How do we actually work

On Friday, we shared the secret secrets of our work. Either the secrets were not so secret, or the stars were in an uncomfortable position, or our intelligence level is too low, but the reaction to the post was not the same as we expected.

Today we want to tell you how we actually work.

Kitchen

The kitchen is the main place in the office. It is exactly in the middle and serves an excellent purpose - to stimulate communication between people. Spontaneous conversations and discussions often originate here. An office without a kitchen is a sad thing.
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Let's start with the most important thing - with food material. Everything below is free for all employees. We have an Italian coffee machine:

which is filled with Italian coffee:

In the office there are always sweets for brain charging: chocolate, cookies, and so on.

There are almost always fresh fruits in the office: apples, bananas, kiwi, pears, oranges (today is Monday, fresh addition to tomorrow)

And ~~vodka~~ soft drinks

Lunch is brought to the office. We tried several suppliers until we found a good one. Now the quality of food suits almost everyone.

Meetings, Mini-teams and Pair Programming

In general, we do not like meetings. We have practically no general meetings. All meetings are very specific to discuss specific issues for the development or sharing of knowledge.

To work on each feature is going to a mini-team. She is fully responsible for all work on this functionality, including technical solutions. The team is quite autonomous and organizes its work as it sees fit.

Daily meetings

You should come to work no later than 11 am, because the meeting is taking place at this time. It usually takes about 15 minutes, but everyone knows who does what, who needs help. The meeting takes place in the kitchen.

Pair programming

There was a time when the pair programming was obligatory. However, as practice has shown, this is not always good. Excellent programmers themselves feel that it is better to do in a pair, and on what you can work alone. Now pair programming is purely optional, the mini-team solves this itself.

Caretaker for Functional Tests (SFUT)

We really have the role of caretaker for the tests and with the cat everything is true, with one exception - the cat, of course, is not real.

Evaluation of work, deadlines and time tracking

We do not appreciate the work. We have no deadlines. We do not have time tracking. We have almost no overtime

Now I will try to explain why.

Evaluation

We make a product, so there is not much point in evaluating work. The most important thing is to focus on the main things that we are trying to do. Estimates take time. It is very rough to evaluate the work in 5 minutes, which is enough for us. We are trying to break a lot of work into a small one, but there is no formal assessment of work. In such conditions it is difficult to approach a programmer and say “a task estimated at 8 o'clock, you have been doing for 2 days already” - and that’s good. One can only come up and say “something is working out, eh?” And he will reasonably answer why work takes so much time.

Deadlines

For the same reason, there is no deadline. They lead to lower quality and additional stress. People are already doing great work and trying to do everything as best as possible - why deadlines? Are they going to work with them faster, more efficiently? Of course not.

Time Tracking

Time tracking was canceled about 2 years ago. Why do we need to collect reports on the elapsed time, if we do not evaluate the work?

Overtime

40 hour work week - this is a recipe for many diseases of any company. People should not get tired and recycle. Tired leads to a deterioration in quality, to a loss of interest in work. People run out of steam and it’s useless to expect enthusiasm from them. Of course, if a person wants to work more than 40 hours - we will not interfere, each is individual. Accordingly, if he works a little less than 40 hours, no one will notice either. The result is important.

In all honesty, overtime sometimes happens. They are associated with all-rounder on production servers. Over the past year, as I recall, this was once.

Workplaces

Of course, no one is sitting on stools . Of course, no one is sitting at small tables. Well, obviously, no one is sitting in the hallway. Actually, here is Sergey's workplace.

Here is the designers and support department

Here is a room of silence, where you can safely work or relax, when everyone got

Anton likes to pose

Alexey sips wine

Sergey tells Max about football

Andrei is working hard

Means of communication

White boards

We love whiteboards very much. They are in our office everywhere.

Skype Groups

Many groups have been created in Skype: QA, Company Wide, Support, Dev, and so on. If you need to quickly say something to many - it works fine.

Information Emitters

The result of the company for the past year and plans for the future. Do you drink coffee - read:

Education

It is clear to anyone that it is impossible to read 100 books a year . But, of course, the training we love.

The company buys any books that people order. Purchases are made on Amazon and Oz.by.

Each employee of the company has the opportunity to attend a good conference in his specialty. For example, 10 people have recently been to QCon in London. This is Oleg. He has a keen sense of beauty.

The company allocates 5 hours a week for self-education. People can form mini-teams and start projects. And they can just sit and read interesting articles. While the experience of mini-projects comes with varying success, but we are looking for ways to make self-education more effective.

2 times a year we hold internal conferences. The conference takes a whole day. Here, for example, the program of the last conference