This morning I had an epiphany of sorts.
I received yet another recruitment message from a high profile tech company. I'm sure many of you receive lots of them, too. But this time, as I was reading the email, I realized that I can't think of a job offer that would convince me to walk away from my current employer.
Why? I work at a weird company. A company where most of us are pretty happy with our work, our co-workers and our employer most of the time. You see, at &yet, we have discovered that the keys to employee happiness are simple. They are not a set of HR tricks or esoteric geek benefits. Employees are humans, and the keys to our happiness are the keys to human happiness.
I believe that everyone is on this little planet for a reason and is 'wired' to be truly amazing at a handful of things (at least a handful, maybe more). Because of this feature of our existence, we are most likely to be happy if we are able both to discover and to do those things. The chances skyrocket if we can also do them with excellence, companionship, and appreciation.
At &yet are makers; we are creators. We build things because it is who we are. What do we make? We make applications for humans and APIs for machines, artful photographs and insightful videos, helpful blog posts and cutting-edge conferences, the ultimate toasted bagel and killer pozole, proven security processes and experimental work spaces.
We are happy because our employer is committed to our well-being as much as to making a buck. We are happy because we know and celebrate each other's successes. [1] We are happy because our processes and environment are tailored more to support excellent creating and less to profit optimization and legal ass-covering. We are happy because being who we are and becoming who we can be is supported, not subverted, by the business team.
I believe that at &yet we are at our core a development shop, and that is the key to our high levels of happiness, creativity and output. We are not a software development shop as our tagline would indicate: "We make web & mobile stuff for human people." That tagline is for your benefit, dear reader; it is why you might wish to engage us to work for you. We ARE a development shop, but what we ultimately aim to develop is people: as humans (being) first and as skilled artisans, artists, engineers, facilitators and communicators (doing) second.
Ultimately, this priority serves both our team and our clients best because, as we develop our ultimate product--a team of happy, talented humans, we are passionate about our individual and group creations because they are an extension of our core purpose.
We make things with the intent that they should increase the happiness and humanity in the daily life of our clients and those they serve.
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1. We created And Bang and use Ginger largely for this purpose.