ARIA

We work beyond borders. Across Tokyo, Shanghai, Paris, New York and Vancouver, in four languages and five time zones. A national holiday in Paris is a working day in Shanghai. An overtime threshold that is correct in Vancouver is wrong in Tokyo. The HR tools we tried assumed one region, one calendar and one set of labor rules, so every office outside that assumption ended up running on manual exceptions.

So, we built our own.

We regularly build data platforms and internal systems, including our own: Aida for our engineering work, Brainz for our institutional knowledge, Wulin for the data platforms we run for others. Building a system for our own operations meant applying the same discipline inward and treating location as part of the structure rather than a setting added afterward.

Aria brings the day-to-day administration of a distributed team into one place, connected to Google Calendar, Slack and Google Sheets. Everyone starts from a daily overview of hours, leave balances, pending approvals and team absences, then moves to what their role requires.

We knew the needs precisely, we were ready to change, and we could build. That is why one month separated the decision from Aria running in every office. Tokyo used it first, on its own migrated data, and reported issues directly to the people building it. Missing features and edge cases were resolved before the other offices reached them, and the previous system was retired the following month.

The same feedback loop still shapes it: new notification channels, adjustments to how overtime converts into leave, and small requests from the people who use it every day. It also left us with a system we fully own and can adapt as the team changes.

Aria happens to be about time and leave. The decision behind it applies well beyond HR: build when the gap between what exists and what an organization actually needs is large enough to justify it.