We’ve interviewed Stevenson Jean-Pierre (SJP), a Senior Engineering Manager, and Mandi Walls, a DevOps Advocate, to help us understand the Failure Friday practice at PagerDuty and how the practice is adopted across the industry.

The origins and evolution of Failure Friday

On June 28, we marked ten years of Failure Friday at PagerDuty. What started out as a weekly practice, quickly evolved beyond that. As the involved teams continued to learn and grow, and in the spirit of continuous learning, Failure Friday has evolved over the decade as well.

SJP manages database reliability and infrastructure teams. For Failure Friday process leaders like him, this initiative serves multiple purposes. It deepens engineers’ understanding of systems, allows teams to get creative while testing failure scenarios, and enables controlled production changes with key stakeholders involved. As SJP explains, “Instead of waiting for things to fail in natural ways in our environments, we produce failure scenarios in our own infrastructure to better understand how they work.”

While the core concept of Failure Friday remains consistent, SJP and his teams have evolved their approach over time. Initially, automated failure testing–randomly disrupting parts of the infrastructure or stopping services–was common. Now, the focus has shifted towards intentional failure testing, targeting areas like load and performance. This deliberate shift allows teams to gain actionable insights into specific failure modes, bottlenecks and optimize their systems more effectively.

Additionally, Failure Friday is no longer limited to a specific day of the week and occurs based on the team’s needs. SJP emphasizes that failure can happen any day, and embraces this concept beyond Fridays, calling it “Failure Any Day.”

So how does it work?

The Failure Friday process at PagerDuty involves planning and executing failure scenarios, with specific objectives and hypotheses. SJP and his team identify the system to be tested, define the failure scenario, and select the stakeholders involved. An Incident Commander (IC) leads the process, ensuring it mirrors the response during a real incident. The process is documented and analyzed, allowing stakeholders to provide their perspectives. A postmortem is conducted to identify areas for improvement, with its scope depending on the scenario being tested. If there are enough surprises or lessons learned, the team gives the postmortem a more formal treatment or invites a wider audience, as the level of detail and rigor needed for the review so justifies. Otherwise, it is conducted by the team that owned the Failure Friday.

For SJP, one key takeaway from Failure Friday is the realization of how complex digital infrastructure has become with all of its interconnected data and systems. Emergent behaviors can surprise even experienced engineers. By inducing failures, his teams gain a more holistic understanding of the system and uncover hidden dependencies. This knowledge equips SJP’s teams to better handle real-world incidents and prevent customer impact. It empowers them to design more robust software and ultimately enhance system reliability. 

SJP mentioned that Failure Friday also builds trust within the organization. The engineering teams have successfully built a culture of reliability, where a proactive approach to failure is embraced and valued.

Fostering a culture of innovation and learning in DevOps with Failure Friday

Failure Friday is a practice that has gained popularity in the DevOps community. It’s used as a means to foster innovation, enhance system reliability, and improve the customer experience. Mandi shed light on the significance of Failure Friday in the DevOps sphere and its impact on organizational culture.

For her, the clear focus of Failure Friday is the customer experience. Mandi emphasized the need for graceful error handling, clear communication to users, and minimizing disruptive errors that result in poor customer experiences. For her, simple actions can significantly improve customer experience: “Do you have more graceful handling of certain errors? Do you pop up a nice message to the user? Or do you just report a 503 error? That’s not a very good customer experience.”

According to Mandi, implementing Failure Friday or similar practices may come with benefits and challenges for organizations. These practices foster collaboration among various stakeholders, including engineers, product managers and business owners. Integrating Failure Friday into DevOps processes promotes better alignment and understanding of failure impacts. Additionally, Failure Friday contributes to developing a positive organizational culture by creating a low-stakes environment for open discussions and learning. This encourages psychological safety and a blame-free atmosphere, facilitating honest conversations and a proactive approach to system resilience.

However, challenges may arise in introducing intentional errors into production systems due to stability concerns and limited testing capabilities. Tools and services can help mitigate these concerns, making testing in production more secure and accessible. Fostering collaboration between stakeholders requires effective communication and coordination, often necessitating adjustments to existing workflows and structures. Moreover, embracing Failure Friday and cultivating a blame-free environment may require a shift in organizational culture, which can be challenging but essential for the success of such initiatives.

Ultimately, for Mandi, Failure Friday positively impacts team collaboration and communication within an organization. The practice encourages teams to engage in honest discussions, enhances trust, and fosters a proactive approach to system resilience and customer satisfaction. At the end of the day, investing in building resilience will pay off in better digital experiences for your customers.

How to start Failure Friday in your organization

For those interested in experimenting with Failure Friday, SJP suggests starting small and gradually scaling up. Mandi’s top suggestion is for organizations to prioritize building psychological safety and creating blame-free environments. As she says, “Failure Friday is not just a practice; it’s an opportunity to foster a culture of collaboration and resilience.”

SJP strongly believes that “other teams and organizations can benefit from adopting a similar approach.” Recognizing that failures are inevitable, he emphasizes the value of understanding systems comprehensively and adopting a failure-mode mindset. Whether running full Failure Friday exercises or starting with tabletop exercises, organizations can enhance their engineering practices and cultivate a culture of resilience.

If you’re eager to learn more and join the discussion…

Don’t miss out on a chance to learn from industry experts and discover how Failure Friday can revolutionize your organization and DevOps practices. Watch the recorded Twitch stream and be part of the dialogue in the comments. Get ready to embrace failure as a pathway to success in the world of technology!

The post 10 Years of Failure Friday at PagerDuty: Fostering Resilience, Learning and Reliability appeared first on PagerDuty.

According to the Fortune survey, 95% percent of PagerDuty employees said we are a great place to work. Said one respondent: “Management always strives to find out what their employees are interested in and are always looking to find opportunities to grow. I think this company definitely values the opinions of their employees and makes everyone feel like they have a voice!” 

