Why I love working at Q42
The yearly, super awesome, Q42 christmas party was last friday. It’s my second since I’m working at Q42 for 2 years now. I really enjoy my time at Q42, mainly because of three things:
Autonomy
Mastery
Purpose & Party
Autonomy
The projects we do, the techniques we use and the approach we take on projects are open for discussion by everybody. Reasonable arguments are always considered, no matter if they’re made by an intern or managing partner. There is no one dictating how you should do your work and often even the features requested by the client are up for discussion.
Deciding with your team, including the client, on what technique your going to use, how you’re going to approach the project and what the most important goals are really makes everybody owner of the proces. This autonomy also results in people that are really committed to solving problems and making a great project.
Mastery
All that autonomy is great, but you need the right people in the right place to be able to let them choose how to work. I’m still wondering how so many smart people can end up in one place. All people working at Q42 are really really great at something. This mastery makes it easy to trust someone.
Constant learning is as important as having smart people around. Not only do we have colleagues that are very eager to learn new stuff, there is actually time built into the planning of every employee to do whatever you think you should do for half a day every other week. People learn new programming languages, crack hard problems and create libraries in that time.
It’s really a pleasure to work with great people that are working hard to get even better!
Purpose & Party
Besides a lot of control over your own work, great people to work with and room to improve yourself there is something else; Purpose. It’s nice to work on things that you really believe in.
We try to do projects that matter, projects about better learning experiences for kids or blind people going to the cinema are really seen as valuable and important. The company would rather do an extra project like this, than go for more profit. Working on project like that or even seeing colleagues work on them really gives you a motivational boost.
Besides meaningful projects it’s also great to see how nice it is to be together outside of work. The amazing yearly retreat, the christmas party and the spontaneous activities organized by the employees themselves like tasting special beers or playing offline games. Those things make Q42 so much more then just a place to work.
