Home Ponce City Market Guide: What it's like to work here

The Complete Guide to Ponce City Market

Ponce City Market Guide: What it’s like to work here

Cutting-edge companies—both local and international, mostly tech- or design-related—have set up shop at PCM, complete with enviable multimillion-dollar buildouts and progressive perks. (Heck, even Twitter’s here.) Take a peek inside three faves. —Mary Logan Bikoff

Cardlytics
What they do Card-linked marketing. They pioneered the tech that lets advertisers see consumer spending via big data.
Founded 2008 in Atlanta
Employees 275 at the Atlanta HQ (with smaller offices in four other cities)
Space 77,000 square feet on the sixth floor
Cool job The wellness coordinator works with local fitness studios like CorePower Yoga to schedule daily workouts.
Why you wish you worked here “We encourage people to be social together because then they’re going to work together better,” says office manager Shaina Horrell. Thus, there are plenty of opportunities for socializing, from arcade games to 18 holes of mini golf to a beer brewing club, dubbed the Backlog. Somehow, the motto is still “Get Sh*t Done”—or GSD, which is illuminated in neon in the main corridor. To help facilitate that, remote-controlled drivable robots with two-way screens keep employees plugged in when they’re working off-site.

HowStuffWorks
What they do Produce a website, blogs, podcasts, and videos that explain science, tech, history—basically everything—in layman’s terms. Each month the site garners nearly 30 million visitors.
Founded 1999 in Cary, North Carolina; now headquartered in Atlanta but owned by Seattle-based InfoSpace
Employees 30
Space 10,000 square feet on the fourth floor
Cool jobs The dozen or so hosts create videos and podcasts on topics as diverse as megalodons and the debt ceiling. Popular shows include Stuff You Missed in History Class, Stuff to Blow Your Mind, and Stuff Mom Never Told You. Look for the team filming around PCM.
Why you wish you worked here It’s a trivia nerd and research lover’s dream. Find new custom-designed audio and video studios and props galore. A giant table in the shape of the company’s signature question mark sets the backdrop for meetings, videos, and lunch. Then there’s the fame: Josh and Chuck, hosts of Stuff You Should Know, get so much fan mail that they use it to line their studio walls.

Mailchimp
What they do Email marketing. MailChimp sends more than 800 million emails a day—campaigns, newsletters—for a client base of 9 million-plus people and businesses. That’s 200 billion emails a year.
Founded 2001 in Atlanta
Employees 500 (They started 2015 with 300.)
Space 126,000 square feet on the fourth and fifth floors
Cool job Employee Happiness Ambassador Ashley Wilson (employee No. 22) orders birthday cakes, schedules parties, and arranges inspirational speakers (Clark Howard, Big Boi) for weekly coffee mixers—anything to spark creativity and maintain what they call the MailChimp culture, which has a lot to do with warm fuzzies and “staying weird.”
Why you wish you worked here Street art throughout the office commissioned by Monica Campana of Living Walls (a local nonprofit that recruits big-time muralists) keeps energy and spirits up; a large part of MailChimp’s mission is investing in art and community. To help new hires assimilate, a Chimpanion program matches newbies with a mentor, and “MailChimp University” teaches communication and leadership to every employee—not just upper management. Plus, there’s a gift shop full of free swag.

Directory

Currently occupied
Athenahealth • Cardlytics • General Assembly (A school for tech, business, and design) • HowStuffWorks • Industrious (The coolest coworking space we’ve seen yet) • The Rocket Science Group (The parent company of MailChimp) • Jamestown • SBCH Architects (Helped design PCM before moving in) • The SLAM Collaborative • Twitter

Field notes

Inspiration
The Ponce de Leon banner signage bears a strong resemblance to the Sears building’s deco sign that hung in the same spot for decades.

Commercial hub
At the height of operations in the 1960s, Sears employed more than 1,000 people. Around 500 additional temporary employees were hired for the holiday season.

Vacancies
City Hall—including a division of the police department, fire headquarters, and parks and rec—occupied only 10 percent of the building. There was also an art gallery on the bottom floor.