At PlayerZero, hybrid work isn’t a one-size-fits-all policy. It’s shaped by the nature of the role and the kind of collaboration the work involves.
“We focus on which roles have the most upside by having people in the office,” says David Schreiber, Head of Talent.
With our newest office now open, the PlayerZero team operates out of two core hubs. San Francisco is home to our AI engineering teams, while Atlanta—where PlayerZero was founded—houses the platform and infrastructure teams.
Across both offices, some employees come in a few days a week, while others are more remote. For engineering teams, that proximity is a clear advantage.
The AI engineering teams work at the edge of rapidly evolving large language models, where changes happen quickly and often unpredictably. In that environment, bringing the team together in person helps shorten feedback loops and speed up decision-making.
“The idea is that we don’t necessarily want people to come in every day,” David explains. “But for engineering in particular, there is a lot of value in everybody being in the office at the same time, collaborating on projects.”
The new San Francisco workspace reflects this philosophy—an open, light-filled environment with flexible seating and plant-lined walls. And at the center is a 16-foot communal table that doubles as a place to eat, whiteboard, and solve problems together in real time.
“Some of the coolest ideas happen when we’re in the office feeding off each other,” says Jeff Bragdon, Principal DevOps Engineer. “Whiteboards move. Ideas flow. You can see people getting excited in real time, and that changes how you build together.”
He adds: “Writing new pieces of local-dev and iterating on them in the office with people actively using the application creates a kind of feedback loop that’s hard to replicate anywhere else.”
For talent, product, and sales teams, the work doesn’t require the same level of real-time coordination.
“I’m remote, and so is our head of product,” David says. “And then our sales team is a little bit dispersed around Atlanta, and up and down the East Coast.”
That’s why the Atlanta office is less about day-to-day presence and more about bringing people together when it matters most.
“There’s a lot of collaboration between the go-to-market team, which is Atlanta-based, and the infrastructure team,” says Robert Klasen, Customer Success at PlayerZero. Teams stay aligned through an open Slack culture, quick huddles, and weekly all-hands meetings that create space for both structured updates and informal collaboration.
“I can think of occasions where something is happening in the platform — not enough to warrant a 30-minute call or a detailed Slack message — but sitting near our platform team means I can share go-to-market experiences with less friction,” Robert adds. “It builds a different kind of relationship.”
Flexibility like this also expands PlayerZero’s hiring reach, opening the door to a larger talent pool.
“Being intentional about where people work and how they work together is core to how we’re building engineering teams for the long term,” David explains. “That’s how I’d characterize our approach as we think about growth.”
If this sounds like a culture you’d like to be part of, don’t hesitate to get in touch.