Recipe of a happy Dev at TheFork

At least, most of the time — Be an actor of your happiness

Keep people happy at work is a complex puzzle to solve, especially in tech domain. We all know that a happy dev is a productive dev, that’s why companies involve lot of efforts to try to make their engineers as happy as possible.

But happiness is a subjective concept — while for some of us money is the satisfaction, some might strive for recognition and lose motivation on failing to achieve it. So, the happiness it not a belief but a state of mind, we should know what we are looking for in a company.

At The Fork, we have values shared across the entire company whatever the job. Working for a company, values are something that we take into account. We cannot be happy if we don’t agree with the company values because decisions should be taken based on those. And at The Fork, we have these ones:

• Act Like An Owner
• We’re better together
• We Never Stop Learning
• We Believe In Transparency
• Speed Wins
• We Love Our Customers

These values promote team spirit and mutual help in order to move forward together. That’s why they are aligned with a positive mind.

And for some people, having a friendly environment aligned with our values at work is a must have for a job.

We all know that sometimes as a dev, it could be hard to feel that we are in the good place to evolve and grow, and that’s at this exact time that we have to become owner of our happiness. Being happy is a choice !

Talking personally, I wanted to leave the company at many times, but after sharing my feelings, and my doubts with my colleagues and my manager, we’ve found a way to make me comfortable and to help me finding my place, that’s why I’m still at The Fork after few years.

Happiness is not a place, but a direction — Sydney J. Harris

So, how I continue to be happy an engineer in the company ?

It would be cliché to say that devs are shy and unsociable. This is the case for few of us, but the opposite for most of us, mainly at The Fork.

Happiness is a really personal feeling, we have different degree of happiness and different expectation regarding it, but I’d like to say that a happy person can make a happy team.

After 4 years working at TheFork, I heard a lot about my happy mood, so I will share with you some of my personal tips.

• Be proud of the job done, even if we disagree with tasks and the mission. Sometimes, tasks are not the ones we want to do, but do it properly leads to personal satisfaction and can also generate a great image of you.
• Be close to colleagues who shared your day to day time. Your are most of the week more with colleagues than family or friends, so you have to find common points, and common passions. Coffee break, or launch break are good moments to share and to discuss with them — do not speak of work during break.
• Share with the team your feelings about the company and the decisions. Sometimes you all think the same way and have the same opinion, so just to discuss about that could help you to be understood and can be reassuring.
• Create a team spirit (Ping pong, games, shared music… ). Be together and share some time, even remotely! There are tons of tools to help us in this way.
• Do not wait for the gratitude, go look for it. Thanks people who helped you to work on a task. A simple thank you in public generates gratitude and their personal satisfactory. And in the majority of cases, this gratitude will come back as return.
• Monitor the team mood — It could be hard to monitor well being and happiness of a team. But you can track people’s spirit to see how your team is doing and to identify potential issues.
• Talk about errors and celebrate successes ! You cannot change everything in a row, but small successes ensure the good way to the final objective.
• Do not blame discontented, they qualify the point. You must talk and understand. Decisions took are not always accepted between all, but you should not look for a professional confrontation. This is not good for the team spirit and personal mood. In the majority of cases, you should talk in order to find a compromise which can satisfy all people.
• Talk with your manager of frustrating points, it’s her/his role to not blame you for this. The manager is also challenged about the good mood of the team, and she/he has no interest of your unhappiness, or in the worst case, that you leave the company. If there is any break with her/him, don’t hesitate to talk to others, there are a lot which will be able to listen and help you to find the best solution for you. One of managers role is to think about dev satisfaction too.
• Have clear and understood objectives between dev and manager. It can be complicated as a dev to find some metrics or KPIs to measure the performance, but once it’s found, the satisfaction of task done is huge and can make you really happy and motivated for the next tasks to come. Challenge can be a booster and a motivation for some people.
• Take time for yourself, to do some personal things — Sometimes it’s good to take a step back on work you are doing in order to focus on things you’d love to. It might mean non professional stuff, but even few minutes it allows to take a breath.

It’s your turn !

Make things change if you don’t like them. Be active in your team, if you see additional actions to be taken to be happier at work.

You should not be lost in the pursuit of happiness, neither looking for being this perfect colleague always happy. But few actions can improve your daily life and the one of your colleagues.

It’s totally normal to be sad or lost, but the most important thing is to continue to be in a positive mood.