Recently we sat down with Elise, Noah, and Dustin to discuss company culture at Blur, their love of cycling, and the flexibility of our team. How do all of these things go together? Well, listen on to find out in this episode of In Focus. 

 

Julia 

Elise, thanks for joining us today on our podcast. 

Elise

Thanks so much for having me, Julia. 

Julia

Happy to have you. All right. So tell me about the cycling culture here at Blur. 

Elise

So, I’ve always been someone who’s biked around kind of casually, but had never taken it super seriously before. I had started biking again, just a little bit like around my neighborhood and nearby where I live for exercise. One time I heard about a bike ride they were going on, so I asked if I could come along. I think it was just a small group of maybe four or five of us that went one morning before work and the main thing I remember from that first ride that I went on with everyone is I was under the impression that the mileage was going to be comparable to what I’d been doing but was truly not prepared for what we were going out there for. 

I had not really done significant gravel biking before and did not realize just how hilly the path would be. And I just remember being pretty destroyed by the “out” of the “out-and-back” path that we took. But thankfully everyone who was with me was really supportive and just trying to make sure that I was drinking enough water and that I was still going and, you know, staying behind if I needed to take a little break. It was just a really nice, friendly, supportive crew and they weren’t, you know, even if I was maybe the least experienced biker at that point, they weren’t out there to really hammer down on their miles. They were down there because it was a fun way to spend some time together and also get outdoors and be biking. And they wanted to make sure that anyone who was interested in coming along was really included in that. 

Dustin

Well, one of the reasons I was really excited to work at Blur actually is when I came in for my in-person interview, I saw Noah with a bike on the back of his car. And so that led to a discussion when he interviewed me, and I found out that there was a whole Blur cycling team complete with jerseys and everything. So I was like, okay, that’s a good sign. I wanna work here. 

Noah

Yeah, I mean, we used to do group rides probably every week. It slowed down a little bit, I mean, especially during the winter when it’s too cold for people to enjoy it as much. But now that we’re closer to the Greenway and a couple of parks now, I’m really excited for as the weather warms up, getting back out there. 

Dustin

We’ve now got a couple of bike storage racks here. So it’s even easier than ever. So the, you know, the Greenway rides, there’s the gravel trails in Umstead. And there’s even the single track and more technical stuff in Crabtree just next to Armstead. So I’m really excited for that 

Julia

Yeah, they used to go like every Friday or every other Friday around three. Get out a little early, go for a two-hour bike ride. I tried it one time… I was very bad. And it was a gravel trail. It was long. I don’t know. How long is that trail? 

Noah

An 8 or 12 mile loop. 

Dustin

You can go as long as you want.

Julia

I think we did the 12 mile loop that day, and my bike was too small, and my tires were kind of flat, and anyways… it was just really not the best. 

Dustin

Well I’m glad that you could, you know, have your first experience six miles from the nearest civilization. 

Julia

Yeah that’s true, that’s true, I wasn’t in the middle of nowhere. It was fun, it was good sort of team building, just pushing each other to do better and beat our own personal bests. Mine was, you know, just making it up the hills.

Noah

One of them is called the graveyard hill for a reason.

Dustin 

We’ve got a bike stand in the office, a pump, we’ve got bike racks. We’ve got a locker room. 

Noah

Yeah, I was a mechanic for six years during college, so I know my way around a bike. Not nice bikes; I’ve patched tires with duct tape and it held for a very long time. So, don’t bring me a bike that’s worth more than like $600 and we’ll be good. 

Julia

I’ll keep that in mind. 

Dustin

A podcast is as good a place as anywhere to unveil this. So Noah Muse and I have been thinking up a new Blur cycling challenge actually. This will be news to you too. Our new building has this huge hill at the back of it that leads into the woods. So we’ve been developing, what I guess has to be the official name now, the Blur Hill Climb Challenge, where you basically have to shoot out of the woods at full speed and try to make it up the hill without stopping, and whoever makes it the furthest becomes the king of the mountain. 

Julia

What if you start going backwards? 

Dustin

Well, you’re wearing a helmet. And we’ll be there to laugh. 

Noah

That’s gonna be tough. 

Dustin

I know. That’s all right. The expectation is not that anyone makes it to the top. But we will see. 

Noah

I think even getting speed coming out of the woods is going to be hard, because even that’s a little bit uphill still. 

Dustin

Yep. 

Noah

Sweet. 

Julia

Well, do you have a launch day for this? Or what’s the plan? 

Dustin

Well, we’re still trying to figure that out, because we’re waiting for it to be nice. We’re waiting for a Friday that everyone’s here and makes sense. He and I were planning on doing some recon, perhaps, next week, just to see how possible it even is. So astute listeners will just have to check back next season. See who the winner is. 

