Cultural differences
Coming from a global corporation I know what company culture should look like: it’s the three to five buzz words that are pushed in every internal memo and presentation “together, responsible, innovative”, or “strong, respectful, results oriented” … sound familiar? These kinds of words are created by marketing, are pushed in quarterly mails from management, are visible on the intranet and are painted on the wall of the break room. One thing is clear: you know what to answer when the yearly employee survey comes around. But do people really adapt to it, do they really live by it?
Everyone who works at a big company has their own story of those X-mas parties. They seem to all be the same, speeches from management don’t really change from the previous year: it’s all about business figures, the importance of every department (and dare not to miss one in that speech), and the obvious “it’s the people that count”. Finish your dinner, have a beer at the bar, and be in office the next day.
Flashback to my start at mySugr: Although I started in February I was already invited to the X-mas party. I didn’t expect this, but it was a great way to get to know the people you will work with in the future. I went there with a sense of excitement and found myself in the middle of a roaring party.
People where celebrating together and exchanging individual gifts that were handpicked by their coworkers. The band that played was special too; Not only are they called “MegaDev”, all of them are monster tamers. The ones that didn’t play in the band made sure to cheer and dance like there was no tomorrow.
Socializing with colleagues at mySugr isn’t the usual forced and organized fun that most work places face. Parties are actually fun, people actually want to be there. At one point I looked at my watch and saw that it has turned 4 in the morning. It was then that I realized that I didn’t attend a company’s X-mas party but found myself in the middle of a group of friends having a good time.
At mySugr, the company’s culture is not something that has to be written down in a presentation, it’s the green essence that runs in the veins of every monster tamer. You can find it in every discussion about the next release, it’s visible during every game at the foosball table, it’s tangible every evening when you leave the office and there are still people left working, chatting or drafting new ideas. People like myself that started recently get sucked into this culture immediately. There is no chance to keep your distance and there is no need for it either.
To see more of what our mySugr monster tamers have to say about our culture have a look here. If you love technical topics, our engineers also share cool stuff from time to time.
