TOPdesk Tilburg: TOPdesk’s oasis in the distant south
One day you think: let’s move to Brabant. Who wouldn’t want that? But blast it – your job’s in Delft! And you’re not ready to leave there yet! So what do you do? Development Experience Engineer Joep Weijers and some other developers had the answer: just start a new TOPdesk office in the south and create TOPdesk Tilburg.
Working in Tilburg? Easily arranged
There’s no lack of luxury or convenience for the developers at TOPdesk Tilburg. You practically trip over the hip new Plan-t office building when you get off the train at Tilburg station. Since the summer of 2021, TOPdesk has had room for almost 20 colleagues here, plus some flexible workstations too. Private meeting room with Microsoft Teams displays? Present. Acoustic pod for one-on-one meetings? Check. Nintendo Switch with Mario Kart and Super Smash Bros? Of course!
Joep: “TOPdesk Tilburg’s first office really came about under the pretext of making a preference a necessity. Some other developers and I were now living in North Brabant, which of course made travelling to TOPdesk Delft no fun. But oh well, a job down here is easy to find, right? Probably, but I still really wanted to stay at TOPdesk! So we went to TOPdesk CEO Wolter Smit with a simple idea: why not set up an office in Tilburg, thus retaining valuable TOPdeskers and creating a good base for new developers in the south? Just arrange it, was his answer.”
It started small: why not an office in Tilburg?
TOPdesk Tilburg version 1.0 had a lease with a 3-month notice period, a nice set of IKEA furniture and 4 workstations for the – you guessed it – 4 developers from Brabant. A great base for an initial reconnaissance of the southern reaches of our little country.
Joep: “But 3 months’ notice obviously applies to both tenant and landlord. A new owner preferred to make flats out of our then premises.” Time for TOPdesk Tilburg version 2.0. “Lucky for us, the Plan-t office building had just been completed and still had a space for us. The bad luck was that we had to move out of our current building before the handover date. Fortunately, we’re talking about 2021, and everyone was working from home virtually full time!”
Plan B in Plan-t
TOPdeskers from Delft will probably have to blink twice when they see TOPdesk Tilburg’s current office space. The interior is so aligned with our headquarters that you almost feel like you’re actually in the Delft office. And instead of four workstations with IKEA stuff thrown together as best we could, in this office everything has been designed to perfection.
Joep: “We needed 2 monitors per workstation for our almost 20 workstations. However, during the pandemic, everything was quite difficult to get. So we just went for ultrawides, ha ha. The company behind our new furnishings, Refitters, also pulled out all the stops. Custom sofas, lovely plants, some hip lamps, you name it.”
Does Joep think TOPdesk will still be in Tilburg in 10 years’ time and with how many colleagues? “Definitely, and as the Development department keeps growing, I can see us expanding to more space in this building, or even moving to another building.” Would you like to check out TOPdesk Tilburg? You really should! A cup of coffee’s waiting for you.
