Last September eight members of VSHN’s Team Pollux took the opportunity to organize a yearly team building event, and we’d like to brag about it a little. The choice of destination fell on Moirans-en-Montagne, a charming town in France, not far from the Swiss border.

Friday on the road

The trip there took us through beautiful green wooded hills. Even though another Team (thank you, Team Sirius!) took over our Operation tasks this day, some people couldn’t resist to check on our services.

Once arrived we were greeted by the caretaker, who gave us a tour of our weekend villa; a lucky find on Airbnb. It turned out to be unexpectedly maze-like, but in the end we didn’t spend too much time inside anyway. The swimming pool and pool house (complete with a fireplace!) as well as the nearby Via Ferrata would be the focus of our attention for the next two days.

But first we had to take care of our grumbling tummies. A shopping task force automatically assembled itself and headed for the local supermarket. Last-minute shopping additions were remotely added via group chat, the whole thing felt very effortless. The same was true for the evening’s BBQ preparations: one person went to find an axe to chop wood with, someone prepared a salad, others scoured the house for the least mismatched cutlery and plates. One delicious BBQ later we dipped into the pool as the night illumination came on and the full moon rose above us.

There was never a big central master plan for any of this, yet it all worked out swimmingly (hah).

A sunny Saturday

After Saturday’s brunch (French croissants are delicious!) exactly half the team split off for a climbing adventure above Lac de Vouglans.  Nobody ended up causing a rescue operation Instead the group enjoyed a spectacular view and thanks to excellent timing didn’t get (too) scorched by the sun.

The groups joined back up again at the pool, in time for late afternoon poolside drinks (and Swiss-German lessons). We were extremely lucky with the weather as the original forecast predicted a rainy Saturday. Instead we enjoyed swimming all evening in summer’s last rays of sunshine, and then prepared another extensive BBQ in the pool house.

Just like the day before, the team coordinated without many words: some cut vegetables, others chopped wood and prepared the fire, or washed dishes and set the table. It was remarkable how the agile mindset seems to have seeped into our brains so much that it’s applied automatically even to everyday chores.

Once the party heated up a little, and everyone had had their singing juice, we sang 90s songs deep into the night, played card games, and of course made use of the pool again for some night swimming.

It seems like none of us had the urge to talk about, or even touch technology very much during these days. The villa offered two TVs and we had multiple Nintendo Switches on hand but they all remained switched (haha) off. Instead we had card games, singing, swimming, and long discussions.

A lazy Sunday

Sunday meant we had to depart. At least the weather had turned drizzly and gray so it would be easier to say goodbye to our villa. Cleaning up was just as smooth and easy as everything else this weekend. Everyone swarmed and barely an hour later we were ready to go. We made a last valiant attempt to get rid of the leftover ice cream (by getting it into our stomachs) and drove off.

We’d like to thank VSHN for making this weekend possible. All of us feel that it brought the team closer together. We can’t wait to see what teambuilding activities the other VSHN teams come up with!

What we learned about organizing our own team building event:

• You don’t actually need to plan that much if you’re used to agile thinking. Picking a good location was the hardest part.
• Coaching and focused exercises are fine team building instruments. But it seems like organizing something, such as cooking, eating, singing and doing sports together, also makes for fine team glue.

VSHNday is an all-day event once a year, usually in late summer. It is about alignment and developing a shared understanding of what VSHN is and does. In 2021, VSHNday was held for the 7th time.

Personal and once again not remote

On Friday, September 24, 2021, VSHNeers got together again for a physical VSHNday (adhering to Corona rules with a valid Covid certificate, of course) after we had to hold VSHNday remotely in 2020 due to pandemic.

When we meet again all “in real”, of course a group photo could not be missing. 🙂

Location: Hive Zurich

The VSHNday 2021 took place at the Hive in Geroldstrasse in Zurich. Really a very cool location and perfect to get away from the daily grind in the (home) office and focus on the day in a creative environment and offline.

Schedule and Agenda VSHNday 2021

We started from 08:30 for Gipfeli & coffee and the official part started at 09:00.

Aarno Aukia gave a short intro about the history of VSHN and why the founders got together to start a company in 2014.

One of the main reasons was a shared understanding (or at that time better an idea) of values and culture of how VSHNeers would like to work together. 7 years later VSHN has reached 45 employees and the original ideas are available for everyone to see in our Open Source Employee Handbook in the chapter VSHN Values: https://handbook.vshn.ch/hb/values.html

The basic pillars of VSHN Values are Positivity, Effectivity, Integrity, Curiosity, Transparency and Accountability.

