Startups and Working Environments

I’ve recently been study­ing a lot about get­ting a Startup off the
ground, get­ting the work envi­ron­ment just right, financ­ing,
recruit­ing skill, and see­ing what it really takes; Keep in mind when
I talk about a Startup I’m talk­ing about the Tech­nol­ogy sec­tor, I’m
talk­ing about what every­one has seen in the movies with the extremely
expen­sive Aereon Chairs and the such.  Regard­less, I’ve come to
sev­eral con­clu­sions after mak­ing obser­va­tions on sev­eral arti­cles by
suc­cess­ful founders, think­ing back on the star­tups I’ve seen and
inter­acted with, and see­ing the com­mon mis­takes that have been made
thus far in the busi­nesses and projects I’ve been involved in and let
me just state that it has been a most inter­est­ing journey.

In a per­fect world we’d all be paid top dol­lar for work­ing 5 hours
a week in a job that we love, from home, but that doesn’t take into
account real­ity.  In real­ity, at least here in the states, we
all work 40+ hours a week, get paid less than what we deserve for our
invest­ment and gen­er­ally get lit­tle to no vaca­tion time.  At the
end of the day though the com­pa­nies that are being started now, those
that will shape the future of this coun­try, have a oblig­a­tion to not
only ensure that they have a healthy return to their investors but
also to make sure that the employ­ees, today and tomor­row, have a
rea­son to invest their time in the com­pany and to believe in the
com­pany.  Here are some thoughts that I hope to imple­ment in the
future com­pany I’m work­ing hard to start, hope­fully these will
greatly increase employee loy­alty, drive down churn and increase
productivity.

In my last “active” posi­tion, my employer expected me to
work 60 hours a week while pay­ing me for 40, expect­ing me to come in
at 7:30 am, leave at 5:30 pm, work from home after hours, and be
avail­able on the week­ends. While I gen­er­ally wouldn’t have minded
work­ing 60 hours, it was the con­stant pres­sure to work the extreme
amount with­out incen­tive.  I’ve been read­ing a lot about the
French work week (yes I know, eww France) the work­week there is 35
hours per week with no allowance of paid over­time and it’s really got
me think­ing; What if a salaried employee is salaried at 35 hours vs.
40 hours, allow­ing the employee to chose to work past the required 35
but not forc­ing them to?  In my opin­ion, know­ing the peo­ple I
have worked with in the past, requir­ing only 35 but pay­ing as usual
would be an incen­tive as the peo­ple I’ve had the plea­sure to work
with would work the extra hours when they were needed and enjoy their
time off when not.  Per­haps this seems a lit­tle crazy, but after
all if you have the per­fect job wouldn’t you make sac­ri­fices to make
sure it can be kept (not from fear of fir­ing but by mak­ing sure the
com­pany succeeds.)

While we’re at it, the French require a min­i­mum of 5 weeks of
Vaca­tion time per year, while I don’t nec­es­sar­ily dis­agree with
amount, it doesn’t work well with a Soft­ware com­pany where a sin­gle
employee owns a piece of code and is respon­si­ble for its
main­te­nance.  But at the same time I think a min­i­mum of 3 weeks
of time off per year, plus hol­i­days and sick time, is nec­es­sary to
keep employ­ees from feel­ing dragged down in the com­pany and to allow
them to refresh their “battery.”

So by now you all prob­a­bly think I’m crazy because I’m say­ing 1.
Give peo­ple full pay, ben­e­fits, etc at only 35 hours per week, and 2.
make sure they have enough time off dur­ing the year to stay happy by
being able to actu­ally enjoy their lives, well just wait it gets
cra­zier.  Let’s talk some about the office space, you know that
place that we usu­ally call a “cube farm” even at 35 hours a
week an employee spends the sig­nif­i­cant amount of their awake week in
their office, just think 24 * 7 = 168, but then you have to sub­tract
8 hours a night (rec­om­mended sleep for an adult) 8 * 7 = 56 so now we
have 112 hours a week left for the per­son, sub­tract another 2 hours
per the 5 work days for com­mute time, 5 hours for lunch dur­ing the
work week and we’re left with 97 hours for the week, so at 40 hours
we spend just under half of our time at the office, and thats tak­ing
in account the week­end!  So while we should never turn an office
into a home like set­ting it is impor­tant to ensure that employ­ees are
com­fort­able in their envi­ron­ment.  The eas­i­est way to do that is
actu­ally also one of the cheap­est ways, take away the fancy glass
walls, the water foun­tain in the entry way, the mar­ble floors, etc
and give your employ­ees a warm, open, and col­lab­o­ra­tive envi­ron­ment. 
Allow employ­ees the oppor­tu­nity to dec­o­rate their sur­round­ings (no
that does not mean allow them to offend oth­ers,) dress casu­ally, cut
loose when appro­pri­ate, and give them ways to relax in the office. 
In Soft­ware, and I’m sure in other set­tings, allow­ing peo­ple to come
together and col­lab­o­rate is a very pow­er­ful tool, cre­ate open space
with couches, open light, and easy ways to con­nect to the work and
don’t con­stantly expect the employ­ees to sit at their “desks“
or “cubes.”  In my opin­ion in a good office, Soft­ware
devel­op­ers should have a lap­top and free­dom to float around to
what­ever desk or couch or con­fer­ence room they feel the need to be
in.  

One of the big fears as a poten­tial man­ager that I have about
future employ­ees is stag­na­tion of skills, let­ting an employee become
so com­fort­able in what they’re doing that they are not expand­ing
their skill-set or keep­ing their skill-set honed.  In my opin­ion
the eas­i­est way, as a devel­oper, to keep your skills up to date is
read books, keep up with blogs, and have access to Wikipedia’s
arti­cles; the eas­i­est way for a com­pany to do that in these days and
times is to pro­vide an employee with an Ama­zon Kin­dle, these devices
are rel­a­tively cheap con­sid­er­ing how expen­sive train­ing is. 
Take for exam­ple the cost of the Kin­dle 2, $359 + $25 for a cover,
and an allowance of $50 dol­lars a month, that’s just at $1000 for a
year vs. a train­ing course on Zend Frame­work at $899.97 per seat
(price pulled from http://www.phparch.com/c/training/course/phpzf.) 

So let’s recap, 35 hour work week (as a full time employee,) min.
of 3 weeks vaca­tion per year, relaxed and open office area, incen­tive
for keep­ing up with indus­try trends and keep­ing skills honed, per­haps
I’m mad, but what if I’m right?  What if decreas­ing the amount
of expec­ta­tion and increas­ing the amount of enable­ment cre­ates a more
pro­duc­tive envi­ron­ment allow­ing employ­ees to spend less time doing
more effec­tive work as well as gain trust and loy­alty to the com­pany
they work for while enjoy­ing their own lives.  After all, who
wants to work for a com­pany that doesn’t take them seri­ously, doesn’t
con­sider the fact that peo­ple need their own lives, and that drains
all free­dom dur­ing the work week.  I will be cou­pling the ideas
I’ve out­lined here with a lightly mod­i­fied ver­sion of Scrum
method­ol­ogy on an idea I’m seek­ing fund­ing for now, adding that with
the fact that the area I’m seek­ing to found in is rich in avail­able
tal­ent, per­haps I will fail but most likely not, only time will tell.

I’m hereby mak­ing an open call for peo­ple to argue with or
con­tribute to my ideas, let’s fix what’s wrong with the cur­rent
cor­po­ra­tions and thereby mak­ing our econ­omy and our lifestyles sick
and dying.

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