If you don't know us, this document is our resume. If you do know us and you're just starting to work with us, it will serve as a "welcome aboard" tool. If you're an elephant, use it to hold us accountable for making everything here our daily reality.
You’ll find this document to be a set of guidelines; it is rich in context and principles and light in formulas and prescriptions. You’ll soon discover that we like autonomy and we treat people as adults. We like clarity, but we don’t confuse clarity with a set of detailed instructions. If you have some questions you can’t find written answers for, don’t worry. We trust you to figure some things out on your own, and if you don’t, just ask. We trust those around you to guide you and we hope you’ll return the favor.
What makes you stand out?
We build teams that do a great trunking job in working with clients to achieve their technology goals.
Every step of the way, we put our creativity and engineering skills to work to enable them to succeed.
We thrive on solving challenges.
In Thinslices we act according to the following values. We understand not all of them will appeal to you equally, but to some degree, you should be comfortable with all of them, or you’re likely to have a tough time being successful here. They are our norms of behavior. This is how we treat each other, our clients and our partners.
Change is the only constant. Embrace it!
Every pain is an opportunity
Be part of the solution
Care for your teammate
Lend a hand
Win together (lose together)
Sweep nothing under the rug
Empower by sharing information
Be receptive to feedback and new ideas
Find the root cause (ask the 5 whys)
Plan before you act
Solve like an engineer
Take commitment seriously
Be hardworking
Go the extra mile
Our most relevant “unit” is the project team, and we’ve developed the entire company around this essential component. We are trying to develop high-performance teams to build and deliver world-class technology products to our clients. As such, our structure includes the following:
Instead of organizing team members into departments depending on their job titles, we strive to create high-performance teams based on a unique combination of people attributes and the Agile mindset, as follows:
We don’t like to formalize things too much. We’re not the kind of people that like to build high walls between ourselves. We are all one team and our success is dependent on our collaboration.
Most of our events & gatherings are elephant-driven so they're not "company-mandated" sort of shindigs.
We have a weekly book club, social coffee meetups, courses & workshops as well as the annual teambuilding & Christmas party.
The Thinslices Software Developer understands and adheres to the Software Professional Manifesto. They are T-Shaped Software Developers, Responsible Engineers, Software Craftsmen.
You should understand your client, their needs, their environment and always try to give them the best solution that you can think of.
Don’t be a code monkey!
Under no circumstances will we ship something that doesn’t work. No schedule will make us do this, no yelling manager will make us do this.
If it is crap we will not ship it!
When you write code you should take into consideration possible scenarios that will change requirements of the product. These changes shouldn’t end up into a rewrite or impossible estimations.
You must not give horrible estimates and you must not let the system reach a point where redesign is a must!
When you see something in the code that is wrong, clean it instantly without fear, without hesitation.
You should clean and refactor the code with fearlessness and competence!
You should go home every night and look in the mirror and say: “Man, I did an awesome job today!”.
You should always know that you did the best job that you could do!
You should learn someone else’s job and know what they are doing. If a team member is absent the team should be able to continue the project.
Team members have each others’ backs!
The most honest estimate is I don’t know. You should find out what you don’t know and provide the range of the estimation.
People rely on your estimates!
You were hired because you think before taking action. You are the ones who know and the only ones who have the knowledge to say No.
When you say Yes you make a promise and you will do whatever it takes to deliver on it. The worst is to say “I will try”!
Feedback is someone that cares enough to tell you what they think about you, in the hope that you’ll find the information useful. They may not have all the facts and they may not have interpreted some things accurately. That’s fine, they’re not saying you suck, they’re just calling it as they see it, from their point of view. It’s always better for you to know what they think, rather than to not know.
Thank the colleague who gave you feedback and remember to return the favor when you can.
The best feedback is short, even less than a minute, given on the spot and it is specific. As a general rule, we’re a pretty straightforward company and we don’t go to extremes in sugarcoating what we say. That having been said, do pay some consideration to people’s feelings. We all have them. Praise in public, criticize in private.
We can’t function without deliberate learning. Without it, we don’t evolve as individuals, we don’t perform as teams, we don’t improve and we don’t innovate.
Regardless of the level we are at or the particulars of the job we’re doing we all need to evolve. Our learning affects:
All in all, we learn so that a year from now our life will be visibly better than it is now.
As part of the formal learning process or not, one of the best ways to learn is on the job. Especially with juniors, sometimes the most effective way to accelerate their growth is to embed them in a team, even if they are not billable, or for that matter very productive.
The simple fact of being close to a real team, helping with real problems, being guided by experienced colleagues is, very often, a better way to learn than theoretical study and theoretical exercises.
In the future of work, roles are not as relevant as they used to be. For us and for our clients it's skills that matter. Skills that create value for us and our clients are the basis for performance, career development and salaries in Thinslices.
General
Web Services
AWS
React & Web Apps
React Native & Mobile Apps
Interact with and use native APIs
Write tests for mobile UI components and pages
Troubleshoot and debug compilation and build issues
Design and implement Mobile applications using React-Native
Design and implement Mobile (Android, iOS) UI components and layouts using React-Native
Each role has a list of skills that create value. But the list isn't static just as the market isn't static. Skills that created value 5 years ago have evolved, some have even disappeared or have been replaced by new ones.
We believe in giving people autonomy. Not just formally.
We encourage every team to think like a business. They have the autonomy to decide how they want to work to deliver a project, how they assign tasks between members and how they onboard new team members.
They choose the tools they want to use and they manage their learning journeys as well.
The context is comprised of the Thinslices vision, values, work methodology, processes, and general meetings.
Regardless of the team or project you're on, as an elephant, you're responsible for your experience.
That means contributing with ideas, taking ownership of tasks, making decisions on matters you're accountable for, reaching out to other colleagues who can help you deliver your objectives.
So no "s-a intamplat", no excuses, no hiding behind processes. We're all here to learn, to grow and to deliver quality, to create value.
We're a team, we help each other and we all contribute to maintaining Thinslices an amazing workplace and a great company to work with.