After Aarno’s presentation, VSHNeers then thought about Values and Culture, considered topics, and discussed them together in groups in an open space format.

For lunch we had a delicious pasta buffet and after a little game (draw toast) we continued with the topic VSHN product strategy.

As an introduction, Patrick Mathers gave a short intro on “Why do we need to grow at all?” including a nice illustration with Phippy. 🙂

Tobias Brunner then gave a presentation on VSHN’s product strategy, explaining our current VSHN Product Portfolio and which path we as VSHN want to take together or better continue to follow.

Afterwards, there were again Open Spaces with lively discussions on the topic of product strategy, which were very enlightening and have already brought about some new initiatives.

Conclusion and evening program

From 18:00 we stayed at the Hive for our dinner and the social part. Dinner was served by Gerold Chuchi and was super tasty!

In summary, we are overjoyed to have been able to meet physically and in person again for VSHNday 2021. It was great to see all VSHNeers in person again (or to meet them for the first time ever).

Very exciting discussions emerged in the Open Spaces and some of the ideas are already being implemented or are being discussed further in detail.

We thank all VSHNeers for their participation and constructive discussions and the organizers for a successful VSHNday!

In VSHN we have adopted various mechanisms for helping people and the organization to grow at the same time, for one follows the other in a virtuous circle. For organizational change, we use Sociocracy 3.0. For personal growth, one of the tools we use are one-on-ones, but not the usual one-on-ones you see in the corporate world. This article explains how we do them, and why.

About Reflection

Reflection is the process of thinking about what has happened in the past so we can have a better future. It is most important in the case of negative outcomes; can help you understand why bad things happened. This is particularly relevant when past events caused unhappiness.

To continuously improve and learn, smart people figured out a simple workflow: starting from concrete experiences, one performs observations. From those observations, one can conceptualize, reflect, and learn; from those lessons, we can experiment. Those experiments lead to new concrete experiences, from which this cycle can start all over again.

This simple mechanism helps change events, actions, attitudes, so that in the next iteration, we can have different outcomes, and eventually remove unhappiness. A simple method to learn iteratively.

Reflection is thinking about what worked and what didn’t, in order to learn and improve, through introspection: “Why do I feel unhappy?” “Do I feel threatened?”

To borrow an expression from the Agile world, reflection is like a personal retrospective. It is tantamount to be open and true with oneself, and most importantly, to allow yourself to slow down because these processes take time.

The reasons for reflections are always the same: asking oneself “why?”, and figuring out reasons.

Benefits of Reflection

There are quite a few benefits to reflection, actually, but we’re going to focus on the following four.

First of all, reflection brings us to a better prioritization of things in our life. Very often, in the turmoil of daily events, we don’t have much time for taking decisions. A reflection process helps us bring to light our priorities, which in turn, helps us make better decisions, even in situations of stress.

Second, and directly related to the previous benefit, reflection helps with setting goals. These are long-term objectives for our lives, and thanks to the clarity brought by reflection, we can set short-term objectives that are fully aligned with those long-term goals.

Third, and simultaneously with the other two, it allows to fight procrastination and anxiety. We have all faced the temptation of leaving change for tomorrow, but reflection makes our goals clearer so that we can finally realize that today is the perfect day to start our process of change.

Last but not least, self-reflection helps to recognize and overcome obstacles. In life, obstacles are everywhere, and take different shapes; a reflection process allows us to recognize those that we already know, and prepares us to face the new ones that will come.

Formats of Reflection

Reflection can take lots of different shapes. The usual team retrospectives we have in agile teams are a group form of reflection. Coffee breaks, chit-chats next to the water fountain, and beers after work are also simple, yet extremely effective forms of group reflection.

In a more personal way, thinking about work while showering or biking, or keeping a diary, are things that can greatly help your reflection processes. You can keep a physical diary, or a digital one. In the latter case, applications such as Day One or jrnl, or even the plain text editor bundled with your operating system can help you get your thoughts in order.

In a professional setting, one-on-ones are one of the most common types of reflection sessions.

Each of these reflection options can have regular schedules; some are confidential, some aren’t. Some have a clear agenda, some are prepared, while some are more spontaneous.

	Regularly scheduled	Confidential	Clear agenda	Active reflection	Prepared	Work time
Retrospective
Coffee
Beers
Shower
Writing diary
One-on-one

One-on-ones, as shown in the table above, have many desirable characteristics.

