By Michael Russo and Emma Anderson Beavers
No matter where you are on any given day — whether it’s the gym, a family holiday gathering, or the workplace — every human wants and deserves a sense of belonging. At the same time, as humans, we all come in all different shapes and sizes. This means finding that sense of belonging, especially in the workplace where equity has been historically absent, can be harder for some folks than others.
Chronosphere recognizes this very real human challenge, which is why our goal from day one has been to create a DEIB (Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Belonging)-focused workplace where nobody feels less than (or more than!) anyone else. We’ve found a great way to work toward that goal is by bringing people together in a place where they can share experiences and create human connections — when we understand another person’s life point of view, we gain empathy, respect, and, ideally, an equitable work environment.
In the spirit of experience-sharing, and in honor of Pride Month, in early June we created a Chronosphere ERG (Employee Resource Group) in support of our LGBTQIA+ employee community. Over the course of the month of June, the (fondly nicknamed) Chrono-Pride ERG held a series of interactive events, shared historical facts, and more. As it turned out, this ERG was also timed with the disturbing Supreme Court ruling that was handed down, limiting long-held LGBTQ protections. On the positive side, it provided a timely forum to gather and discuss the impact of this historical reversal in human rights.
As we mentioned, our Pride ERG kickoff was very active. There was a documentary to watch: Stonewall Forever – A Documentary about the Past, Present and Future of Pride. There was complimentary Pride-themed Chronosphere swag to order. There was a Slack hashtag to follow.
If your company is interested in standing up its own Pride ERG, here are three getting-started ideas all packaged up for you to take and run with it. The more Pride ERGs in this world, the better!
The most important thing to do, and a great place to start, is to plan a venue where people can both speak and listen from the heart. Every person in the Chrono-Pride ERG has had different experiences that have shaped who they are and how they forge ahead in life. Their experience may be formed by an era. Or a family member who wasn’t open or understanding. Or maybe just a later, or earlier, age when they understand everything about themselves. In our case we shared all of this panel-style, with six people on Zoom (remember we are a 100% remote company, so meetings are virtual). Maybe your style will be a round table where topics are floated and people raise their hands to chime in. Or a company-wide live Slack chat. Whatever the format, the key is to get the conversation started.
It generated a wide range of experiences, which reinforced the diversity within the ERG. Here is some of what was shared:
Question: What was your first Pride?
“At my first Pride I was lucky enough to march in the New York Pride Parade. I had come out to my Mom that year and she reached out to a friend who was marching with her community center that focused on LGBTQIA+ support. It felt like a massive celebration of self and love with more joyous people than I’ve seen since.”
— Emma Anderson Beavers, TA Ops Manager at Chronosphere
“I felt more like an observer. I was unsure of how or where I would fit into the crowd or the celebration because I had not fully come to terms with my own sexuality at this point in my life, and I didn’t know if I really belonged there, but I came to realize by the end of the event that none of this mattered — at the end of the day, it was all about being part of a movement in support for the safety and rights of the LGBTQIA+ community and celebrating the pride and love everyone has for living and being their true and authentic selves.”
— Michael Russo, Executive Business Partner at Chronosphere
Question: In the context of the work environment, what does Pride mean to you?
“Once upon a time work was a place where members of the community were not safe; it’s still a struggle for some members.”
— Parker Trewin, Head of Corp Communications
“In my career growth, I’d always started at new companies instinctually feeling uncertain of how open and honest I could be about myself when sharing personal aspects of my life or interacting with colleagues, and worried how others might react, but being at a company like Chronosphere that offers the kind of support and benefits we offer for LGBTQIA+ individuals, and with such a heavy focus on DEIB, this innately helped me feel more comfortable with being myself at work, knowing that this company has my back.”
— Michael Russo
Question: What does it mean to be an ally?
“A crucial part of being an ally is continuously standing up for friends and family in social situations. Oftentimes, the burden of explanation and education falls on the LGBTQIA+ person. Taking the time to sit down and have hard conversations will emphasize your support of the community and push the needle forward within your own circles.”
— Kiran Girish, Engineer at Chronosphere
For our first Pride month, we really wanted to drive the energy across our employees. One thing is certain – our company loves emojis. Especially special emojis. And, being a remote-first company, people also love to change up their Zoom backgrounds to freshen things up. And we’re a supportive lot, so we also love to change up Linkedin backgrounds to put support of our ERGs on blast beyond the company walls.
