Course Hero’s Post

Curious about KnowledgeOwl's approach to meaningful work and employee joy? Marybeth Alexander outlines the benefits of our 25-hour work week on the People-First Jobs blog. ✨ We are so honored to share our story with People-First Jobs. 🎉 It can be daunting enough searching for jobs that align with our personal values. P-F J makes a great impact by highlighting companies and roles that value autonomy, flexibility, transparency, and balance - all key building blocks to a healthy culture! Give them a follow, and let us know what you think of the latest post. 🥰

Wrapping up the kind of working week that bleeds into the weekend. Customer inbounds, job applications and feature requests still rolling in at midnight last night, it’s hard to even keep track. We’ve been working on Plain for 3 years. Matt and I took many unconventional decisions (and some really bad ones, too). We waited to hire for a long time; we built all of Plain API-first from day 1 because we believed that support was becoming infrastructure; we remained a small, focused team all this time; it took us a year to get the product in the hands of our first customer; and we picked our first customers carefully because we believed the opinions of our customers would define our product more than we ever could. Each of these decisions was the “slower” path and counter to conventional wisdom - but the path we believed would compound to something an order of magnitude better in time. Being a founder means owning and backing every decision you make in the belief that it is right, while knowing full well that history will ultimately be the judge and may determine them foolish. We are still in “foolish” territory - we’ve far from made it - but weeks like this tell me that some of the things we’ve done seem increasingly less foolish now. (Ok, some of those things definitely were.) I’m so excited for what’s ahead. ❤️ P.S. We’re looking for a few people to join our team - design, marketing, engineering. In every role, you’ll be exposed to every aspect of our company and own entire problems end to end. Consider getting in touch, it’s a great time to join! https://plain.com/jobs

Onboarding new hires isn’t rocket science. A positive intent is what it takes — To pull it off. We’ve all been at a point when we felt Jittery about our 1st day at work But were equally excited. Imagine all that excitement & enthusiasm dying Because you felt unwelcomed, isolated, and overstressed at the new office. This could ruin your performance, Or worse, make you run to the exit, searching again for a new job. Here are 3 things you can do to make newbies feel welcome and supported: 1) Have a mentor or buddy system. Assign someone to spend time with them to: - Show how things work, - Offer guidance when needed. - Go for lunch together (helps the connect with the rest of the team) This can be done by 1 person or rotated amongst volunteer staff. 2) Invite them to offer their input during meetings. Side note: Don't just listen. Understand what they have to say. 3) Hand them a personal collage of staff they'll be working with. You can include: - Pics of employees - Their personal details such as family, pets, hobbies, or favorite sayings. Some companies even build public pages to facilitate that. Remember: When someone steps into a new world, The experience can be pretty daunting. Your empathy and support will make them feel home and start delivering in zero time. 🔔 Follow Yiorgos Tzirtzilakis, I help you go from ‘surviving’ to ‘thriving’ at work. #CompanyCulture #MentorshipMatters #LeadershipDevelopment #TalentManagement

"Working from home is here to stay. I can prove it with data" As a leader of a globally distributed organization, this has always been a thing that I've balanced. And frankly, over the past few years, we've finally gotten better at it. Because we've embraced it intentionally, rather than as a 'regrettable reality'. And intentionality seems to be the key. More than 50% of hires in my team since 2021 are female, and other historically underrepresented demographics in IT are being hired more than ever. And we continue to grow and hire. Engagement is at an all time high, measured on the regular. Velocity and quality of releases are better than they've ever been. People are not spending 90 minutes in their cars commuting to and from an office. Turnover is consistently at the lowest rate it's ever been. (I acknowledge there was an industry wide spike in 2022, but it's come back down to historically low rates) Our six summer internship positions (all purposely remote) had nearly 5,000 applicants. What metrics am I missing that would make me want to choose a different approach? https://lnkd.in/gixQkU_E

Let’s talk about it: THE 4 DAY WORK WEEK! This is not the 4-10s we know…this is different and we are seeing more companies experimenting with this idea! What do you think? (if you don’t feel comfortable leaving your comment below please DM me because I would love to hear all the opinions about this)

Looking for more marketing insights from our Loomonauts? 🚀 From what we really think about Threads to why we decided to switch to a 4-day work week, read through our library of marketing insights here 👉 https://lnkd.in/gfS4ijhz

I would like to preface this post by stating that former members of the Bitwise Industries communities had different experiences from mine. Each one is valid, grounded in their truth and experiences. Looking back at my time at the tech company, there are specific components that I continue to hold onto and some that I'd like to elevate. Why do I want to elevate them? I want to elevate them because they made me a better leader, colleague, and human being. Although Bitwise Industries tried and failed to make their model sustainable and thriving, a simple Google/Generative AI search lists the plethora of benefits in creating human-centered practices, including improved morale, increased creativity and innovation, reduced stress and burnout, increased job satisfaction, improved communication, increased productivity, increased engagement, increased organizational growth, improved customer service, reduced workforce fatigue, increased intent to stay, improved performance, increased efficiency, and committed and engaged employees. What would you include? (*A recent article by Andrea Hsu at NPR highlights the success of the 4-day work week, "Of the 41 American and Canadian companies that began the trial in 2022, none has reported going back to working 40 hours a week.")

Incomplete thoughts: The culture of hustling I moved to Amsterdam about a year ago, and one notable cultural difference I’ve quickly noticed is how the streets are empty early in the morning – nothing is open. The pastry shop opens at 9AM, the cafe opens at 8AM as does the grocery store next door  – though none of the shelves are stocked at that time. People here basically wake up late and don't start their day at 6AM. This is a stark contrast with life in the US where people wake up early, go to the gym at 6AM and where every shop opens early. Something similar is also true for software engineers. The culture of hustling isn't really a thing here – you can work hard, learn and grow a lot if you want but there's less peer pressure to do so. This is one the interesting factor if you're considering moving across the Atlantic ocean -- check out Nicola Amadio's posts if you want to learn more about comp (and cost!) in Europe My 2 cents is that working for a US big tech company in Europe is the sweet spot: you get to work on interesting/challenging problems, get to learn a lot from amazing peers and get to work hard if you want without feeling pressure – you basically have a lot of benefits as in the US but a much better work life balance. Side note that if you're a staff engineer interested in infrastructure and privacy, I'm hiring for my team in Amsterdam :) #softwareengineer #hustle #cultural #difference #bigtech Illustration's prompt: cartoon of a stressed software engineer drinking their cold coffee in a to-go cup while working on their laptop early in the morning -- in Europe people tend to get coffee on their balcony, on a cafe's terasse etc. not in a to-go cup :)

Did your org move to a 4-day work week in recent months/years? Have you run into any operations challenges, like: 🤷♀️ processes that feel too complicated/redundant 🤷♂️ software tools that have fallen out of sync with tasks 🤷♀️ gaps or delays in communication 🤷♂️ missed deadlines 🤷♀️ less time for considering and integrating strategy, customer, etc. into work 🤷♂️ disconnect from the org's past and/or the external environment I'm curious about these and other operational frictions. What has the transition looked like for your org?