10 years of sharing, caring and daring
When thinking on how to capture these 10 years of Wunder, sharing, caring and daring are the three words that first come into the mind.
Here we are – 10 years old! Not really a kid (read “a start-up”) anymore but definitely not an adult yet. And to be honest, I truly hope that we as a company will never really “grow up”. Not in a sense that we shouldn’t widen our business, attract more clients or hire more IT talents, but in a sense that the 10-year-olds friendly, playful and ready to experiment attitude with what we go through life, really helps to keep up the positive vibe towards even the most complicated situations.
When thinking on how to capture these 10 years of Wunder, sharing, caring and daring are the three words that first come into the mind. Sharing as a giving and receiving of knowledge and experience, caring as a love and respect towards our teammates and clients, and daring as all the fun and even crazy things we do that lets us stand out in the crowd. But let’s dig a little deeper in each of them, shall we?
Sharing
People are our main asset, which makes knowledge and expertise – our wealth. As it is with the money, you have to move it around to earn some more. And that’s exactly what we do with our knowledge and expertise – we share it to gain even more!
From day one, we have been an active contributor to the Drupalopens-in-a-new-tab community which at that time was the only content management system we used to build our digital solutions. Through the years we have expanded our toolbox but still, stay trustful to only open source technologies as much as we share their values. Teamwork, innovation and knowledge sharing is what keeps up the open-source technology communities. We as company support that for all 100% by giving our input in core code as well as module development, organizing and sponsoring community events (e.g. DrupalCamps, DrupalCons, React events etc.), and sharing our expertise in conferences, workshops, and meet-ups.
But not only the external knowledge sharing is what we encourage. Inside the company, we have a few great ways of how people can interact with each other to spread their wisdom as well as to gain new knowledge. Let’s start from the widest one – The WunderCon – an annual internal company-wide conference that brings Wunderers together to share, learn and collaborate. All conference content is initiated and created by Wunder people according to their needs and current interests. Another of our knowledge-sharing initiatives is WunderTalks – weekly online sessions hosted by any Wunderer willing to share his or her latest findings, learnings or even fails to save others for similar mistakes.
When it comes to more personal growth and self-development, we have several solutions for that field as well. We truly believe that the most worth learning is learning by doing, therefore an interesting development project is one of the best ways to acquire loads of useful knowledge. But of course taking part in conferences, workshops or online courses are highly supported as well. And – not a minor thing – even the most booked developer has a right to have a dedicated time for shaping up his mastermind.
We really do care that learning is accessible to everyone – junior or senior, developer or office manager. And we most certainly know that everyone has their pack of unique knowledge to share with other Wunderers and the world.
Caring
As already mentioned above, people are our number one asset. Without people, we couldn’t deliver such complex and unique digital solutions to our customers. But what do people need the most? In our opinion – a safe, trustful and caring environment where they feel welcome and can be themselves. Just as we care for close ones, we care for each other at Wunder.
Most probably from the first sight, we look like any other company – a bunch of people sharing a similar skillset, needs and interest. This is actually true, but in addition to that, there is a magical power that keeps us together. It is our inclusive and caring attitude towards our work, team and each other. No matter if you prefer your coffee with or without milk or even decaf tea, favor work late than starting the day early, or choose to join art classes instead of playing computer games, it’s all great and welcome for us and we respect that. And not only respect but we encourage our colleagues to be themselves. We celebrate diversity, respect the differences and believe that that’s exactly what enriches us and makes us such an outstanding team. And we are proud to share these values with the world by being a member of Inklusiivopens-in-a-new-tab in Finland or signing a Diversity Charter in Latviaopens-in-a-new-tab and Estonia.
Another great way of caring is recognition. Positive feedback goes a long way and sometimes is even more expected than Christmas. Our great invention for encouraging feedback between teammates is WunderHugs – a virtual hug system. Since we are located in 6 offices in 3 countries and an actual hug is not always an option, this system allows us to send a hug to any other colleague wherever he might be located. And when Lady Luck is with us, the hugs are paid in actual money. This being a nice benefit and showing also that the owners of the company are behind the WunderHugs as well.
And as much as we care for each other, we care for our clients as well. We are delivering not only the product but also the process – transparency and open conversation on all the matters that tackle the project. We see our clients as a part of our team because we work on the solution together. So once you have met us, you most probably want to stick with us for a long time 🙂
Daring
Sharing is caring, but caring is daring, that’s how we see it. We care, therefore we dare to be different in a way we run the company, approach the clients, and treat the employees. Pretty often we receive questions like “Aren’t you afraid that people will not do their job if given too much freedom?” or “How can you be sure that the person will not leave in a year right after finishing the training you pay for?”. Well, we can’t, but we dare to trust our people.
Freedom on working from anywhere and the flexible working hours most often are the ones that raise questions, and also the ones that are the most appreciated among Wunderers. We dare to let people choose themselves the place they like to work from and the time of the day they feel the most productive. It doesn’t matter if today they are working from 8 AM to 5 PM or from 11 AM to 8 PM, at the office, the cozy coffee-shop around the corner or from home. As long as the work is done and the goals are met, it all works well. And one more, not a less important thing – if you do what you love, you do not watch the clock and count the hours until the end of a workday. We at Wunder love our job and don’t hate Mondays! 🙂
Experimentation is another thing we dare to encourage around Wunder. But even more important is that we dare not judge anyone if the experiment wasn’t successful. Admitting mistakes without judgment is a step closer to the next successful experiment which, who knows, could be our next bestseller. It is so easy to kill the passion for something, but we choose to let people make mistakes and learn from them instead.
Dreaming itself is not daring, going for your dreams is. And that’s exactly what we encourage our people to do. We all have our unique set of knowledge and qualities that have brought us to Wunder. No matter if you are a developer, designer, data analyst or human resource manager, everyone has a dream to become something more, something bigger. Whether it is being the best in the field, or widening the knowledge in some other field, we do our best to help these dreams come true in every possible way.
"Why are you doing all this? - Why not?"
Why not having a Christmas party at the National Museum of Arts? Why not wear a tuxedo instead of an evening dress for a GALA dinner? Why not move and work from Spain, Germany or Hungary for a month or a year? Why not sleep during the days and work during the nights if that’s how my brains work the best? Why not – if we love to share, care and dare? For 10 years already and for many, many more!