71–80 of 116 posts
Not sure if it's in the same bucket as Valve or GitHub: at Mobile Jazz http://mobilejazz.com we're only 20 people (and that makes things a lot easier), but we've quite a different way of working compared to traditional companies: * We pay fair salaries. For most people in our team it's way more than what they've earned before. * We pay everyone the same (base) salary. Regardless of their role or title. * We pay quart…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
You mentioned a base salary for everybody. Can you give me a specific number?
We're currently at around 53k€ for someone who works full-time, which is slightly above average for Germany and very high for Southern Europe, where most of our people are from. We also have a few from Latin America, Eastern Europe and Mauritius, where this is also a very good salary. We weren't looking specifically in those countries nor are we limiting ourselves, but it simply happened that we found people through…
I also noticed that you bonus folks based on pro-activity and other measures, which presumably plays a pretty big role in the decision-making process?
I'm a mod of it...we're pretty flat at Balsamiq, too.
We're a slightly larger team (almost 50 peeps) at Axiom Zen (https://axiomzen.co). Our entire raison d'etre is predicated on coming up with interesting, high-risk ideas and carrying them through the various stages of market validation, prototyping, iteration, and growth. Because of this, we are working really hard to become and remain the best place for brilliant people to build awesome things.
We try to clearly define our values (just like Valve/GitHub), build them into our products, and use them as a heavy filter for hiring. We also go out of our way to ensure total transparency in the team, using GitHub for everything from sales to hiring so that everyone can see the stage everything is at, decisions leading up to a particular status quo, etc. Also everyone has an equal voice in jumping in to suggest / push forward changes.
For a bit on our workflow, take a look at this blog post: https://www.zenhub.io/blog/beyond-code-use-github-zenhub-for...
We'll eventually polish up and publish our company handbook which dives into the `how` and `why` much more thoroughly than I ever could here.
Gore is a widely known company that does. However, a review of their glassdoor profile shows it is not as great on the inside as the marketing makes it out to be. Here's my previous comments on it https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8270601
"Now instead of getting work done, people will dedicate their time to internal politics and jostling for group position"
Internal politics and jostling for group position happens in every large organisation I have worked at.
"unresolved because nobody could assume the role of dictator and push through needed work prioritization schedules"
Again, at every large company I have worked for the "dictators" of successful projects were rarely the people with official ownership of the projects or people high up in the org chart. So I'm not sure why nobody could assume the role of dictator.
Gore is a widely known company that does. However, a review of their glassdoor profile shows it is not as great on the inside as the marketing makes it out to be. Here's my previous comments on it https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8270601
Nice recap. I had a friend who worked as a sales guy for Gore (his company was acquired by them). He said that he couldn't "order" anyone to do anything for him, so he had to spend all his time sucking up to people just to get any needed support.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
You mentioned a base salary for everybody. Can you give me a specific number?
We're currently at around 53k€ for someone who works full-time, which is slightly above average for Germany and very high for Southern Europe, where most of our people are from. We also have a few from Latin America, Eastern Europe and Mauritius, where this is also a very good salary. We weren't looking specifically in those countries nor are we limiting ourselves, but it simply happened that we found people through…
Here's a subreddit full of resources about this topic: http://www.reddit.com/r/flatmanagement I'm a mod of it...we're pretty flat at Balsamiq, too.
I love this model of working, but I think it's a lot more common in engineering teams than people realize. My company isn't anything special, and certainly most of the rest of the company doesn't work open allocation, but the engineering team pretty much does. You work on what you want, and you tell people what you're doing. Does anyone else feel this way?