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What would be your idea work environment as a team member working on a cool technology project in central London? This is not (just) about the office space, it's about the team and the company you work for. I'd like to hear peoples' top three items about what they'd love to see for their perfect job. Why on Earth am I asking? Well, I'm helping set up a software company in central London, and I'm fascinated by the idea that the 'wisdom of crowds' can help me discover some of my 'unknown unknowns'.
Although I have a whole bunch of ideas, I will start the ball rolling by giving my own top three:
- A really great team - I don't have to agree with them, but I need to be able to respect them and be able to learn from them too. They're team players but they're not afraid of disagreement, not in an elitist jerk kind of way but in a "based upon what I know now, I don't agree; let's have an open conversation and I want you to convince me" kind of way. Without a great team, everything else is a non-starter.
- An organisation that respects people - and by this I mean one that treats the team as grown-ups, like the professionals that they are, not like little kids that need to be told what to do and then watched over to make sure that they don't do anything naughty. This permeates throughout every aspect of an organisation, from pay and benefits to holiday policy to providing working materials. I want to feel that the company gives me the space to demonstrate that I am worthy of trust and respect, but starting from an assumption of adult professionalism, not kindergarden.
- A culture of excellence - by this I don't just mean that people are good at their jobs, and the company produces products that excite and engage the customer, but an organisation that understands that IT is essentially a learning business, and that we need time and space to learn and improve - not just technology and skills, but about the market, about our customers, about business and about each other. Those who learn fastest can adapt fastest and lead the market, today's startups are about learning faster than the competition, not doing faster or changing faster.
There's lots more, but part of my own journey is having the discipline to listen more, and talk less. I'd love to hear what your top three are...
9 comments:
Great question!
My top three (just now):
Mutual learning - everybody (including clients) wants to learn, and share with other folks in that learning endeavour, guided by a profound sense of common purpose.
Great work i.e. great (aka synergistic / chaordic business model) clients, with interesting (making-a-difference-to-society) challenges and reasonable expectations about how much things cost to do well (although mindful of e.g. jugaad).
Short-term / log-term balance: One eye firmly fixed on continuing to be successful (stay in businesss), with the other on the successful longer-term future of the community of work (aka business).
HTH
- Bob
Thanks Bob, great response! Hoping for some more like this over the next couple of days.
I'm loving both your and Bobs suggestions, can I add just one more
No fixed structure: A complete absence of formal roles and hierarchy, complete self organisation - requires great people
Tom
Since you have indeed covered the top three most important qualities of a great place to work, I will add one I think is commonly overlooked: a physical environment conducive to creativity and adaptable working. This means no identikit desks with precisely measured workspaces where everyone has the same number of bookshelves and drawer spaces, but an adaptable area that can be changed to suit the team members. Some days they may need quiet places to work, some days a large common work area to collaborate.
@YogaCat: thanks, I agree that a flexible working space and one that the team has control over so they can customise to their needs is an important aspect of trusting the team to get the work done in the way that they know best. You are right, choosing a space will be important.
@Tom: This is the Agile way - sadly most organisations think that managers know best how to select and organise a team, a hold-over from the days of the Victorian industrial revolution. Thanks for the input, I agree whole-heartedly.
I agree whole-heartedly with all the suggestions so far. I'd like to add these things that haven't been mentioned:
Not sure how to express it but I call it "working with the grain". It's that feeling you get when you're doing something that you're excited about and you somehow seem to magically achieve so much in so little time. Whatever it is, maybe for some reason the idea of converting all your work's CSS to LESS makes you feel all skippy, or you have an idea in the shower that morning that you've been having a lot of text bugs recently, maybe you could figure out some scripts to include in the build and automatically catch the worst of them. If your work has figured out a way for you to just do it (well, eventually) I think it means a lot to everyone's happiness, and also might lead to some cool stuff.
In more general terms it's a recognition that as humans we're motivated by emotional needs, and in the best places to work, I think positive needs such as the need for fun, play, collaboration, contribution and making things are encourage. Traditional work structures (hierarchical command and conquer) seem to be built around the need for validation, control and security. In fact they can be positively painful places to be if you're not built like that, and just want to have fun and make cool stuff. I see this as something sitting behind a lot of the specific points mentioned. Say in the case of handling a disagreement, of course people who really care about making things over their own need for validation and control will have constructive discussions about disagreements. If you want to make something good then someone disagreeing with you is someone who is doing you a great kindness. By building a place where constructive discussions are valued you're building a place where people who value making stuff over their own egos can thrive.
There's another thing I'd like to add, but I'm not sure what to call it. In my head I call it "I don't want to work in a box". This is probably an unfortunate way of phrasing it though, because it brings to mind the hackneyed phrase "thinking outside the box", and this is an undesired connotation. Just over a year ago I joined a startup from a large company. Being in a small startup you get to do, and think about all sorts of things that you wouldn't get to in a more established company. It felt like I had come out of a dark box, finally my code was part of a large continuum, it was part of a product, a company, customers' lives, a marketplace, the world as a whole. The openess between all the parts of the business, which was at that time a side-effect of us being so small, felt great; and it worked too, everyone did a better job for it. Gradually as our business got more successful and grew all the standard accoutrements of "proper" companies, those of separate teams, hierarchies, specialisms, and perscribed responsibilities, we have a lot of that initial openess. It happened very slowly, and although we're comparatively open, I do find myself in mourning for those olden days, I feel slightly as if I am stepping back into a box. For me, I'd like to know if it's possible to structure a company of any size, whilst still retaining the advantages of being tiny.
Catherine who couldn't seem to sign in to comment left her response here: http://bit.ly/IUkW1I
"1) A clear purpose. A pithy and articulate answer to the question: “What is this company/team for”?
2) Founders’ responsibility. Founders should recognise that they are creating a culture, take responsibility for that task and approach it in a conscious way, aware that their own behaviours and demonstrated values will have a great influence on the community they create.
3) Integrity under pressure. When times are tough or mistakes have been made, a great organisation can avoid blame and scapegoating and come together to reflect and, collectively, to find ways to do better."
Thanks Catherine.
Great People, Problems, and Culture
Great people are the foundation. Some features of great people:
* Always Learning
* Love to teach
* Approachable
* Insightful
* Have integrity (both personal and professional)
* Humble
* Care about why something happens
Great problems keep you excited about your work.
Good problems:
* Optimise image processing algorithm tenfold
* Create scalable framework for data processing
* Automate a build system
* Design an asset pipeline
Bad problems:
* Debug legacy ball-o-mud code
* Port a program between Unix and Windows
* Work around a chipset limitation in software
* Fight for the adoption of a clearly superior solution
Great Culture
Values the people (Both makers and clients) by:
* Giving them freedom proportional to their responsibilities. (for example, if you earn £40k/year, you shouldn't need to get a signature for a £800 conference ticket let alone a £30 book)
* Making their Personal and Professional development a top priority.
* Holding everyone to the highest standards of quality.
A great culture:
* Always looks for better tools to do the job
* Regularly looks back at what has been done to learn from mistakes
* Isn't afraid to question anything, from the technical, the business or even the core business values.
* Does things the right way, not the fast way.
* Grows only when there are mentors available to look after the new hires
* Isn't about make lots of money quickly.
* Is about building something special that employees can be proud of.
* Is stable, and doesn't suffer from financial ups and downs every 6 months (by growing slowly and putting money aside)
* Grows slowly and puts sustainability over short term gains.
* Puts cultural fit and willingness to learn above diplomas, degrees and certificates (Rich Hickey is a musician!).
* Changes the process to avoid ever making the same mistake twice instead of blaming someone
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