On my second day at work two days ago, I was sitting in a video conference with a bunch of new hires in San Francisco. In my conference room here in New York, there was another new colleague and me, and as it was an HR presentation, this was specific around the company’s core value of charity and giving. At my new company’s San Francisco headquarters, they have set up volunteer events throughout the month every month to help the local community in different ways. The activities range from engineers teaching free coding classes to lower socioeconomic status students, soup kitchens, cleaning up beaches, to food drives. They’re gradually rolling out a program to mirror this in New York, but at a smaller scale, of course, since our office is so much smaller.

The facilitator of the meeting on the People Operations team started the meeting by having each person introduce him or herself, his/her new title and team, and a nonprofit/cause s/he participates in. In my part, I discussed Mentoring USA and the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention. And you know what was so shocking to me — every single person in this meeting of about 15 new hires had a nonprofit s/he could name that s/he regularly volunteers in. That was so amazing to me. I finally feel like I could be part of a work culture that I am happy and excited to be a part of.

At my last company, the only thing that everyone around the room would “volunteer” in would be to drink free beer. And I hate beer.