Awards like these provide us a sense of achievement and pride, reflective of the passion and commitment of our Dutonians and the inclusive culture we’ve created together. Our mission-driven approach–providing value for customers but also recognizing that there’s no way we can support our customers unless we’re taking care of our employees–is why I joined PagerDuty and why I stay. We have a big vision and bigger ambitions, and we pursue them always with kindness, empathy, conviction, and collaboration. Here’s just some of the ways we’re living up to our ‘Best Place’ recognitions. 

Showing up for one another

Building a work model for the future and harnessing the power of Generative AI to accelerate our internal work and the power of the PagerDuty Operations Cloud are some of the ways we show up for our people and our customers. We support people inside and outside the workplace, with Inclusion, Diversity, and Equity (ID&E) at the core of our identity and business strategy, supported by our Employee Resource Groups (ERGs).

But most of all, we simply like and respect each other–no matter who you are or where you sit in the organization. When called upon, we show up. 

We show up for conferences and recruitment events. We show up for innovation around generative AI and host hackathons. We encourage experimentation and challenging conventions. 

“Pop-Ups” bring back in-person interaction

We want to provide employees with flexibility in how and where they work. But we also understand the importance of bringing people together in meaningful ways. In-person connections can enhance learning, decision-making, and innovation, not to mention deepen relationships across the team. 

It was in service to these principles that the PagerDuty Pop-Up program was born. We set out to create a low-cost, low-friction experience for employees at all levels to engage with colleagues. The ensuing day-long sessions consist of modules highlighting the business and our values, as well as local social impact and cultural experiences curated for each particular geographic area.  

The Pop-Ups are designed to build a greater sense of community among all Dutonians, whether they are direct colleagues or just meeting for the first time. You get a mix of business updates and camaraderie; peers sharing their expertise and problem solving in real-time. On multiple occasions these interactions have led to substantive changes in practices, products, and the way teams communicate across PagerDuty.

So far we have hosted fourteen events across eleven cities throughout the US and Portugal, impacting more than 300 Dutonians across 25 teams. We have expanded the scope of the program, including increasing the number of events to cover every major region we work in including EMEA, and APJ. As we continue to experiment with this model a few changes will be made to scale and mature our approach, adding more subject matter experts; planning longer days with more social time; and using the events as an incubator for creativity.

PagerDuty is where great humans work 

One other defining characteristic of PagerDuty is that we are very self aware, even self critical at times. We know we’re not done yet, that we can get better and improve the way we operate. This is empowering and motivating–it’s one one of the many reasons I love to get up every day and do my part to move PagerDuty forward. 

I’m therefore not surprised that we’ve been recognized as not just a great place to work, but an inspirational place, too. Anyone can come to PagerDuty and be their best selves without reservation or apology. Everyone has an opportunity to be successful, regardless of their personal background or experiences. 

Not every job gives you the ability to make an impact on the business or on people’s lives. Not every place allows you to develop your career while being surrounded by great humans. 

Not every company is like PagerDuty–in fact, no company is like us. We are PagerDuty. 

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We’ve grown in many ways in our first four years as a public company. We have more than doubled the number of customers on the PagerDuty platform, and nearly tripled the number of users. We’ve more than tripled our revenue from $118 million to more than $370 million. And for the last fiscal year, we achieved non-GAAP profitability a full year ahead of plan, putting us in position to run on our own steam in the years ahead. 

Four years is a long time in the software world. Our team is now more than 1,000 strong. We are now accustomed to the rigor, inspection, and cadence that comes with being a listed company. We’re more battle tested, and a little more confident for our experience, but we realize now our mission is more important than ever. 

The year of our IPO, my daughter was about to enter high school. Later this year, she will graduate. And like her, our team has cherished the opportunity to build, succeed, fail, learn, and improve with each quarter. Don’t get me wrong, we still have a lot to figure out as any growth company does, but we have taught ourselves we can manage through anything if we stay focused on our customers, hold ourselves to a high standard, and don’t confuse excellence with perfection. 

Four years on, the market and the world of 2023 both look very different too. No one could have predicted a global pandemic, or how we work would change so drastically, or that Zoom’s noise canceling feature to drown out my barking dog Maverick would be so critical on a daily basis. We’ve navigated once-in-a-generation events and the end of a decade-long bull market, marked by incredibly low interest rates. 

Now, when my fellow CEOs and I are comparing notes, we are not talking about how to prepare for an IPO. Instead, we cover a much broader range of topics, from managing our employees’ wellness and safety, ways to leverage AI in our business, to leading in a more volatile environment where “sustainable growth” and efficiency are prized. 

Here are a few of my takeaways that have helped drive PagerDuty’s success since those heady days four years ago.

The New Scorecard is the Old Scorecard

For over a decade, tech companies and our investors both optimized and were rewarded for high growth. Profitability was a visible but distant goal at IPO. When the economy shifted last year, the tune shifted too. Suddenly, the hits of the 1990s have a new resonance (beyond my high schooler’s playlists today). Teams like ours that are, as Alphaville put it in their classic Forever Young, “Hoping for the best but expecting the worst” are demonstrating you can achieve durable growth and improve operating margins while still investing in the innovation your customers demand and require.

At PagerDuty, we achieved non-GAAP profitability this past year as the result of a multi-year initiative. Our CFO Howard Wilson and I have always believed that being reliable and consistent in our results, and transparent with our teams about our financials, growth plans, and future goals, are critical. This transparency has helped our leaders anticipate and weather the ups and downs of the market. Our consistency has given investors confidence in our ability to deliver value over the long-term.

For more than two years, we have consistently achieved dollar-based net retention (DBNR) above 120%. We had a choice: burn additional cash to push that percentage higher, or lean into that performance while developing economies of scale to balance our growth. At the time, investors favored super-growth over balance, but we felt that positive operating margins and free cash flow would ultimately give our organization operational freedom, and make us more resilient. It was a somewhat boring position in a time marked by sexy high growth, highly valued offerings. Looking back now, it was the right long-term decision, and it has put us in a much stronger position in these volatile times.

Takeaway: Sometimes, boring is success, where hype trends can be hard to sustain. In both good and bad economic times consistency, reliability, transparency, profitability, and fostering a culture of innovation never go out of style.

