Last week has been an entirely new and memorable experience. The enormity of the experience has me capturing these thoughts even as I make my way home from the very first, company-wide Vercel offsite organized in Monterey, California. In general, I’m accustomed to documenting work-related milestones in my anniversary posts (0.5, 1, 2, 3, 4), but, on this occasion it would be a disservice to wait until the next milestone.
Now, I’ve had my fair share of meeting and interacting with Vercelians (i.e. the group name for employees of Vercel) in the last 4 years. From indiviual hang-outs to joining along a different team’s meetup (because we were still a start-up size then) to my own team’s offsite in London in ~2022. I know of and admire that the magic of chatting IRL with people you had only ever interacted with on Slack is non-manufacturable; it’s equal parts familiarity and newness. And yet, despite the practice and preparation, the magic of this offsite was sorcery on a new level.
This was my first time in America. I hadn’t really nailed down what my assumptions of visiting this new country would shape up to be, probably because my attention was fixated on surviving my first long-haul flight there. As I successfully walked out to SFO, I was hit with a wave of nostalgia. I take great pride in being a (sad poet &) third-culture kid, moved by the shifting destination and definition of “home”. Every part of California my eyes were witnessing were a parallel to the parts of Saudi Arabia (my home from years 0.5-18 years) I had left behind 9 years ago. The infra, architecture, signage, traffic, hotel decor, natural composition being a few prime examples. It reinforced my conviction that the bond between a place and a person is only for that person and place to mull over.
Reaching the offsite location in Monterey, California, I was astonished by just how much effort was put in in converting the whole place to be covered in high-quality Vercel branding. What @mamuso achieved here sets the gold standard for marrying physical venues with creative expression. I truly wish for everyone to experience a company to whom design is not an afterthought but a foundational pillar. Because once you do, you can’t go back.
On Day0 of the offsite, I was sat in one of the middle rows in a room full of Vercelians from my department (GTM). After the scheduled programming, it was time to announce the annual performance awards for our department. Each award was announced sequentially through the different segments of GTM (Sales, Marketing, Operations etc.) by the leaders of these teams. Eventually, it was time for Customer Success Engineering; our CCO (Paul) took stage, and, by this point, I was still charged by my weird sleep pattern and the coffee from breakfast, so, my mind went quickly skimming through many of the faces in my team and the excellent work so many folks had completed over the past year. It’s no wonder my internal search yielded so many results for potential winners (spoiler: you’ll come to understand why this is so further along this post). When Paul did announce that I was (hi, it’s me, I’m…) Customer Success Engineer of the Year for the highest Customer Satisfaction Score — I was shooketh.
While I was genuinely astonished, I was immensely proud that my year-long, dedicated effort in supporting customers with exceptional communication and tone had been recognized by the company. I want to give a special shout-out to Jourdan Diskin for setting the precedent here whom I worked more closely in 2024. Internalizing the “How would Jourdan reply here?” framework was a cheatcode. I had so, so many kind Vercelians congratulate me throughout the day that I lost track of time. Closing off Day0 by talking to my mom over the phone and hearing how happy she was for me for this achievement was everything.
Obviously, I had to celebrate with my 1st ever In-N-Out experience.
Verdict? 8.5/10 (Great burger; subpar fries).
Day1 was designed to empower all Vercelians to soak in customer-centric learnings and feedback, encapsulating the KYC (Know Your Customer) value. It also included a keynote/panel led by @rauchg and other talks by the other leaders at the company. Sitting in the ballroom with all Vercelians for the 1st time was wild. The largest public Slack channel in public that you can imagine!
We, then, walked to the beach during a break in the schedule and I was awe-struck by the magnitude of the Atlantic Ocean waves hitting the shore. As I walked back, I read aloud my old poem from 2014 (which, yes, is still online ) about the beach to @AmyAEgan who graciously appreciated my amateur poetry (You Can Just Share Things). In the evening, we all boarded multiple shuttles and walked right into the majestic Aquarium and got to hang out with the otters, fish, octopuses, etc. I had a really fulfilling day, but I remember struggling to keep my eyes open on the shuttle ride back from all the extroverted exhaustion of the day.
