Creating a great workplace for developers
By Sarat Pediredla

I was recently trawling through my Google Reader subscriptions and came across a post about workplace experiments, which struck a chord with some of the things we do at hedgehog lab to make it a great place to work for our team.

We don’t call what we do “workplace experiments”, as it is just standard practice for us. I thought it would be good to list out all the unique things that we do to enhance everyone’s jobs here at hedgehog lab. I appreciate (given the heated responses to the 37signals post) that these won’t and can’t apply to everyone, so I am in no way recommending these as best practice (although I have yet to get anything but staunch support from our team on these).

4-day week
One of our founding principles was the 4-day week. With the exception of client demands (as we still do some consulting), we regularly work 4-day weeks. No one is required to come into work on a Friday if they do not want to. The problem we are facing is keeping our team away on a Friday! The reality is, if you create the right environment and give people a goal to work towards to, you will have a tough time keeping them away from work.

Expenses
Although we do not offer everyone a company card, we never say no to anything that someone in the team wants (that is reasonable). Books, software and conferences are paid for by the company as long as we can afford them (see you at @media 2008). This ensures our team gets what they want without spending the time getting them; allowing them to focus on getting on with their jobs.

Working from home & Flexible hours
One of the toughest things you can do as an “employer” is trust your team to get on with their job without constantly looking over their backs. Therefore, most working from home policies for office-based businesses are either half-baked or cosmetic at the best. Not so at hedgehog lab.

Our working from home policy is completely flexible and anyone from our team can work from home at management’s discretion. So whether you are having that brand new laptop delivered home or you need to see a doctor miles away, you can rest assured that it will be stress free.

Similarly, our flexible hours are actually flexible. When most companies use the word “flexible hours” they mean that you can come in an hour later but have to stay back an hour later too! When we say “flexible hours”, we are saying “we appreciate there will be times when you cannot get into work on time or want to leave early and we are fine with that!” There is no need to stay later or come in earlier to “make up the hours”. I have yet to see this being abused at the lab!

Profit sharing
Unfortunately we don’t have a bonus scheme at hedgehog lab as we feel that it depends too much on the whims of the person deciding the bonus and offers no real method of measuring contribution.

At hedgehog lab, we have a flat profit sharing scheme. It works on the basis of setting aside a share of our profits every year and dividing this equally between all team members. No matter what your role, junior or senior, director or developer, you get an equal share of the profit. Of course, there might not be a profit to share but that means no one gets an incentive. We feel this is a great way to reward overall performance of the team and company while ensuring no one feels singled out.

Overtime
Although we frown at overtime for our internal projects, work for clients sometimes dictates that we are forced to ask some of our team to work overtime. We accept this as a by-product of service work but instead of fighting against it, we embrace it by innovating on how people are paid for overtime. Instead of paying overtime rates of 2x or 3x times someone’s hourly rate, we pay them the whole amount that the company makes for that work from the client. You heard that right!

These are just some of things we try and do to make life better for everyone in the team. I would be interested in finding out what works for other people and welcome any debate on our approach.

Until next time,
Sarat Pediredla
http://www.hedgehoglab.com