A Tour of Our HigherEd Tech “Start-Up” Offices…

So what’s it like to work at Roompact?

Working at a young, rapidly growing higher ed tech company is exciting. It’s also both a lot of fun and a lot of work. I wanted to share a bit about our office and our work experience to give you insights into what’s happening “behind the screen” when you’re using our software.

Roompact was founded and is headquartered in Chicago. Although we moved around a bit in our early years, we’ve finally settled into an office in the River North neighborhood. For those of you familiar with the city, our offices are in a building directly connected to the Merchandise Mart. When it was built in 1930, it was the largest building in the world with approximately 4 million square feet of space.

Although we have our own private offices, we share a common work space with a number of other small growing companies in a co-working space provided by Make Offices. You may have seen advertisements for Make Offices, or their competitor, WeWork. These types of co-working spaces are rapidly growing as individual entrepreneurs and other fledgling businesses seek to find work spaces with common amenities while keeping overall costs lower.

Our common spaces at Make Offices have a number of amenities you would expect from a “Google-like” tech office environment. Free freshly brewed coffee, beer on tap, wine on Fridays, and the occasional free lunch. The office also has a number of different working spaces you can try out, such as treadmill and yoga ball desks, small telephone rooms, conference rooms, and even a massage chair room.

We have two team offices that we work out of. Myself, Matt, and Dan share one office which can be seen here. We have a “step and repeat” background for the occasional webinar and video call and a number of desks with hookups for monitors and other peripherals. This is also where we store all of our giveaways and “conference swag.”

It might be surprising that we need a physical office at all. All of us work in a highly mobile manner. With laptops and an internet connection, we’re able to work from almost anywhere. If you ever send us a question or a support ticket, the reason we answer so quickly is because we can reply on-the-go. Sometimes we even answer simple questions from our smartphones. No laptop required!

The software engineering team also has their own office where they’ll work together on code reviews and collaborate on plans for the next generation of our software. You’ll may notice the school pennants on the wall. We try to celebrate and remember the unique needs of each institution with which we partner. (So keep those pennants coming!)

Of course, in addition to work, we also find the occasional opportunity to play and celebrate our success. If you were to visit our office on any given day, there’s a high probability you’d find some kind of treat or delicious eats–particularly doughnuts. We also have the occasional fun company outing, such as in the photo below when we rented a boat for an afternoon on the Chicago River (which conveniently flows right by our offices.)

And that’s the basic tour of Roompact HQ! Admittedly we’re biased, but working here is fun. It is also invigorating when we get to interact with so many people on a given day, solve challenges and issues, and plan for future solutions that can help our partners get their work done more effectively and efficiently. We love what we do.

If you ever find yourself in the Chicagoland area, drop us a line. We’d love to show you the offices and take you out to lunch!