Open floor plans be damned: Wildbit’s new space is all about offices

Wildbit wanted all 12 of its Philly-based employees to have their own offices, and that’s why they moved into a new space.
Yeah, you heard that right. Private offices and lots of them. No open floor plan. Wildbit was over the open floor plan craze. It was too distracting.
The web dev firm, which opened its first brick-and-mortar office on N3rd Street in 2012 after running a remote team for a dozen years, just moved into a new office at 225 Chestnut St., not far from its old N3rd Street digs. It’s much bigger (they went from 2,000 square feet to three floors and 10,000 square feet) and has an event space and a whole floor for game studio Flyclops, which moved from the Philly Game Forge. It took them a year to find it, said Wildbit cofounder Natalie Nagele.
The company is hosting an open house event on June 5.
RSVP
Private offices were important, and so were breakout rooms, common space and a long communal dining table for their daily team lunches, prepared by a chef, cofounder Chris Nagele wrote in a blog post.
Even though Wildbit opened an actual office three years ago and is clearly sold on its importance, the company has still held onto some of its remote team. Out of its team of 21, 12 work out of Philadelphia and the rest are remote. That raised an important consideration when building the new office: every breakout room should have videoconferencing capabilities so that remote employees feel included, Nagele said.
“We’re always looking for the best people to join our family, so we will make any location work,” Nagele wrote in an email. “We just make sure to have two retreats a year where we can all spend time together.”
Wildbit has what feels like a pragmatic approach to location.
Said Nagele: “We’re all very close and would love to be in the same city, but that’s not possible. For example, we have a few guys in the burbs that work remote so their life doesn’t suck commuting. But they come into the office periodically so we can hang out together. And just recently one of our guys from CA came to Philly for two weeks to work with the Philly guys closely.”
See photos below of the office. Wildbit worked with Boxwood Architects to build out the space.

The Wildbit team has lunch together every day, prepared by a chef. (Courtesy photo)

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