Stampede Rant » Team

Fail and Fail Fast

Shaza Hakim — Sat, 13 Aug 2011 20:19:53 +0000

Help employees get their bearing back, send them out there again, then get the hell out of the way.

Shaza shares her take on why companies should permit employees to fail. Shaza is the Creative Lead at Stampede.

Zana wrote a brilliant post earlier today about nurturing creative culture at workplace. Her posts are always very insightful and I want to extend that with how we do things at Stampede.

When we started Stampede some good 5 years ago, Dov and I were still cringing at our share of bad workplace experience. Our goal then was to create a working environment where people not unlike us can do stuffs they really like while actually enjoying each others’ company. My litmus test when I wake up every morning is almost always – “Do I want to go to work today?”

You cannot underestimate the power of working with people you like. If you are an entrepreneur and have the choice, this should be high on your list. Not profit, not product. People.

Which brings me to my next point. So you found a person who is a perfect fit to your company culture. What next?

I think that it is crucial to build a company culture that allows employee to fail and fail fast. Everyone fails. You shouldn’t tiptoe and delay the inevitable. Only by throwing away your reservations and trying things and risking failure, you are able to learn new things. The key point here is moving forward – not to dwell on your failures or repeating the same mistakes. The former is denying yourself of further greatness (and I mean this in every sense of the word) and the latter is just, well, plain lazy. We abhor lazies.

At the speed in which this industry thrives, failing and moving on is a ubiquitous advantage. Never before an outcome of failure can be rectified almost immediately. If it’s beyond repair, be genuine and honest about it. Clients appreciate transparency and only know too well that everyone is fallible to some degree. Get it out of your system, step back and think of another way around it. Nip the negativity in the bud and move the project, and yourself, into positive territory again.

My take – everyone should be permitted to fail. I fail on daily basis, as few dozens half-finished artworks can testify. Dov’s intensity of hacking at his keyboard multiplies when he couldn’t get some code to work. Failure is an acceptable by-product of actually doing something. A good team is built to weather, nay encourage, the education of failures. People will be too scared to try new things if they’re too busy dodging toes.

On the other side of the coin, a company should have a failure-handling mechanism well-oiled and ready. Assure employees that failure is acceptable, help them get their bearing back, send them out there again, then get the hell out of the way.

So fail and fail fast. Then dust yourself off and move on. Rinse and repeat.

“All happy families are alike…”

Zana Fauzi — Sun, 24 Jul 2011 17:15:17 +0000

There is a reason Leo Tolstoy came up with that aphoristic brilliance of a first line in his novel, Anna Karenina.

Zana loves her new family so much she bugs for their status updates every single day without fail. Zana is the Project Manager at Stampede.

Here’s one thing about me – the day before joining a new company I would always establish the idea that my team members are like my family. That way, in times of those affectionate points of brushing past each other purring contently or during those fraught moments of tearing each other’s hair apart, I will be obliged to love and protect them, come high or low.

I carried the same notion with me the day I joined Stampede as a Project Manager. And just like all families, every member has their own quirkiness which makes every one of us unique. Here’s how I see them:

Dov

Let’s start with Dov. He is The Man, that’s how the boys call him. He’s the male parental unit of the family, generally taciturn, only speaks when he needs to. And when he does, his words are worth quoted and framed. The boys look up highly to him, at some point they fear him but often it is for a good cause. He never needs to speak much to convey his message, just a little sideswipe glance and the boys would scramble out of their seats, jostling against each other to finish their homework so that they could gain extra gaming hours.

Shaiful ‘Holmes’ Borhan

And then there’s the big brother, Shaiful. As opposed to Dov (but just as awesome), he is very laid-back, speaks in a pleasant drawl and regards everyone as his ‘homies’. Despite that, he’s whom everyone runs to when Daddy gives that fearful sideswipe glance. A few reassuring words, and we would be on the right track back again.

Guo Lin

There would always be a nerd in the family – here is our very own Guo Lin. Despite always racking his brain with what-to-do-next’s and here’s-what-I-think lists which never failed to blow our mind, he is often highly critical of himself. At the risk of sounding like a hypocritical mission statement for a tire & rubber company, he strives to be the best among the best among the best. We all love him for his competence and awesomeness, but often never admit because when every time we say “Congratulations, GL!” after a victorious feat, he would go, “Er, OK?”

The Twins

In real life, they are not one – but we have the twins, Syazwan and Mujib. Just like every pair of twin, although they might be identical there will be always be opposing traits that the family always welcome with open arms (although sometimes we leave them debating with each other in the distant corner of the video call). Syazwan is an Android enthusiast, while Mujib is devoted to Team iOs – so we often see them bashing each other about their perennial partialities to their favorite operating systems.

