It Doesn't Have to Be Crazy at Work

No goals! No revenue, profit, growth goals. Only goal is to stay in business.

Productivity. Business or effectiveness? There’s a lot of bullshit in productivity space that just encourages you to work more and more. Cram more work in than you can reasonably, and calmly chew. Better than managing time is just saying “no” to things.

Office hours. Assume people are not available to help out except for office hours published by the person.

Heartbeats. Report from a team leader once a month to the whole company.

Trust battery. Charges or discharges with every interaction, with each person separately. Don’t discharge it.

Bosses must ask questions, not just “leave their door open”. Hard questions, like what are we screwing up, or what everyone is afraid to ask — not BS self-congratulatory ones like “what can we do EVEN BETTER”

Any suggestion from the boss seems like a mandate. Be careful not to casually just mention something. People will react

Low hanging fruit is a trap. Things you haven’t done before are, by definition, probably harder than you think.

Equal pay for equal work. No negotiation, salary formula.

Benefits whom? Benefits that encourage healthy out of office life, not staying at the office. Paid vacations (the vacation, not just the time), paid learning, CSA, month long sabbatical every 3 years.

Deadlines are fixed, scope is variable — goes down with time. People suck at estimates but are pretty good with setting and spending budgets.

Avoid interdependencies. The whole company does not have to be perfectly choreographed. Moving in lockstep is tripping up in lockstem. If one team is ready to ship, just ship. Don’t wait.

Disagree & commit. Building consensus is too costly, unless it’s life or death. Let everyone be properly heard, and then have someone make a call. You can disagree, and yet commit to do a thing.

Project-based development. 6-week sprints in 3-ish person teams.

Don’t make promises. Promises are cheap to make, very expensive and stressful to uphold. Don’t make promises.

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