One of the hardest things to do at any company is to find great people. You can hire people really easily, it’s just hard to hire good people. Our Very Own has done a fantastic job at hiring excellent employees, I love working in the office, being surrounded by extremely talented people, all of which are ready and willing to help you out at the drop of a hat. No one hordes knowledge, everyone is willing to sit down, teach other people what they know. We even run workshops to teach the other developers something new. Jon is obsessed with Elm, so he took it upon himself to run a workshop in which we all sat in a room, he ran us through an interactive introduction to the Elm language. It was quite fun even if I hated the syntax.

I love coming into the office each day not because I love the technology I’m working on, it’s not always Elixir (my one true love). I love coming in because of the people I work with, the culture that has been created not only company wide but in the development team. Working with people you actually want to work with boosts productivity more than you could ever imagine, who knew. I was asked by my partner do you enjoy work every day, my answer was “yeah for the most part I enjoy it every day, sometimes it's tough, and not every day is perfect but as a whole I love work”. This kind of admiration for your work is hard to come by, you don't stumble upon people who take pride in their work but Our Very Own have, they have selected great people, most whom have come from recommendations of other employees. Referrals have given us some of the best employees and it makes it even sweeter that you don't have to pay through the nose for a recruiter!

Yet it's not just the cost savings of referrals that make it great, it's the fact that you get great people more often. People refer people they like, what would be the point of putting someone they hate, or someone who does a terrible job in the same office as you? This leads to people suggesting great people, I for one suggested James a guy I met while at University, he's still the best programmer I've ever met who has less than 20 years of experience. He picks things up instantly, he writes well documented code and he does a fantastic job at planning. Of course I'm going to want to work with him so when I found out he didn't have a job after graduating, it became a pretty easy question. The more people you like in the office the better job you will do and the easier it will become. Creating this work culture as a company wide approach also leads to small pockets of subcultures, like we have with the engineering team. We have our own little pocket of the office, setup how we like it, with star wars figures built by Aidan and a little Groot plant also bought in by Aidan. We all grab lunch together each day, coffees and have an engineering standup. All these activities bring us together which is great because I spend at least 40 hours with them a week, it would be nice to like them.

Working with great people, not people that are brilliant because they aren't always great to work with, but people who make work life great. Creating an environment that people love coming into each day, leaves you with a workforce that works harder and stays longer. A workforce that takes pride in their work. A workforce that will go the extra mile for a client, so much so that same client will refer you to another company to work with as they had such an amazing experience. Word of mouth is such a powerful marketing tactics and it all starts from the culture you create in the office, the great people you employ.