want to be happy?
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Love What You Do and Who You Do It For
Hi. My name is Dan and I am a pessimist and a Senior Software Engineer, hoping to be promoted to a Junior Software Engineer one day.
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Four Pillars of Leadership
Over the years I’ve been asked on many occasions, what is leadership?
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The Power of a Gift
When the Client Services department was formed earlier this year, one of our key objectives was to create client magic. Client magic is defined as gifts, tokens, and authentic correspondence that delights our clients and ensure they feel the Metal Toad love.
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Leading the Ethical Software Movement: Integrity
"Our brand promise, Leading the Ethical Software Movement, highlights how Metal Toad advocates an ethical approach to creating technology and doing business.
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Employee Liberation and the Impact of Good Company Culture
You know what’s sad to me? It’s sad that most people will never know how liberating it is to come to terms with your unhappiness, and to quit your sh*tty job because of it. My moment of clarity came on a bus.
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Great Customer Service or Great Craft?
If you were to go out and buy a new piece of furniture, would you prefer a store that offered a great product and treated you poorly or a store that provided a great shopping experience, but poorly made furniture?
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Metal Toad announced as one of the Best 100 Companies to Work for in Oregon!
We are excited to share that Oregon Business Magazine recently acknowledged Metal Toad, based on our application and employee survey, as one of the 2017 100 Best Companies to Work for in Oregon.
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Open Letter to My Future Hire
Dear You--
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Saying No & Behaving No
My kid is a year and a half old. She is accumulating language at a startling rate. A few weeks ago, she started saying “no.” No has quickly become her favorite word.
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The Currency of Culture
At the end of the day we need to operate viable businesses, and we all know there are many ways to get there. So much is said about culture and its impact on an overall business that many are wondering if they should care or invest in culture? What is the ROI? What is the currency of culture?
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Love Should Not Be a Four-Letter Word for Software Development Companies
Sometimes in high tech companies, the focus is mainly on the numbers (financial, hours, etc.), but that really misses the fact that human beings – no matter how logical they are – are motivated by the heart.
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Burn all the Foosball Tables
A colleague of mine attended a marketing seminar. One of the speakers, a Senior Executive, made the comment that she would not do business with a vendor that had a foosball table in their offices.
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Thank You Frontline Software Development Managers
While I could applaud many of the excellent VP and CTOs in technology, I would like us all to take a moment to give thanks to some unsung heros…. The Frontline Software Development Managers.
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Creating Culture
A few weeks ago, I joined some of my Toads at the first TechTown Change Agents, an event put on by Portland Development Commission to talk about how we ca
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How a Toad Writes a Blog Post
“Don't procrastinate. If you want to blog, then blog.” - Fritz Chery
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A Place for Ideas
When people think of Metal Toad, they immediately think of technology thought leadership and a strong devotion to education and outreach.
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Interns: Instantaneous Toadness
I love our interns. Bringing groups (or individuals) of new minds into our lilypad is one of my favorite parts of my job. Our commitment to our internship program is something that I routinely bring up in my social and professional circles.
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Flying Toads!
For the second straight year, Toads filled the Oregon skies. Not like in P.T. Anderson’s award-winning film Magnolia, but more like tiny dots of bravery speckled throughout the horizon.
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Metal Toad Among Oregon's Best Workplaces
It is with great humility that I serve as Metal Toad spokesman in a very proud moment. Oregon Business magazine has acknowledged Metal Toad as one of the 2015 Top Companies to Work for in Oregon.
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B2B Communication. By Writing on Windows. With Markers.
“At Metal Toad, we do things differently.”
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The Toads Know How to Throw a Party
On December 4th, 2014, the Toads hosted an Open House to celebrate our recent move into the fourth floor of the historic Yeon Building in downtown Portland.
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A Retrospective: The Metal Toad Summer Picnic
On September 12th, 2014, Metal Toad overtook downtown Portland. Well, maybe not “took over,” but the sentiment was there.
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Money Can't Buy You Culture
Recently, I have been asked questions about Metal Toad’s culture. People want me to explain what our culture is, how we got it and, for that matter, how we keep it?
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Sound "Bytes" from the 2014 Digital PM Summit
With the dust settled following the 2014 Digital PM Summit in Austin, it's time to take a moment to refelct on another year of great keynote sessions, enjoyable conversations with like-minded PMs, well-attended afterparties, and a fun host city.
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DC Comics & Hip Hop
Many years ago I got into skateboarding, soon after, that lead to hip hop. Something about the two seemed to be synonymous around that time, or perhaps it was just my area (Metro Detroit).
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A Symbol of Culture
Cultural anthropologists in the 60s started a study known as “Symbolic and Interpretive Anthropology”. These few found the connections between objects of significance and the larger culture around them (notably: Mary Douglas, Victor Turner, and Clifford Geertz).
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Wait...you do what for a living? My life as a Metal Toad Office Concierge
I must admit, I do have a very unique job. After all, have you ever heard of an Office Concierge? What I have learned since I started is that this position is definitely one of a kind and I love it!
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What I Learned Having Lunch with My First Grader
My wife and I decided because Lucas worked so hard on his fall school play "The Garden Show" in which Lucas played the Alien Grandfather, we would take lunch to him at school. What we did not expect is that we would be having lunch with the whole class.
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Leadership Lessons I've Learned as CEO
I recently answered a question on Quora about the characteristics of great CEOs.
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The Successful Digital PM, Part 5C: Retention
The final post in my Successful Digital PM series is also both the trickiest for me to write and the one that has been the most eye opening to me as I've written it. Retention of all employees is critical to keeping an organization running like a well-oiled machine, and given the integrated role of a PM across projects, this is doubly true. Metal Toad hasn't always gotten it right, but we've learned a lot along the way. Below are some things I've learned and strategies we employ at Metal Toad to achieve success.
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Always Learning, Always Sharing
It's always been my motto to never stop learning. I also think it is important to share what you've learned with others. I don't think this could be more important then it is as a developer.
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Gender Diversity in Tech Requires Applicant Diversity
I would love our company to show more gender diversity, but where are the female applicants?
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Web Agencies Need Code Review
Web design and development agencies are lacking in code review practices, and our collective clients are suffering as a result.
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The Survey For People Who Make Websites, 2010
The annual Survey for People Who Make Websites from our friends at A List Apart has gone up, and I encourage you to take ten minutes to participate.