Work should be a pleasure

Recently, one of the founders of the company DevExpress, Roman Eremin, gave a short interview. In it, he talks about the main methodologies that we follow when creating our products, discusses various approaches to managing a large company, and also shares its basic life principles.

" Work should be fun . By and large, you only need to do what you would have done. Main value? Benefit. Money is important as a measure of this benefit. We need to create such products and services so that people really want to afford to buy them .

If someone is obeyed , it means that he is more persuasive or his opinion is respected and trusted. I try to make sure that I have not subordinates, but colleagues who are engaged in common work. We adhere to the theory of management Y : people like to perform their duties well, and they always want to do everything faster. No one needs to force or customize. We strive to recruit and retain just such employees. All that needs to be done for coordinated work in this case is to clearly formulate goals and not to prevent people from making decisions.

In management theory, it is difficult to imagine that a person works poorly because they pay little, and starts working twice as good if they pay twice as much. Programming is, after all, an art, not a craft. Even after spending 16 hours instead of 8, you can not do twice as much, and sometimes you can do 10 times more / better, just by resting and clearing your head. Therefore, we have no piecework payment. There is the concept of professional level. All people on the same level get the same money. This level indicates how well a person takes responsibility for certain aspects of the work - his or someone else's.
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We need to make fewer decisions for others . People support the decision if this is their decision. If I like a solution, I have to convince others of it - perhaps I just have more information, and this should be conveyed to my colleagues.

The authoritarian way of management , unfortunately, is possible and happens, and we are fighting with such manifestations.

We practice code sharing . That is, each team member can solve any problem or correct an error; he will not say: “It was not me who wrote.” Accordingly, there is a reasonable team size. Here the mathematics is simple: 1 person should not discuss anything, 2 people have one discussion channel, 3 - 3 channels, 4 - 6 channels, 5 people - 10 channels, etc. Each N + 1 person adds N possible channels of communication. Therefore, the optimal team size is 2–4 people. 5–7 people will require formal work coordination processes (meetings, for example), and more than 7 people will naturally break up into groups of their own. Therefore, we try to keep teams small, then decision-making processes occur by themselves. The main thing is to have common goals.

It’s not a big mistake to make mistakes ; you just have to reduce the price of a mistake: when they go by car, they don’t set the course and turning points in advance to the millimeter and then do not follow stupidly, regardless of reality. Instead, go on the road and taxi to where the road turns. For us, flexibility in planning is important, that is, the ability to taxi.

Common standards for the practice of extremal programming : short iterations, sharing code, developing through testing, continuous integration, refactoring.

I do not think that we are unique . We offer the opportunity to work on a global level, in a creative atmosphere, without bureaucracy. I wish there were more and more such companies.

We do not have a system for generating ideas ; we try not to formalize anything unnecessarily. Anyone who has an idea can express it either in conversation or on the forum and find out the opinions of others. If the idea is worthwhile, it will be supported, and it will reach people who have the capacity to realize it. We try to encourage this by convincing that in our company there is no concept “this is not my business” or “I have no authority”. On the contrary, each new professional level is an expansion of the circle of things for which you are responsible, about which you say: “This is my business, I am not indifferent to this.”

A unique employee is one who shares the company's goals and leads her to success in one way or another. Each unique employee has his own set of qualities. It is important not to be unique in the sense that only you know how something works.

I have always been successful in my internal criteria for success. I was not and did not strive for excellence, but I tried to do what I liked and not to do what I did not like.

As soon as I learned about computers, I wanted to deal with them . I guess I have such a mindset. Moreover, then it was fashionable and inaccessible. And now I would not have changed anything, well, maybe only would have gotten to the computers themselves faster. To become a successful programmer, you need to study at the computer - to write many different programs, read other people's programs, to feel the beauty in the code. The university provides higher education, outlook, but to learn to be a successful programmer there can not.

People working with me ? Yes, they did not teach anything, in this sense I am a stubborn donkey and continue to step on the same rake. But seriously, it is only thanks to the people who work with me that we can do so much.

Motivation ? Run the current project so that it changes something in the world, makes people's lives better.

20 years ago, my future wife asked me what I would do for a living. I replied that I would assemble programmers, we would start writing programs and selling them. So I did. Then Andrei and I ( note: Andrey Telnov, Roman's colleague and founder of DevExpress ) dreamed that 20-30 people would work with us. So now the company exceeds our dreams every 10-15.

The future is in meeting all the needs of our customers - software developers not only in libraries, but also in services, tools, technologies.

Life is short and you have to enjoy it. Do not fuss and do not worry ahead of time. "

How is work organized in your company? What methodologies do you use, what management style have you adopted? What can you be proud of in your work?