Posted by Kevin Merritt on May 1st, 2008
I admit to being a little over the top about the observance of traditions. I try to find mundane events that can evolve into traditions. My kids think I make the routine ceremonial. Getting a haircut is a big deal at my house. We buy our Christmas tree from exactly the same Christmas tree lot every year. There will be warm orange rolls for breakfast and little smokies for half-time on opening day of the football season.
Yesterday was Paul’s one year anniversary at blist. He brought in a pound of fudge to share. He says he’s starting a new tradition at blist. Each year on your anniversary you need to bring in a pound of chocolate times the number of years you’ve been working at blist. A startup has much in common with a family. You learn a lot about each other. I’m learning that Paul is as geeky about tradition as I am.
Paul’s first year at blist has been phenomenal. He’s a major contributor to both the above-the-surface part of the blist application you see and the below-the-surface infrastructure you don’t. He’s an incredibly diverse software engineer, working all over the stack. Paul is a big picture, long term thinker, which we appreciate. Some software engineers are afraid of hardware and systems administration. Not Paul. He’s physically touched virtually every piece of gear we have and he keeps all of our systems humming. Paul’s been instrumental in building the team by keeping the hiring bar high and genuinely doing a great job of identifying people who can make big, meaningful contributions. blist would be no where as far along today if Paul hadn’t left Microsoft to join us.
So thanks for a terrific first year Paul. This is just the beginning.
I do think if Paul succeeds at spreading the pound of chocolate tradition among all employees, we’ll be incorporating yet another new tradition at blist – the weekly Saturday morning 5K to keep in shape.
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Posted by Kevin Merritt on April 3rd, 2008
I had a passionate discussion yesterday with one of the guys on the team. It was about getting folks to work a little harder in order to try to collectively get a little more done each week. It turned into an interesting discussion about our company’s culture.
What kind of culture do we want? Do we just let it happen? Or do we deliberately try to develop the culture we want?
I think responsiveness, speed, innovation, agility and nimbleness are good and vital attributes for a startup. Hard work and productivity are crucial as well. But I don’t want to create a culture that values working long, unproductive hours over smartly and efficiently getting things done. We’re in this for the long haul. Burning out and getting nothing done isn’t a viable strategy.
One of the most productive employees who ever worked for me worked almost exactly the same schedule every single day over a 10-year period. He was in the office by 7:30 and on his way home by 6:30 every day. He was more productive than those working 8 to 5. He was also more productive than the folks working 70 hour work weeks. At one point I estimated he was responsible for 50% of the productivity of a 7-person development team. The difference was how he worked, not how long he worked.
We have lots of room for improvement at blist. We can be more responsive. More nimble. More innovative. More agile. More productive. Sure maybe working another hour each day would help some. But the culture I really want to develop is one where we optimize for efficiency, not where we compensate for inefficiency.
Posted in startup work environment | 4 Comments »
Posted by Kevin Merritt on October 12th, 2007
One of the most important jobs of a founding entrepreneur is building the team with incredibly talented individuals. An interesting concern for the candidate considering joining a startup is the perception of risk.
“Don’t most startups fail?”
The short answer is yes. But it doesn’t matter nearly as much as you think. Here’s why. Let’s say you’re an incredibly gifted software engineer, a few years out of school, working at Amazon, Google, Yahoo or Microsoft. You’ve had a great mentor, learned a great deal about the craft of software construction, but you sense it might be more exciting to work for a startup. There’s just that nagging concern that they’ll go belly up 18 months after you join. So you stay put and keep daydreaming about joining the next Zillow, wetpaint or Redfin.
Let’s understand the facts. You have a strong education. You were recruited by, passed the interviews, and were actually hired into one of the big software companies. You benefited from the mentoring and learned how to build commercial software.
Then you jumped to a startup. You worked your butt off, learned the LAMP stack, became a pretty good Rails developer, if you do say so yourself. You even picked up a little Linux system administration, and tweaked your startup’s Asterisk VOIP system. And because everybody wears a lot of hats in a startup, you did some program management, some product management, even did some pre-sales work in the field. Then the company failed to raise another round of capital and laid off half the staff. You made the cut, but the mood was depressed. Finally they shut the doors and gave you a lousy two-weeks severance.
Did you make a mistake? Not at all. You are now a much more valuable contributor. You’re far more versatile. Your skills have been updated. There’s a huge shortage of good talent in the market. Microsoft still has 10,000 open reqs. I assume Yahoo, Google and Amazon are equally starved for good engineers. So you got 2 weeks of severance. Take another week or two at your own expense and spend a month finding the right company for your next stint.
If you suspect you’ll like the pace and energy of a startup, take the leap! While there’s a lot of risk of survival for the startup itself, there’s a lot less personal career risk than you might have initially thought.
