Tighten will be closed from Monday, December 23rd 2019 through Wednesday, January 1st 2020 to celebrate the end of year holidays with family and friends.

As we close out 2019, we took a little time to celebrate and reflect on team accomplishments. Here are a few of our big numbers:

Tighten Talks: 17

Tighten Talks are monthly-ish talks where members of our team take an hour or less to teach the rest of the company about something they're interested in.

Here are the topics we talked about this year:

• Kubernetes
• Travel Strategies for Packing Light
• Real Estate 101
• Low-Cost Flight Tactics
• Overwatch
• Macro Nutrition
• Philosophy
• Online Privacy Practices
• Custom Emoji
• Attachment Theory at Work
• How to Bullet Journal
• Empathy and Collaboration
• PopOS/Ubuntu Setup
• Retry Strategies for Consuming APIs
• Favorite Methods in 5 Minutes
• Event Planning
• InfoSecurity Best Practices
• Alfred Workflows

Controversial food opinions shared: un-countable

Is mincemeat dessert? Which specialty Oreo flavor is the best? (It's Love! No! It's Peanut Butter! No! Original and everything else is an abomination!). Is turkey the best or worst choice for a holiday meal?

Kudos given: 327

We have a channel in our Slack entitled #kudos where we can share celebrations of each other. This year, that happened 327 times.

Assuming 1960 working hours in each year (40 hours x 49 weeks), Tighten colleagues average 1 kudo every 6 working hours. We appreciate each other!

And, one bonus fact: approximately 3700 emoji reactions supported those verbal kudos.

Team members who discussed coffee: 12

This is down 3 from last year. Coffee drinkers recommend beans from Blanchard's, Five Watt, and Blue Bottle, and grinding your beans just before preparing your coffee.

Team members who discussed tea: 7

This is up 4 from last year. Tea drinkers recommend adding milk and sugar or honey to black teas, adding nothing to white or green teas (or maybe a little bit of honey), using a kettle with an accurate temperature gauge for proper brewing, and bringing your favorite tea when you travel.

New benefits added: 2

This year we were proud and happy to add a monthly wellness stipend and student loan assistance to our benefits package. Each employee receives $100 every month to use at their discretion for personal wellness. Tighten chose to partner with Peanut Butter for a student loan assistance program that helps employees or their spouses pay off student loans.

Budget set aside for welcoming newcomers to the Laravel community: $15,000

Tighten's partners have pledged $15,000 toward grants and events to welcome traditionally underrepresented groups to the Laravel PHP community. Those funds will be spent in the year ahead to help new folks attend and participate in various events.

Happy holidays!

We are proud of the work we have done as a company and a team over this past year, and happy to celebrate and share these accomplishments. We hope you also have time to celebrate and reflect on the past year with those dear to you.

May you know grace in times of challenge, have peace in times of turmoil, and find light in times of darkness. And may you only be served mincemeat as dessert if you specifically asked for it.

Cheers to you and yours from all of us at Tighten!