It’s Time for Growth Companies to Grow Leaders

Elements of this scorecard feel very familiar to our senior leadership team and me. In nearly 30 years as a leader, I’ve experienced multiple market cycles and much economic uncertainty. Newer managers with just a few years in the workforce may have never worked in a cash-constrained environment, or been asked to deliver growth without ever-increasing headcount. As interest rates rise and corporate balance sheets adjust, our companies need to equip their leaders with the right skills, whether it is prioritizing efficiency, embracing automation or helping employees manage the crisis fatigue of the last several years.

Over the winter holidays, we ran a “12 Days of Automation” contest to identify areas where leveraging the PagerDuty platform could eliminate repetitive work or automate processes to save time. Proposals came from most areas of our business, ranging from procurement to marketing, all with the goals of saving time and money, and freeing our teams to focus on the highest value work. These projects have helped us build an organization-wide mindset where optimization is the first instinct, instead of simply requesting more headcount and budget.

Preparing managers to lead in any environment isn’t just an employee retention strategy. It’s a prerequisite for making sure your organization is operationally resilient. At PagerDuty, we’ve built development tracks that support our managers in developing practical and actionable skills to lead. We’ve empowered every employee to speak up when they see ways to automate repetitive tasks, and to deprioritize those activities that aren’t adding value to the business, fostering a culture of leading from any seat in the organization.

Takeaway: Invest in leadership development for your people. Skill development isn’t just a retention play. We owe our younger leaders training for the particular skills needed in this climate and mentorship to support their growth journeys. Consider training around accountability, prioritization, and leading through adversity.  

Volatility Invites Opportunity

PagerDuty was founded during the 2009 recession. Even then, our co-founders believed so deeply in their ability to address a critical problem for developers that they collectively quit their jobs to launch our company. 

I’ve managed through multiple cycles and while environments change, operational excellence in service of customer experience always endures. In fact, that operational excellence becomes more important in moments of disruption. Today’s push for efficiency means that enterprises are desperate for ways to streamline their operations, their vendors, and their tech stacks. Those are your customers – and they need your help.

Across PagerDuty’s customer base, businesses are hungry for automation, AI, and flexible workflows to create more resilient operations. We are helping them discover all the value that PagerDuty can provide. There are new companies being started right now that will help define enterprise solutions for the next decade. The ones that succeed will put their customers’ most pressing problems at the center of their plans. Push your teams to ensure that your company is delivering on that value proposition. 

Takeaway: Champion the Customer is PagerDuty’s lead value. Customers must be your focal point as your organization weathers this storm. Prioritize by asking yourself, “how important is this initiative to my customers?” Be intentional, even maniacal, and resist the urge to get too internally focused — you’ll come out more nimble, agile, and resilient. 

At the time of our IPO, I was asked how the vision for the company would change once we went public. “The vision doesn’t change,” I said. “We intend to do exactly what we’ve been doing, which is to provide the best real-time operations platform to companies to meet the growing demands of their customers.”

Four years later, the world has changed dramatically but I remain confident in our approach. PagerDuty’s mission is to help companies revolutionize their operations and build customer trust by anticipating the unexpected in an unpredictable world. We’ve gotten to this point by applying a leadership philosophy that enables us to adapt to changing environments while keeping our values central to everything we do. I’m more optimistic than ever about our future, because we continue to champion our customers, advance a platform that addresses their most pressing needs, and empower our employees to focus on the work that matters most. I encourage all my peers to consider how they can best prepare their teams to navigate whatever the road ahead brings.

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CEO Jennifer Tejada and PagerDuty leadership hosted global team meetings where they discussed the layoff announcement made earlier this week. She sent the below email to our employees as a follow up to those conversations.

Team,

This has been a difficult week for our company. For those of you who were not able to attend our town hall discussion today, I wanted to share what we discussed. The way I communicated layoffs distracted from our number one priority: showing care for the employees we laid off, and demonstrating the grace, respect, and appreciation they and all of you deserve.

There are a number of things I would do differently if I could. The quote I included from Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. was inappropriate and insensitive. I should have been more upfront about the layoffs in the email, more thoughtful about my tone, and more concise. I am sorry.

Many of you have reached out to me this week with feedback, questions and support – thank you.

Jenn

CEO Jennifer Tejada sent the following email to PagerDuty employees on January 24, 2023

Dutonians, 

Part of our mission at PagerDuty is to help businesses “anticipate the unexpected in an unpredictable world.” Over the last year, the macro environment shifted rapidly, with growth contracting in Q1 and Q2 yet expanding in Q3. Inflation and geopolitical concerns caused the US Federal Reserve to hike interest rates, while the jobs market overall remained strong and the unemployment rate remained low. Macro signals remain mixed and uncertain as we head into a new fiscal year. 

Our $38 billion TAM of over 75 million potential users remains large, our Operations Cloud platform mission critical for our customers, and our competitive advantages deep, but we are not immune to macro volatility, nor can we predict when the economy will improve.

While demand for our products and services remains stable and our strategy to help our customers transform their operations remains relevant and intact, it is taking longer to convert than prior years. Macro uncertainty and volatility has led our customers – businesses across segments and regions – to scrutinize and slow investments in order to preserve business outcomes and protect shareholder returns, while improving their operational resilience.  

For the last two years we have undertaken proactive initiatives to scale efficiently, accelerating this program last summer by standardizing our go-to-market motion globally, reducing layers, improving spans of control, reducing discretionary spend and standing up teams in cost-effective, high-talent locations. 

The reality of today’s volatile economy requires additional transformation. Despite executing well over the last eight quarters, sustaining high growth and dramatically improving operating margins, there is more to do to secure PagerDuty’s future. To weather today’s economic uncertainty and succeed over the long term, we must generate more cash flow and increase our operating margins in the near term. Doing so enables us to sustainably fund the priorities and commitments our customers count on us for: resilience and security at scale, and an easy-to-use, low-cost-to-own, high-ROI Operations Cloud. 

Today’s actions 

After considering a range of approaches for strengthening the company as we move forward, we are further refining our operating model as we work to increase our capacity while improving our cost structure, focusing our efforts, and improving our return on investments. 

