Workplace: Work and Play Hard

Managing a growing company’s culture is a tightrope at best.  You struggle with hiring more, asking people to suck it up, pitching in to help people go home earlier, or alternatively, slowing things down.

This past week we tried out some new firewalling equipment and fired it up in the office. One of the things it produced was a pretty graph that shows what our staff is up to at all times throughout the day. Seeing a good amount of usage, most companies would use a tool like this to filter out or block Youtube or Pandora to save bandwidth, but at Dyn we have a different approach in mind.

To help answer the earlier questions, I thought about looking at the relative levels of stress and activity compared to the general Youtube consumption. If we looked a bit later and the amount was lower, that says that people might be out of balance between trying to get things done and being able to mentally reset. If that happens for too long, maybe the company should lay back a bit or encourage people to take some paid time off or something. Maybe something slips a few days but the long term productivity stays high.

We’re also running out of space in the office, so the ability to add new hires is becoming more difficult. In the short term, my office is going to get turned into another conference room for a few of us who are now “displaced.”  Our ping pong table will take the conference table’s place with some chairs around it — after all it’s all about flexibility!

This type of treat of others who you want to be treated is what makes us a different place to work. Perhaps it’s why we’ve been recognized as a Best Company to Work for in NH so many times. BTW, we may be running out of space, but we’re still hiring…

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