Life at Ad Hoc articles

Achieving greater impact for Veterans with the Veterans Experience Center

March 15, 2023

Veterans have always played a critical role in how we research and help design products for the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) and the Veteran community.

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A remote-first guide to remote culture

August 09, 2022

As more organizations consider remote work, it’s important to understand what it entails and how to ensure all team members feel supported. In this piece, we share a few practices we’ve found success with.

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Building a mentorship program for product managers

May 25, 2022

We’ve created a supplemental APM mentorship program that provides a place for aspiring product managers to grow and experienced PMs to teach.

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Product Reviews: Building a culture of feedback loops in government

April 18, 2022

We created Product Reviews to provide product managers with non-judgemental feedback on their strategic approaches from cross-functional peers.

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Tour the U.S. with Ad Hoc!

January 10, 2022

If you’re looking to try something new, whether in your home state or another, check out our list for some bookmark-worthy adventures!

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Crafting our leadership teams for fast, effective information flow

January 04, 2022

As people within Engineering take on new responsibilities, and new people join our teams, they are entering an intentionally-structured way of operating.

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Learning to grow as an organization without losing who you are

October 21, 2021

For us, that has meant doubling down on our people and investing in new structures that promote professional development, technical excellence, and the impact of the digital services we support.

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How Ad Hoc supports working parents and caregivers

October 18, 2021

Ad Hoc’s #remotelife culture gives our team members the flexibility to adjust their work to meet the needs of their lives.

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6 concrete tips on how to keep good people while managing remotely

September 13, 2021

People are quitting their jobs in record numbers across many industries right now. How can we keep folks interested and engaged in their work, specifically in a remote environment?

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What it’s like to be a product manager at Ad Hoc

January 13, 2021

We’re looking for people at all levels of experience who are interested in solving hard problems and helping organizations adopt more iterative and human-centered ways of working.

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Ad Hoc’s 2020 reading list

December 22, 2020

To wrap up 2020, we wanted to share the highlights from our book clubs and other staff favorites to inspire your winter reading list.

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Finding your place on Ad Hoc’s research team

September 23, 2020

Ad Hoc researchers come from a wide variety of backgrounds from archaeology to anthropology to museums to education. The team is proudly a place where we accept and encourage the diversity of people and their experiences.

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Grow your design career at Ad Hoc

September 17, 2020

We recently launched a new career ladder for the design practice. Each step has clearly-defined competencies and responsibilities that help staff chart a path for how to grow at Ad Hoc.

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For remote work, try starting with trust

July 16, 2020

If your team is new to remote work, spend as much time setting up an environment based on trust as you are setting up technical tools to make it possible.

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Gift exchange — because even #remotelife people like gifts

February 06, 2019

As 2018 drew to an end, the season of appreciation, gratefulness, and gifting was coming upon us.

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Ad Hoc’s design team experiments with a book club

December 11, 2018

Four months ago, when so much felt uncertain and I was getting ready to begin my first day at Ad Hoc, passages from Bird by Bird are what made the excitement swallow the anxiety in my stomach.

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Celebrating Pride Month at Ad Hoc

June 28, 2018

In March 2017, Ad Hoc’s LGBTQ+ employees set up an #lgbtq Slack channel, and since then, Ad Hoc-ers who identify somewhere within the LGBTQ+ family share articles, swoon over Janelle Monaé’s latest, and talk about the tough stuff.

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Moving into UX

March 01, 2018

I have an anthropology degree, and I believe that working in User Experience (UX) research is one of the most meaningful applications of that training.

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Why we use homework to recruit engineers

February 26, 2018

One challenge is finding a way to evaluate technical ability without an in-person technical interview. We do this by issuing homework assignments to candidates to be completed on their own time.

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Video: Details on our recruiting process for engineers

February 19, 2018

We recently conducted a session over video with potential candidates, and we recorded it so that others can get a feel for how things work.

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The truth about remote work

December 05, 2017

While the benefits of remote work are fairly self-explanatory (living where you like, being able to travel and work, etc), some candidates have concerns about whether or not remote work is right for them.

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Ad Hoc Retreat IV

October 19, 2017

Ad Hoc held its fourth all-company retreat in beautiful Leesburg, Virginia. This get together was a chance for all of us to make deeper connections between team members and the work we do.

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Easy eclipse viewing with #remotelife

August 21, 2017

Sometimes, a once-in-a-generation event comes along to mess with your work day. Fortunately for Ad Hoc team members,

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James’ uptime beard - #remotelife at Ad Hoc

August 08, 2017

I check my phone for PagerDuty alerts and pull my mustache from between my lips. Vets.gov was available through the night; I won’t need to shave this morning.

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UX Offsite 2017 in Portland, Oregon

July 28, 2017

Our growing UX team got together in real life in beautiful Portland, Oregon last week to talk, work, drink lots of coffee and tea, eat, and generally, spend some quality time together.

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#remotelife is for the birds

June 28, 2017

This spring, a robin decided to use my rain gutter’s downspout for her nest. I grabbed my phone, fired up a meeting room, and let everyone know that we had a live stream of the nest.

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Sophia’s #remotelife at Ad Hoc

June 12, 2017

I love the flexibility to cowork with other members of Ad Hoc when I need human contact, or to hole up in my basement den when I need to focus in solitude.

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Katie Gwinn’s #remotelife at Ad Hoc

June 09, 2017

I have found working remotely has been invaluable in being able to pursue my career while balancing the demands of a family.

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Ad Hoc Retreat III

May 09, 2017

Last week, Ad Hoc held our third Retreat — a periodic gathering of all team members in the same place so we can learn from each other, have fun together, and build our shared culture.

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Laura Ellena’s #remotelife at Ad Hoc

April 20, 2017

As research manager, my days have a lot of variety. I frequently use our co-working space near the White House to plan projects, facilitate remote feedback sessions, and sync with teammates.

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Curtis’ #remotelife at Ad Hoc

April 11, 2017

Working remotely is pretty cool. It’s by no means a breeze, and it comes with its own set of difficulties, but one thing I’ve come to greatly enjoy is the ability to eat amazing food.

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Danny Chapman’s #remotelife at Ad Hoc

April 06, 2017

I’m Danny Chapman, Creative Director at Ad Hoc. In my current role, I assist other design teams where I’m needed, and advocate for good design principles in all of the work we do.

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Ben Kutil’s #remotelife at Ad Hoc

February 21, 2017

I’m Ben Kutil, product manager and designer for Ad Hoc’s work with CMS on HealthCare.gov. I’ve worked independently for 8 years, and value the flexibility and focus remote work provides.

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