Additional refinements we are implementing today include: 

• Eliminating roughly 7% of roles globally, the vast majority of which are in North America, primarily in our go-to-market and G&A organizations;
• Reducing discretionary spend;
• Negotiating more favorable commercial agreements with key vendors;
• Rationalizing our real estate footprint to reflect the realities of our distributed-by-design hybrid work model.

Like most technology companies, our most significant investment is our workforce. These decisions were carefully considered and are necessary to set PagerDuty up for long term success, especially in the context of ongoing uncertainty. That said, these changes are also very difficult. They will be painful for those Dutonians impacted, their loved ones and their teammates, because every PagerDuty employee is an important, valuable part of our community.

As these changes impact the heart of our organization, our people, we worked to ensure fair and equitable, principled decisions by focusing on a value-centered and business-based set of principles. Decisions were predicated on business rationale that included, for example, protecting investments in top product development priorities like our new Incident Workflows, self service and product-led growth (PLG), and continued AIOps and Automation enhancements, improving spans of control and streamlining management layers, expanding teams and roles in Santiago and Lisbon, and addressing our enterprise opportunity with a hybrid strategic and high-velocity GTM motion that continues to improve our productivity.  

I regard Dutonians as more than employees; they are accomplished, deeply talented individuals who #BringThemselves and drive the innovation and culture behind our products and services to deliver experiences that delight our customers. I appreciate each and every Dutonian’s contribution to PagerDuty. It is my expectation that we show all of our colleagues the grace, respect, and dignity they have earned. As someone who has worked in this industry for decades, I have experienced this before and it is never easy, and I also know from experience that while we may not work together in the short term, our relationships and this community live beyond our tenure at PagerDuty. 

Honoring and supporting our people

We are committed to supporting impacted Dutonians through this transition. In doing so, we ensured our colleagues receive severance with an average of 11 weeks pay, with additional severance based on tenure (or we followed local laws as required). Impacted employees, who are currently enrolled in our plans, are being offered extended healthcare coverage for themselves and dependents for a minimum of three to four months (depending on carrier requirements by location), and all employees will be provided career transition support from Randstad RiseSmart. All notifications for impacted employees are expected to be completed today and tomorrow. 

We are confident that these changes sufficiently improve our operational resilience such that we do not anticipate further actions outside of the regular course of business.

Looking forward to the future 

I’m excited to appoint Jeremy Kmet SVP, North America Sales, to Senior Vice President of Global Field Operations, effective February 1, 2023 reporting to me. Jeremy assumes expanded responsibility for our global Sales, Partner and Sales Strategy & Operations organization. Jill Brennan, Natalie Fair, Josh Thacker, Julia Fare, Tim Chinchen and their teams will report to Jeremy beginning February 1. For customer and business continuity, and efficiency, we are not backfilling the SVP, Americas role at this time. 

We are well positioned to succeed with Jeremy leading our go-to-market (GTM) organization, going from strength to strength. As our most tenured and highest performing GTM leader, he is credited with designing and scaling the land-and-expand motion – especially in the upper mid-market and enterprise segments – underpinning PagerDuty’s efficient growth and setting our performance pace, especially in the past two years as we accelerated our growth and profitability. 

With this promotion, Jeremy’s role expands from the Americas, approximately 75% of annual recurring revenue, to our global sales theaters, channels and operations teams. Jeremy has deep domain experience, customer relationships and product expertise. He brings a breadth of expertise – from selling to the world’s largest enterprises to building a high-velocity mid-market motion here at PagerDuty. Given his track record and demonstrated deep commitment to our customers, our people, and our values, our board of directors and our leadership team have great confidence in Jeremy to lead the Global Field Operations organization.  

Dave Justice, Chief Revenue Officer, is leaving PagerDuty to pursue other opportunities after the completion of FY23. Dave has been a valued partner to me and the executive team over the last three years. We thank him for his leadership in championing our customers, and for his many contributions to PagerDuty. Please join me in wishing Dave all the best in his future endeavors. 

This leadership transition creates an opportunity for us to evolve our customer experience in ways that encourage a faster Operations Cloud adoption and value realization, through both product-led and sales-led growth. The strength of the partnership between our customer support, success and services team and sales teams creates a foundation for us to build on, more tightly integrating the voice of the customer into product design and experience, blazing the product-led “Path to Platform” for our Operations Cloud by connecting these teams with our product teams. 

With that goal in mind, we are realigning the Customer Success Group (CSG) organization with the Product Development team. Manjula Talreja, our Chief Customer Officer, will report to Sean Scott our Chief Product Development Officer. Manjula will stay closely aligned across the company as a part of both the GTM Leadership and Executive Leadership Teams, and continue to extend the teams’ impact on our business by more tightly integrating the voice of the customer into product design and experience.

I am excited to connect Customer Success to our product strategy, and likewise drive a deeper connection between product management and our customers’ platform engagement and post-sale experience. The organizational design of Sales, CSG and the rest of the company beyond the changes noted above remains in place. We are confident we have the right team and a strong platform to achieve our bold mission. 

Taking additional steps to improve our own operational resilience will shore up our ability to achieve our long-term goals – achieving $1B in revenue, sustaining profitable growth and working towards the rule of 40 – by expanding our leadership in digital operations through adoption of the Operations Cloud which benefits our customers, our shareholders and all our stakeholders. 

We are reinforcing our strengths, ensuring capacity to increase innovation and growth, and delivering on our commitment to operate as a profitable, durable growth company, with a platform and team our customers trust and can depend on for years to come. We expect to finish the year strong – in fact, we have reaffirmed our guidance for FY23 today – and those results, combined with the refinements outlined above, put PagerDuty in a position of strength to successfully execute on our platform strategy regardless of what the market and the macroenvironment bring. 

None of this would be possible without you, our leadership, and our board — thank you for your grit and resilience, your commitment to our customers and your support of our values and people. I am reminded in moments like this, of something Martin Luther King said, that “the ultimate measure of a [leader] is not where [they] stand in the moments of comfort and convenience, but where [they] stand in times of challenge and controversy.”  PagerDuty is a leader that stands behind its customers, its values, and our vision — for an equitable world where we transform critical work so all teams can delight their customers and build trust. 

