In three years, Asana has grown from a team of 50—occupying one office floor in San Francisco—to a team of 240 spread across three floors in our San Francisco headquarters and two other offices in New York and Dublin. Luckily, our Facilities Team has made this growth nearly painless by knowing when, where, and how to expand our space. They’ve helped teams feel less isolated and have succeeded in using our space well—from common areas to work pods, from our Cafés to our many meeting rooms.
Growth without growing pains
Avoiding growing pains has been a big focus of our Facilities Team. To make our growth feel so seamless, they used several strategies:
Involving many stakeholders
By soliciting feedback from many members of the team, our Facilities Team not only ensured buy-in across the company, but also made the process fun for the whole team. Of course, this involved many meetings and much planning, but it was also interactive: a brainstorm board on the main floor of our office was a canvas for ideas on how to keep all three floors connected, and an Asana project let everyone vote on names for our new conference rooms and espresso bar (now fondly known as Café Narwhal).
Consistent design
Consistency across spaces helps them feel connected, so we focused on a similar design across all of our spaces. By working with the same designer, Byron Kim of ASD | SKY, on layouts and furnishings—and using the same hand-lettered meeting room signs—we made sure that no matter where someone might be in any of our offices, they feel at home.
Minimal disruption
One of the largest pains of growing an office space is the disruption it can cause for a team. Construction, noise, and moving your belongings are the more obvious annoyances, but people can be disrupted if their spaces aren’t returned to a workable state. To mitigate these pains, we worked to do as much loud construction on the weekends as possible and to think about the layout of our desks and pods so that the space would feel comfortable after the changes were made.
Our space
Our office has an open floor plan, organized by team. Scattered throughout the space are several soft areas, with couches, tables, and books or board games. We’ve spread our common spaces across all three floors of our San Francisco office: Café Narwhal and the Theatre on the third floor, and Café Luna on the eighth floor. We try to reflect our culture and approach to working in our office and hope that everyone feels at home when they’re at the office (even if they need to take a nap in one of our three nap rooms!).
LA-based photographer Jonpaul Douglass recently spent a week with us, capturing every quirky corner and team interactions across the office. Based on his take on it, our space has successfully captured the commitments and values we strive to embody.
Would you like to come work with us in our growing space? We’re hiring! Learn more about our open positions here.
