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Everyone is hired for a specific job. The details of that job are explicit to both parties. Where there is ambiguity we call that out and set that expectation (

Everyone is hired for a specific job. The details of that job are explicit to both parties. Where there is ambiguity we call that out and set that expectation (ex: that this duty may change). This alone avoids a lot of the “not my job problem” or people trying to encroach on someone else’s job. In turn, this reduces chances of conflict and politics. Additionally, we keep communication extremely focused on work. There are no slack channels for watercooling, there are no “get to meet each other” zoom calls. We (including founders) log on, we do our work, we communicate (via text) about issues, wins, concerns, questions, and we log off. There’s no expectation of working hours (save for that weekly dev sync I mentioned). We also don’t preset deadlines. I’m not going to sit here and say we don’t have target dates, because we do. But it’s an explicit function of engineering to determine the scope of a feature and to assign it an effort. Based on that effort I can then forecast when it might get done. But there’s no deadline. This is just good engineering practice and also helps us improve our code quality over time. We do not share forecast completion dates with users and customers. The most we will say is that we’re working on something. No etas. We’ve also built in a culture of shipping constantly. Shipping a feature or a release isn’t some big event. I might log on in the morning and see that a feature was finished over night (including final QA, etc.) and I’ll just release it. This takes a lot of pressure off development. Because we’re so comfortable releasing, even if there was an issue, we could just roll back. I’ve had to do this twice now and it was a non issue. The release notes hadn’t even been emailed to users yet, so no harm.

skynet-9000 6y ago
This sounds pretty awesome. I think that some of the office politics creep in not because of the projects that people are working on, but just because people actually interact on non-work things. This can be a really good thing in many cases (you spend a lot of time with these people, so it's good to have a cultural fit and hang out), but it can also be bad, because so much of your personal life can be wrapped up in people from work. This has less personal contact, and therefore the only politics will mostly be focused on work. As long as things are scoped tightly and you are self-motivated, this should work pretty well. But, you have to have your own social life, since you won't get it from work.
- ryanSrich 6y ago
  This sums up my thoughts as well. I pay you $150k per year, you work 20 hours per week, there are no meetings, there are no politics; you're assigned work, we collaborate on that work via text, you complete the work, you log off and have a life. Most engineers (including myself) are only worth about 4 hours of actual work per day anyway, so if you can do a weeks worth of work in 20 hours, then so be it. I don't need to fill another 4 hours per day with bullshit emails, meetings, or anything else that doesn't involve work.

skynet-9000 6y ago

This sounds pretty awesome. I think that some of the office politics creep in not because of the projects that people are working on, but just because people actually interact on non-work things. This can be a really good thing in many cases (you spend a lot of time with these people, so it's good to have a cultural fit and hang out), but it can also be bad, because so much of your personal life can be wrapped up in people from work. This has less personal contact, and therefore the only politics will mostly be focused on work. As long as things are scoped tightly and you are self-motivated, this should work pretty well. But, you have to have your own social life, since you won't get it from work.

ryanSrich 6y ago
This sums up my thoughts as well. I pay you $150k per year, you work 20 hours per week, there are no meetings, there are no politics; you're assigned work, we collaborate on that work via text, you complete the work, you log off and have a life. Most engineers (including myself) are only worth about 4 hours of actual work per day anyway, so if you can do a weeks worth of work in 20 hours, then so be it. I don't need to fill another 4 hours per day with bullshit emails, meetings, or anything else that doesn't involve work.