Social responsibility
Today I held a presentation at Q42, about Q42. The listeners were four entrepreneurs from developing countries (kosovo, pastina) who are in the process of building or running a technical enterprise. The BiD Network helps these people by getting them in contact with companies that can aid them in their development process.
When they asked me, I couldn't say no to an oppertunity to tell people how awesome Q42 is. And if I could help these entrepreneurs by doing so, all the more reason.
So I told them about our developer-centric working environment, with project- and company management as facilitators to the all-mighty developers. About our 48 employees of which 45 are developers. Each one motivated by the cool projects they do, the cutting-edge technology they're using, weekly passion-time, yearly w00tcamp, company outings, and so on.
The entrepreneurs were quite amazed when they learned that our founder Kars at some point hired a CEO so he could spend more time developing again. The people I told the story to were at this point founders of small companies, but they hadn't foreseen this possible future for themselves yet ;-)
For me personally it was a good exercise in explaining outsiders what Q42 is and what it stands for. The devil is in the details, and it's quite a challenge to put your finger on the sweet spot. And of course, a little CSR (that's what google translate makes of it...) never hurts!