About One-on-Ones at VSHN

In VSHN we have a specific format for one-on-ones, and we have documented it in our Handbook. They require personal preparation, in a dedicated time slot, as well as a second time slot to discuss those thoughts with somebody else, usually somebody from your team, who might help you by asking the right questions.

One-on-ones in VSHN do not work exactly the same way as in other companies. Our format is admittedly less obvious at first, but the whole point of one-on-one meetings is for everyone to get help to solve their problems.

In the corporate world, one-on-ones are akin to “two-people retrospectives” between a manager and an employee. In VSHN, we do not have those ranks, so it’s a discussion between peers to solve problems for each party.

There is, however, a very important point to understand: the role of the second person is not to solve the problems of the first. It is rather to listen, listen, and listen more, and if possible to ask questions that might trigger a self-reflection process in the first person.

Another responsibility of the second person is to create accountability, keeping up on the progress of the first, so that change actually happens.

One-on-ones work in a peer-to-peer way; both parties are equal. The first person is the reflecting person, and the second person invests 10 minutes to coach the first. After that, the roles reverse.

Outcomes

This is an important point to understand: one-on-ones in VSHN are not a place to talk about other people behind their backs. We can, however, discuss how what another person said makes somebody feel. In those cases, the follow-up of such discussion might involve going through the conflict resolution process.

Another possible outcome from a one-on-one might be a new VSHN Improvement Proposal, triggering a whole new change in the structure (or behavior) of some part of the company.

For more complex problems, not solvable with a series of one-on-ones, every VSHNeer can get specific help through a personal coach. By their external nature, coaches are not biased by the engineering point of view (that is, “trying to solve your problems”) or VSHN-specific ideas (“that’s how we designed this”), so that you find answers “outside of the box”, whichever this box might be.

How to do One-on-Ones?

VSHNeers are free to choose who to do one-on-ones with. Some VSHNeers have a bit more experience in this matter, and they can gladly help others to get started.

As stated previously, we suggest doing them with people from outside your own team; this brings a different, more global perspective; a view from the outside.

Conclusion

It is extremely important for us at VSHN to make it clear that it is OK to stop and think. Particularly in technical environments where things change at a frantic pace, feeling able to slow down allows everyone to take the time to reflect, evolve, and hopefully, to feel better overall. One-on-ones are one of the mechanisms that we have set up for this to happen.

Hi all,

My name is Virag aka Viri and I am very excited to become a part of the Sol Team and VSHN family as an Inside Sales.

I have worked in the finance sector for some time and then made a switch into the IT world in 2013. Since then, I have worked in a Data Centre and therefore had the opportunity to get to know the IT world from a different perspective. The big world of IT, technology and everything related to it have always fascinated me and so it didn’t come from nowhere that I applied to work for VSHN.

I look forward to meet all the new employees, all the new customers, facing new challenges and also being able to pass on the best possible solutions and services.

Outside of the office, I fully dedicate myself to my family, friends and my dog. As I love challenges, how could it be any different, of course I adopted a Jack Russell Terrier. Yes, it could have been so easy, but only half as fun. So, when I’m not out chasing after my dog, I like to go to the gym and completely exhaust myself or go out into nature to clear my head.

See you at the office.

Viri

Hello everyone, my name is Adrian and I’m thrilled to join team Sirius as a System Engineer!

I’m originally an Environmental Engineer and I worked in research at ETH Zürich before joining VSHN. My research focus was on Life Cycle Assessment (LCA, Ökobilanz in german). I’ve worked on a wide variety of topics, ranging from numerical computing in LCA, data science with geodata, to satellite image analysis and developing GUI tools for other researchers. As a self-taught linux sys admin, I was in charge of the whole server infrastructure at my research group.

I’ve always had a very keen interest in Linux, automation and Open Source. I’m very excited to be a part of VSHN, where I can expand my knowledge in these areas and learn more about DevOps, containers, Kubernetes and its ecosystem.

When I’m not sitting in front of a monitor, I like to cook (and eat!) and spend my time outdoors. I love to hike, ride my bike and sleep outdoors in my hammock.

Looking forward to meeting you all, hopefully also in the office in the near future,
Adrian

The lecture of Jacob Kaplan-Moss’ blog post, “Designing Engineering Organizations” triggered quite a few interesting conversations internally, and I would like to expose in a few lines our opinion about the subjects discussed therein. (If you haven’t read this article, please do, we’ll wait for you here.)

In a nutshell, and basing his reasoning on top of Conway’s Law, Jacob (former director of security at Heroku, and creator of the Django web framework) explains in detail a very simple definition for effective teams:

Summary: the most effective teams are stable, multi-disciplinary, aligned to product delivery.

