About

Looks like we're opening a pizza shop here, but in fact it was a DevOps shop!

How we bootstrapped the business

Gruntwork originally started out as two traditional DevOps consulting companies: Atomic Squirrel, founded by Yevgeniy Brikman (”Jim”), and Phoenix DevOps, founded by Josh Padnick. Jim and Josh met in 2015, realized that they kept re-implementing the same solution with every client, and began working together to create a better way to create best-practices infrastructure.

In 2016, after working with a number of clients and building up a library of reusable scripts, templates, and best practices, they merged the two companies together into Gruntwork. The rest, as they say, is history.

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Our values

Think like an owner

Act as if the company were your own. See yourself as responsible for everything that happens in the company, while focusing on where you can contribute most.

Take pride in your craft

Whatever you do—code, contracts, or calls—do it with excellence. Focus on quality, craftsmanship, and creating work you can be proud of.

Get things done

The counterpart to pride in craftsmanship is finding a way to get things done. The most beautiful code that never ships adds no value. Don't let perfect be the enemy of good.

Incrementalism

The best way to get things done is to do work incrementally. We believe that quantity of iteration beats quality of iteration. Plan projects so that every increment is valuable by itself. Optimize for fast feedback. Aim to recover quickly rather than trying to avoid all mistakes.

Lift up your teammates

A true team player uplifts everyone around them. Share your knowledge freely, challenge your colleagues to improve, and help make the team and company stronger.

Do the right thing

You almost always know what's the right thing to do. It's the choice that is fair, ethical, and decent. It's the choice that lets you feel good as a human being. Always make that choice, even if it means losing a client or losing money. Be a good person.

Putting the human touch
into building a company

Gruntwork has a secondary, social mission:

Prove that being a human-friendly company is good for business.

We embrace a broader concept of success that includes not only our financial success and stability, but also the health of our team, and the impact we have on our customers, partners, vendors, and society at large.

We’re 100% bootstrapped

Gruntwork has neither investment capital nor debt. Instead of spending time appeasing investors, we focus on meeting the needs of our customers.

We’re transparent by default

We are transparent by default. We share monthly financials, salaries, equity grants, bonuses, and important company information with all Grunts.

We all win together

We issue 3x - 4x the market rate of equity, use a progressive equity plan, and share annual profits with all Grunts according to transparent formulas.

We prioritize both work and life

By saying no to approaches like “growth at all costs,” we can say yes to a sustainable balance between meeting the needs of our customers and those of our team.

Building great products requires genuine care for both our customers and our team. Being human-friendly isn’t a cost we pay; it’s an investment we make.