Please Don’t Take Ideas from this Employee Handbook

(A brief note: When a local tech journal asked us to contribute an article about workplace trends, we decided to write a spoof employee handbook. Here it is...)

Hello, new employee!

Welcome to your first day at IdealCorp, Wilmington’s hottest new SoLoMo fintech maker startup. We’re on a path to ridiculously incredible growth and that’s because of the amazing culture we’ve been building.

Unlike other companies out there, our employees come first. That’s because we want the people on our team to give us the best one, or maybe even two, years of their lives working with us.

How are we able to retain people for so long, you ask? You’ll understand as soon as you leaf through our handbook. Yes, it is printed on artisanal paper from local pine trees. And yes, we do need it back.

But for now, we hope it helps you imagine what your life will be like around the office.

Welcome to the team.

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Dress Code

At IdealCorp, we recognize the nobody knows what to wear to the office anymore. So, there is no dress code. Just come as you are, and express yourself! However, on Fridays, employees are encouraged to wear unicorn horns, fairy ears, pajama bottoms and flip-flops to create a more casual and stress-free work environment.

Benefits

We are pleased of offer a full range of employee benefits. These benefits include, but are not limited to unlimited amounts of coffee and kale-themed beverages, an avocado bar, and access to our listening booth just in case you want to “zone out” for a while.

Quantifying Success

Employee evaluations have always been so… awkward. At IdealCorp, we’ve replaced all of our bosses with algorithms! These are programmed to be completely, fair, unbiased, and nonjudgmental. Note that in order to keep-up with the ever-changing consumer landscape, these algos will be periodically updated to appear fickle and arbitrary.

Financial Transparency

We’re still assessing if revenue is a positive or negative, so we prefer to say that every quarter is a “really great” quarter. Auditors regularly call our accounting “amazing” and “incredible.” Believe that.

Our track record shows that bigger spending leads to greater funding. This enables us to spend even more on over-the-top ideas. We call this the VC, or Virtuous Cycle". Our objective is to keep the VC’s going for as long as possible.

Continuing Education

We recognize that your career is a big commitment, and might last as long as three years. To maintain a competitive and “edgy” workplace, we offer no employee training – whatsoever! Instead, we offer free, UNLIMITED access to the public library.

CyberSecurity

Bring your own device, and we’ll give you free stickers.

Better communication means more communication platforms. We embrace all of them as equally effective means of staying in touch with one another. So, we regularly use Fleep, Ryver, Flock, Hash, Twist, Chanty, Slack, Skype, Zoom, and even Google+!

All passwords must contain letters, numbers, doodles, emojis and chipmunk sounds.

Your Work Environment

Time is money and space is time. We provide a completely open office floor plan in our newly renovated warehouse. In recognition that our valued partners are actually full-time art students at DCAD, all new employees are given an IdealCorp backpack (loaded with swag!) and a locker.

While working at IdealCorp, you’ll find that the line between working, playing, and sleeping will become very, very blurry indeed! We offer showers, free laundry service, and surrogate roommates so that you’ll never need or want to go home. Ever.

Reprinted courtesy of Technical.ly Delaware.

Thinking Fast and Slow

I’ve been doing a lot of research lately on the future of real estate. This is an easy and popular topic – so much of it is tangible and visually interesting.

One thing really stands out. We’ve had some radical shifts in how we think, act, and organize. Yet, our physical world has been relatively unchanged for decades. We have the same streets, the same buildings, and the same forms of transportation. Cities change slowly. Parts grow, parts fade away. Yet the “bones” often remain across the generations.

Understanding why change doesn’t happen is almost as interesting was why it does. One of my favorite explanations comes from Stewart Brand, of the Long Now Foundation. He writes about this in his book How Buildings Learn.

Brand noticed that while collective change is now a given, not everything adjusts at the same rate.

This is a layered view of the world that we live in. Brand refers to this as "pace layer thinking."

Fashion and technology move very quickly. Every few months, there are trendy new lines of clothing, movies to watch, and music to follow. Our language is surprisingly adaptable.
Commerce and businessdo their best to keep up with the times, rolling out new offerings and updatingexisting ones. The start-up period between idea and reality is quickening, but it can still take years to introduce an entirely new product.
Infrastructure projects take significant planning, and often require a decade or more to build out. Part of this relates to the red-tape involved in obtaining approvals, and the need to raise massive amounts of capital.
At the layer of governance, building codes and zoning regulations can last a century or more.
Culture is not so much about fashion as it is about core values and traditions. The time frame for change can be hundreds (if not thousands) of years.
And in the end, nature has the final word. It will last longer than civilization.

Between each of these layers, you’ll have an element of turbulence and friction. This is where public discussion frequently happens. The faster moving layers get all the attention, while the slower moving layers have the power.

Pace layer thinking explains why cities and our built environment tend to change slowly over time. It provides insights to why the market for hydrogen fuel is so small (infrastructure), or why crypto-currencies might not hit ever reach the mainstream (governance). Cultural considerations are also significant. We may have some of the technology needed for genetic engineering, yet are reluctant to embrace it.

So, next time you encounter a new investment concept, take some time to consider why it might work out (or not). Think fast. Think slow.

Jim Lee CFA, CMT, CFP®

Founder, StratFI.

Disclosure: Information contained herein is for educational purposes only and is not to be considered a recommendation to buy or sell any security or investment advice. Securities listed herein are for illustrative purposes only and are not to be considered a recommendation.

Please Don’t Take Ideas from this Employee Handbook

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