keeping your webmutant happy
At the risk of coming off sounding like a complete prima donna and making certain no one ever wants to hire me again -- there have been some aspects of my work environment at various web development jobs that have been, shall we say, less than perfect.
I'm not horribly picky -- I don't insist that every company I work for has to be polished and professional in every way. But there are a few things that I consider the bare essentials; a few practices that I'd like to see web development companies start adopting as basic needs.
Realizing that there are probably a lot of other webmutants out there who feel the same way, I've compiled this list.
Have somewhere for me to work the day I start.
And have something for me to do. Being told on the day I show up that actually, you're not quite ready for me yet, and you haven't got a computer or a desk for me, does nothing but tell me you don't think my time is valuable and wastes your money. You might think I'd like to get paid top dollar for doing absolutely nothing, but actually, it makes me feel frustrated and useless -- I want to be doing something, and frankly, anyone who would feel otherwise is not an employee you want to have.
It's not good enough to have me sharing someone else's computer until you can set me up with one of my own. That just cuts into their productivity and mine, as well as getting our working relationship off to an antagonistic start as we both scramble to use the same limited resource.
I don't understand why there is such a problem with this; it's not like I drop in and start working somewhere by complete surprise. You know the date I start on; we've both agreed to it; I'm ready to work, why aren't you ready for me? Trust me, you wouldn't be happy if I told you, "Oh, I'm not ready to come in after all -- maybe by Wednesday. Or Friday."
And while you're setting me up with somewhere to work:
Give me real furniture.
I'm talking about a chair and a desk. A real chair, and a real desk. If you want me in that chair and at that desk for forty hours or more every week, it had better not give me back problems, repetitive stress injuries, or any of the myriad other health problems associated with poor ergonomics. I've had to make do with chairs that were literally broken; I've had to use a computer that was tucked in the corner of a room on a counter, with the monitor propped up on a phone book.
I'm not saying that you have to make sure I have the very best of everything; I don't need a $600 chair, just make sure that what I have isn't something that should have been thrown out a long time ago.
I have to give proper credit here to one of my former employers, Talking Dog Media. My webdev team was actually sent out on a shopping trip to an office supply store, told to find chairs we liked and come back with a short list of model numbers and prices so that new chairs could be ordered -- and we had our new chairs delivered very shortly, and I was pleased to see that they'd even selected one of the more expensive models from our list of favorites. Now that is how to let your employees know you care about their needs.
Stop living like refugees.
This is a big one. As long as you're getting me some real furniture, buy some for yourselves, too. I've worked in "cubicles" made of unpainted slabs of dry wall inexpertly nailed together; I've made my way past stacks of cardboard boxes full of old documents just to get down the hall; I've had to go scavenging around to other empty cubicles to find chairs, monitor stands, wastebaskets, and other office supplies; and come to think of it, I've never worked anywhere that didn't have a few disorganized piles of computer parts somewhere, gradually being picked apart like carrion.
Not only is it depressing to work in an environment that looks like it was assembled by geeks living away from home for the first time, and looks like it could all be shovelled into the back of a truck and moved somewhere in the dead of night, but it can't be good for business, either. Don't just think of your employees -- think of your investors, or your clients. Even if you think your office space looks "good enough for now," surely when you have V.I.P.s drop by, you don't want them thinking, "Good Lord, what a dump"?
Don't be cheap.
It doesn't cost much to provide the little things. I was horrified to be told at one job, after I'd been there for a month or two, "It's your turn to buy the coffee this week." I hadn't realized that the coffee I'd been drinking from the break room was paid for out-of-pocket by my co-workers. So after being sent out on company time and picking up a can of coffee with my own money, I brewed myself a cup, and sat down with it at my computer and started mailing out resumes.
Come on. We're talking about coffee. It costs you a few lousy bucks a week in return for the comfort and convenience of your workers. If things are so tight that you really, literally can't afford it -- re-examine your business model.
Don't assume I can do everything.
This comes as a surprise to a lot of people, but just because I'm a web developer, it doesn't mean I'm an alpha geek. I can't assemble my own computer from a pile of parts; I can't administer a LAN, or a Windows NT server. I have every respect for those who can, but I can't number myself among them.
If there are certain technical skills that you need me to have, let's discuss them in the interview process instead of after I'm hired -- I'll be happy to tell you what I can and can't do.
I often wonder why you don't see this happening in other professions: a race car driver isn't expected to leap out into the pit and fix his own car, he has a pit crew to support him. If you're going to have a network of computers, then you need a network administrator to maintain them. I have a website to worry about.
Let me use the tools I want to use.
Within reason, of course. If you have some piece of project planning software, for example, that you want everyone to be using, then sure, I'll learn it. But when it comes down to tools like text editors and e-mail clients, please assume that I have my own way of doing things and my own reasons for doing them that way.
After a fruitless argument with one "helpful" sysadmin at a company I used to work at -- where I was trying to tell him I was perfectly happy reading my e-mail with Pine right on the Linux server, and he was trying to tell me, "Oh, you'll love Outlook Express once you get used to it!" -- he set up Outlook Express for me, with me standing there asking him not to. Of course, OE then went and promptly deleted all of my old mail off the server and stored it on my local machine, where I could no longer use my familiar Linux tools to sort and search through it all. I never did learn OE, actually, because I was too busy working to devote the time to it. So I ended up essentially abandoning all the mail I'd saved.
I know what tools I need to be productive. Let me use them.
Don't hide me from the clients.
Too many times, sales and marketing types or upper management have been the only ones who have had direct access to clients I've been building websites for. Too often, these go-betweens don't have enough technical knowledge to keep from promising things we can't deliver. At the very least, the practice of "I ask you a question, you ask the client, the client tells you the answer, you tell me" slows the development process down to a numbing crawl. Come on, let me talk to them. It's okay, I own a suit and everything.
Realize that I have a life.
I don't mind working long hours. In fact, I don't even mind working ridiculously long hours, at times. You want me to come in on the weekend? No problem. (Of course, I expect this kind of flexibility in return, too; if I need a Friday off every once in a while, I expect to be able to get it without having to beg.)
The key here, though, is to give me a little notice. "We need this done by tomorrow, so I need you to stay late tonight," is not enough notice. I may well have plans that you're interrupting that might be important to me.
If it's honestly an emergency, well, sure, I'll stay. But a lot of "emergencies" are the result of poor planning.
At the very least, please act as though it doesn't surprise you that I might have something to do outside of work, and act as though you realize that you might be inconveniencing me, and that you might even be sorry about it.
