Weekly Recap #16: Booyakasha!

We mingle with politicians, get back to designing and coding and might even have a job to offer! Read on for the whole story!

I am Harry, we are diesdas.digital and you are looking at our 16th weekly recap! Here we go!

The show must go on!

Again we were slammed with work as we’re moving from small, relatively trivial projects to longer, more complex ones. The latter are definitely more challenging and fun, but also harder to do in parallel with a small team. Still, we made super good progress during these last five days, with a lot of situations like the one pictured above: a few of us huddling around a screen, discussing sketches, designs or code.

Often these ad-hoc discussions are productive and fun, but every now and then you just get stuck on a project and don’t know how to continue. Then it looks more like this:

And in these moments you feel the pressure and get stressed because with all the things that need to get done, there is simply no time to waste.

However, sometimes good things take time to ripen and you can’t rush or force progress. In the particular photo above Lorenz and I tried to wrap our heads around a web shop solution and how to integrate a very specific licensing model. In the end we cracked it and left the office happy, but it was fairly tough during the day. And that’s why …

… we’re now seriously considering to open up our team for new members. We got a project offer last week that would secure a steady cashflow for at least 6 months — it’s not the most fancy of all projects, but it’s a solid web-based editorial product that is used by many people every day. We would take over development, but Lorenz and I can’t dedicate the time and focus that is needed. Which means:

• We are looking for a developer comfortable with an API-driven Node + React stack (including server-side rendering). The focus is on JS development, but would ideally also extend into HTML/Sass/responsiveness, working in close collaboration with me and Lorenz.
• We can’t fully employ anyone just yet, but we can guarantee you freelance work for at least 6 months, from 3 days a week up to 5. Your choice.
• We are not taking on the project to make a huge profit, but rather because it gives us the financial security to bring a new person on board who we can learn from. So we can pay you reasonably well.
• We can provide flexibility regarding work times, since the client is not based in Berlin and there aren’t any meetings apart from the usual agile rituals such as review+planning and daily stand-ups (iterations last two weeks).
• We are looking for somebody to bring a new perspective into our company. So if you are different from us (e.g. gender you identify with, language, origin, age, …), that’s a plus.
• You can treat this as a day job or go all in. We’re cool with both. We can’t stand the “YOU GOTTA BE PASSIONATE ABOUT WHAT YOU DO” crap, so we’re totally fine if you say development is what pays your bills and that’s it. On the other hand, if you want to, this can also be your company to shape.

If some of these statements make sense to you (or someone you know), we’d like to talk sooner than later. Shoot us an email, a tweet (DMs are open) or feel free to just call me: +49 (0)30 44 351 491. There is no formal process, we’d probably just have lunch or a coffee together and see where things go from there.

We’ll post a real job offer soon, but I thought putting this in here can’t hurt. So if you’re reading this, you’re probably ahead of the rest. 👍

Now for something entirely different: On Monday Lars and I attended the launch event of the Internet Economy Foundation, which was held at the Allianz Forum next to the Brandenburg Gate. Pretty impressive venue. We built the website, motion graphics for the presentation and were involved in the branding. Fun project and we’re looking forward to continue working together, however us being there was also a bit ironic: Sure, we’re part of the “internet economy” as well, but their focus seems to be very much on startups and venture capital, which is not how we did things when we founded our company. 🙃

Back in the office on Tuesday: We started doing daily stand-ups in the morning (as you can see above: not everyone was too happy at first 😀), defining very clear tasks for the day and at least I felt it worked beautifully to create transparency as well as making sure nothing is ignored or forgotten. We’ll continue doing that next week. 👍

A big part of the week was evaluating how we work together and what we value in this adventure. Therefore on Wednesday morning we met outside the office, had breakfast together and talked about many difficult topics. Such as: Where do we see the company in a few years? How can we improve our workflow, share knowledge among us, which conferences do we want to attend, etc. There was definitely a healthy tension and we got worked up over many details, but we shared opinions regarding the overarching themes. I mean, it would be weird if we didn’t, but still it’s good to check once in a while. 👹

And that’s pretty much it. It’s been a packed week and I feel we planted a lot of seeds for things to grow and develop in the future. Exciting, but also kinda daunting … but I have full trust in my teammates, after this week even more than before, so the best is yet to come!

Oh, and we also have the video recap from our Snapchat story. I still feel weird, sometimes it’s too slow and by the end of the week I got too stressed to record much, but off we go:

Besides Snapchat, you could also follow us on Twitter, subscribe to this Medium publication, like stuff on Facebook or check our Instagram channel. No pressure, just saying. 😇

Have a nice weekend, send any feedback you might have and we hope to see you soon! Take care! 👹 👽 👻 🤖