zeal-technology

We agree

Yes it is also our product. We use it internally every day as well.

Here is the link to the bot we created and use on a daily basis. http://zeal.technology/

Hi danudey, We really appreciate your feedback and are taking it to heart. We were hoping to get in touch with you so that we could show our appreciation for the feedback you have given us.

Part of our mission is to help people be heard so that they can have a voice in shaping company culture and yours has been very appreciated here at Zeal. If we could get in contact with you so that we could show our appreciation that would be great! Let us know how we can get in contact!

Thank you for the encouragement! :) We are actively working on fixing our message on the website to be more direct and clear.

We do not aim to replace relationship between manager and employee. In fact our goal is to help strengthen the relationship. Believe it or not many managers do not have the proper training when becoming a manager to implement meaningful 1:1 meetings to solicit feedback and gauge how their people are feeling. We aim to better track and improve this relationship with gathered metrics so that managers never miss a beat. We also acknowledge that many people are not comfortable giving feedback in a one on one or publicly so our goal is to provide a channel for them to do so comfortably and productively. We have seen teams address feedback that has come through Ava and even implement and improve parts of their culture that management had no idea was an issue for its employees.

With that said, Ava is meant to strengthen relationships on the team and help the team collaborate when it comes to company culture. She even provides metrics on how relationships are within the company.

Thanks for the suggestion! We actually have buttons in the works, the should be up in the next few days for all teams. They do make it so that all you do is click and move on.

We're taking all the feedback that we're getting and prioritizing what to work on next, thanks for helping out!

That's fantastic feedback, we're taking everyone's comments and deciding what changes we want to implement next.

Noted :)

Ava reaches out to employees on a scheduleable basis and does what we call a "Check-In". Check-ins are short questions that are answered on varying scales that give insight into what is really going on at the company.

These interactions typically take between five and fifteen seconds to complete, and then you're back to whatever you were doing before. We have tuned when and how Ava reaches out to minimize annoyance, and to keep productivity high. We also let employees respond at their own convenience, so it's not like you have to immediately give Ava your attention.

Here's an example: http://i.imgur.com/M5cyOvZ.png

Thanks for the feedback! It really helps us revise what we do and do not show.

thank you for the feedback. we really appreciate it and will make adjustments

yes. if you navigate to http://zeal.technology/meetava.html it should give a bit more info. our product is a chatbot named ava. she integrates with your slack team and gauges how your team is doing. she uses weak ai to gauge your morale, autonomy, mastery and a few other things. she is conversational and allows you to provide anonymous feedback to your company.

sorry to hear that we will look at making some adjustments to come across more clear without the video

We can set up a demo for you. Currently we are working on a way to talk directly to ava without installing her.

Feel Free to ask us any questions here!

I might take action on this and ask our customers individually what they would like and compare across roles. If I sort this data I will definitely post my findings.

This is true and I think it is important to really value people. Trying to cut that because you can is not really nice nor motivating.

That is awesome! Remember that many people want to learn regardless of their skill level or experience level and everyone has something you can learn from them. Take advantage of both and try to connect with those around you. :)

This hits home for me. Having the attitude and atmosphere like this is very important! It makes such a difference to feel that the company and community has your back. It also takes so much stress out of work and adds to excitement. Well said.

Unfortunately we see too much of managers worrying about figures and utilization rates. These numbers are not always the best to go by. We like to try and empower each other to implement ways to improve our culture and build a better workplace that can benefit us in many ways. I hope that your company can realize the benefit this can have on the whole companies morale and productivity. Empowering your people to learn and improve helps everyone.

That is awesome! Do you have a community within work that supports this hobby? I know that we take time to support peoples hobbies and lives outside of the scope of our product and jobs. This can be a huge motivator and brings us a lot of joy and bonding for the team. We are people first and we take pride in our different skills and hobbies supporting each other any way we can. We would love to play test a board game!

I agree, flexibility and autonomy seems like a large roll in this discussion. I think acknowledging life outside of work is really important. Better yet work that suits your lifestyle can be very motivating.

Its a great observation and one that I think has struck many people. I would be interested in hearing a sales person and development person put their views on the table about the subject so we could see both sides and compare motivators between the two roles.

Autonomy is huge for us and being able to do work when you see fit tends to produce better code in our case. It also fits better into our daily lives and motivates us much more. I agree with unexpected bonuses and raises can be a good motivator too, but I have seen that the effect wears off faster than something that fits into your daily life and improves it.

I also agree with the above board approach! You are spot on there. Transparency through the good, the bad, and the ugly are really important to us. I think that with transparency comes strong trust and more respect in the work place.

We like to see and feel the motivation of each other "Owning it" or taking lead and pushing on a project emotionally and with Grit. If someone becomes a driving force for a project they think is important it creates a great sense of motivation for them and others around them. It is a core value that really pushes us to be better people and better developers.

I can tell that this is great insight for someone just out of college so before I start, props to you. Coming out of college and into my first job I found it beneficial for myself when starting to work on a problem first consider all alternative ways to solve it. I would consider things like would this be better off done in a different language? Using a different library? Using a different devops tool? Can I use some new technology that could help me learn something new? This helped me to broaden my expertise. At the same time remember to balance these choices. You may hear push back from people saying do not just use a new technology for the sake of it, you need a good reason to which I can also agree with.

Feeling connected and a sense of supporting community is really important to be happy with the work you are doing. I found that sense of community by making a friend at work, someone that I would hang with outside of work and could relate and support me in decisions. This friend also pushes me and we have some fun competitions sometimes to better our skills that we use for work or to learn new ones. I have since looked to make friends in more co-workers to build my community and network of people that give me this feeling and that I hopefully provide for them too!

I know this part sounds cliche and old but if there is no luck with co-workers or even friends then there is always the community you are talking to here! HN is a great way to improve and become active in community. HN is not the only one too, meetups around your area could be more common than you think. Take the time to get out and meet other people in your field and take it upon yourself to expand your network and community.

Overall I would say keep up drive for new experiences and career building. You might even try to suggest ways to improve and build community within your company! Take it upon yourself to see if you can push the company to implement your ideas! :)

I think a company hackathon or project week can be really cool. Team up with co-workers or just yourself that follows a topic like improve the office somehow or create an idea that can help an opensource project or improve development or another teams process throughout the workday. This can motivate people and at the end you may have something that solves a common day to day pain point for your co-workers.

I think that hack can be very good for advancing yourself. There are some people here that have said their companies encourage that and allow them to experiment with new technologies and learn different things. Maybe present the benefit of learning side projects or hackathons with the team and pitch it as team building to your company. See if you can get them to bite!

That is the I am at my company too! It is important for me to make a difference in work culture. I think that when something that fits your lifestyle and life goals provides you the ability to do it for work, it does not really feel like "work" and it is very motivating and moving personally. I think you are in the right spot if that is the way you feel. :)

I think it is awesome that your company allows you to use infrastructure to test new ideas and learn. It sounds like they have trust in you. Do they encourage you to experiment and try new things? Are these new things ever totally different from what your company does?