Steve Smith On Optimizing For Happiness | Hacker News Reader

Steve Smith On Optimizing For Happiness

ngenworks.com

44 pointsbscofield11 comments

This is probably the greatest endorsement for working at a company I've ever seen. Working @ Github must be great.

I do like the idea of a "flat" team/company - but I'm finding it hard to see how it would work with a company that does work for other clients. Clients expect deadlines, and progress reports and so on. How do you handle that without a project manager to keep things on track?

I guess that's the difference in being a product company vs a service company. A service company might not have that kind of luxury I agree.

I've been thinking about it and wondering if it could work for service company. Possibly it would if the clients also bought into how things are done.

Maybe the starting point for this would be if the whole team is involved in the process of vetting the clients and choosing the projects.

If enough people on the team are interested enough to make it work, then they will be motivated enough to please the client, agree to time scales, budget and all that sort of thing.

But, in all honesty, I'm not sure. You would have to be a company that everyone wants to use, so that you would have enough potential clients 'bidding' to be actual clients.

If this was possible, I would love to do it!

That's exactly right. At nGen Works we're working everyday to be a flat service company. We recently published out process so others can learn from our successes and mistakes. It's human nature to chase that which retreats from us. When you tell a prospect the team has to select them it turns the traditional model on it's head. Some prospects laugh and walk away. Others understand that they will get a passionate team that cares about their goals.

You can access our process wiki here. Check out the New Biz section (Phase Zero). http://process.ngenworks.com

Also, here is a video on our model. http://www.ngenworks.com/blog/the-jellyfish-model-a-video-su...

We're also working on a site that will be a resource for other service companies looking to go flat.

So far, being a service company going flat hasn't been easy, but we are seeing positive cultural and bottom line results. The toughest part is getting through the fear that it won't work.

Interesting. Thanks, I'll look into that.

I kind of makes me happy that my thoughts are in line with what people are actually trying.

I'm a student at Notre Dame (in South Bend) and Steve actually came and spoke to our computer club a little while back. I ended up talking to him for a good long time afterwards about everything from business to software to Github to working remotely. Pretty cool then to see an interview with him on the front page of HN.

One thing that was kinda cool was that Github's interview process isn't necessarily so technical, because they usually find out if someone is a good programmer by just looking at their Github, and having popular repos sometimes catches their attention. Also, all new employees push to the master Github branch on their first day IIRC.

Does anybody know of other flat companies? I've heard Valve is somewhat like this. What about outside of the software industry?

I believe that's also the model of Gore Associates, makers of Gore-Tex.

Gore & Associates[0] is the canonical example. Flat structure with 9,000 employees, and consistently rated one of the best places to work.

[0]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WL_Gore_and_Associates

There are actually a ton of companies who are flat in and out of the industry--and I think it's fairly popular for startups to begin that way these days. I'm trying to compile a list right now and will hopefully be publishing that on our site in the near future. If you'd like me to keep you in the loop, let me know.

http://ngenworks.com

Cheers!

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