What’s next 

Please join us later today for a Town Hall at 1:30 pm PST / 4:30 pm EST where we’ll discuss these changes further and have an opportunity for Q&A. Once all notifications are completed (targeting end of day Wednesday PST), you will receive an email from your ELT member outlining any specific changes within your functional area.  

Jenn 

Forward-Looking Statements 
This post contains forward-looking statements including but not limited to statements regarding our future financial performance, financial outlook, expected benefits of our global scaling initiatives, and market positioning. These forward-looking statements are not guarantees of future performance and involve significant risks, uncertainties and other factors that may cause our actual results, performance, or achievements to be materially different from results, performance, or achievements expressed or implied by the forward-looking statements contained in this post. A discussion of factors that may affect future results is contained in our SEC filings, including the company’s most recent reports on Forms 10-K and 10-Q, which may be obtained by visiting our Investor Relations website at www.investor.pagerduty.com or the SEC’s website at www.sec.gov. PagerDuty does not undertake, and expressly disclaims any duty, to update any statement made in this post, whether as a result of new information, new developments or otherwise, except to the extent that disclosure may be required by law.

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However, any realistic accounting of this work must recognize that we are still in the initial stages of this journey as an industry, and there is much more that needs to be done to close equity gaps in the workplace. There is no such thing as a “set it and forget it” ID&E initiative. Making ID&E a business priority requires personal commitments from employees and leadership, a new mindset and operating model for the organization, and full integration into business strategy and company culture. It also requires agile planning, and a willingness to acknowledge where progress must go further.

PagerDuty’s third annual ID&E report is a testament to our company’s commitment and dedication as we continue to build toward positive and progressive change. But this report is not intended solely as a celebration of progress; it is an important vehicle to hold ourselves accountable as an organization, and an opportunity to outline our key areas of focus for the coming year. That’s why our key initiatives in 2023 will focus on upskilling Dutonians to establish a universal understanding of an ID&E mindset; creating strategic mechanisms of accountability, starting with our executive leadership; and ensuring we outline objective measures toward the outcomes that will drive the true, and lasting, change required for our company and industry. 

Key findings 

“Bring Your Self” and “Run Together” are core PagerDuty values, and central to our ID&E work. But equally as important are two other PagerDuty values: “Take the Lead,” and “Ack & Own.” Taking the Lead requires holding ourselves both out as an example, and to a higher and evolving standard; Acking and Owning requires us to rigorously measure our progress in hiring, retention, and leadership composition year-round, and own both our successes and our challenges. In FY23, PagerDuty has hit its business targets and got to Non-GAAP (Generally Accepted Accounting Principles) profitability ahead of schedule. And as the report demonstrates, we’ve achieved this success while still centering our ID&E goals. 

Some key findings from the report: 

• Board diversity: two-thirds of the board is classified as non-white, with women making up nearly half of all board members
• U.S. race/ethnicity: 61.6% identify as white, the remainder as non-white. Senior U.S. leadership (VP and above) falls along the same lines
• LGBTQ+: nine percent of Dutonians identify as members of the LGBTQ+ community

Putting “People First”

These results aren’t just numbers to us, or a matter of simply checking a corporate responsibility “box.” Our goal is to foster internal accountability and external transparency across all things ID&E – and that begins with living our methods of putting people first. 

Our culture binds us together and guides our decisions. Unique employee backgrounds, experiences, and perspectives give us our competitive edge, allowing us to remain the most innovative, efficient, and trusted digital operations management partner for our customers. 

That also means our ID&E work is inevitably tied to both our business success, and our team’s Impact Work. Over the last several years, we have:

• Created six different ERGs, with 2022 ERG membership growth reaching an incredible 80%
• Distributed $2 million since 2019 in unrestricted funding to organizations like Trek Medics International, Nexleaf Analytics, and SIRUM, and deployed $1 million to close the global vaccine equity gap
• Launched a climate equity fund in 2022 with initial investments in organizations that are building solutions to the climate crisis
• Created an ID&E Ambassador Program, which provides a global perspective on cultural and business norms for every region
• Added an ID&E session to The Dutonian Experience employee onboarding program
• Developed an Executive Leadership Development Series (ELDS) with a focus on emotional intelligence and global awareness

The road ahead – accountability is critical

We are all proud of what we’ve accomplished so far. The collective commitment to these principles and to building an inclusive culture of belonging will ensure that equitable representation and opportunity exist for all. 

But this report is a milestone – an early milestone – on our journey. We must continue to push forward in 2023 by furthering our inclusive hiring program, elevating pay practices and policies, and ensuring that pay philosophy is built on the foundation of equity. We’ve already expanded  the compensation team’s resources and tools to align pay equity strategy with diversity representation, and have expanded pay transparency.

Continuing to expand and support ERGs will also be a key priority in 2023. We are providing ERGs with increased opportunities to support PagerDuty’s diversity goals and help them create structure, consistency, transparency, and global scalability. During Q1 we will debut Elevate, a new ERG that aims to foster a more inclusive and equitable community where women are empowered to own and excel in their career development. 

Finally, we will continue raising the bar within our ID&E training and development series, building inclusive leadership with accountability to diverse representation, and upskilling to establish a universal mindset of ID&E within PagerDuty.

From executive leaders to Dutonians worldwide, we all have a responsibility to ensure that our organization is truly inclusive, diverse, and equitable. We must be accountable to ourselves, to each other, and to our customers and partners. Our role as a company is greater than the sum of our parts – we must push ourselves beyond the boundaries of our own business to support and advance a more equitable world. This is the spirit behind the newly developed Dutonian Accountability Plan, which provides Dutonians with a baseline understanding of ID&E, while holding our executive leadership accountable for improving our diverse representation, and defining how inclusion drives innovation within each business unit. Together, these initiatives will drive a greater sense of global belonging as we continue to understand how to best serve and support the communities where we live and operate.

I encourage you to read the report and see for yourself why PagerDuty is a great place to work and thrive. The full report is available to read here.