Day2 was officially the final and most important day. The itinerary consisted of a Women@Vercel breakfast, practical sessions on various tech topics, exciting excursions (I went kayaking on the Monterey Bay), and a final, fancy celebration dinner. By this point, I had gotten pretty good at meeting so many new people functioning on so little sleep! Nearing the start of celebration dinner, it was occurring to me that we were closer to the end of this offsite than the beginning. Perhaps, this is why I hadn’t fathomed what myself and my team would get to experience would become etched in Vercel’s history. I was seated on table 2 which, at the time, felt like a huge coincidence as most of the CSE team was sat at the same or nearby tables. Little did I know that this was all sneakily planned and executed by our amazing organizers: CSE was awarded the esteemed TEAM award in recognition of our achievements and impact on customers!
Now, I want to set the context in more detail. I’ve been at Vercel a relatively long time especially in tech/start-up years. I’ve been a part of the CSE team from when we were ~5 people. In this time, we have more than trippled our team’s numbers, expanded our surface area to include specialist roles, rolled out dedicated weekend support coverage, embedded the customers’ voice into Product and Engineering, operationalized QA to learn from and fill in any gaps, navigated real-time incident comms across multiple timezones, successfully onboarded C-Suite leadership to don on the Support hat for a day, balanced high quantity case handling with high quality support via automations and excelled focus.
This, no doubt, is all extraordinary work done by our collective team, yes, but from our point of view? It’s also just a regular workday. These achievements are all in tandem to the basic duty of diligently listening to one customer’s problem and empathically replying to resolve this. Simple in theory, yet, significant in nature.
I’ll never forget the reaction of my team members as the TEAM award was being announced. Transparently: we could not believe it. Support can feel like a neglected or under-valued part of the tech industry. Supporting existing features and issues doesn’t always get the recognition or reward that, perhaps, shipping new features does.
Thus, I don’t mean to exaggerate but: Vercel choosing Support for this award was industry-defining. And I am so grateful for the role I get to play in this. The last day of the first ever company-wide offsite in my first ever trip to America could not have concluded on a better note.
Thank you, Reader, for bearing with my lengthy recap. If you have any more appetite, I had the following misc. list of random/memorable/special callouts to share:
- CSEs continued serving customers throughout the offsite. On Day0, we resolved support tickets working together in the same room and even had different members of the wider org join us and collaborate with their expertise. Win-win.
- Spending quality time with our mighty sister team (Trust and Safety) including hanging out with @juliejonak and Katie May whom I still learn from so much around topics of internet safety, people management, systems thinking, and so much more.
- Walking around and randomly spotting folks wearing the Vercel Community t-shirt I had designed was very surreal and will always be very surreal. @TySbano proactively sharing IRL how much he loved the design was so incredible.
- Unbiased admiration and love for the design team. I was starstruck meeting @skllcrn and @raunofreiberg . When @ZeeJab said hi to me on Day1, my mind literally didn’t comprehend until the next day and I had to recompose myself and re-say hi on Day2. The shuttle ride back to SFO with @skllcrn meant I could talk ALL THE THINGS.
- I already knew @paulienuh was a natural on stage as I had seen her deliver a talk in Nottingham way back in ~2019 but witnessing her mastery of this skillset as she was routing me to the right place was so much fun. Without co-MCing the offsite was a real privilege. Unmatched aura.
- From our weekly syncs to rowing like a champ; @codybrouwers was the sole reason our kayak didn’t capsize. While I may have rested my shoulders and admired the otters, @codybrouwers navigated those choppy waters like it wasn’t even much effort.
- Meeting many of the OGs (folks who were at Vercel when I joined) I had in mind thanks to OG @samko_cx routing me to the right place was so much fun. Without @samko_cx , I know I would have really struggled and given up.
- It was heart-warming to find that one of the engineering teams tied with my support subject matter expertise were so delighted to meet me IRL and were keen to have me return to their weekly syncs to share customer feedback. Incredibly wholesome moment.
- I’m told this is only a California cultural thing but people (from hotel staff to Uber drivers etc.) were super friendly/chill and more talkative. I’ve had really pleasant and kind experiences from similar staff in the UK but the friendly/extroverted vibes in California were another level. Definitely reminded me of the fun vibes in AMER team stand-ups!
Until next time,
Riz