Posted in startup work environment | 1 Comment »
Posted by Kevin Merritt on October 1st, 2007
Today’s Wall Street Journal (WSJ) has a great article by Kelly Spors on the top small workplaces of 2007. It reflects yet again how startups can compete with Microsoft, Google and other large companies when recruiting for top talent. The article highlights 15 small companies having great work environments:
1) Alaska Wild Adventures
2) Barclay Water Management
3) Corporate Ink Public Relations
4) Cowden Associates
5) Exactech
6) FRCH Design
7) Gentle Giant Moving 
Guerra DeBerry Coody
9) Healthwise
10) NRG Systems
11) Phelps County Bank
12) Point B Solutions Group
13) Reflexite
14) Restek
15) Summit Aviation
Congratulations to all of the companies recognized in the article. The one company on the list with which I’m familiar is Point B Solutions Group, which like blist is a Seattle company. The consulting industry is one where many employees are fatigued with burnout and facing difficult career change decisions because traditional consulting practices are tough on family life. Point B innovates by keeping its consultants local so they don’t have to travel and can be home with their families every night. Another innovation is eliminating the concept of vacation time. Employees are paid hourly, with the ability to decide if and when they’ll work. Want to take 3 months off to tour Europe? No problem. Just take the time off. Of course this means people need to take more self-direction in their financial lives so they can afford to go without a paycheck for a few months. That’s the right step people should be taking anyway, in my opinion.
The article is a great read and I highly recommend you all read it. My take-away key points from it were that great small companies:
* Offer employees tremendous autonomy
* Provide deep transparency to employees
* Encourage employees to manage their careers, including finding the right work/life balance
* Allow employees to significantly influence company direction
* Structure themselves to allow employees to share in profits
* Encourage open communication
* Provide an environment that fosters collaboration, teamwork and camaraderie
* Create career growth opportunities for employees
blist didn’t make the list this year, but hopefully we’ll be considered in the future. We think we share a lot of the same traits. As an example, one way we’ve been able to compete with Amazon, Google and Microsoft for software engineers in the Seattle area is by courting engineers who aspire to be entrepreneurs themselves one day. Microsoft, Google and Amazon provide a lot of resources, infrastructure and process that many engineers take for granted, without even recognizing it. Instead of jumping straight from Microsoft to starting your own company, maybe you’d be better prepared by spending a couple of years in a startup along the way. We welcome future entrepreneurs. It’s a win-win for us and the engineer. The engineer typically has exactly the right skill set and temperament for a startup and by sharing the nitty gritty details of how a startup really works, they’re better prepared when they ultimately launch out on their own. This approach works well for other disciplines – marketing and business development – too, not just engineers.
The WSJ article reminds me to emulate what successful companies do and that a key to creating a healthy work environment is one where both the employer and the employee “win” at meeting their goals.
Looking for a great small company to work for? We hope you’ll consider blist.
Posted in startup anecdotes, startup work environment | No Comments »
Posted by Kevin Merritt on September 20th, 2007
The press tries to stir up the notion that there’s an ongoing competition between big software companies (Microsoft, Oracle, Amazon, Google, et al) and startups for the limited pool of software engineering talent. While it’s true that good software engineers are needed by both mature and fledgling software companies, there’s such a distinction between the two environments that the perceived competition is overblown. This post is the first of many that will try to enumerate the differences. If you’re a software engineer, one of your first decisions is figuring out whether you are currently a better fit at BigCo or LittleCo.
A couple of weeks ago we started blogging and republished our blist corporate website. One of the enhancements we added was a way for people to sign up for announcements and early enrollment to our beta program, even though our application isn’t ready yet. Lots of people have already signed up, which is terrific. By the way, you can sign up too. Just enter your email address at the top of this blog post.
Yesterday Matt, our Online Marketing Director, sent an email blast to the subscribers of the list. Most of us at blist are on the list, so we too received a copy of the email. Paul, one of our phenomenal software engineers, quickly sent a note to Matt, me and the rest of the team, suggesting two enhancements to future email campaigns:
1) Fix the problem with line wrapping
2) Give recipients an unsubscribe link right in the body of the confirmation email, instead of merely telling them “you can unsubscribe at any time”
Paul’s suggestions were unsolicited and welcome. The changes were quickly made for next time. Paul spent the last three years at Microsoft. My reply to Paul, cc’d to everyone on the team, was simply
“You bring up one of my favorite things about startups. Everyone gets to wear a lot of hats. If something isn’t right, chime in and let’s work to make it right. Do you think the programmers at Microsoft get to influence email campaigns?”
BigCo can’t compete with the diversity of influence every individual has at a startup. Diversity of influence. We’ll call that benefit #1 of working at a startup.
Is there a lack of diversity of influence in your diet at BigCo? There’s still a couple of open seats at our table.
Posted in startup work environment | 1 Comment »
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