Shaza

Of course we shall not forget about our female parental unit, Shaza. Just like every mother, she is just as protective and wants the best for everybody. Analogically speaking, it’s like as she was trying to let us cross the street after a number of hours of road safety lessons at school, in an instant her mind would go, “It’s OK, Shaza, let go, let them explore on their own.” and after a few seconds she would go again, “Don’t go too far, come back! Let me show you how!” Of course, just like every mother, she has the ability to multitask like a bawse, and escapes unhurt every single time.

Zana

Then there’s me – the crazy, domineering sister.

There will always be one in the family – when the father’s scary sideswipe glance, the mother’s comforting words and the big brother’s reassuring pat won’t work – here’s where the bossy sister comes in. She reminds you every 5 minutes when you forget to clean up after your sleepover. She sticks Post-It notes all over your corkboard (of which she installed for you in your room) reminding you to do your own laundry. And when you forget to do so, she does it for you. Just when you are about to be grateful, she sends you a text message reminding you to walk the dog, when you are about to do so.

Nevertheless, this is what family is about. Some may drive everyone off the wall more than the others, some may be the instant family favorite, some may be just sitting on the fence watching the conversation over family dinner evolves from kindergarten to puberty – in the end, as I was saying, when you are a family, you are obliged to love and protect for each other come high or low.

Stampede team is made of this, amongst many other beautiful traits, and I am so grateful to join this family. (I hope the feeling is mutual).

(Pic: The Winslows of Family Matters, remember them?)

My Favourite Dudes

Anita Zein — Tue, 31 May 2011 18:16:39 +0000

They executed a well-orchestrated maneuver and completed their tasks with a bang.

Anita Zein is very proud of the team and she wants the entire world to know. Anita is the Project Manager at Stampede.

There’s nothing more fun for a manager than to see the crew she led successfully meets their target. And while having much fun too.

A project requires many things: fulfillment of responsibilities, good cooperation, effective communication and the awareness to be your own leaders. For the past one year, Stampede has been actively managing post-development tasks for one of our biggest accounts. As with other projects, there were stumbling blocks. But more recently and particularly today, everyone shines at meeting the demands of their. They executed a well-orchestrated maneuver and completed their tasks with a bang.

Mothers, Lock Your Daughters

We’re very proud of our three young dashing crew – Syazwan Hakim, See Guo Lin and Mujib Jazmin. Between the three of them, they tackled updates on a severely limited system and resolved them instantly. On a live server.

GL, Mujib and I received requests from the client and quickly distribute the tasks to the expert in charge. Mujib handled anything design-related, Syazwan did his front-end magic then GL followed through with the real deal coding. We then reported progresses and completion to the client on the same hour within minutes.

This is definitely my dream team. Their young spirits and friendship are invaluable to me. We had so much jokes and fun during the session, it was hilarious. Cherry on top – I received word that the client was very pleased with our response and speed. He skyped me kind words until he ran out of praise.

I’m surrounded by three extraordinary men in the team. Yeah I’m happy.

(picture by Ken Ludwig)

Why Higher Education Is Overrated and Skills Aren’t

Shaza Hakim — Fri, 30 Jul 2010 14:08:54 +0000

“MIT’s motto isn’t Mens et Manus (Latin for Mind and Hand) by accident.”

“[It is] painfully clear to many employers [that there] are serious gaps between elite educational credentials and actual individual competence. College transcripts spackled with As and Bs — particularly from liberal arts and humanities programs — reveal less about a candidate’s capabilities than most serious employers need to know. Even top-tier MBA degrees often say more about the desire to have an important credential than about any greater capacity to be a good leader or manager. The curricular formalities of higher education — as opposed to its informal networks of friends and connections — may be less valuable now than they were a decade ago. In other words, alumni networks may be more economically valuable than whatever one studied in class. “Where you went” may prove professionally more helpful than “what you know.” That certainly undermines “value of education” arguments. While higher education itself isn’t marginal or unimportant, its actual market impact on employment prospects may be wildly misunderstood. In “Econ 101″ terms for job-hunters: time spent cultivating your Facebook/Linked-In network(s) may be a better investment than taking that Finance elective.”

Excellent argument on why great knowledge is not the same as great skill by Michael Schrage of the Harvard Business Review.

Launching Real Soon

Shaza Hakim — Tue, 01 Jun 2010 01:28:30 +0000

Up to this hour, we’re still doing last minute removal of things from the original Stampede v3 design. With the amount of content we’re dealing with – 24 dissected portfolio pieces at last count – 8 months of detailing work on weekend and after hours don’t seem at all extravagant.