Knowing all of this, we created Zoom and LinkedIn backgrounds that employees could use to show their support, and we also created a whole new array of emojis. It really made for a fun and rainbow-filled, Happy Pride month.
We also created spotlight emails on the lesser-known pivotal figures in LGBTQIA+ history, including the first openly gay official elected for office, the person who organized the march on Washington, and the lesbian drag king who threw the first punch at Stonewall.
We also decided it was important to drum up support for important philanthropic organizations. In our case, we partnered with Percent Pledge to share their portfolio of causes that support the LGBTQIA+ community. During each communication and during each event folks were encouraged to donate.
Supporting our LGBTQIA+ employee community isn’t a once-a-year thing and neither should yours. We’re already looking at future initiatives for Chrono-Pride to happen in the eleven months in between Pride Months.
Probably the most important takeaway is to do everything in your power to get as many people as possible from your company engaged — even if it’s just one thing: use a Pride emoji, watch a 90-minute documentary, listen in on a panel discussion where folks are sharing experiences. Creating these human connections actually goes far beyond a specific ERG’s focus: We’re all better humans — and employees — when we understand and respect where everyone else is coming from. Don’t just take it from us, there are studies that show, “When you put a variety of individuals together in the same room, you’ll get different perspectives and opinions that can benefit your business. This will allow your business to grow in a number of ways.”
As Parker put it in a Pride LinkedIn post: “Pride is about celebrating yourself and the wonderful uniqueness in each of us. This day, this month, this year. This life.” You can read the whole post here. It’s a pretty great read.
We are already looking forward to and thinking about Pride Month 2024 and the many ways we’ll inspire Chronosphere team members to support, listen, and share. If this post is helpful to you and your efforts in starting a Pride ERG, please give us a share and tag us on LinkedIn. Or better yet, give us a shout back. Feedback will only make us better.
When it comes to birthday celebrations, we like to make a big deal when Chronosphere turns another year older. Each year we chronicle that trip around the sun with an annual blog — and when stitched together, these blogs reflect our journey from a fledgling startup with co-founders who cut their teeth in observability to a hyper-growth company with hundreds of employees located around the world. Here’s a quick snapshot of how far we’ve come and then we’ll get into where we’re going:
This brings us to Chronosphere’s fourth anniversary, which we just celebrated! As we steam toward our half-decade mark, and through a period of global economic uncertainty, we are fired up and more focused than ever on providing value for our customers. We recognize that what our customers need now more than ever is efficiency gains from all aspects of their business — and that they can achieve this by controlling costs and improving developer productivity.
We know this to be true because we’ve seen it first hand: We’ve helped a financial services customer improve availability of its platform by 64x; save 14,000 hours of engineering time annually; and cut costs by $5 million annually. We helped Abnormal Security aggregate 98% of their metrics, which resulted in being 10x more cost-effective than the alternative.
And our customer Robinhood is saving millions each year on infrastructure and has also improved availability of its observability platform to at least 99.9%. Analysts like Forrester Research are saying the same — The Total Economic Impact™️ of Chronosphere shows we deliver 165% ROI for our customers and reduce critical incidents 75%!
How are we in such a strong position to help our customers get through tough economic headwinds? We continue to hit milestones that bolster our team, company, and cloud native observability offering year after year.
This January, we raised another $115 million as part of an additional Series-C funding round, bringing our total funding to $343 million and increasing valuation to $1.6 billion. Funding is always welcome news because it allows the business to continue to grow and innovate. When the funding market is tight, and the economy is uncertain, it’s all the more meaningful — it signals investors are bullish on us and our future is bright! All of our existing investors doubled down in this round, and we welcomed in new investors such as Sangeen Zeb, who is a Partner at GV (formerly Google Ventures.)
Revenue. With 2.5x annual recurring revenues (ARR) growth and a net revenue retention (NRR) of over 140% in FY23, Chronosphere continues to be on pace to become one of the fastest-growing B2B SaaS companies. It’s amazing to be sharing such positive financial updates, especially when we’re in a tougher economy.
Built-out workforce. Our sprawling group selfie from last year’s birthday celebration was pretty stunning at the time. Our 200ish employees filled the camera frame and we were buzzing about how much we had grown. Last year (year four) we grew by another 50% and have surpassed 300 employees!
International growth. Some very exciting — and also bittersweet — news. We’ve expanded our presence from two countries to seven in two short years. The downside is this includes having my co-founder and best mate, Rob Skillington, move halfway across the world to open the Australia office.