The post The Value – and Challenge – of Accountability: PagerDuty Releases Our Third Annual Inclusion, Diversity, & Equity (ID&E) Report appeared first on PagerDuty.

• Five free Professional user licences 
• 40% off additional product
• Expanded onboarding and training resources

We know that in today’s digital economy, seconds matter. Maybe even more so for mission-driven and nonprofit organizations, where seconds can be a matter of life and death. Whether operating a suicide or safety hotline, delivering disaster relief, time-critical healthcare, or food stamps—such services rely on round-the-clock availability. PagerDuty’s real-time operations platform guarantees reliability and uptime, so that mission-driven organizations can be assured the constituents and communities they work for will never be without their services.

Our vision at PagerDuty is an equitable world where we transform critical work so all teams can delight their customers and build trust. Enhanced Impact Pricing supports this vision by making PagerDuty accessible to more teams from IT to business operations such as constituent service and support. This is particularly important at a time when prices are rising universally and many organizations are working with additional resourcing constraints. We also know that mission-driven teams are committed to being the best stewards of the resources they have, and Impact Pricing helps them meet this goal.

Deepening PagerDuty’s Social Impact 

Our work through PagerDuty.org, the company’s social impact arm, is a vital part of how we support PagerDuty’s broader vision of an equitable world. PagerDuty.org mobilizes company assets across our product, people, and philanthropic funding to help organizations save lives by reaching people faster and to advance justice and equity. Combining the capabilities of our platform and the expertise of Dutonians, we work with partners to solve complex social and environmental challenges that help move people from risk to thriving. 

In 2021, PagerDuty.org provided a total of $804,000 in platform discounts and donations to qualifying nonprofit organizations and B Corps through Impact Pricing. Here are just some of the organizations that we supported.

• Trek Medics improves emergency response for at-risk and vulnerable populations through innovative mobile phone technologies. It uses PagerDuty to support its Beacon communications platform, through which responders are alerted and coordinated in response to emergencies. 
• The Trevor Project is a nonprofit organization focused on suicide prevention efforts among lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, and questioning youth. It uses PagerDuty to keep its suicide hotline and text services available and ready 24/7.
• Democracy Works helps Americans vote no matter what, by providing the tools and support needed to confidently participate in elections. It uses PagerDuty to keep its voter engagement platform, TurboVote, and its data tool, Voting Information Project (VIP), running around the clock.

You can learn more about our social impact work in our 2021 Impact Report, and key social and ESG outcomes here. 

Driving Positive Change Through 2022 and Beyond 

In concert with our improved Impact Pricing offering, we’re creating new programs to provide enhanced support to our nonprofit customers and PagerDuty.org grant partners. This includes “Health Check” services for our nonprofit customers that we are currently piloting. PagerDuty employees (Dutonians) provide pro bono expertise to nonprofit customers to ensure they are fully benefiting from the PagerDuty platform’s features and benefits. Health Checks will help nonprofit organizations ensure they have a solid foundation in place should they wish to extend the use of the PagerDuty real-time operations platform to other departments, teams, and use cases.

We’re also working with PagerDuty’s Services, Support, and Education teams to create new offerings for nonprofit users to help them adopt proven practices and drive better outcomes for their real-time digital operations. For more information, please contact support@pagerduty.com.

From time-critical health to civic engagement to reducing environmental impact, PagerDuty’s technology is the single most valuable asset we can bring to our nonprofit customers. We are committed to continuing to learn alongside our customers and partners to effectively apply our resources and expertise to create a responsive world where everyone has the freedom to thrive.

 To apply for Impact Pricing, visit: https://www.pagerduty.com/foundation-apply/. 

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Today, I am delighted to launch PagerDuty’s 2021 Impact Report. 

Here’s the question we’re interested in: Is this world better off because PagerDuty is in it? We move in this direction by adopting a social impact mindset that asks us to examine and account for the way our actions, individually and jointly, impact the world around us. 

PagerDuty’s 2021 Impact Report describes the influence we had in 2021 through our social impact arm, PagerDuty.org, and in partnership with our customers, community partners, and Dutonians. This year’s report contains our inaugural environmental, social and governance (ESG) disclosures along with an expanded description of our social performance. The report is vital in ensuring we continue to be accountable to our stakeholders and communities, and transparent about how we measure and adapt our impact on the world.

Read the full PagerDuty Social Impact Report 2021, published here today.

Last year, our work was completed in the midst of the pandemic, deepening political schisms, and the acute need for greater racial justice. This year, the backdrop feels just as tumultuous. Collectively, we face many unknowns—from the climate crisis to global conflicts to increasing inequity. Yet I also know that when we join forces, we have far more power to engender greater justice, freedom, and health for all. 

How We Approach our Social Impact Work to Accelerate Change 

I am proud of the projects that we’ve supported, how we’ve helped nonprofit organizations and B Corps to achieve their missions, and how Dutonians have given back generously to their communities. These outcomes are led by three clear principles that guide our work and our partnerships. Because we’ve seen first-hand that how one makes an impact is as important as the impact itself. Here are the highlights.

1. We provide full-spectrum support. We mobilize company assets across our product, people, voice, and philanthropic funding, and tailor this support in the way that best serves our partners’ goals.
   • $1.87m in funding deployed to 668 organizations globally.
   • 75% of 2021 grantee organizations led by women and/or leaders of color.
   • 23,300 people received COVID-19 vaccine doses (via our investment in the Go Give One) campaign.
2. We practice trust-based and equitable grantmaking. A core operating principle is a trust-based, participatory approach to philanthropy.
   • We made investments to reduce health inequities and support equitable COVID-19 vaccine access, piloted grants in environmental justice, and launched the Employee Resource Group (ERG) Grantmaking Program.
   • Our grants are provided as unrestricted funding and we made our first multi-year grants, allowing organizations to innovate and make longer term program investments. 
   • We trust local leaders to apply resources where, and when, they are most needed because they hold insights into the issues, climate, and culture.
3. We cultivate an impact mindset. We examine how our actions, individually and collectively, affect the world around us. We empower every Dutonian to create this impact as a part of their core role.
   • 92% of Dutonians volunteered or donated to a cause.
   • 5,232 hours volunteered by Dutonians; an 83% increase compared to 2020.
   • 90% of Dutonians say the company’s social impact work makes them proud to work here.

