Why we do not have bosses and office, and why we work 4 days a week Bashny.Net

In 2008, we partner graduated with a degree in "Computer Engineering" at the university in Argentina.

Senior years we were trained in companies such as HP, IBM, Intel. That's when we noticed a flaw in their work. We could not understand why people without technical knowledge programmers say, what to do, and besides, check exactly how they do it.

So when we did Project eMT , comparative search engine for Latin America, we decided to work in a different way: without the project managers. Six years later, we have a team of engineers was 34 Chile, Brazil, Mexico and Colombia, and we are still working without the use of traditional structures and work schedule, and our annual growth rate of 204%.

Without bosses h4> In large technology companies, we often observed, as programmers do something quickly and badly and received encouragement from management. Over time, this leads to the standard: "Do albeit poorly, but quickly».

Larry Page said: "Over the engineers do not have to be project managers with limited technical knowledge»

On the other hand, as programmers, we greatly lacked that authority to arrange meetings at any time when they wanted to.

The developer needs an average of four hours of continuous operation for productive activities. Ideally, therefore, the programmer must work from 9 to 13 and then from 14 to 18, for maximum efficiency.

If, for example, the chief appoints a meeting at 11 am - morning lost, because I need to prepare for it, to be there, say hello to all, discuss problems, go back to the workplace and to continue from where I graduated. With all this morning shebutnёy lost.

Paul Graham - entrepreneur, programmer and founder of YCombinator said: "The cost of the meeting to the programmer is always higher».

No office h4> To be honest, at the beginning of the office was not available to us. We just do not have the money in the early stages to remove Office.

It was not until the second year, when we were able to enter the office with all kinds of buns, which have long dreamed of (ping-pong, video games, cook in a cafe, gym and healthy TVs). This phase lasted only eight months, and then we decided to go back to the remote work, for several reasons.

For a start, the road - whether public transport services, or in his car - took an average of an hour there and an hour back. That is, when a 9-hour working day, we spend 22% of time on the move. The cost of road and rent office space was added to the costs.

But economic reasons - not the most important. The most important reason was fatigue, which accumulates from these movements. This time could be used much better, for example, to communicate with his family.

Now we employ people from five countries, and we believe that the habit of working remotely will allow us to continue to grow.

four-day working week. H4> Reducing the number of days in the working week - this is our recent innovation. We work the last two years and it proved an excellent solution.

At the dawn of industrialization, people believed that the more they work, the better the results will be - so all the work for 5 days and there are only 2 days to rest. In this technological projects like ours, "more" - does not always mean "better».

We need engineers, job satisfaction and motivated for quality performance. We are not interested in quantity, it is important to quality.

This is fully consistent with the goal to hire the best programmers. Such working conditions allow us to hire the best and as a result we have an extremely low percentage of staff turnover.

In our experience, a wonderful programmer solves two times faster than the average, and with the best quality.

In addition, we are tired of hearing about the balance between work and family time. For us, it was a great response to the age-old problem - now you can spend with your family 50% more time.

Step-by-step h4> 1. For a start, we have completely given up meetings. All communication is done in writing. No phone calls, meetings and teleconferences.

This may seem inconvenient, but we have been working for three years and this is absolutely normal for us. We read about how the production company has saved the equivalent of about 200 salaries, simply reduce the meetings to 30 minutes, and the maximum number of people at the meetings to 7 - and realized that we were on the right track.

2. No agenda. Nobody includes meetings in our business hours and does not change our schedule. Work is organized by each of us, on the basis of knowledge and schedules.

Thus, all communication becomes asynchronous. This means that we can program without interruption, and then, at a convenient time, to answer questions.

3. Another important point is that we have completely abandoned the e-mail. We are tired to use e-mail as a to-do list. It was not designed for this, and especially not been effectively imprisoned by it.

We have moved from historical methodology kicks (push) to query mechanism (pull). That is, no one can send me an email demanding that something be done. I choose their business for himself.

Disclaimer of meetings and email provided our internal development, which we call iAutonomous. This application class SAAS, allowing each team member to participate in the development and creation of new tasks.

Thus, we see lists of tasks, progress, and we can create and participate in a task to bring them to the end.

With this tool, you can see what people are busy right now. We do not need a boss who tells us what to do and we do it right or not. We are all programmers, and we know how to work the rest.

be demanding h4> I believe that our main feature - the quality of engineers employed by us. Their main property is the ability to be proactive. People working with us, entrepreneurs themselves - they do not need someone who constantly checks whether they work.

Inactive engineers harm our working culture. High-engineer wants to work with those who are even more (and better) works. We were wrong, hiring programmers, who did not have such qualities. But after a few days, maximum - weeks, we found it. I advise you not to delay the break working relationships that do not add up - it's better for both sides. If programmers need overseer, they will find their place in the other company managers.

I advise you to start with these habits at once - it will be much easier than to change them later.

Source: habrahabr.ru/post/237187/