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 quarterly bonuses based on pro-activity, responsibility and other performance indicators.
* Everyone can work from wherever they like, still many people choose to work from our main office in Barcelona. (For example I work many weeks out of my camper van with 3G/4G connection from beautiful surf locations)
* In theory, everyone can choose how much or how little they want. Not always possible, but we try to make it possible as much as we can.
* We have managers, but they don't demand things. They are responsible that certain things happen, but decisions are being made collaboratively.
* All managers are either engineers or designers. No bullshit managers.
* We don't have a dedicated sales person. All work we get is from word-of-mouth and the first person a new client speaks to is either an engineer or designer (or both).
* We play Mario Kart / StarCraft after lunch ;-)
* We do a lot of sports activities together
* We have a lot of BBQs on our terrace
* We use some of the profits for fun internal experiments
(small projects without an expected outcome other than having fun & learning). However, some of them are now actually turning into actual products: http://bugfender.com/
* MJ University: we take online classes together as a group
* MJ Talk: weekly presentation about an interesting topic (not necessarily tech related). For example we had talks about personal finance (investing), achieving happiness, etc.
* We encourage pair programming where it makes sense
* MJ Retreats: we're going to remote places and work there together. At the moment six of us are on an island in Thailand. In February we go skiing in Austria.
* We put a lot of effort in hearing everyone's opinion and feedback and try to put it into action
With all that we've managed to attract and retain incredible talent, but most importantly we have a very pleasant time together.
That said, we're a company optimizing on lifestyle and happiness, rather than profit. So this way of running a business is probably not applicable everywhere.
However, sometimes we might think that taking the whole company to these great places is the best thing to do, but people tend to end up marrying, having children and getting tired of going to a beautiful island with their workmates when they could just stay at home with their family.
Work/life balance is not imposing our view of a great life to our coworkers. I'm sure you guys are cool with that and you've got a thousand more reasons to be a great place to work, but I wanted to raise this.
We make those things optional. We're at the moment on Koh Samui with 6 people, while the majority of the team is still in Barcelona and a few others at random other places.
Everyone should do what they think is right for them in their current situation. We just want to give options :-)
Pretty amazing. Are the founders/management team working towards what might be considered a high rate of growth or an incremental one? In other words, is the staff level, revenue, expenses, and earnings in some way optimized at the current level? Kudos for focusing on your people- this mix is difficult to achieve for what I am assuming is a bootstrapped business and impossible in a venture-backed one.
To be honest, we haven't put too much thought into the business side of things. We've been growing organically from two people (the two founders, I'm one of them) to now 20 people and things always somehow worked out. We're still learning ourselves, though. Pretty much every day.
Revenue and expenses are relatively stable. We've some really good quarters, and some not so good ones. But overall we're profitable. Sometimes we also spend a lot of money on "fun" things without thinking too much and then realize later that we need to be a bit more careful with spending ;-) In particular cash flow issues when waiting for the big corporations to pay their invoices.
In terms of staff, we're actually at the moment not growing that much any more, simply because having too many people makes it difficult to run such a business as the "family & friends" feeling gets lost and we'd probably need to introduce more hierarchy, which we also don't want.
From past experience, there are two danger points when growing: 25 employees and 50 employees.
At 25, you stop meeting everyone every week. i.e. Random encounters no longer guarantee that every person in the company keeps good contact with everyone else.
At 50 pax, you stop knowing everyone. i.e. You may know the list of employees by heart, but you don't really befriend them anymore.
Of course, these are soft trigger points. You start noticing something different at 20 people, and are sure of what is happening at 30. It is definitely not the fault of the 25th hire :-)
The remedy is always the same: Company culture. Growing slow is a good ingredient towards a good culture, albeit not the single ingredient.
Thanks for that. That's the way we feel as well. We don't have the need to be a huge company. We're quite happy with 20 people and grow slowly now with the right people.
Depends on the project. We've clients ranging from tiny startups up to huge multinational companies. So we usually adapt to their preferred processes with some recommendations from our side.
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 contacts in our personal networks.
Have you had any resistance on that from folks in the US? I live in a very average/slightly below average cost of living area of the US and that's probably 8-10% below what most places around here are offering a developer with 3-5 or 5-7 years of experience.
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?
We've only spoken with people in SF and NYC, because that is where our US network reaches into. However, developers there are too expensive for us (at the moment), so it doesn't make much sense.
That said, we've noticed that many people care much more about the freedom and flexibility we over, rather than having a huge salary, as long as the base salary is fair.
With the bonus we want to encourage everyone to think and act like a co-founder. Take responsibility and action where needed instead of just ignoring problems until the shit hits the fan.
There's no general number. It depends on the clients. We have huge companies that pay very well, but we also like to work with startups on interesting projects. If we're really interested in a project we usually try to figure out a way to make it work for everyone.
Interesting. Another thing is, how do you determine market price for the project? I mean, your prospective clients might also ask quotes to competing agencies. So how do you know your price is competitive enough?
You never really know. Sometimes you win, sometimes you lose ;-) But I think in the end people work with us because of our honesty, transparency and the flexibility to adapt to their needs: http://mobilejazz.com/philosophy
We also had cases where potential clients decided to go with a cheaper option and then came back to us to "rescue" the project.
In the end the price itself doesn't say too much. More important is the value you get for that price and that is different for every agency. There are things like quality, being pro-activity and recommending the right things to do (not those that make the agency the most money), experience beyond pure design & development (e.g. marketing apps, getting featured, high App Store ratings and reviews, etc.)
* 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 quarterly bonuses based on pro-activity, responsibility and other performance indicators.
* Everyone can work from wherever they like, still many people choose to work from our main office in Barcelona. (For example I work many weeks out of my camper van with 3G/4G connection from beautiful surf locations)
* In theory, everyone can choose how much or how little they want. Not always possible, but we try to make it possible as much as we can.
* We have managers, but they don't demand things. They are responsible that certain things happen, but decisions are being made collaboratively.
* All managers are either engineers or designers. No bullshit managers.
* We don't have a dedicated sales person. All work we get is from word-of-mouth and the first person a new client speaks to is either an engineer or designer (or both).
* We play Mario Kart / StarCraft after lunch ;-)
* We do a lot of sports activities together
* We have a lot of BBQs on our terrace
* We use some of the profits for fun internal experiments (small projects without an expected outcome other than having fun & learning). However, some of them are now actually turning into actual products: http://bugfender.com/
* MJ University: we take online classes together as a group
* MJ Talk: weekly presentation about an interesting topic (not necessarily tech related). For example we had talks about personal finance (investing), achieving happiness, etc.
* We encourage pair programming where it makes sense
* MJ Weekend: once or twice every year we fly everyone to Spain, rent a nice villa with pool and have a good time together. Some pics: http://blog.mobilejazz.cat/work-life-balance-at-mobile-jazz/
* MJ Retreats: we're going to remote places and work there together. At the moment six of us are on an island in Thailand. In February we go skiing in Austria.
* We put a lot of effort in hearing everyone's opinion and feedback and try to put it into action
With all that we've managed to attract and retain incredible talent, but most importantly we have a very pleasant time together.
That said, we're a company optimizing on lifestyle and happiness, rather than profit. So this way of running a business is probably not applicable everywhere.
(Edit: formatting, typos and a few additions)