Quitter

I set a longetivity record working for Hotelecom, and I might've stayed on long enough if it weren't for the chance to work for India, Inc., which was an opportunity I just couldn't pass up. It had its ups and downs, for certain, but there were more ups than downs.

One of the things I remember most about Hotelecom was its executive leadership. These guys were on the ball. The CTO was speaking at all the right conferences, the CEO had a swagger that screamed "follow me!" When he spoke, he was excited, and he was animated enough as a person to let the excitement become infectious. When you walked away from talking with him, or after a lunchtime presentation, you were stoked to work there. You felt like you were in the right place at the right time. It didn't hurt that the company did fairly well, either (it was eventually acquired for quite a large sum of money, but not until and a half years after I left).

One summer was particularly memorable. We had a product that was doing fairly well in the niche that we targetted, but there was a bigger market out there, and we wanted to hit it. We knew we could leverage most of our existing product's technology, and it would just take a few new features, a bit of marketing, and we'd be able to make a huge splash in this much larger market. The problem was, we knew other people were seeing the same thing. We knew we had to hit the market sooner than later, and we decided we needed to launch at the Q3/Q4 changeover. Of course, this was late in Q2, so we really only had a single quarter to get this all done. It was decided that we would work Saturdays. Every other Saturday would actually become a mandatory work day.

To compensate the engineers, the company provided onsite day care for those with families, and the management staff (all the way up to CEO) would be on hand to take people's cars to be washed, or get their oil changed. Laundry services were provided. All attempts were made to handle some of the mundane things that engineers would normally do on weekends, and most importantly, they were handled by the management.

Nobody was really that thrilled about losing their Saturdays, particularly over the summer. Strangely enough, the team actually got stronger as a result. The executives did a number of things right.

For one, they treated the engineers like true members of the company. The plan to work the extra days was presented with complete rationalization. We were not simply told, "Oh, by the way, you need to work Saturdays this summer", but were rather pitched the plan. This communication was key in getting buy-in.

Of course, pains were also taken to encourage the effort. Additional stock options were planned, and the team would receive a number of options based on the delivery schedule; if we hit our self-imposed deadline, we'd get a full share. If we were late, our take would be less and less, down to a minimum (so that even if we failed miserably, the extra time spent would still be worth something).

When you ask people to give up additional days, you can't always just buy them off. Even if they're willing to work for the extra money, morale can be crushed if it seems like people are being given extra work out of balance. Often, this will make people feel like they're suffering for someone else's mistakes. Indeed, this occurred quite often at Company C, where sales people would ink crazy deals with insane deadlines, and then hand the projects off to engineers, who then felt beholden to work crazy hours, and weekends, all because someone else in the company was too stupid to be sane -- and who, of course, had no reason to put in extra hours, since their involvement in the project was over once the deal was signed.

Hotelecom executives didn't make this mistake. All of the senior management team was likewise required to work the extra days. They didn't have much they could do, obviously, but were put to work in other ways -- They were responsible for taking engineers' cars out to be washed, to get the oil changed, or to deliver and pick up laundry. The executives sacrificed their Saturdays just like the engineers were asked to, and they helped do the things that the team would likely have been doing on those Saturdays anyway.

This was huge. Going to work on those Saturdays no longer felt like a punishment, it felt like the right thing to do. You wanted to go to work those days, because you knew the entire team was pulling together to accomplish something huge. You felt like your extra effort was appreciated, every day.

The project was completed a few weeks late, but we got our full share of options. The reason the project was late was actually due to some complications in licensing some third-party software, which was of no fault to the engineers. We launched the product with much fanfare, and we were all very happy. The engineering team felt like it had really accomplished something big, and nobody really took issue with the extra days we spent working. In the end, the entire project was a huge morale boost.

Hotelecom's executives weren't perfect, though. Flush with the success we had that summer and early fall, we were a bit dismayed to hear about another plan to work Saturdays the next summer. Why was this second push such a morale killer when the first push had been so successful? Positioning.

The second time around, there was no rallying pitch. The reason for the extra time, for the hurry, was never adequately explained. The benefits returned, with executives taking care of our cars, and the like, but this second time around, it really felt like we were simply being abused by management. Lesson learned? You can ask your team to really pull together in a crunch, but you really can't make it a habit. If there is a reason for the urgency, it needs to be conveyed -- and if the situation isn't actually urgent in the first place, don't try to convince your team it is, just so you can speed up your development. It's like shouting "wolf!"