Company event · Function hall · Makati
Bayanihan Tech
Barong casual · December 2025 · 180 employees
“Half this room had never been in the same room.”
Bayanihan Tech hired remotely for three years and, by the end of it, had a headcount of 180 people, forty of whom had never physically met a single colleague.
The name tags
Somebody had the sense to print the handles people actually use at work under the legal names. It cut the awkwardness of the first hour roughly in half.
The ones who could not fly in
Twenty-two staff across Visayas and Mindanao joined on a stream that ran the whole evening, including the awards, including the part where the CEO forgot a name and was helped by the chat.
The awards
Budgeted at forty minutes. Ran ninety. Nobody complained, because the categories had been written by the teams themselves and several of them were extremely personal.
What people said
- “I have managed her for two years. I met her at 6:40 this evening.” — Paolo, engineering lead
- “He is much taller than his video call.” — Rhea, support
- “I flew from Davao and I would do it again.” — Kenneth, QA
- “The chat carried the CEO. That is culture.” — Anon, submitted award nomination
After
The formal night ended at ten. A group of about thirty relocated downstairs and stayed until the security guard began, politely, to hover.
The palette
The team
RSVPs, dietary needs, the awards run-sheet and the stream for the twenty-two who could not fly in were all run from one Setnayan page by an admin team of two.