What Makes Ministry of Programming aka MOP a Great Place to Work!
John F. Kennedy said once “Efforts and courage are not enough without purpose and direction”
1. Sense of purpose
At MOP people are highly motivated, and always reminded with the purpose of building those startups. In general we thrive to have a measured impact on the lives of our end users, clients, and even the team of developers, through solving simple and complex problems in their daily life.
Kennedy’s quote perfectly fits the IT Industry, as a matter of fact according to a [2016 LinkedIn survey] 58% of companies with a clearly articulated and understood purpose experienced growth of +10%, and more strikingly, 42% of non-purpose led companies that showed drop in revenue.
Of course having a purpose is preceeded by understanding the vision of your company, and sharing the vision clearly is as important as having one. Leaders are often agitated with so many competing priorities that it’s hard to consider others’ concerns.
When it comes to managing a company, everyone is betting on “you” as the leader. It’s viral to recognize that everyone doesn’t always understand or come to the same conclusion that you do when defining why you’re building what you’re building.
At MOP we don’t share the vision of the Company Only, but also the vision of each product launching from our pad.
So what gave us the sense of purpose you ask?
It is true that we could see El Dorado in the eyes of the founder brothers (Faris and Resad ) , but the glitter of gold is not the only motivation of our expedition.
At MOP, right from the start, the founder brothers made sure that we partner with the startups we are building, we felt part of each product, products that brought solutions to people, health, finance, and some with very humane missions, a good example is War on Cancer, a platform that unites cancer patients, gives them a space to tell their stories, and gathers donations to support patients, and helps with the medical fees.
2. Lead by example
Every time Our Company announces a decision, our Management Starts by themselves, an example is in a remote work situation, we are required to increase our communication with the team, and the client, especially in terms of time management, the management adopt the decision once they take one.
3. A culture of Respect and trust
A healthy work culture is built on a foundation of trust and respect. If people don’t trust each others, if there is a sense of discrimination, people will not feel satisfied on the job. To help build trust at MOP, we are always asked to evaluate our managers, and speak up directly or anonymously about anything we suggest, or wish to change.
I recall when we were moving to a new office our suggestions were taken so seriously. At MOP we are multi cultural, we come from the Middle East, the Balkans , Sweden , Germany, and The USA, we believe our growing Family will have more nationalities onboard.
4. Team development
It’s not just a course on Udemy, or Pluralsight that helps an employee advance, but in addition to that, the possibility of innovation, the performance recognition, and even the possibility to be a shareholder in a startup we are building, all different factors motivate us to excel in what we are doing, besides, the way we defined our goal from the start, to be an elite power in the IT Industry, these types of expectations pushed us to learn effectively , and perform the best we can.
5. Employee Recognition
Employees are evaluated every 6 months, they all set short-time and long-time goals, We were required to know what we want, and to plan a trajectory to our careers. The highly performing employees, always get recognized, but still everyone benefits from the generous perks of the company.
6. Investing in the workspace
The comfort of the team was a priority right from the start, when we were working in a shared space. We started our journey in about 35 m2, but even then everything felt regular, we had the up to date hardware, and software, very competing paychecks, and a great remote work method, our ways worked well, so many neighboring IT companies started to adopt the Remote work concept.
Investment is not only about money, if you invest in trust, the payback is going to be loyalty.
To sum it up, at MOP we build products with care; care about the team, the end user, and the client.
To those interested in joining us I quote ― Sheryl Sandberg
“If you’re offered a seat on a rocket ship, don’t ask what seat! Just get on.”