Personal impacts aside, this expansion is positive news for Pacific Rim customers, and, thanks to Zoom and our remote-first structure, Rob and I can still collaborate seamlessly and daily and also celebrate Australia Day together! Here’s a shot of us doing the Tim Tam slam over Zoom for the entire company’s enjoyment. Yes, the Tim Tam slam is a competition, and you can see from the timestamp who won (ahem)!
Chronosphere and Google Cloud drive cloud native adoption: We are thrilled about our close partnership with Google Cloud; a lot can happen when two cloud native pioneers join forces! We recently shared the news about our strategic partnership, which encompasses both GTM and engineering initiatives.
Because Google Kubernetes Engine (GKE) is one of the platforms Chronosphere is built on, we are a natural choice for GKE environments. Our customers have already benefited from this partnership. Take Snap Inc. as a great example. Since adopting Chronosphere and Google, Snap has achieved 99.9 percent availability, reduced alerts by over 90 percent, and cut data volume more than 50 percent.
Industry partnerships continue to grow: AWS has also joined the Chronosphere team as a strategic partner. Together with AWS, we are helping our customers gain full visibility into their cloud native environments from infrastructure (ECS/EKS) to applications (microservices).
When Rob and I set out to launch Chronosphere four years ago, it was a top priority to build a great company … and a great company needs a great culture. We wanted Chronosphere to be a place where people show up eager to dig in and excited to learn. We wanted it to be a place where interactions are kind and egos don’t get in the way of building great things.
We also wanted to be a company that offers benefits that help keep life in balance. My family just welcomed our second child into the world and I know first-hand how challenging it can be to balance the rigors of home life with work life — and startups are notoriously hectic. We strive to be a company that makes that balancing act easier.
I am blown away by the recognition for the positive company culture we’ve received this year. Among the awards we’ve received are for Best Company for Women, Company for Diversity, Perks and Benefits, CEO (👋), and Company Outlook. We’ve also been featured on Otta’s Rocket List.
Being the kind of company that gets recognition for having a positive culture is something we make part of everyday life here at Chronosphere. As our Global Head of People & Talent, Gabriela Serret-Campos, puts it, business-first means people-first.
To know me is to know that getting together as a company and in-person is a top priority — something the pandemic made challenging if not impossible during our early years. This year we celebrated our anniversary in a way that was nearest and dearest to my heart: A series of in-person meetups across the country and around the world.
It means a lot to me to see our team members off Zoom, in-person, and enjoying time together in real life groups of five, ten, and more.
I’m incredibly grateful for every single person — from our customers to investors to partners to team members — that’s been a part of the Chronosphere journey. I know that we’re set to achieve greatness as we push ourselves to prove that “impossible is nothing” (one of my favorite company values)
Then: A mere two years ago, Chronoversary celebrations happened over Zoom.
Now: We’re gathering in-person to attend ballgames, play darts, and flex our Jenga skills!
The recent tumultuous cycle of layoffs and uncertainty for tech companies over the last six months has driven home one particular point: for People teams across the industry, the success of the business correlates to the wellbeing of people on the team.
While the pre-pandemic trend was focusing on lavish perks to stand out from the crowd, in today’s climate, operational efficiency is more important than ever (by the way, cutting costs — for observability — just happens to be Chronosphere’s thing). At Chronosphere, we’re aware that the health of our business correlates to the health of our team. Being sustainable with our internal practices and offerings is what has allowed us to cultivate a truthful, fulfilling workplace experience (and win some awards along the way.)
It’s not about chasing after those lavish perks and benefits (although we do have some pretty neat ones) and throwing up the “people-first” flag. It’s about continuously finding ways to support the business, and in turn our team members, in a way that feels authentic, sustainable, and forward-thinking. We like to think about it as a routine health check — not just a one-time thing.
What do we have to show for the success of our approach? Just earlier this month, Chronosphere was recognized for 5 new Comparably awards:
🏆 Best Company Outlook
🏆Best Places to Work in New York
🏆Best Product & Design Teams
🏆Best Marketing Teams
🏆Best HR Teams
Let’s take a dive into what each of these awards mean, in connection with how we think about our workplace.
Chronosphere was recognized on this year’s Best Company Outlook awards list for small/midsize companies. According to Comparably, this list recognizes companies with the brightest futures. Using sentiment rankings by current employees, the award speaks to how excited our team members are about going into work each day, and how they feel about the future success of Chronosphere.