Fifty years after Melvin Conway coined it, Conway’s Law is being “rediscovered” once again by teams all over the world. The rise of DevOps and in particular microservice architectures have been (in some cases, painful) demonstrations of its reality and its applicability.

In a world of fear, uncertainty and doubt, where software is eating the world, where every company is a software company, where all industries face the pressure of disruption, Conway’s Law got propulsed from an obscure computer science concept, to a cornerstone idea at the very root of modern business success.

The rules of business have changed. To succeed, we must reverse engineer Conway’s Law: we need to organize ourselves so that we can maximize the quality of our output, with constant, data-driven re-evaluation loops.

In VSHN we are undergoing such a major mutation, taking us towards that goal, albeit in a micro level: from technology-oriented to product-oriented teams. The objective is to stabilize our delivery cycles, and to align them to requirements through the interface of a single designed service or product manager.

This internal transformation is already showing positive results, and aligns our practices with what we believe is the best way to work with our customers.

In his article, Jacob also exposes the interrelationships required internally for such organizations to become more effective:

Larger organizations often end up needing a mix: a set of platform teams that build and maintain underlying infrastructure, shared libraries, and tooling; and a set of product teams that directly work on the product.

This is quite literally one of our core beliefs: we want to become the ideal platform team, to help our customers build and maintain the required underlying infrastructure, libraries and tooling for our customers to reach their own business goals.

The choice of words matter. A lot.

For non-native English speakers like me, certain words carry a seemingly “professional” meaning to them. Common examples such as “synergy”, “executive”, “agreement”, and “resource” are used as part of the “lingua franca” of world business, usually without paying attention to their origin or hidden meaning.

Let us focus on the last word above: “resource”. There are many valid uses for it in a business environment: whatever your business needs to run, is a resource. Computers, electricity, money, raw materials, all of that are valid resources. The problem, however, appears as soon as we read the word “human” next to it.

Wikipedia explains that the first recorded use of the expression “human resources” happened in 1893. The term evolved and took its current meaning around 1950, reaching its peak of usage and “popularity” somewhere between the 1980s and 90s.

The world, thankfully, has evolved. The founding document of the International Labour Organization, the Declaration of Philadelphia from 1944, clearly states in its first point that “Labour is not a commodity”. Human beings are not replaceable, just like coal or wheat could be, and thus deserve to be considered in a different, much more humane light. We live in a world where the focus is moving back towards the individual; we no longer live to work, even if for the time being we still work to live.

When we started VSHN we wanted to create a different workplace; one where people were our most important value, one where everyone could voice their opinion, and actively shape and reshape the company following the best possible consensus. To a large extent, our Handbook is a concrete reflection of this attitude, an explicit contract between all VSHNeers. Needless to say, in such a place, the expression “human resources” not only makes no sense, it actually sounds offensive. We therefore decided to change it to “People Operations”, or “PeopleOps” in short, following the naming trends of the very industry we’re operating in.

When talking about people, don’t use the word “resource”.

Valid use of “resources”

• The server does not have enough [ cloud computing ] resources
• We’re out of [ monetary ] resources to buy more hardware.
• With more [ monetary ] resources we would be able to achieve more results.
• We’re out of [ raw materials ] resources to be able to produce more products.

Unacceptable use of “resources”

• Our team does not have the necessary [ time/people ] resources to work on this task. → Our team does not have the necessary time to work on this task.
• With more [ time/people ] resources we would be able to achieve more results. → With more people we would be able to achieve more results.
• We need to assign more [ time/people ] resources to this project. → We need to assign more people to this project.
• We don’t have the [ time/people ] resources for this project. → We don’t have the time for this project.
• We’re out of [ time/people ] resources to be able to produce more products. → We’re out of people to be able to produce more products.

Every year all VSHNeers take a day off from the daily business, to meet and shape the future of VSHN on what we call the “VSHNday.” Of course, this year, due to the COVID-19 situation, this will happen in a remote-friendly way.
VSHNday 2020 will take place on Monday, September 21st, 2020. For this reason, on that day VSHN will only be available for incident handling. We will keep an eye on incident tickets, and answer the technical support phone number. Also, our OnCall service is not affected, and the physical office will stay closed for the whole day.
The summary of the 2019 VSHNday can be found in this blog post.

