Finding your tribe at work

There is a proverb I recall:
The main thing in life is to find your people and calm down.
My tribe is Atola team. Absolutely. It’s fair to mention; it is just a half of our wonderful squad in the photo above. We have 7 more awesome team-mates. All together we trust, sincerely try to understand each other, enjoy to work in mini-groups, appreciate helping one another and so on and so forth.
I have been working in Atola team for almost 9 years. So you understand there is a lot of teamwork practice behind, and I would like to share our experience.
How to find your tribe at work
It can sound surprisingly simple but I see the only way how one can possibly do it:
Define your key life values and search for similar people.
Not a big deal at first sight, isn’t it? However, it requires quite much work on yourself. Let’s look at it this way. For instance, my life values are:
- sincerity
- reliability
- kindness
- harmony
Remembering those as primary ones is magically helpful for me to attract people whom I can easily trust and enjoy working together.
I had been working in 4 different teams before joining Atola. I had a different map of reality valuing salary, programming language, frameworks more than people. As a result, all previous teams were a far cry from how Atola team joyfully lives at work.
Keep your values in mind as the most important factors during interviews: whether you are interviewer or interviewee. There is no place for trade-offs considering high salary, perfect schedule or multiple bonuses. A team is what matters the most. All people have convictions, expectations, beliefs, values. Being at the same or close wavelength with others opens a new horizon for development and having a happy time at work.
In case of Atola, I can state that following our common and personal values paid off in many ways:
- synergy when working together
- our own methodology based on our behaviors and needs
- intensive, regular salary growth
- a lot of fun working together
It all brought us to the situation when Atola hiring process distributes candidate assessment as follows:
- 70% — soft skills (emotional intelligence, character traits, leadership, etc)
- 30% — hard skills (technical proficiency, foreign language knowledge, etc)
Lucky you!
They say once in a while: “Oh, you are so lucky to be in such a fantastic team!” Well, don’t believe that. It has nothing to do with luck. To be perfectly honest, I don’t believe in luck or lack of luck whatsoever. My idea is that it is all about your work and attention focus. If you are laser-focused to get into your dream team, you will do it sooner or later. Transforming “I want to have” minds into “I want to be” thinking style help much in this sense.
Luck is what happens when preparation meets opportunity
© Seneca, Roman philosopher
There is a plenty of opportunities around if you tend to be open to the world. Work good enough to prepare for them. .
Is my work team a family or not?
One of the significant questions for everybody is how to distinguish work from family life. If you truly and deeply love your work, isn’t it a family? Or even better than family?
Surely, all of us have to answer ourselves. I would say Atola is my family. Not ultimately though. It’s my work family to be precise. My team and our work do not replace my family/personal life. They compliment giving fuel to keep it burning and helping achieve almost ideal work-life balance. I feel I am a better husband, friend and in harmony with myself.

Wrapping up, I’d like to remind we spend lots of time at work on a daily basis. Normally 40-hour work weeks, correct? If so, don’t we deserve to be happy? I profoundly convinced that happiness at work should become a standard and not an exception. Happy people do more and achieve more! That’s why finding your tribe may be an eye-opener incredibly improving your life.
If my thoughts resonate with you and you still don’t really feel good about your team, then maybe it’s time for changes. Interact with the community in a more active manner and begin searching for your new tribe. A true one!
Sincerely,
Vitaliy Mokosiy
