10 Years of Alley – Alley is A Family

This post is part of our 10-year retrospective, sharing thoughts and musings from our partners and others in the company. We’re excited to share this anniversary year with you, and hope you enjoy! Up this week – Chief Operating Officer Bridget McNulty!

As I look back at my time with Alley, it truly feels like my family. And, like any family, I could find so many different words to describe it. A few to start with – Alley is:

  • a team who has each other’s backs,
  • a group of real people working hard and having fun while doing so,
  • not afraid to make mistakes and learn from them,
  • a company that takes our work seriously and honors our client commitments,
  • random, irreverent (in some respects) and crazy to the core.

As an only child, my family has always been small, but even just this past year my family has expanded to almost 80 Alley-ens who I could not be more thankful for. 2019 was an extremely challenging year personally for me, and it was my Alley family that helped me through it in a lot of ways. The team helped me to maintain a sense of normalcy when everything in life felt far from normal, and that was so appreciated.

But Alley is more than just the people that are part of the team. Alley is everyone who has been a part of it at any point. It’s (obviously) bigger than any one person or group of people, and is truly an amalgamation of all past, present & future Alley-en’s perspectives and experiences. I feel responsible for it, in some ways – while I may not have founded it or been around in the first ~2 years of the company, I adopted Alley as my own and I find myself so fortunate to help it along its journey to mature company-hood. And this is something that continues even now – every day I try to nurture Alley, whatever that might mean. It might mean improving a process, a policy, or helping an individual out. Whatever it is, I’m there for it, as a parent would be.

With that in mind, I couldn’t be more excited about the next 10 years of Alley. To me, the first 10 years of Alley were simply preparation for what’s to come – years of experience in our rearview mirror – to help empower us for the road ahead. With an established team and dedicated individuals, it’s almost scary to think of what might be next. Any company is only as strong as the individuals who are a part of it, and Alley is fortunate to have some of the best.In the coming years, I’d love to focus on leaning into our values of quality, transparency, and accountability and try to answer questions like: how can we not only have an impact on our client’s products but on their companies? How can we have an impact on other remote companies in the world? How can we improve the landscape of employment for everyone? Those might seem like slightly ambitious problems to tackle, but I believe Alley can and should be part of the conversation for solving these problems and more. We have a lot of insight to offer and we’re ready to start helping those around us. It’s time for us to share what we’ve learned, and improve not just the future of Alley, but the world. Here’s to the next 10!