Post on 10-May-2015
description
Yakov Fain, co-founder of Farata Systems and SuranceBay, USA
Running a Virtual Company
“I got an idea. Let’s create a startup”
A friend of a friend
Early 2006 • I’m not happy with Java offerings for the client side
• Met two seasoned developers who were not happy with JavaScript
• Adobe acquires MacroMedia and releases a promising RIA framework Flex 2
• Let’s learn Flex and write a book about it
Let’s create a consulKng company
Do we need an office like this?
Or like this?
Who’s going to work in our office?
Lawyer
Bookkeeper
Payroll
HR
Accountant
Salesman
Who’s going to work in our office?
A lawyer
Bookkeeper
Payroll
HR
Accountant
Salseman
Sales force 1. Tech. wriKng, teaching, speaking 2. Former Customers
How did we get projects
How did we find people 1. Personal ConnecKons in Eastern Europe
2. Speaking at
conferences in Ukraine
3. Recording audio podcasts (non-‐technical)
Where to Open an Office?
Where to Open an Office?
Recrui'ng!!! “Ideas are a dime a dozen. People who implement them are priceless.”
Mary Kay Ash
How we Aaract Talent from Overseas
• Ability to work flex hours
• Ability to work in your own town
• CompeKKve pay
• Work with seasoned developers
Hiring
• We don’t hire teams
• We don’t hire juniors (too expensive)
• People must be capable of doing independent work and communicate well
• Each person goes through phone/skype technical interviews. If we are not VERY impressed, we offer a candidate paid
test assignment
Retaining Good People
• Between consulKng projects, they work on our product
• People need to be moKvated: pay + flexibility + challenging work
• Moving people from development to maintenance, if it beaer fits them
• Encouraging people to aaend trainings and conferences
Firing
• Didn’t become producKve in 2-‐3 months
• Prima donnas
• People who don’t care
Developers should be traceable
They Need to Have Self-‐Discipline
How do we do Time Tracking?
We don’t. Developers send us daily reports:
Managers
Manager’s role is to produce realisKc esKmates, deliver on Kme and protect developers from mean clients.
If a manager can’t tell if people were working unless he saw them working, he’s incompetent and has to be removed from the project (fired, promoted et al.)
Our Always Remote Offices
Our Always Remote Offices
Our Always Remote Offices
Our Always Remote Offices
Nothing beats face-‐to-‐face communicaKons
Photos from hap://imgur.com/bJnJN
Nothing beats face-‐to-‐face communicaKons
Photos from hap://imgur.com/bJnJN
Nothing beats face-‐to-‐face communicaKons
Photos from hap://imgur.com/bJnJN
Nothing beats face-‐to-‐face communicaKons
Photos from hap://imgur.com/bJnJN
Face-‐to-‐face rules!
“I got an idea. Let’s create a startup”
A friend of a friend
2009
Let’s Automate Insurance Industry
Yeah, right!
Let’s create a product company
One person started invesKng money
One year later
Our Product Company (front office)
• We have sales, customer support, HR • During 4 years everyone was working from home.
• Two months ago we rented an office in Tampa, FL for 5 people of the front office team.
Our Product Company (back office)
• No specs for development. Fail quickly. • Sprints for maintenance
• Wiki arKcles describe processes
• QA, CI, releases twice a month
Hardware
• First development server was running on Verizon FIOS in my basement in NJ
• Now we have two data centers (leasing cabinets in FL and NYC ). Once a year we double the capacity/bandwidth
• We buy 2-‐3 y.o. hardware for 25% of original price, works well
Smart UI + Workflow AutomaKon • More than 50% forms are autocompleted (Geo locaKons, public/proprietary DB/Web services, educated guesses)
• All paper forms are turned into PDFs
• OCR
• Digital Signatures
2013
Epilogue
In 10 years most of the of small IT companies will work remotely. Large corporaKons should find a way to work in the same mode or else...
Some URLs • hap://faratasystems.com
• @yfain
• yfain@faratasystems.com
• hap://yakovfain.com
Read this book for free now at hap://enterprisewebbook.com