How Do You Attract World-Class Web Designers?

You build your company entirely around THEM.

Bill Gates famously described the distinction between a service company and other companies in one sentence:

“The entire value of your company walks out the door each night.” — Bill Gates

It therefore follows that people are your greatest asset and should be treated as such. So, the question is:

Q: How do you find and keep great people?
A: You create an environment where people can do their best work.

To achieve this, remove distractions.

An environment that heightens focus works best in the absence of ego. Rockstar/hero cultures have no place here. We simply want the best from everyone individually.

I believe in taking your job seriously and appreciating the difference between that which is given and that which is deserved. To that effect, it’s always annoyed me that I have to buy my own lunch (I’ll explain why, later.)

What makes a workplace attractive?

• Respect
• Opportunity to succeed
• Lack of stress

That’s it. It’s not having a pool table, or an awesome cafeteria, or dry-cleaning service, it’s not some other trendy nonsense. It’s simply creating an environment where good people can enjoy doing great work.

(It’s also nice to have fun along the way, but that’s just icing on the cake.)

At ATTCK, we accomplish this in several ways:

• We have great benefits. We cover health care costs and transit expenses, match 401(k), have vacation and sick time, and observe two weeks of holidays each year—and we’re super lax on remote work. This covers both respect and alleviating stress. We respect that career professionals want to mind their future and their health. We aim to make benefits one less thing to worry about.
• We buy and have lunch delivered every day (and no, we don’t expect you to eat it at your desk.) As I mentioned above, I always thought this was an annoying oversight. What a waste of time it is to have highly skilled people stop what they’re doing (presumably something of high value) just to think about something as mundane as where to eat lunch, then walk out to get it, stand in some dumb line, pay for it, then walk back to eat it. Every. Single. Day. The most coveted thing in this business is uninterrupted time. (It is for this reason we at ATTCK also avoid having almost any meetings.) All that said, if someone wants to leave the office and take a break, then by all means, go. But I’ll always offer the option of saving someone the time and money wasted on a daily lunch quest, so they can focus on doing the work they love.
• We meet individually to discuss performance, career progress, concerns, etc., in private — every MONTH. Not yearly. Not quarterly. Monthly. You cannot afford to take your finger off the pulse of your own company, or you risk losing good people because they don’t feel they are being listened to (i.e., respected), or given the feedback they need to succeed.
• We have weekly company retrospectives. Every Friday, we have a big company lunch and carefully review the week, celebrate project launches, and discuss anything that can be improved as a company.
• We regularly give unannounced raises that go into effect immediately. Almost everyone I’ve worked with thinks they should be paid more. And they’re probably right. You become more valuable every day, so we try our best to recognize that and correct for it as often as possible.
• We never demand work after 6 p.m. or on weekends. Doing this is basically theft, in my opinion, and is one of the most egregiously disrespectful things a company can do. People have personal lives, families, etc., to attend to. They didn’t sign up to bear the cost of a poorly estimated or managed project.

No excuses

Every one of these benefits has been in force in our office since day one. We set out to create a company different from the ones we had been accustomed to at large digital agencies because we saw good people quitting over and over for avoidable reasons.

If we can do this with five people, larger companies have no excuse not to.

Communication is key

Regular and transparent communication builds trust and mutual respect. It also alleviates the stress of not knowing why company decisions are being made or how one’s performance is perceived. Regular company retrospectives set a tone of openness and collaboration.

We have zero internal politics, and everyone trusts in our collective ability to communicate openly and with respect.

Here are some tips for managers from our collective past:

• Don’t: delay someone’s yearly review, then reward them with a pitiful raise based on unhelpful feedback that some middle manager rushed to put together—and then to top it all off, delay actually applying the raise.
• Don’t: try to lie about your culture by saying cute phrases like “we work hard together and play hard together.” That likely means you’re all working late and just becoming desk alcoholics together. I don’t play at work. I play with my daughter, when I get home, at a reasonable hour.
• Don’t: ask people to work longer hours if you don’t have an adequate plan for tracking project performance and projecting realistic deadlines. This one is a little more complicated, but honestly, sorry/not sorry, this is the business. Make sure you know how to run it properly.
• Don’t: make excuses for not providing adequate compensation. This means, at the very least: benefits, 401(k), and vacation. We had these when we had five people, so most companies don’t have a legitimate excuse not to.
• Do: give autonomy. Assuming we’re still talking about highly skilled people whom we respect, why micromanage them like children?
• Do: provide mentorship and career guidance. It’s easy to stagnate in this business. The easiest way to stay sharp is to make it easy for team members to help each other. At a management level, make sure you’re in tune with everyone’s individual career goals, and try to build each team member’s project work around those goals (or they will satisfy them elsewhere).

As a reward for considering these principles as fundamental to your company’s success, you will have a tighter, more creative team, less turnover, and better physical and mental health.

By removing distractions, we’re able to do our best work.

Please comment if you have other tips for improving your work environment!

—Dennis Plucinik, Founder, ATTCK

About ATTCK: We’re an NYC-based digital agency that specializes in web and native app design and development. We work with companies of all sizes. If you’re looking for an agency to work with, give us a call at (917) 725-0044, or email us at hello@attck.com.