Dear future colleague: let me give you an overview of the way we work in HeroCoders

Hello. My name is Farid. It has been just over a year since I joined HeroCoders. I had a general feeling that this might be a different company than the ones I worked with before, but I had no idea how different. I’ll try to explain those differences to give you an overall view of the work atmosphere at HeroCoders. Note that I am talking about my personal experience.? HeroCoders may not be the best place for everyone. No single company fits everyone. Hopefully this depiction of the work environment will help you decide if it is the right place for you.

Autonomy: Being Treated as an Adult

I joined HeroCoders as a Software Developer in the Issue Checklist team. The first surprise for me was that no one assigned me any tasks. There were some recommendations, and we had some wiki pages about the actions we should take to prepare ourselves, but no one directly assigned me to anything.

Even in our weekly planning meeting on my first Monday, no tasks were explicitly assigned. After the meeting, I realized I should pick one of the issues from our Jira board and start working on it. I did, and we continue working in this manner. Of course, things can go wrong, and this system may not work when we get larger, but it is working for us for now. People choose their tasks themselves, and the company trusts them.

Note: I should emphasize that I’m not saying this is necessarily the best model, and there is no guarantee that our system will remain the same in the future.

Minimal Bureaucracy

Being treated like a trusted adult also extends to handling of internal processes. For example, for managing time off, we have a publicly available Confluence page. Each team member has a row containing the total number of paid days off allowed in a year. When you want time off you note the days in the Dates column, and update the number of remaining days available. Requesting – it’s more like notifying – time off is a simple matter of updating the page. You can plan for the future or take half-days off. Yes, things could go wrong, but they don’t! The company trusts people, and there is no need for accepting/rejecting days off.

Few Meetings, More Writing

This brings me to another important point about working for HeroCoders. We are a remote company with people living in different time zones. Therefore, most of our interactions are asynchronous, and people are free to work when they want as long as their schedules have a 4-hour overlap with UTC+1.

As a result, writing plays a crucial role in how we collaborate. When we want to communicate our ideas with other people, or make a decision, we usually write a blog post or a wiki page and share it with the team. Of course, we may hold a face-to-face meeting for further discussions, but we try to avoid unnecessary meetings as much as possible. This system makes us thoroughly think through our ideas, which is a great advantage. Consequently, being able to articulate your ideas in writing is a crucial skill that is required in HeroCoders.

I hope this has given you a taste of the work environment at HeroCoders. We are looking for a Head of Marketing, and we'll be opening another position in the upcoming weeks, so if this is what you’re looking for, keep an eye on us.