Join Team Formic

Formic exists to create a world of abundance by outsourcing the drudgery of work to robots so that humans can be unleashed to do the creative, imaginative, collaborative, satisfying, society-advancing work we’re meant to do.

Realizing our mission will require us to rethink the status quo, stay on the cusp of today’s innovations, solve really hard technical and operational problems, and most importantly, remain fearlessly optimistic while we do it.

We’re in an old space doing new things and aspiring to new heights. Instead of thinking about all the small ways something won’t work, we think about all the big ways something can. We lean on the experience and perspective of our team mates coming from other industries to learn what is possible – this mix of viewpoints is one of our greatest strengths. The path forward might not always be immediately obvious–it’s still early days for Formic–but if we focus on our mission in everything we do, every day, we’ll always be headed in the right direction. We will create a world of abundance with the world’s largest robot workforce.

Every production manager or owner that chooses a Formic solution relies on us for their output and production, and their employees rely on us for their livelihood. We take that responsibility seriously and work to build reliability into every step of the process. We want to turn them into the hero of their factory.

We exist to make automation so easy that our customers think working with us feels like magic. Behind the scenes, we know there are complexities and tradeoffs, challenges and risks, but we always strive to make things as easy as possible for our customers. If we have a choice between making something harder for us or harder for our customer, we choose to make it harder for us every time. It’s our job to handle all the complexities of scoping and deployment so that they can stay focused on their business and outcomes.

We require of ourselves extremely high standards of work, help elevate those around us, and always have the most skin in the game. The success of Formic should always be aligned with the success of our customers. We don’t compromise on the stuff that matters, even if it’s inconvenient to do so. We strive to be great partners for our integrator & supplier networks, and firmly believe that our success will lead to their success as well.

We’ll always do whatever it takes to deliver the promised outcomes to our customers, ensure buying automation from us is a simple business decision, and surprise them at each step of the way about how easy the process was. Staffing a factory with Formic’s robots should be an easy, instant, win for any customer. If we obsess over one thing, it’s this.

The only way to do the industry-shaping, tide-raising, high-impact work we are here to do is to deliver great work at a steady clip. As Kevin Kelly said, “many backward steps are made by standing still.” We must take decisive steps forward, as often as we can.

We’ll get there by taking accountability for our work, staying focused on what matters, and seeing things through to completion no matter what it takes to deliver on our promises. We refuse to be blocked, even when it’s unpleasant. We aspire to work efficiently and we’ll prioritize ruthlessly to get there by constantly asking ourselves if the “juice is worth the squeeze”. There will be times we have to say no to work and people we really, really want to say yes to. Those moments might be painful, but we have to constantly remind ourselves it’s worth the space it opens up for us to execute exceedingly well on the things that matter. We own our own work and our focus.

There will be times when the work in front of us feels big and hard to wrangle. So, we’ll break it up into smaller, more manageable pieces, polish them up, and get them out the door. (It’ll help us learn sooner and more often, anyway). We bias towards getting things done. We help our colleagues keep that spirit up, too.

We do all this without being asked or told, because that’s the kind of company, product, and reputation we all want to uphold together. This company is ours to build together. We’re still the underdog, but if we keep shipping great stuff and building great habits around urgency and focus, soon, the Formic way will become the most obvious way for a factory to build their workforce.

Building the world’s biggest robot workforce will require doing our best work, tackling big challenges, and being ruthless about quality for our customers. It will require taking the time and effort to work from first principles and find the right path forward, then being decisive about that path once we find it.

We have to respect conventional wisdom enough to learn from it, while being skeptical enough to look for new and better ways to do things. At Formic, we don’t just accept the status quo, and we don’t do things without knowing why. If things aren’t right, we’ll keep working to improve them until they are. We value asking good questions and finding good answers. We approach questions with curiosity and humility and reason. We think before we act and when our gut is telling us something, we’re disciplined enough to back our instincts up with facts.

We get feedback along the way not only because it fosters alignment and consistency, but also because it usually yields better results. We defend our ideas with the truth, not our emotions or even worse, company politics. We’re egoless in debates and judge ideas on their merits, not based on who presented them or how things have always been done.

Doing what’s right shouldn’t be confused with doing what’s popular, though. Operating without consensus is uncomfortable, but it’s more important that we have the courage to make hard tradeoffs and do what’s right even if it’s not popular.

Building with a commitment to getting it right allows us to make big bets and take risks, while giving ourselves and the customers that rely on us the very best chance at success. It’s also the quickest path to trusting ourselves, and each other, to stay on the right track and do the right thing in everything we do.

Think about the things around you that are made of rubber – tires, the soles of our shoes, pet toys, bouncy balls, brake pads, windshield wipers, medical gloves, balloons, surfaces of playgrounds, hoses. Now think of how reliable these things are across so many different use-cases, whether it’s rain or shine, or whether we’re walking, driving or biking, playing or working. Rubber does the trick because it is simultaneously incredibly durable and incredibly resilient.

At Formic, we work like rubber; when we fall we bounce back up. Dropping something shouldn’t necessarily mean breaking it. We are flexible enough to meet all kinds of challenges and are strong enough to get through them without falling apart. We should be able to move over gravel with grace. Everyday pokes and prods and pushes shouldn’t throw us off our game. When they come, we should be able to absorb them and reclaim our shape in no time…or, mold ourselves to the new normal if that’s what’s needed.

There’s going to be a lot thrown at us in the days, months, and years to come. We aspire to take it all in stride, with a spring in our step.

At Formic, we always work with a desire to make things easier and better for other team members. In a fast-paced, quickly-scaling organization like ours, a graceful baton pass is an act of kindness.

We are judicious with our asks, mindful of the costs of internal requests, and look for opportunities to be proactively helpful. We think about how to make useful information available to our colleagues (ex- in well-curated, discoverable documentation). If it’s buried in a Slack thread, it’s probably not usefully available. We unblock others and are responsive to help them sprint.

Before you ask someone else to do something (or even just give them an idea), consider, whether it’s actually important that they hear from you about this, whether now is the right time and whether this is the right forum (and if not, when/how?). When you’re on the receiving end of an idea, relentlessly determine who is the decision-maker, what the action is, and whether you are going to take action on it. Get comfortable with (the good kind of) process - they help us run more smoothly. Respect those others have established and honor the inkling that something you’re working on might require one.

Be generous with useful information. Share resources, tools, and tips that are likely to accelerate someone else’s progress. Make teaching and learning a part of your day, every day. Much of our work requires that we “stitch together” disparate areas (mechanical engineering, software, finance, legal, etc.). Helping each other lets us continue to build a better solution as we “connect” and produce seamless solutions using multiple disciplines and knowledge areas.