Investing in modernizing Buffer

Up: § 2023 Shareholder Letter Index

For a 13 year old product and company, tech and organizational / process debt is a given. In the past year, we’ve recognized this is a significant threat to our long-term success and have introduced a few key projects to pay down this debt. We are especially at risk in having inferior UX to newer competitors in the space, as they have the benefit of building from scratch with modern tooling. We’re energized to improve in this areas as it makes using the product ourselves much more enjoyable, and improves the developer experience for engineers too.

On the product side, we started an initiative we’ve called Consumer Grade User Experience (CGX), with the goal to level up the UX and clarity of the product significantly. This is taking the form of establishing a complete design system, upgraded components and a visual refresh. We’ve taken an iterative approach and the new design system and components are already going live across our newer functionality launched later in the year. This work is already making Buffer feel snappier and more fun to use, and it also paves the way for some welcome side benefits such as theming or dark mode.

We’ve also made an effort to move faster with some features that are expected in modern software, and in September rolled out our cmd/control K “Quick Navigator” functionality. This came out of our annual build week, where we spend a week working in small teams across the whole company on ideas contributed by anyone in the company.

We’ve also made a variety of process and organizational improvements to pay down the debt that can build up over many years of operating. One of the most significant efforts in this area was to reimagine our salary formula and eliminate discrepancies and inconsistencies which built up over a number of years. The results of this was our new Open Salary System.