Hi everyone,
My name is Finn. Last year I was in school in Hirschengraben. I learned a little bit of English, maths, and other interesting things.
In my spare time I play three to four times a week football, where I meet a lot of friends; I play video games sometimes, too.
My goal this year is to learn programming, to get to know as many programming languages as possible, and to understand them.
One of my dreams is to have a wife and two children and to hopefully stay in VSHN after my apprenticeship.

Hi, I’m Michel Rios
What did you do for a living before joining VSHN?
The last few years I worked as a VoIP Supporter and lately as Technical Service Engineer, primarily troubleshooting VoIP related issues of customers and assisting customers in setting up VoIP solutions. Also I was able to work on projects and expanded my knowledge in this field.
What does VSHN mean for you?
I got excited when VSHN  hired me, due to the possibilities I saw to evolve in IT and working with great and interesting people.
What will be your job at VSHN?
I am really looking forward to work as a DevOps Engineer in the Polaris squad.
What goals do you have at VSHN?
My goals are to grow as a person, gather more knowledge and new experiences, as also to set a foot in the DevOps world.
How do you spend your spare time?
If I’m not sitting at the computer I spend my time with traveling, listening and producing music, collecting records, playing basketball and practicing martial arts.
Kind regards
Michel

Ein VSHNeer zu sein bedeutet nicht nur ganz viel Zeit vor dem Rechner zu verbringen, sondern es gibt auch noch den einen oder andere Benefit den wir einheimsen können.
Und ich rede hier nicht nur von der Flut an süssen Weihnachtsgrüssen die momentan reinflattert und unsere BMIs ernsthaft strapazieren, sondern davon, dass wir eine ganze Liste von lustigen, praktischen und tollen Gadgets beziehen können=)
Aber ja, unser Arbeitsalltag kann auch bedeuten: Stundenlang konzentriert in den Computer zu starren, zu wenig Bewegung zu kriegen und naja ganz ehrlich: Jünger werden wir alle auch nicht mehr.
Aus einer Bemerkung dieser Art wurde eine fixe Idee und schliesslich ein Resultat:
Seit Herbst 2019 dürfen wir jeweils einmal im Monat die Möglichkeit nutzen, uns hier im Office für jeweils eine halbe Stunde massieren zu lassen.
Michael von Bodyalarm kümmert sich seither einen Tag pro Monat nicht nur um unsere verspannten Nackenmuskeln, sondern auch darum, das wir nicht wie Lauche und Bananen vor den Bildschirmen sitzen.
Wir verfügen zwar alle bereits über höhenverstellbare Tische und die Möglichkeit sich seine Peripheriegeräte, so weit wie möglich, selbst auszuwählen. Aber die Besuche von Michael sind jedesmal eine super Gelegenheit, während dem Alltag kurz den Kopf frei zu bekommen und sich wieder ein paar Gedanken über die passende Ergonomie am Arbeitsplatz zu machen.

Hallo,
ich bin Manuela, und ich unterstütze die VSHN ab Dezember in der Buchhaltung.
Während die meisten Leute eher irritiert reagieren wenn ich sage, dass es mir Spass macht in der Buchhaltung zu arbeiten, war für mich schon während meiner kaufmännischen Ausbildung klar, dass dies mein Ziel ist.
Bevor ich diesen Monat bei VSHN starten durfte, habe ich das KV und eine Weiterbildung zur Sachbearbeiterin Rechnungswesen gemacht sowie praktische Erfahrungen in der Debitoren-, Kreditoren-, Betriebs- und Finanzbuchhaltung gesammelt. Und damit mir nicht langweilig wird, bin ich zurzeit dabei, mich zur eidg. diplomierten Fachfrau in Finanz- und Rechnungswesen weiterzubilden.
Nun freue ich mich, Teil des grossartigen Teams von VSHN zu sein und mich den Zahlen der Firma zu widmen.
Wenn ich nicht am arbeiten oder am lernen bin, trifft man mich häufig auf Konzerten oder Städte-Trips an, oder beim Serien-schauen.

Hi,
my name is Gabriel and I come from a small country called Moldova. Before joining VSHN I worked as a Software Engineer for a German company.
I understood from the first days that VSHN is not just a job, it’s a community with a wonderful culture. It has set high standard principles and I’m glad to have been chosen to be a part of it.
I’m currently in Capella squad and working as a System Engineer. My goals are to learn as much as possible from my teammates and to help and further develop the current projects.
I do several things in my spare time, I usually swim and read. I hope one day to fly in the outer space, maybe in the far future there will be opportunities for normal people to go there.
The goal of this year is to become an independent DevOps Engineer with several certifications and help other VSHNeers.