On my first day I took Uber to get to the office building. I did not want to get lost and it was also raining. I took the elevator to go up to the office. I looked around, I could see people preoccupied with their PCs and tasks.
Susan, the office manager has as much energy as short she is. She immediately took me around in the office and I got the office notebook already installed for me. All I had to do was to turn it on and I had everything for development. Then came a meeting with the Online Marketing Developer Team. Their name has recently changed to Growth.
I had learned that the Team had been created by the merging of two smaller squads in the recent days. Accordingly, they were in the middle of getting used to each other and they were establishing new processes. I personally could not have asked for a better time to join them. Chaos, uncertainty, immaturity – these are the source of the greatest opportunities. I had travelled there to see such things. I succeeded in that.
What I had not expected however was that this mass would piece together into the right structure within 3-4 weeks. The team is getting newer and newer ideas from other groups or from similar teams of other companies. This is what makes this city wonderful! If you ask the right person, then they arrange for an exchange of knowledge between companies.
I had known that the guys who worked here were knowledgeable. It tuned out that each and every of them were also great persons. They were youthful and easy-going.
Placid saviour nerds work for companies of killing competition with each other.
You need to be open to apply methodologies using kindergarten and schoolkid ways in the adult world. You draw on boards, reveal tension in the team with post-it notes and markers and the team members are to prioritise existing tasks using similar tools. It works. What gets on the board is not only something forced and sweaty on a sticky piece of paper but the team members do set about writing down their opinion. Even on 1-2-15 sticky notes. Nobody is shy.
Openness, expertise — and the curtain falls.
