An Interesting Month
The trials and tribulations of the first 30 days as a new employee in Bakken & Bæck.
The day before I officially signed the employment contract with the digital product development studio Bakken & Bæck, I received my copy of Dan Lyons’ “Disrupted: My misadventure in the Start-Up Bubble” in the mail. There is a limit to how much I identify with an accomplished 50-year old white male magazine writer, but after more than ten years as a consultant for the likes of Accenture, and working with various flavours of traditional, über-Norwegian brands, I am probably more old-school career-wise than I would like to admit. To make matters worse, Bakken & Bæck is, arguably, as tech-edgy and Silicon Valley-trendy as Scandinavia gets.
Nonetheless, my initial cautious optimism did little to prepare me for the first week on the job, which happened to coincide with the final preparations for Bakken & Bæck’s annual conference, An Interesting Day. As it turned out, it was hasty to conclude already on day 1 (Monday) that individually wrapping used glass bottles in aluminum foil would be the most surreal thing I would do at work all week. By day 6 on the job (Saturday), I was sitting in an abandoned warehouse turned party venue, on a tiny island in the Oslo fjord, stuffing rubber chickens with sand and waterproofing them with duct tape.
Despite repeated reassurances that the week before the conference is an exception to the rule, I began suspecting that the madness leading up to An Interesting Day, is in fact very representative of everyday life in Bakken & Bæck, which in turn begged the question:
Have I joined a kindergarten for grown-ups or is this the millennial dream workplace (fun, profitable AND with a sense of purpose)?
Exception or the norm, my first week as Bakken & Bæck employee no. 32 showcased at least four idiosyncrasies that sparked some reflection on, and provided partial answers to said inevitable question:
1. Things get physical. Between the weekly stretching session, lifting beer crates, packing goodie bags and making personal champagne deliveries, this office job comes with the added bonus of burning calories and building muscle. Granted, when it comes to bonding with new colleagues, nothing beats carrying a helium tank together. I sense how the physical dimension, whether it’s moving yourself or a piñata, adds welcome pragmatism to work that quickly gets abstract (natural language generation, anyone?), but I may still pass on yoga poses in business attire next Monday.
2. There’s method in the madness. Rubber chicken get waterproofed with duct tape and stuffed with just enough sand to make perfect projectiles from a 3-meters high slingshot, flown in by helicopter just-in-time to impress already awe-struck conference guests. Used bottles are used bottles only until then become pixel points in a giant LED-wall for that perfect after-party. Rigging up the conference paraphernalia displayed a miniature of Bakken & Bæck’s product development process i.e. a mix of contagious obsession for detail, plenty of micro problem-solving and most importantly, a shared understanding of how all tiny pieces go into a perfect final product.
3. Grown by nature. In many conversations with the conference guests on An Interesting Day, the two words most frequently used to describe Bakken & Bæck were organic and — unsurprisingly, given the scale of the free event — generous. Bakken & Bæck’s organic growth seems to have been fuelled by a capital of goodwill that flows freely in an extended family of clients, partners, friends and employees. Keeping up this goodwill factor depends almost entirely on choosing the right products to develop, as awe-inspiring products keep spinning the virtuous growth circle where talented employees are motivated, and happy clients are willing to pay.
My current working hypothesis is that the hardest part of Bakken & Bæck’s growth equation is factoring in the opportunity cost of new clients and ventures. Saying ‘yes’ to one opportunity means saying ‘no’ to another, and that balance is particularly fragile at the next stage of growth beyond 30 employees.
4. Chaos is underrated. As the number of employees nearly doubled from the previous year, I found there is an understandable concern for growing pains, and a surprising appetite for adding more structure to daily operations. The surprise element is that there is a process and it works. The good (and the bad) news is that it’s synonymous with Slack. Once you get past the walls of Giphy, and over the feeling that everyone else will always be more emoji-articulate than you, the elusive formula to get things done becomes apparent. People get assigned clear responsibility to solve a problem, trusted with the solution, and encouraged to have constant and open conversations about their progress. All three elements in this fluid structure scale easily, provided that the company continues(!) to hire the right people.
As for missing the comfort of corporate structure and process from my previous work life, luckily that’s one place where ‘you don’t know what you’ve got til it’s gone’ does not apply. More often than not, I would spend the same (or more) time figuring out if there is a process to follow, and then trying to customize (i.e. bypass) it, than on being creative and finding the best means to an end. Corporate bureaucracy is just another type of chaos, and navigating it turns out to be an essential survival skill regardless of company size.
One month into the job, the answer to the big question floating around at the back of my head, much like the inflatable flamingo present at all company events, is tallying in strong favour of the grown-up workplace I had hoped for. I just need to keep working on my emoji game and probably buy a wet-/bee keeping/<insert name of random activity> suit for the upcoming Christmas party, to rule out any misadventures in this startup bubble.
