, we often got the advice to find the right culture fit first and foremost. What we didn’t quite know was how to build a sense of culture in the first place. 6 years in, one of the things I’m proudest of is the culture that we built. Below is a list of tangible ways of going about building culture.If you stay late, that will set the precedent for everyone you hire. If you leave at a reasonable time and make time for other things in life, so will they.
Our office used to be inside a dance studio and we held our daily Scrum meetings inside the studio. One of our interns suggested that we stretch if we want to during Scrum and called it Strum. One of our other teammates started to play the sound of a guitar strumming at the beginning of each meeting. To this day, I can’t stop referring to standup meetings as Strum.When a new hire starts, they don’t initiate taking a lunch break. They wait to see what happens during lunch typically.
One of our developers felt like we went from one product shipment to another without taking a moment to appreciate it. So we started taking a few minutes to drink a glass of sparkling apple cider together every time we shipped