In the full report, you can read in detail how some of our nonprofit customers have leveraged the PagerDuty platform to advance their work. This includes SIRUM, which is using PagerDuty to facilitate the distribution of unused prescribed medication in the United States. And WeRobotics, which is using PagerDuty to support incident response for drone field and operations support for COVID-19 vaccine delivery in Tawi-Tawi in the Philippines.

An ESG Roadmap to Guide our Company, and Contributions to Society and the Environment 

Formalizing and integrating ESG into our daily operations is critical to our resilience as a company, and aligned with our vision to contribute to an equitable and sustainable world. Our ESG program is a natural evolution of our social impact work. PagerDuty’s existing programs contribute to progress against 11 of the 17 United Nation Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). We’re making investments to advance these outcomes and to further align ESG within PagerDuty. In 2021, we identified material priorities, developed an ESG roadmap, assigned accountability, and targeted initial investments. In addition, we set benchmarks that we’ll use to measure our progress, including:

• Achieved gender pay equity within $0.01
• Achieved race/ethnicity pay equity within $0.02
• Built a diverse Board of Directors: 50% women and 75% underrepresented minorities
• Completed first Materiality Assessment to guide our ESG priorities
• Completed two years of Greenhouse Gas Inventories

The full report has more detail on our ESG programs—including our Inclusive Hiring Program, our Inclusion, Diversity and Equity (ID&E) goals, and how we assess and reduce our environmental impact. 

What’s Ahead for 2022

While we’ve launched new programs to deliver greater value to our nonprofit customers, and built on early investments and learnings in Time-Critical Health and racial equity, we know there is more work to be done to create healthier and more equitable communities. 

In 2022, we will continue to put social impact at the core of PagerDuty’s business, including how PagerDuty’s technology can help customers cure delays in healthcare and reduce environmental impact, and how our social justice investments can most effectively eliminate systemic discrimination. We will launch Impact Labs, a new program that inverts our current model, and provides more than $1M in funding, product credits, and technical volunteer support for Time-Critical Health partners. We are also introducing new Impact Pricing to reduce cost barriers and enable nonprofits and certified B Corporations to expand their use of the PagerDuty platform. And we’re building a multi-dimensional Just & Equitable Communities strategy to guide long term investments in Climate Justice. We will continue to advance and report on our ESG priorities and progress.

These last few years have been a continuous beat of unknowns and of everyday resilience. Drawing inspiration from our partners, customers, and the communities we work in, we remain optimists. We will continue to work toward more justice, freedom, and health for all, as we move towards our vision of a responsive world where everyone has the freedom to thrive.

Read the full PagerDuty Social Impact Report 2021 here: https://impact-report.pagerduty.com/ 

To find out more about PagerDuty.org and our Impact Pricing for nonprofits and social enterprises, visit: https://www.pagerduty.com/foundation/.

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Industry-Leading Parental Leave Programs

Almost 30% of our employees identify as parents or caregivers, according to the latest PagerDuty Inclusion, Diversity, and Equity annual report. Through BabyDuty, our global parental leave program, we provide generous paid leave, and in many cases go above and beyond the minimum requirements. For instance:

• US: We offer up to 22 weeks of paid parental leave for pregnant parents and 12 weeks for non-pregnant parents, including adoptive parents.
• CANADA: We also offer up to 22 weeks of paid parental leave for pregnant parents and 12 weeks for non-pregnant parents, including adoptive parents in coordination with Canada Employment Insurance as well as unpaid parental leave for the remaining parental leave required by Canada.

New in 2022, we’re excited to introduce a phased return-to-work policy, providing new parents with the option to return to work on a reduced schedule for up to four weeks before becoming full time again. They can reduce the number of hours worked in a day or the number of days in a work week to equal 50% to 75% capacity, helping to ease the transition back to work. 

Additionally, we are expanding our policy to cover more than base salary during the paid parental leave period. The intent of the new policy is to keep employees who are eligible for bonus or commissions financially whole.

Emma, PagerDuty Director of Commercial Operations, spent lots of quality time with Freddie, seen here sporting a “Future Dutonian” tee, while on BabyDuty recently!

Supporting Our Parents and Families

It takes a village to raise a child, so we are also increasing the size of employees’ communities. To help Dutonians manage the many demands that come with parenthood, they receive memberships and access to benefits through Cleo and Care.com.

• Through Cleo, employees are paired with a dedicated specialist who supports their health, parenting, and career needs so they can navigate parental duties with less stress.
• With Care.com, employees gain access to a wide network of certified child care providers. Employees in the US and Canada can also take advantage of backup care—five days of subsidized child care coverage per year.

“It’s tough being a parent during a pandemic, especially without having family nearby. When our nanny was out sick earlier this year, we were able to juggle it for a day, but when she ended up needing a week off, we started scrambling. I decided to try out PagerDuty’s backup care benefit and within two hours Care.com had assigned us a verified caregiver to arrive the next morning and cover the rest of the week. I couldn’t believe how easy it was!” -Karen, PagerDuty Sr. Program Manager

Time To Recharge  

During the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, we learned through internal well-being surveys that our employees were feeling stressed and they didn’t have enough time for themselves outside of work to recharge.

In response, we quickly introduced Dutonian Wellness Days— scheduled company-wide paid days off in addition to other paid time-off (PTO) benefits and scheduled holidays—  for employees to unplug and enjoy time away from work. Company-wide time off is not new to PagerDuty. We learned years ago that there are significant benefits to the whole company taking time off at the same time through our corporate tradition, HibernationDuty. During HibernationDuty at the end of the year, employees enjoy a week off while the company runs with a small coverage team. During this time, employees fully disconnect without worrying about email or work piling up.

Due to the success of Dutonian Wellness Days and HibernationDuty, we are proud to offer for the first time this year a paid midsummer Wellness Week! We believe that when Dutonians are well-rested, they’re able to “Champion the Customer” every day.