“Overall, I’m very happy at Chronosphere. Great company with a strong and real culture, a great leadership team, and an even better outlook for the future.” – Anonymous Chronospherian, Marketing team
In such a tumultuous time, we feel grateful to be able to slow down, be responsible with our growth, and make sure our teams can work well together. We’ve already built a team of highly-skilled and determined individuals, alongside a value-driven company and now we’re focused on optimizing and supporting what we have.
Shout out to our New York Chronosphereians! For this award, employees anonymously ranked ~20 different workplace culture categories from compensation and leadership, to work-life balance, professional development opportunities, and more.
Although Chronosphere is a remote-first organization, the biggest of our three hubs is located in SoHo, Manhattan. This combination of a remote-first model and available offices means that Chronosphereians are supported to work where they prefer, but can also enjoy monthly hub events with their teammates. We like to think of this option as a great way for folks to show up every day in a way that works for them.
Comparably’s Best Product and Design Teams award is derived from anonymous employee ratings over the past 12 months in both the product and design teams – and Chronosphere made it to top 10 on the list.
If we’re going to talk about product and design, it only feels right to bring up the baked goods analogy.
Shortly after Chronosphere was born in 2019, our Head of Product at Chronosphere, Jeff Cobb, created the best analogy for how we think of our purpose-built solution and product. Like a baked good, there has to be a quality foundation (the cake) that can be built out into a delightful outcome (the frosting and decorations.) In a way, it’s how we think about our team, too!
Our product and design teams go above-and-beyond in innovating and collaborating to create a meaningful and exciting customer experience.
For the Best Marketing Teams award, Chronosphere made it onto the list of 50 companies that are recognized by their employees for an outstanding team experience.
Just last year, you could count our small-yet-mighty Marketing team on just ten fingers. Today, the team has tripled in size, and quadrupled in creativity — as they continuously look for new ways to establish Chronosphere’s presence as the leader in cloud native observability.
Finally, let’s talk about this Human Resources award. As mentioned in the introduction of this blog — a big part of what makes Chronosphere so successful is how we treat our outstanding team — with the right benefits, opportunities, compensation, and balance.
To be receiving this award by our anonymous HR experts, who have worked together to craft Chronosphere’s experience, just goes to show how much we believe in our own mission.
Sometimes, tough times call for gratitude. Although we’re just a few months into the year, we’re already thinking about how we can make it the best one yet — for our business, back down to the individuals that collectively make up this great company.
In the meantime, stay up to date on all of the exciting things happening in Chronosphere’s world.
Happy Women’s History Month!
March offers a moment to reflect on past and present issues that women and allies face in the fight for gender equality. It’s also important to recognize all of the social, economic, cultural, and political achievements of women all over the world. We couldn’t be more excited to reflect and celebrate!
Last year, Chronosphere tackled 2023’s International Women’s Day theme, #BreakingtheBias (take a look at how we contributed to the conversation here to see co-founder and CEO of Chronosphere Martin Mao, alongside his family, posing for #BreaktheBias).
While last year’s theme was “Break the Bias,” this year’s theme is all about embracing equity. But firstly, let’s talk about what equity means.
While equality and equity sound similar, as defined by the organizers of this year’s International Women’s Day: “Equality is the goal, and equity is the means to get there.”
Equality means offering everyone the same experiences and opportunities, and equity is supporting the unique circumstances of each individual, so that joining and enjoying that experience is possible. Together, this creates equal outcomes.
In honor of embracing equity, we decided to get the scoop on what equity means from our teammates at Chronosphere.
Stay tuned as we continuously update this portion of this blog every week of March with a new video-style spotlight, and hear from a few Chronospherians on what “embracing equity” means to them – from Chronosphere’s People Strategy, Talent Ops, and Culture, Gabriela Serret Campos, to our CEO and co-founder, Martin Mao, and others!
Gabriela Serret-Campos is Chronosphere’s Global Head of People and Talent. She enjoys shaping environments where people can bring their best selves to work and feel empowered. As a single mom of two, she is passionate about connecting people to purpose, to create measurable impact.
To Gabriela, embracing equity means: “acknowledging that there isn’t always a level playing field, owning our unique responsibilities and recognizing our own privilege.”
Listen to the full chat with Gabriela to learn more about embracing equity!
