I recently read Richard Sheridan’s book “Joy, Inc.” (93 UAH in electronic form).
In the book, Richard Sheridan talks about the history and day-to-day life of his company, Menlo Innovations", where he works as director and founder.
Hands up, who has their dream job? Yeah, a forest of hands. Well then, read how Sheridan did it.
His company does custom software development. One striking feature: they practice pair programming. And not the way you do it once a year, but every day. That is, this company has exactly half as many computers as employees. What’s more, the pairs change every week. This way, after a month, every person on the project knows every part of the system.
How does this affect employee happiness? Very simply: at the very least, you can go on vacation at any moment; you will never be the one person who knows a key part of the system and without whom it’s impossible to do a release. Secondly, with pair programming, the quality of implementation gets much better. In the end, everyone is happy.
Overall, it was interesting to read about this and a lot more. For company directors and founders — strictly required reading.