The culture and daily battle rhythm of companies, and especially startups, effects everything from employee happiness, speed of innovation, recruitment, and employee retention.
Sometimes, it’s a nice company-wide policies like $100 desk budgets. Other times, small policies like gathering for lunch every day does the trick.
I’m luck to be at one of them.
Etsy’s culture - “For employees, working at Etsy sometimes seems like being embedded in a permanent flea market. From the coders to the receptionists, most are crafters at heart. Employees volunteer to teach classes as part of a formalized program they call Etsy School.”
Stripe’s culture - “When lunch arrives, an IRC bot (appropriately named nombot), announces the fact and the whole team relocates to the dining table. It’s important that everyone gets together at least once a day, and meal times are a good excuse.”
Github’s culture - “Unlike traditional companies where projects are assigned top-down, GitHubbers tackle whatever projects they want, without any formal requests or managerial interference.”
Wordpress’s culture - “The company has about 190 employees and nearly all of them work from home. Employees are scattered across 141 cities and 28 countries… Any team can meet whenever they want for a “hack week” in any location in the world. Teams have met in Tokyo, Australia, and Athens. The five most popular destinations are: Lisbon, Portugal; Kauai; San Francisco; Amsterdam; Tybee Island, Georgia”