The Company I Want To Work For

As someone, that is working now for over 26 years in software business, I must admit I have still not found the ideal job, though I have already worked for five companies. But that does not mean, I have given up yet.

As somebody, that takes things never lightly and tries continually to improve his surroundings, I have climbed up the ladder of so-called “success”. I went a long way from being a “Junior Programmer” to becoming “Head of Development” in a small company of about 30 people.

Over the years a picture about the ideal workplace has formed in my mind, becoming continuously clearer in recent years. This not only because of my personal work experiences, but also because of all the stories I have heard of colleagues, friends and customers I coach. Sure enough there is also a big influence by two other factors, I would like to mention: First my upbringing in a open, critically thinking Christian family, with strong moral, social and altruistic values. Second the lecture of many courageous, non-conformist authors, that did not hold back with their radical ideas and that often have themselves put them into practice.

Ok, it might also have to do with my own character. I have never chosen the easy ways. I was always asking lots of why’s. And my perseverance – some might call it stubbornness – made me go to the roots of ideas, instead of just repeating slogans. An imminent curiosity pushed me – and does still – to fish in other fields than software engineering for ideas and connections to things I already know.

So, enough of this longish intro. How is the place like, I would enjoy working in?

• It is filled with people, passionate about what they do.
• It has no fixed hierarchy, but people take turns as needed in leading others, in the areas they are skilled in and have passion about.
• It educates its staff in all things they care about and that have to be done, distributing at least basic knowledge to all employees.
• It welcomes ideas to problems at hand from all employees.
• It hires the best possible people, gives them all information needed to make informed choices of their own, without formal supervision, and trusts them to act in the company’s very interest.
• It creates a save-to-fail environment, where collective ownership is taken, of successes AND failures.
• It makes working fun again. These must not be mutually exclusive.
• It tries to minimize administrative overhead to a minimum, to help people do really useful stuff, they care about.
• It does not succumb to pure shareholder interests.

Does this seam to be your typical laundry list of points for the ideal company? That might be. I am sure many others out there have come up with similar wishes and add even some more.

Interesting Thoughts About Architectural Evolution

Tom Ayerst, whom I met when becoming a Certified ScrumMaster in Vienna in 2004, writes here some interesting notes about architecture evolution, like:

“What does this mean? The ideal architecture is as described above simple, and focused, it should also be balanced and not restrict you from taking it in any a particular direction. This last desirable trait is invisible, you don’t know you cannot go in a particular direction until you try to go there.”

and

“Over time your architecture will become less balanced and amenable to change. Getting the balance back will probably require an architectural review of some kind and some kind of more disruptive change than another simple refactoring.”

I think he is quite right. I can observe this with our own application framework we use at work. No simple refactoring will do. After multiple refactoring sessions done often as a pair, we are still trying to bring the architecture back on track. It all depends on how far away you already are from the ideal line.

Scrum Talk at Event for Swiss FDJP Project Managers

I will be giving a talk about our experience with Scrum in a large project at an event of the Swiss Federal Department of Justice and Police on June, 28th.

Here the slides (in German) in Powerpoint format: Scrum in der Praxis (Powerpoint).

And as PDF: Scrum in der Praxis (PDF).