Martin Mao is Chronosphere’s co-founder and CEO. Prior to co-founding Chronosphere, Martin worked on an observability solution at Uber.
When asked what embracing equity means to him, Martin responded: “The way the world is, perhaps isn’t equitable. And, there are particular things out there, like pay disparity between men and women, that exist. So, we’re looking at ways in which we can help in those situations.”
Watch the interview to hear his full response!
Lori Lipscomb is Chronosphere’s Regional Vice President of Sales. She is also a mom, wife, caregiver, dog walker, therapist, wine enthusiast, foodie, athlete, and explorer.
For Lori, embracing equity means: “having empathy, being accountable and taking action. It’s about acknowledging that we all come from different backgrounds, experiences and opportunities. It’s important for me to consistently look for uniquenesses and differences to broaden my perspective.”
Watch Lori’s full spotlight to learn more on what embracing equity looks like to her!
Matt Mihic is Chronosphere’s Global Head of Engineering.
To Matt, embracing equity: “means making sure that you’re looking out for hiring, bringing on women, particularly in leadership roles, and that you are supporting, developing and building the next generation of leaders.”
Take a peek at the full spotlight video to hear more!
Rachel Dines is Chronosphere’s Head of Product and Developer Marketing.
When asked what embracing equity means to her, Rachel said: “To me, embracing equity means giving everyone the tools that they need to get to the level they need and want to get to. And, that doesn’t mean giving everyone the same set of tools – because we all come from different backgrounds, different experiences, different educations, and different opportunities.”
Watch the full spotlight with Rachel to hear everything she has to say on embracing equity!
As we wrap up this year’s Women’s History Month at Chronosphere, we look forward to finding ways that we can continue contributing to the conversation (and for what next year’s theme may bring.)
In the meantime, keep up with the latest at Chronosphere, and our weekly blog posts!
By Lenesto Page, Emma Anderson Beavers, Serrita Rubino, Kyausha Lewis, and Amber Nobles
Happy Black History Month from Blacksphereians!
Blacksphereians is Chronosphere’s newest Employee Network. Founded by nine Chronosphereians across different departments, we’ve come together for one mission: To create a safe space to celebrate Black and African American history and culture, while learning alongside our advocates and allies within Chronosphere.
Black History Month is an important time to recognize the remarkable achievements of Black Americans throughout U.S history and today. It’s also the perfect moment to step back and reflect on the roles that each and every one of us play in establishing an inclusive environment, both inside and outside of the workplace.
We’re excited to celebrate Black History Month here at Chronosphere because “it provides the needed emphasis on showcasing the importance of African Americans in society,” says Serrita Rubino, a founding member and Technical Account Manager.
Additionally, “As a remote-first company, it can be a challenge to learn, recognize, or get to know other Blackspherians. I love hearing more about their professional story,” says Kyausha Lewis, another founding member and Senior Marketing Operations Manager.
Here are a few more responses from our other Blacksphereian founders in regards to celebrating this month:
“I love our company’s diversity and the attention that we pay to it,” says Lenesto Page, Senior Technical Account Manager.
“What excited me most is the fact that [there’s] support from Staff that is allowing for initiatives for this month to not only happen, but be fully supported — fiscally and otherwise,” says Emma Anderson Beavers, Talent Acquisition Operations Specialist.
“I was always taught that Black History is American History — so I’m thrilled to share and celebrate a very special part of American History with the entire Chronosphere family. Additionally, I love how education and awareness is so important to Chronosphere when it comes to diversity, equity, inclusion and belonging, so I’m so proud that Celebrating Black History is being showcased in meaningful learning opportunities for all Chronospherians,” says Amber Nobles, Workplace Experience Manager.
Let’s walk through just a few ways that we were able to bring Black History Celebrations to Chronosphere this month.
Blacksphereians organized the company’s first Black History Month event with a fireside chat with Entrepreneur, Information Technologist and Author of Career Rehab, Kanika Tolver, hosted by our very own Head of Product, Jeff Cobb.
We were ecstatic to host Kanika, a highly-decorated information technologist, who dedicates her time to advocate for diversity in science and technology. Kanika has experienced a very common phenomenon: career burnout. But that hasn’t stopped her from paving the path for her ideal career.
One of Chronosphere’s values is “Nothing is impossible;” or as Chronosphere’s CEO and co-founder, Martin Mao likes to put it, “impossible is nothing!”
