What two days in Brandenburg taught me about Goodpatch
What better way to get to know your soon-to-be colleagues than to spend two days in the woods of Brandenburg with them?
The yearly Goodpatch offsite took place two weeks before my official start at the Berlin office. So even before my first day as Design Strategist, I had the opportunity to get to know my colleagues. The situation itself could have been somewhat cringy since I did not really know anyone yet. But as you might have already expected, the opposite was true. The weekend turned out to be the perfect kick-off for my new position and I learned three very important things about Goodpatch.
We work with a purpose
Work gets really fun when your projects mean something to you. Many Goodchies care about creating a more sustainable work environment and want their work to be both meaningful and have a positive impact. At the offsite, we put together a list of sustainable dream clients — think Ecosia, GLS Bank, or SIRPLUS.
What excites me most is that this list wasn’t just created and then forgotten. Ever since, we’ve been connecting with and inviting interesting people over to our office to exchange ideas on how to focus our work on sustainability topics more. So, if your mission is to make the world a better place and you’ve received a coffee invitation from us, you’re most probably on that list.
We embrace diversity
I doubt that Bad Belzig has ever been as diverse as it was on the weekend of October 18th. First off, the Berlin, Paris and Munich offices all came together. We even had Keika from the Tokyo office join us who squeezed the offsite into her Europe holiday.
It was also fantastic to realize how truly diverse we are within the teams. Not only do we count 20 nationalities within our 40 person team — currently, there are more gals than guys working at Goodpatch. This is fantastic considering how challenging it is for the tech scene to overcome the gender gap.
Karaoke is a thing
If you know Goodpatch, this is not news to you. Karaoke is an essential puzzle piece to any Goodpatch event. Not only did Sam, our Karaoke master, bring a Karaoke machine to Bad Belzig, he also brought wigs, strange musical instruments, and even a little disco ball.
I was a bit sceptical at the beginning, but it didn’t take long until I found myself giving my best performance of “Westerland” by Die Ärzte. (It’s a great Karaoke song, highly recommended.)
All in all, I’m still stunned by how welcome I felt in this completely new environment from second one. Also, I knew everyone’s names and favorite guilty pleasure pop song after only one weekend. How great is that?
