How a Slack thread about cakes represents Motius’ culture
Warning: this blogpost is unlike other Motius culture blogposts. Not because it’s about cake. But because it’s going to show Motius in its purest form — techies highly motivated to have an impact, turning their knowledge into action and shaping the future of this company. Another warning: don’t take this blogpost too seriously.
The setting
Another Monday at the Motius office. Just like on any other day, we’re busy developing the products of the future. In our workshop, one of our project teams is working with a fog machine. Sounds fun, right? Yeah, they think so too. Until the fog machine activates the fire alarm.
The big mistake
Marcel realizes the seriousness of the situation, drops everything and runs to Michael, one of our co-founders. Michael calms him down, makes sure that the firefighters don’t actually come to our office and the fuss settles. Until Marcel returns back to the workshop. Because that’s when he sees this:
Poor Marcel got caked. When he ran to Michael to settle the crisis, he didn’t think about locking his computer. His team members quickly realized the potential of the situation and caked him on our Slack team channel — they sent a simple cake-related message which means that he has to bring cake to the office.
Let the discussion begin
Michael, realizing what happened, only comments with:
“Frech” is the German word for cheeky. Which is true — caking a colleague in a “serious” situation like this is cheeky. And a great idea. However, Marcel doesn’t want to accept it:
He hopes that there’s a rule that makes this caking invalid. But guess whose reaction the small “I don’t care”-emoji is. It’s our caking referee Sagar. So he puts Marcel into the internal cake list and the issue seems solved. Until Philipp, another co-founder, enters the discussion to defend Marcel:
Of course, Marcel loves this almost unbeatable argument since ISO27001 is an international standard on how to manage information security. And as André adds another layer of complexity to caking, odds seem to be in Marcel’s favor:
Philipp, in turn, likes André’s argument. More than that, he found a slide deck on ISO27001 in the meantime that really seems to deliver the knockout arguments:
Indeed, these arguments have the desired effect. Caking referee Sagar draws back:
End of the story? No, not quite. First, Sagar clarifies the only acceptable procedure to follow in case of fire:
And then, suddenly Gregor enters the discussion. Looking at the current cake list, it gets clear why:
Obviously, he sees his opportunity to get rid of his four cake list entries (come on, Gregor!):
While four of us simply doubt it, André rejects this, building on his argument from before:
And that’s the end of the story — no fire, no cake, no chaos. Only Gregor left with four cakes to bring to the office. Can’t wait!
Why we tell you about this
As the headline says, we think that this simple Slack thread represents our culture at Motius and we already mentioned some points in the introduction. But apart from all the sarcasm, here’s why that’s true:
- Motees want to have an impact that usually doesn’t concern caking. Instead, Motees work closely with our customers to deliver the biggest impact possible.
- Motees are tech experts that don’t just know everything about cyber security but above all use their expertise to develop innovative products and prototypes that shape the future of tech.
- Motees shape the future of our company not only by setting rules for caking but mainly through Motius Discovery, our decentralized organizational structure and flat hierarchies.
Sounds good to you? Then we’d love to have you on our team. And don’t forget to bring cake on your first day.