It just so happens to be Kanika’s favorite slogan, too. As Kanika mentions, “Impossible is nothing” perfectly encapsulates the challenges that Black Americans have faced in so many different industries — especially in tech.
Kanika dives into just how important it is to keep tabs on how innovative and energized your work leaves you feeling: When you’re not feeling inspired at work, it’s time to rebrand yourself, and shift your mindset from being an employee to a brand.
“If you saw yourself on a shelf, would you buy yourself?” Kanika asked.
Checking yourself into career rehab doesn’t mean you’re playing quits; it means that you’re showing up for yourself and your goals, so that down the line you’re doing the best work that you can, for yourself.
Black History Month initiatives like this have excited our entire founding group and we truly see them adding value here at Chronosphere.
“Bringing in an outside person like Kanika to talk about career growth is amazing,” says Lenesto.
“Having an amazing speaker like Kanika who could speak to career growth as a person in tech and as a black woman was truly exciting,” says Emma.
It’s all about advocating for yourself, for your employees, and for your brand. Career burnout doesn’t have to be a taboo topic. Kanika says as a black professional in tech, it often feels like power and respect in the workplace are lacking as a result of discrimination and little diversity among executive leaders. While respect and power can come from within, employers must support their employees so that they can flex that superpower muscle.
The thought of starting a new networking group can be intimidating — but as founders of Blacksphereians, we are nothing short of excited. Read for yourself in this Q&A with our Blacksphereian members!
“Great! Being a voice and collaborating with colleagues on shaping the content is important to me.” – Serrita
“It’s a great experience. Most companies consider interest groups once a company is more established. Great to see Chronosphere start this early in our corporate journey.” – Kyausha
“As an African American woman, I feel very proud to be a founding member of Blacksphereians. Groups like this are so important, not only to provide a space for Black and African American members of a company, but also for advocates and allies to provide support.” – Emma
“I’m open to possibilities as we grow as a company, and grow as a group. My hope is that we will have a positive presence as Blackspherians beyond Black History Month.” – Kyausha
“Seeing how we can be advocates to onboarding practices, to expose unconscious biases and how to practice awareness, and showing how Chronosphere values the diversity of thought with those that have a different life experience.” – Serrita
“To the dark side of the moon, no pun intended.” – Lenesto
“[I see] Blacksphereians becoming a group that can create awareness events and propose changes if any are needed as the company continues to scale.” – Emma
“I see Blacksphereians not only helping to increase camaraderie and inclusion here at Chronosphere, but also understanding and awareness. I think it will be a beautiful journey.” – Amber
As part of the initiatives offered to Chronosphereians this month, Modern Health’s Allyship Circle was available for the entirety of February for those interested in learning about microaggressions, how to address them, and what it means to stand next to historically marginalized communities.
And for every Monday in Slack, we launched Melanin Mondays — an opportunity for us to add some levity and inspiration to our coworkers’ weeks!
We also encouraged our teammates to show their advocacy by updating their Zoom backgrounds and email signature to join in the celebration.
I truly appreciate that Chronosphere has helped to put forward so many opportunities for us to celebrate the treasure which is Black History. This has allowed everyone – whether they identify as a member of the African Diaspora or as Advocates and Allies of the Black community, to select the resources that work not only best for them to learn, but to also celebrate
Amber Nobles
At Chronosphere, we believe that our power and potential starts with the people at the individual level. As we continue to grow and reach new heights with both our product and culture (hello, 330 Chronosphereians!) we will never stop finding new and creative ways to celebrate Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Belonging at Chronosphere. After all, we do love to innovate.
‘Til next year, and Happy Black History Month!
You might remember a blog that I wrote just a few months ago on our exciting recognition from Comparably on Best Perks and Benefits, alongside Otta’s Rocket List 2022.
Founded in 2019, Chronosphere is a remote-first company built by engineers, for engineers. We are a leading cloud native observability platform aimed at putting engineers back in the driver’s seat to seamlessly navigate cloud native complexity.
In the past year, we’ve achieved some pretty amazing things: like tripling our team, adding key executive leaders, and retaining 100% of our valued customers. At this year’s KubeCon + CloudNativeCon we announced our latest launch of the Chronosphere platform which continues to disrupt legacy solutions that we think provide too little, too late for too much out of pocket. Needless to say, we’re on a mission to change the observability world, and it starts with our people.
