16 Matching Annotations
  1. Dec 2022
  2. Aug 2022
    1. Indeed, judging from the accounts of the many employees who have now gone on record about this issue, the “debates” that have been happening at Basecamp are precisely the kinds of conversations that happen when you have a diverse workforce. Different issues affect different people differently, and being able to speak freely about those differences is the hallmark of a healthy culture. But by framing these discussions as “acrimonious debates” rather than “challenging conversations,” Hansson has positioned himself not as a peacemaker, but as a tyrant hell-bent on taking his toys and going home; shutting down discussions rather than holding space for growth and discovery.
  3. Feb 2021
  4. Mar 2020
    1. Basecamp has dedicated channels where no work-related discussion is allowed, including message boards for workers to chat about personal interests like food, sports and pets: “just for social stuff, funny things, whatever people want to talk about,” Fried says.
    2. In recent days, if a meeting ends early, employees at GitLab will invite their children to take over for a bit.“People will throw out, ‘Anyone have kids home from school who want to chat with my kids?’” says Darren Murph, who leads employee culture and onboarding at GitLab.
    3. Around 5 or 6 p.m., a trivia emcee will pose one question to the group, and employees submit guesses in a Slack thread until someone responds with the correct answer. The emcee continues this way for four more questions, and the competition can get fierce.
    1. A healthy company culture is one where empathy and inclusivity are values of the organization. The real value of employee empowerment and engagement in such an organization results in empathy and a healthy company culture. Due to the increased impact of their work through optimization and innovation, employees can feel empowered enough to re-connect with their team, their coworkers and the organization. These empowered workers are excited to help others and to be empathetic to others. 
    2. The truth is that building an innovative organization from top-down is a dynamic process.  It often involves people at all levels of the company. But, the fundamental narrative across the board with innovative organizations is the culture. The company culture has to include employees who feel connected to the organization and want to contribute value.
    3. In our age of innovation, most organizations realize the need to innovate. According to entrepreneur coach Theodore Henderson, innovation is often crucial in being able to stay competitive long term in the marketplace. Innovation doesn’t just mean technology innovation. It can be company culture innovation, process innovation, management innovation, data innovation and much more.
  5. Sep 2019
  6. Aug 2019
  7. Nov 2015
    1. Companies need to have realistic expectations of the work-life balance of open source maintainers.

      When you hire an open source developer, you hire someone who works all the time--not just 8-5, not just at a desk, not just on that one pet project that management's currently excited about. They work on that, they work on the related libraries, they work on projects that use those libraries, they work on the next great version of the libraries the company will need in two more years.

      Plan for your own future by letting your developers explore it for you. They already are...even before you've hired them.

    2. effectively contribute and participate in upstream projects

      If anything is missing with regards to open source within companies (of all sizes), it's this situation.

      Teaching "companies" (or rather the entire management stack/chain) how to "effectively contribute and participate in upstream projects" could change the game for those companies, the projects they interface with, and certainly for the developers (inside and outside of the companies).