In my spare time I’ve been exploring Second Life, the virtual playground analogous to the Metaverse from Neal Stephenson’s Snow Crash. I’m having an interesting time orienting myself in-world, which could spark a lot of fascinating discussions on the Second Life UI, usability, and the transmission of non-textual, non-verbal information — as Hiro Protagonist recalls in Snow Crash, “condensing fact from the vapor of nuance.”

For right now, I’m more interested in The Tao of Linden, a document Linden Lab (creators of Second Life) put together to describe their office culture. Take a few minutes to read it, it’s worth it. The basic points are:

• Work together!
• Your Choice is Your Responsibility
• Be Transparent and Open
• Make Weekly Progress
• No Politics!
• Have a Sense of Humor
• Do It With Style

When I finished reading, I was struck — not only by how great the culture sounded, but by how closely most of these policies resembled ours. I’m the youngest Innovian by age and the second-youngest by tenure, and I think this gives me a fairly unique perspective.

For example, Innova lets me play pool, drink beer and write blog posts, all on their time and their dime. Now, a lot of companies would balk at offering these things, because they distract from working. For me, it works exactly the opposite: Innova’s very good to me, wants me to be comfortable and have a life outside of just developing software all the time. In return, I very much want to contribute to the company’s growth and to watch the company succeed.

Similarly, if I’m having a problem getting a project out by deadline, I feel comfortable going to any of my coworkers to ask for help, because Innova has fostered this atmosphere where it benefits me more to have people know I’m not good at something and try to help than it does for me to hide my deficiency and suffer quietly. Same with “management” — our hierarchy is pretty flat, and they’ve done such a good job at fostering a friendly environment that I feel very comfortable going to Matt or Dan and telling them that a project is slipping. This allows them to manage client expectations before things get out of hand. The alternatives would be for me to either work very hard and very late to get the project finished — good in some situations but usually leads to poor quality code and burn-out — or to hide the fact completely, which doesn’t do anyone any good at all.

Adjusting to this type of culture, coming from the traditional “keep working or you’re fired” model, has been enlightening. Everyone’s had at least one job where they dreaded interacting with their boneheaded coworkers every day, or where they were constantly wondering in what new, exciting way the company was going to screw them this quarter. This leads to poor work, because you honestly don’t care. But apparently, if you treat your employees with respect and foster an atmosphere of self-improvement, they want to work hard for you. What a novel idea!