Recently our culture was described as “for coders – by coders”.
I’ve never thought of it like that before, but it is spot on. Makes sense too, considering my “corporate up bringing”.
My first “real job” happened when I was promoted to Junior Programmer at National Research Corporation in Lincoln, NE. They had the typical company calendar at NRC that was printed and distributed every month. But the most iportant task I remember being on the calendar was which department was responsible to go on the beer run for Beer:30 on Fridays.
At the time, this was a 15 year old company with 100+ associates yet they had never missed a Beer:30 in the history of the company.
I accredit much of my thought on how a business should be ran (flat structure, no HR department, reward new ideas and hard work) to National Research Corporation and Mike Hays.
My second job was when I couldn’t take the commute to Lincoln any more and found another market research company in Omaha, Customer Service Profiles. When I started, of the 20 employees, the only other guy was the co-owner and salesman, Sandy Friedman. Because of this, Sandy and I bonded and I really appreciated the approachability of a company owner. CSP was very good at putting on company events, whether that was a picnic outside, potlucks, etc. it helped bring the employees together.
Then I went into consulting – staff augmentation actually. Staff aug can be pleasant or horrible or somewhere in between. You can be set up at a folding table with rough edges to rest your for arms on while you sit on a metal folding chair and work on archaic technology. Luckily, I was placed at IntegriGuard for 3 years and they treated me like an employee. I even received “employee of the month” while I was there. Working with the folks at IntegriGuard, made me understand the difference between being treated like a vendor and working together as a partner.
Lastly, before starting Volano, I had a quick stint at MSI. MSI made me understand the importance of polish. At MSI, people dressed nice. It was a sales-driven organization. It had good coffee always available. They knew the importance of presentation.
With each of these companies, there were also things I learned not to do, but I’ll save those for another post.
That’s how the Volano culture came to be – at least a large part of how.
We work hard and we very much like to have our fun. There’s no HR department at Volano. We play darts and drink on Friday afternoons. We play our jukebox. We reward people for thinking of better ways of doing things. We eat lunch, go to movies and go to the bar together. Our clients are our partners – that’s not just something we say. We work to the best of our ability for each and every client-partner we have. We can effectively communicate with the client and present ourselves in a professional manner from the C-level executives to the entry level staff.
That is Volano.
January 19, 2021
Software development is a team-based endeavor because of the complexity involved in launching a new system. Gone are the days when one developer can be point on the whole back-office software stack. It now takes multiple specialized roles to (appropriately) fulfill the software delivery lifecycle. A typical software project requires: Leadership Product management Project management […]
January 13, 2021
One definition of rot is the process of deterioration. Something that decays over time. By this standard – software rots like food in the Nebraska heat. It’s true. If your software isn’t regularly updated, it deteriorates and breaks down. Consider this – software is written to work at a moment in time…but time marches on. […]
January 4, 2021
OMAHA, NE, January 4, 2021 – In late 2020, Volano Solutions announced it has changed its name to Volano Software and launched a new website: www.volanosoftware.com. The name change was made to more accurately reflect what the company does, and the website was designed to be more informative and user-friendly to clients and prospective clients […]
June 2, 2020
According to LinkedIn technology (software) has a higher overall turnover rate than retail. With that, it isn’t a matter of if, but a matter of when. Volano has engineered a culture of “by developers, for developers” and this helps our retention. In fact, most of the folks that work at Volano have been here +5 […]
June 2, 2020
It is hard enough to build a successful business, and few want to invest time and resources into worrying about an Intellectual Property Assignment. But alas, you must do your homework. Fortunately, we make it easy for Volano customers. When asked – “Who owns the software and IP for my project?” – it is an […]
May 28, 2020
Many of us remember the grade school game Telephone. It was funny to see how a simple message would get garbled as it was passed along from person to person. But it’s not as funny when that message is a critical business requirement that will be turned into software that will power your business. Yet, […]