By Paul Hampel
St. Louis Post-Dispatch.
ST. LOUIS
The headquarters of tech startup LockerDome blurs the line between work and play.
The 6,800-square-foot office in downtown St. Louis has a full bar, where drinks are on the house. It adjoins a recreation area with basketball hoops.
Employees who need a siesta can grab a bunk in one of its two bedrooms.
Workers can bring pets to work. And free breakfasts are catered daily.
The reaction most outsiders have to such amenities is to ask if LockerDome is taking applications.
In fact, the company does expect to expand soon. But anyone hoping to land a job there should not expect an all-play and no-work environment.
“The nice elements in this office are more a reflection of how committed our staff is to working together here as a team and to completing projects, no matter how hard the job is or how long it takes,” Nick Apperson, 30, the chief technology officer, explained recently.
To that end, the bunk beds are most often used by “hackers” to crash in at the end of shifts that start early in the morning and sometimes run well past midnight.
The bar is typically a place where employees quickly wash down takeout dinners with soft drinks before hurrying back to their workstations.
And the catered breakfasts began last year as survival-mode nutrition for computer-coders who took to living at the office for weeks on end, one of them brought a basket of laundry and stayed 81 straight days, in a push to launch a new website.
As LockerDome CEO Gabe Lozano recently said, it’s a workplace culture that’s not for everyone.
“When people come to LockerDome, I tell them up front that if your goal is to have a 9-to-5 job and get the best bang for your buck in terms of how much you earn per hour, this is a terrible place to be,” said Lozano, 32. “But if your goal is to be on the right side of history, you have made the right choice.”
That historical reference reflects Lozano’s contention that St. Louis will emerge as one of the nation’s premier tech centers.
By moving downtown in 2012, LockerDome blazed a trail on the Washington Avenue tech corridor that now counts more than 100 startups among its tenants.
“We’ve become an example of what’s possible for other tech companies in St. Louis,” Lozano said. “I’m not saying we’re the whole reason for the ecosystem there, but we were the first tech startup that moved onto Washington.”
LockerDome began in 2008 as a social network organized around sports. Last year, it expanded beyond sports content to create an online environment designed to “learn” about its users’ likes and habits and then customize site content to match those profiles.
In the past two years, the company has raised $18 million from investors, including $10 million in December. It plans to bolster the roster of 33 employees by adding up to 10 staff in its New York office and hiring more engineers and other employees at the St. Louis headquarters.
Meanwhile, the site’s popularity has exploded from 20 million monthly unique visitors in December 2013 to 75 million today.
Before LockerDome moved into its current space, Lozano visited the headquarters of two tech giants based in San Francisco, Twitter and Square. He incorporated office elements from those firms into his own.
“The reality is, you want people to work where they feel productive. And to that end, we have areas to sleep, either for a nap or for all night. We have a bar, so you can kick back and have a beer. We have a rec area where you can play bags (a bag-toss game) or pop a shot. And we don’t have a dress code, so come as you are,” Lozano said.
That is not to say that Lozano has eschewed all traditional elements of American workplace culture.
The employee handbook forbids working remotely. “It’s easier to learn when you are sitting next to your peers,” it states.
The handbook also requires employees to answer every phone call “regardless of the time of day” and demands their prompt attendance and unwavering attention at meetings.
The “LockerDome Manifesto” also addresses employee attitudes. A section headed “Humility and Respect” reads: “Arrogance is limiting. While we value intelligence, we recognize that intellectuals are the norm in the tech world, not the exception. We translate this awareness into listening to all new ideas and respecting both our teammates and our competitors alike.”
Chris Simmons, a senior development manager at LockerDome, said he knew what he was getting into before accepting a job there.
“It’s been one of the most difficult challenges of my life,” said Simmons, who previously worked in customer service for Sprint. “But at the same time, that’s what makes it fun, overcoming different challenges and continuing to grow as a company.”
Management and workers would not discuss salaries, but all are offered stock in the company as part of their compensation.
“Having shares in the company is important,” said Simmons. “But, honestly, the bigger part is feeling that I can make a suggestion here that may lead to a change, as opposed to Sprint, which was so big that I felt like I had zero chance of making a difference.”
