Friday one of Volano’s former developers dropped in to say ‘hi’ and play a couple of games of darts with the team. Doug Dawson was one of the first class of developers who helped Volano in its early days and it was great to have him back. Friday culminated a long week and our team worked hard. Inevitably cocktails began for some an hour or two before the usual 4-4:30 time frame. One cannot overstate the cathartic necessity of that Friday happy hour when you imbibe with your peers, play good music, tell jokes and play a unifying game of darts. Software developers seems to get unfairly categorized into a personality type, but it seems that the only thing our people have truly in common is a passion for their work and a good sense of humor. Doug blended in as if he had been gone for 3 days, not 3 years.
Benefits of Working for a Small Shop
Working in small, growing businesses can be exciting and challenging. In the larger organizations where I’ve worked, people naturally gravitated toward segmentation and silos, a problem that can dilute your company culture and also get in the way of workflow and efficiency. Volano Solutions has 14 (soon to be 15) employees and we all work in a collaborative space. Like many small businesses, we wear a lot of hats and look for people who are resourceful, creative and easy going. We share knowledge and subject matter expertise to help on client projects and advocate access and communication. By necessity many larger businesses need to be process-oriented to scale growth but this often creates an unavoidable level of bureaucracy that can intimidate and frustrate ideas and breed in-house politics. That dynamic simply does not exist here. Having Doug come back to visit us was validating. We are proud of our humble roots and excited about the future here as we continue to delight clients, land custom software development work and add clients to our mobile app product line Steelwool and Action Card.