In October, we saw two awards as a result of our great culture. Today, we couldn’t be prouder to add four more awards to the list including:
🏆Best CEO
🏆Best Company Culture
🏆Best Company for Women
🏆Best Company for Diversity
What do these awards say? These Comparably awards speak to the special culture that we’ve cultivated together, and our leadership that takes us to the next level.
Let’s take a dive into what each award means.
Comparably released their 6th annual list of Best CEOs, based on anonymous employee ratings over a 12 month period. The final rankings were determined from sample questions and approval metrics of CEOs. We were ecstatic (but not surprised) to see none other than our trailblazing CEO, Martin Mao, grinning in 1st place on the small/mid-size companies list!
Martin leveraged his success at Uber, where he and future co-founder and our CTO, Rob Skillington worked on an open-source observability tooling (M3!). It provided Uber with the power of a scalable, remote storage time series database. With “uber” relevant experience under their belt they founded Chronosphere, as a people-first company with a passion to develop great, mission critical products.
At any company, the cultural mindset starts with its leadership and in particular the CEO. Martin believes — and it’s echoed throughout the leadership team — that transparent, people-first leadership is key to the success of every teammate. With the important pass-along effect of enduring camaraderie and care (amongst the rest of our values), we feel unstoppable in our mission and solutions.
See Martin’s leadership in action in this video from our company-wide third birthday celebration!
Comparably’s company culture rankings were determined on 20 core culture metrics — from compensation to career growth and leadership. Chronosphere came out with an A+ rating across the board — with the majority of voters noting that they truly look forward to interacting with their teammates (+1 to that. I mean, our team is pretty great.)
We believe in a work environment where all Chronospherians can thrive. Although our headcount has rapidly expanded we work to maintain a culture of trust and transparency. We think it helps make us collaborative, innovative, and successful in all of our endeavors — from teams down to the individual.
At Chronosphere, we offer an extensive list of global perks and benefits – to support our people, such as gender affirmation spending accounts. And, we’re always finding different ways for Chronospherians to connect — whether that be over free lunches, at monthly hub events, or even global, company-wide trips at exciting destinations!
How about the award for best company for women? Yep – we’re on that list too. Chronosphere actually ranks in the top 5% of companies for our “Gender Score”, which measures how female employees rate their experience across multiple dimensions.
This “Best company for women” award reinforces our commitment to our continued efforts in creating a diverse, equitable and inclusive work environment for all female-identifying teammates; especially in a famously male-dominated industry. For example, while the engineering org increased by 54%, we increased the number of female identifying engineers by 325%.
The Chronosphere team also expands inclusivity efforts outside of the company, like partnering with Girls Who Code, the largest pipeline of future female engineers.
Finally, check us out on the list for Best Company for Diversity. Small tech companies with less than 1,000 people actually hold the largest female employee ratio, with 30.2% – according to this FinancesOnline article. We’ve bested this number. With approximately 250 employees, we’ve achieved greater parity with no single gender comprising more than 65% of our workforce.
But, we are going further. For instance, you can see the average employment trends in tech in this special report by the EEOC, which highlights minority employment disparity in the tech industry. We aim to do better. Much better.
As part of our Q3 DEI goals, Chronosphere has pledged and achieved to ensure greater diversity across the organization where no single ethnicity would make up more than 55% of the team.
What does Diversity, Equity and Inclusion at Chronosphere look like?
The presence of difference.
It’s about taking intentional steps to establish mutual respect, understanding, and recognition for our unique qualities and experiences. We start with our hiring practices: further exposure to our role with job boards, asking for resumes to be blinded by candidates, and tracking efforts through DEI surveys.
Treating everyone the same.
We aim to meet people where they are, so that all teammates have an equal opportunity to be successful. We look at our practices and policies for this. How we think about compensation, and onboarding a Head of Total Rewards are a few ways we make sure people feel valued.
Creating an environment where everyone feels respected and connected to one another.
We practice inclusion at Chronosphere by seeking various ways for team members to not just feel invited to the party but feel part of it, too. This means in-person events and virtual events to acknowledge levels of comfort, sponsored meetings and work locations, and pulling in multi-level and multi-background individuals.
One of our priorities in 2023 is to have DEI innate to who we are — with DEI awareness events internally, alongside continued efforts to diversify the candidate pipeline. For FY24, we hope to launch at least two additional employee resource groups.
And stay tuned – we aim to release our first annual DEI report in March of 2023!
You can check out all of our latest happenings here!
As always, we’d love to hear from you.
Happy 2023!