Five years ago the four founders of GitHub were open source developers without business credentials. They worked from their homes. They ran the company on business minimalism which means they ran until they had problems and then fixed them. They ran an open source business which means:
- no meetings
- no offices
- no work hours (work when you feel productive)
- everything is asynchronous
- people self-assign work
- maintainers, not managers
- everybody contributes ideas (maybe only a couple provide vision)
The entire company works this way (even the legal department). They call these ideas their first principles (borrowing the concept from philosophy). There's no dogma that says "no managers" -- there's the argument of "is a manager the best way to get the value we want".
The 3 year old prosecution = "why" - your ideas should survive this. Direct the three year old prosecution at your business. Same idea as the Toyota "five whys" concept.
Examples of 3 year old prosecution
OFFICE - is it the same as the factory 100 years ago. Are you doing something because it has been done in the past or because it works for you?
First principles of the office:
- a place to work (maybe you have kids and you need a space you can get away to)
- creative collaboration
- serendipitous interactions
- meet the suits (auditor meetings etc)
- interviews and onboard people
- physically ship things to and from
- event space (for public or internal)
Note that at the office GitHubbers don't talk to each other because it's more fair to those not at the office and are on chat.
THE SCHEDULE - most people work about the same hours - 9 to 5 is "core hours" for meetings - why?
How often do you need to meet in person? Only for one of these things: strategy and brainstorming and serendipitous interactions OR heads down, uninterrupted implementation
Think about the university environment: you go to a couple classes a day and then you make up your study time on your terms. You decide who you work with and when you work on what. On the other hand kindergarten is someone watching you all day. Which does your office represent?
- set your own daily schedule
- mini-summits a few times a year (hack-house) to come up with a vision - it's up to the team to decide based on need for vision of communication issues
- whole company gets together once a year
- autonomous - there are benefits to allowing your people to work on their own. This also allows you to bring more diverse people into your organization. It's easier since good people will leave other companies to work for yours. For instance GitHubbers don't miss dance recitals.
MEETINGS - what is the output of a meeting? Who generally comes out ahead in these meetings? Does it support the best ideas or certain personalities?
- chat rooms
- discussion lists (@ mention people)
- as long as it is logged someone else can find out about it on their time. you never leave people out
MANAGEMENT - what does management do? Managers solve a lot of problems, but they are not the type of problems that GitHub has right now.
Why would you have managers?
Assign tasks, coordination, facilitating communication - at GitHub they assign for themselves (everyone is a mini-manager)
Hiring and firing - informed by team, but the four founders make the decisions
Venn Diagram: your skills and interests - problems GitHub has = overlap: what to work on
This is what they tell new employees to work on
By using software to allow cross company communication they have not put personal bias or selective memory in the mix.
Pay structures - why are you doing bonuses? is it maslovian based or reward based?
Long hours - do you implicitly or explicitly look for this and is it important for the business? Is it a badge of honor or a badge of foolishness
Benefits and perks - they've decided against free food because they want to be good community citizens and have people dine at local establishments
Retention counteroffers - in the long term is this in the interest of the company to have people there only for money?
With everything go to first principles and see if the thing is supported.
For their IP assignment legal document they passed it around and let employees fork it and give input which resulted in a better legal document in the end.
Ask these three questions on everything:
What are our values?
What are we trying to accomplish?
What is the best way to get there?
Are you willing to put kittens on your factory floor?
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