Inside Southworks: Culture First

In a previous post I commented about the book The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, which we use as part of our mentoring process. In this case Diego Marcet, a new southy that joined the company a week ago, wrote a blog entry giving his impressions about this mentoring process. He says:

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The first thing that caught my attention these first days is how much importance the company gives to communicate its philosophy of work. In all my previous jobs I always had a day or two for reading a couple of documents about the company and the project I would be working on, and immediately after that I’d start coding. Here it’s the opposite thing, first you have to focus on understanding the philosophy the company has and how they expect you to behave (like being proactive, collaborative with teammates, and so on)

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I’m happy to see he understands this at his fourth day at the company because our culture is, in my opinion, what helped us be where we are and what will help us reach the next level as a company. Good start!

But don’t be scared – there is technology during the mentoring process too (we are a technology company!). As Diego says, one of the first things you learn is Test Driven Development and Scrum. But what I want to highlight here is that first we try to prepare our southies in a environment where they can safely fail and learn our culture, so that when it’s their time to tackle real-world business challenges, they are better prepared.

Want to learn more about our culture? See the Mindsets and Core Values.