About Four Kitchens
What is Four Kitchens?
Four Kitchens builds "web platforms for complex organizations". It says it makes "the web a better place to teach, learn, and advocate for all", crafting websites that help organisations fulfil their missions, and it has long worked with clients in education, advocacy and publishing. Four friends who met on the student humour publication at the University of Texas at Austin founded it in 2006. They went on to found That Other Paper, an alt-weekly whose Drupal website "attracted the attention of several publishers who wanted help building their own websites", and web development soon had their full attention. The name comes from a custom-built workspace in the Lost Pines Forest near Austin with four separate living areas, "each with — you guessed it — its own kitchen." Drupal and open source remain at the centre of the work: Four Kitchens sponsored a fellowship with DrupalEasy that took an industry newcomer to a full-time Web Chef role. It has expanded internationally by merging with Advomatic and with Manatí, a fully remote Costa Rican agency with deep ties to the Drupal community that it acquired in 2022.
Where will I work?
From home, wherever that is. Four Kitchens has been "a fully distributed team since 2015". Its careers page says that "as long as you have a reliable internet connection and you're not dialing into meetings in the middle of the night, you're free to live or travel wherever you like." The team spans four time zones, including a Costa Rica team, and stays connected through Slack and Zoom.
What is the Four Kitchens team like?
The team calls itself the Web Chefs and works by five core values: Endlessly Curious, Dedicated to Our Craft, Playful, Share What We Know, and Accountable to Each Other. "People first" means living those values "from our internal policies to our client services processes", with empathy, "extreme ownership" and "radically candid feedback". The team page lists 23 people across engineering, design, project management, business development and leadership. Director of Business Development Si Robins puts it this way: "Four Kitchens does remote right. It's not a crutch; it's a way to provide balance and flexibility on the path to producing great results." Four Kitchens welcomes applications from all backgrounds, "particularly from people of color; women; LGBTQ+ people; immigrants or refugees; differently-abled people; and people from low- or moderate-income backgrounds."
Work-Life Balance
"We plan for Web Chefs to take at least 40 days of paid time off per year, including holidays and a weeklong winter break," the careers page says, and it recommends that everyone remove Slack and email from their devices "so they can unplug, relax, and recharge." Its heading is "Work to live, not live to work": "We rarely put in more than 40 hours per week. There may be times during a launch or event that people work extra hours, but we encourage them to take more time off later so it balances out."
Perks and Benefits
- At least 40 days of paid time off a year, including holidays and a weeklong winter break
- A fully distributed team: live or travel wherever you like
- A professional development stipend, which also covers directed language learning
- A stipend for technology and home-office furnishings
- Time for creative projects outside client work