By James Carroll

GoDaddy

GoDaddy is once again upping our work space game by expanding our growing Kirkland footprint into the entire sixth floor of the Carillon Point space we’ve inhabited since 2013, now covering a robust 42,000 square feet. With Lake Washington as a shimmering backdrop, this airy new space helps accommodate our burgeoning Seattle-area talent pool with a spacious layout and amazing new amenities. In less than four years here we’ve increased our numbers exponentially and we’re still growing.

This expansion reflects an array of expertise and skill sets, including engineers, marketing/analytics folks, product managers and data scientists, as well as those working in communications, human resources and operations.

While our Scottsdale headquarters still accounts for a big percentage of GoDaddy’s people, about a third of senior leadership is now in Kirkland and we see no end to our continued expansion here up and down the ranks. The fact is, Kirkland is a unique office and an important development hub for GoDaddy, bringing in a variety of innovators spanning multiple disciplines, with plenty of growth yet to come. This upgrade and expansion reflects our investment in continuing to develop GoDaddy’s presence and people in the extraordinarily productive Seattle area.

The “what’s new?” inventory includes 145 new work spaces, an Xbox lounge, fireplace seating, snack bar, keg station and a fully stocked wet bar. But as much as we love the cool stuff (and we really do), it’s about way more than that. It’s about creating a space that reflects, enhances and propels our culture as a visionary company, an international force for change and a family of colleagues working and playing in sync, every day.

So we created a space that looks, feels and functions much like a second home — one that’s supremely stimulating and inviting.

We believe that interesting people create interesting products and the environment plays a key role in helping creativity emerge.

So you’ll see a lot of glass, vistas and open space — a lot of breathing room — reflecting our emphasis on creating a transparent and outward-looking culture. The optics and aesthetics also reflect our global vision and orientation: there’s a free-flowing sensibility, where diverse people with diverse and complementary skills can interact every day in an amazing shared space. And we think that grand ambitions thrive best in an environment that reflects a little bit of grandeur back.

We’re also committed to cultivating a culture of openness and diversity, which reflects both our expansive global outlook and our core values. We’re passionate about hiring the best, most versatile collection of talent possible by supporting pay equity and scale, promotion opportunities, transparency and an inclusive culture. We believe that a diverse community of colleagues embraces a mix of attributes including ethnicity, gender, religion, race, age, sexual orientation, gender identification and many other elements so that our campus composition reflects and celebrates our global identity and outlook.

That includes supporting policies that are important to all families, including parental leave, flex time and part-time options.

Fifty percent of our new engineers, and 36 percent of GoDaddy interns, are women. GoDaddy is one of the founders of the “Equal Pay Pledge,” aimed at closing the gender pay gap and is a member of the Employers for Pay Equity consortium. And we’re among a handful of companies that pledged to hire 500 military veterans or spouses between 2016 and 2021, as part of the Joining Forces initiative launched by Michelle Obama and Dr. Jill Biden.

James Carroll is the executive vice president of Global Platform Development for GoDaddy.