Since the introduction of the Wellness Days, we’ve seen our resilience scores (measured through frequent pulse checks) rise 25 points in favorability. Based on these results and the overwhelmingly positive feedback from employees, we invested in our employees’ wellness, making these changes a part of our culture.

Jon, PagerDuty Software Engineer, enjoyed a Wellness Day diving with friends!

Dutonians, Hannele, Logan, and Giselle, shared their Wellness Day plans in photos, highlighting our distributed environment with the mix of seasons and activities presented!

Easing Employees’ Financial Obligations

Compensation is important and personal to employees—even more so in these uncertain times. To assist with relieving additional pressure that may be associated with financial planning for the future, we increased our retirement match.

In the U.S. in 2022, we boosted our investment in employees’ 401k retirement plan matching contribution from 1% to 2%. Now, PagerDuty will match an employee’s 401k plan contributions up to 2% each pay period, as long as they contribute. For our Canadian employees, we are pleased to announce that we have increased the company matching contributions to the PagerDuty DPSP. Effective January 1, 2022, for every dollar of their eligible earnings contributed to the RRSP mandatory, PagerDuty will contribute $1 to the DPSP up to 2%. 

Additionally, on certain plan options we lowered deductibles and out-of-pocket health care cost maximums in the U.S. For our Preferred Provider Organization (PPO) plans, out-of-pocket maxes decreased between $500 to $1,000, depending on the plan and plan tier. Our High Deductible Health Plan (HDHP) deductibles decreased between $300 to $600, depending on the plan tier, and includes an employer Health Savings Account (HSA) contribution of up to $225/month.

PagerDuty Highly Values its Employees

We appreciate the contributions our employees make to enhance our products and services every day. As we all move forward and new challenges arise, we will continue to listen to our employees and make strides to provide a world-class employee experience. 

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Putting People First is in Our DNA

What does a People First culture look like? It starts with our people-centric values —”Bring Your Self” and “Run Together.” Our values guide our work, including how we hire and develop employees. As a leadership team, we put our values into action every day. People First is a journey, not a destination.

Here’s a look at how we strive to go above and beyond the standard compensation and benefits package to support and nurture our employees from day one at PagerDuty.

1. Vesting Equity Faster

All Dutonians (PagerDuty employees) are owners in the company and we are proud to offer competitive RSU (restricted stock unit) grants to every new hire. New hires that started October 2021 or later can look forward to vesting their equity faster, with RSUs vesting quarterly, removing the previous 1-year cliff vesting. This equity change demonstrates to our new hires globally how much we value their contributions and decision to bring their talents to PagerDuty.

Want to tap into more equity? All Dutonians can buy PagerDuty stock at a 15% discount through our Employee Stock Purchase Program (ESPP) which includes a 24-month look back period, which means a greater discount is possible over time (15% at a minimum).

2. Leaning into Flexible Work

PagerDuty has been recognized as a Great Place To Work®. The majority — 94% of employees — say they feel encouraged to balance their work lives and personal lives. That’s no coincidence.

Work-life integration starts during the hiring process. All candidate job interviews are now conducted virtually, offering more flexibility and control. The virtual interview also gives candidates a preview of what it’s like to work with our distributed teams.

Being distributive is our native state, and we’re leveraging lessons learned over the past year to provide every Dutonian with an excellent experience, connected not only to their team, but to the values and culture that make PagerDuty a truly special place to work.

Once a new hire starts, they choose how and where they want to work: in-office, hybrid, or anywhere. This flexibility makes it easier to manage life’s responsibilities.

While we have adopted a flexible working strategy, there are some roles that need to be in an office, or benefit greatly when individual work is conducted from an office. We make sure that expectations are clear to both employees and candidates about their choices in work mode.

3. Hiring Inclusively

We want to invoke change not only in the tech industry, but in the world. PagerDuty partners with Women Who Code, People of Color in Tech, Out 4 Undergrad, PowerToFly, and Latinas in Tech to find the best underrepresented talent in technology. However, attracting diverse candidates is just the start. Feeling comfortable bringing yourself to work matters at PagerDuty. In order to help our candidates really see themselves at PagerDuty, we now offer on-demand videos and resources from our Employee Resource Groups (ERGs), and even a chance to meet with our ERG members through informal, non-evaluative conversations at a late stage of the recruitment process. Our goal is to ensure every candidate leaves feeling that PagerDuty offers an environment where they will feel valued, included, and like they belong.

PagerDuty has six ERGs: PagerDuty Array (Black and Latinx employees), PageAble (visible and invisible disabilities), PatriotDuty (military veterans), RainbowDuty (promoting gender identity and sexual orientation diversity), Illuminate (Asian and Pacific Islander), and SisterDuty (women and allies).

4. Improving Our Communities

Our People First commitment extends far beyond ourselves. To introduce new hires to our giving culture, they receive a $25 USD (or local currency equivalent) credit to donate to a charity of their choosing in their first week at PagerDuty.

Beyond donations, PagerDuty believes in supporting community volunteering. PagerDuty gives employees 20 hours of paid volunteer time off (VTO) each year to give back to organizations and causes that are meaningful to them. Additionally, all global voting-related activities (including voting in-person, mailing your ballot, and volunteering as a poll-worker) are eligible for VTO. At PagerDuty, we believe that voting, and supporting a democracy where all voices are counted, is one of our most important rights and responsibilities, and a way for every individual to drive social impact.

While we are constantly evolving our Social Impact program, these recent efforts have roots going back several years. Since 2017, PagerDuty has been a member of the Pledge 1% movement. That means we commit 1% of equity, 1% of product, and 1% of employee time to help our communities and support employee volunteerism. We’ll be sharing lots of new and innovative ways that we’re supporting our employees over the next several months and we’re excited to offer these additional benefits and perks!

Interested in Joining the PagerDuty Team?

People First is core to PagerDuty’s success. We hold ourselves to the highest standards and strive to be a best-in-class company that our employees love!
PagerDuty is hiring for a variety of positions. For up-to-date information about available positions, please visit the Careers page. In addition to locations in Atlanta, Lisbon, London, San Francisco, Sydney, and Toronto, PagerDuty supports work from various remote locations around the world!

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