Julia

Okay, well, I’ll be watching out the windows to see if you’re going backwards down the hill. 

Dustin

If you can see someone from the window, it means they’ve achieved, you know, success. 

Noah

Yeah, they definitely won that. 

Julia

This will be a spectator sport for me. I will cheer on those brave souls who dare to, you know, climb the hill. 

Elise

One thing that was also fun about getting more into biking with everyone here at Blur is that they’re not only, you know, excited to go on a bike ride, but are really passionate just about bikes and learning how to take care of them and how to fix them themselves. It was nice to be able to bring in my bike maybe the day before we had a group ride planned and have multiple people here offer to put it on the bike stand that’s in the back of the lab and look and just check and make sure everything’s running well. 

One time I remember someone said, “Oh, I have these old bike pedals, I’m just gonna put them on yours.” And I was really pretty astonished. I was like, wow, that’s just really a really sweet thing to do. That’s just really helpful and kind. And also it has kind of been a fun learning experience where they wouldn’t just take my bike away from me and deal with it. They would generally be showing me like, oh, this is the thing you should be checking. And you know, if you’re noticing this is making this noise, it’s because it’s running is rubbing over here and kind of, you know, general mechanical engineering learning experience of looking at the different pieces and just generally helping each other out and making sure that we can all kind of learn and enjoy things. 

Julia

I think that’s another cool part about working with people who are passionate about what they do. Typically, people who are passionate are also very willing to teach and show you how it’s done. So this thing that is tangentially related to mechanical engineering, it’s just cool that they are kind enough to show you. 

And I feel like that’s part of the culture here at Blur. Everyone is just kind and willing to help out. They’re never holding it over your head that you don’t know something, but really use a lot of opportunities to teach you and show you as long as you’re willing to learn. 

Elise

Yeah, and there’s definitely, I feel like there’s a broad extension of that kind of willingness to teach stuff or to have people learn new things, just even in like… the definitive work culture here. It feels like there’s a lot of, you know, if anyone starts talking to a project manager or a boss or anyone else involved with something and they say like, hey, I don’t really have much experience with this thing, but I’d like to delve more into it. Like, could I kind of learn how to do this? For the most part, you know, unless it really doesn’t make sense in that specific instance, like they’re gonna find a way to say like, yeah, of course you can expand what you’re working on and try and learn this new skill. Just nice to not have super rigid roles and separation of exactly what kinds of things everyone’s in charge of. So we each get to kind of bounce in and out of multiple different tasks and varieties of work that maybe someone in our traditional role at a more corporate place wouldn’t get to touch on. 

Julia

And you had a little bit of that experience moving from the R&D side into quality. Which seems like they would be super different, but I think even in R&D world you touched a lot of quality stuff. So maybe it was a big learning curve, but there was an understanding at least of what quality did. Do you wanna speak a little bit on that? 

Elise

It’s been helpful to have started in the R&D world and to now be in the quality world. I was exposed to our change control process, at least from the R&D side. And I had, as an R&D engineer, gone in and helped out with some manufacturing projects before and transferring things from engineering to manufacturing and different things like that. And so it was definitely a helpful perspective to know exactly what someone on the engineering and R&D side of a project is thinking about and looking at and working with to now be on the quality side.  

I think for me it’s kind of a cool thing because I, maybe unlike some engineers, I’m into, you know, working with words and writing things, and I deal a lot more with documentation now than I used to, but for me that feels like I’m just kind of expanding on a strength I maybe already had. 

Even now that I am officially on the quality side of things, there have been a couple times where we realize on a project, like, oh, we need more mechanical work done on this before it can get released, and I’m still able to kind of bounce back and work a little bit on that end. It’s nice to feel like I have a variety of experience that can still be utilized throughout work here at Blur. 

Julia

If you could describe Blur’s culture in a word or a sentence, what would that be? 

Elise

If I were to just use one word, I would go with communal. Just in the way that it feels like everyone is communally trying to help each other out and gather information and lend a hand where it’s needed. There doesn’t feel like there’s any competition between coworkers. It doesn’t feel like you’re trying to make sure that you succeed rather than someone else. It’s all about just making sure that the project and the work and the tasks are getting through and the products are getting made. 

Julia

One of the things we prize here at Blur is the flexibility of our team. And there’s no better example of that than Elise’s move from research and development to quality. Her mechanical background allows her to troubleshoot manufacturing issues quickly while maintaining quality standards and processes. I hope you got some insight into how we run our team at Blur and what it looks like to have a collaborative environment. And if you caught our enthusiasm for cycling along the way, well, that’s just a bonus and we’ll see you on the trails.