All in all, I spent around 180 hours of design time and that’s not only because of the level of complexity involved, but mostly the routine of going macro when everything is done, then removing almost half of it.

I still do incremental design change after sending the templates for Joomlafication, some so minute that only the most observant will notice. If we don’t have our own internal programming powerhouse, I can only imagine the costly bleeding.

Because this is the most ambitious project we have done for ourselves just yet, tension does run high and heated arguments over design vs code were so commonplace that when we finally come to an agreement, it was worth sitting back to take in what just happened. Such is the merry partnership I have with Dov.

It took 4 major revisions, countless minor ones, a bit of going back and forth with the rest of the team for valuable insight (whether to place this element or that on the right or left or scrap it altogether). Stampede v3 was almost a practice of convoluted layering (up to 400 at last count) to achieve a particular blend, testing out new composition for different content type, revising typography properties. Let me not bore you. Needless to say, it required plenty of patience as well.

Though I must say the only constant throughout the revisions was our signature color red. Our new logo and branding does not go through multiple iterations like most design agencies do. The branding – if you can call it that – was a split second decision of deciding what embodies Stampede. After that was decided and validated by the rest of the team, we now have a new logo, polished and all but still represents the very same identity.

Stampede has been very blessed and lucky, to say the least. We have a good score of clients who pretty much leave most design and development decision to us. We also get smart young people generous enough with their passion and time to become part of our team. I felt it’s about time for us to share values that have prevailed since Stampede’s very early days so we have designed and built a special page for this. As co-policymaker at Stampede, I probably have more fun with the Values page than most people expected.

So when v3 is finally launched, you may find it look way simpler than the actual effort – I sure hope so after the many hours spent mulling over what to safely remove and what to keep.

But then again, Stampede’s own website design has always been a sort of escapism for us from daily client requirements. It’s something we don’t do everyday and probably will never do again. For that reason alone, I know a few more days of punishing pixels is worth it.

On Good Communication

Anita Zein — Sat, 08 May 2010 07:47:32 +0000

Good communication attracts great clients and bring about the happiest of team.

Anita Zein writes about the importance of communicating good especially in the wonderful chaos that comes with her project management turf. Anita is the Project Manager at Stampede.

In the work we do, everything involves multi-directional communication: telephone, messages, faxes, emails, even notes. A successful project or product is often achieved only if all parties involved truly understand each others motivation and goals.

In almost all aspects, communication is the one definitive role in the success of a project.

Working separately of distance and time with the team and the client is a new experience to me. Face to face communication is easier, but it’s not always possible. Even so, there is no excuse for a disconnect in communication, especially with a number of supporting facilities that allow for effective and accurate transfer of information. Distance and time is no longer an obstacle now even if your team and your clients are not in the same location, or in the same country.

Here at Stampede, we use all sort of communication tools: Basecamp, instant messaging, voice conference, email, telephone. We even send each other reminders via ReminderFox. All these tools, when applied right, greatly facilitate the type of work we do, to help deliver ideas and keep us focused on details. I do find written communication more productive. To me, everything noted and recorded can always be quickly reopened and referenced at any point of project development. There is very little margin of misinterpretation too.

Nevertheless, you shouldn’t depend sorely on communication tools. The most basics of communication delivery is also important to master. Firm messages are easiest to understand while properly composed questions will encourage productive discussion and further attention to details. Keep your communication clear and concise. Without it, misinterpretation is bound to happen and I have seen plenty of problems resulting from the tiniest of misunderstanding.

Any successful project accounts for delivery of work product on time and with agreed and planned quality. Poor communication can result in severe delays, uneven workload and consequently, hinder a company’s growth. Good communication, on the other hand, will attract great clients and bring about the happiest of team to work with.

(Image from MIX’s brilliant Building a Website, Explained)

My Path So Far

Syazwan Hakim — Fri, 30 Apr 2010 22:13:18 +0000

“We are a company of perfectionists and working in this team has made me one too.”

Syazwan Hakim writes about the experience that led him to Stampede and what has transpired since. Syazwan is the Front-End Developer at Stampede.

My first experience with computer started in late 1997. Internet was still new and hype for many back then. I remember paying MYR1 for an hour of internet surfing at the nearby cybercafe. Since then, my interest in computer and internet blossomed quickly.

That was the era of addictiveness to Internet Relay Chat for windows or better known as mIRC. I did my very first mIRC Remotes against room menace such as spammers and abusive operators. That was the start of my programming experience.

In 2006, while studying at UniKL Malaysian Institute of Information Technology (UniKL MIIT), I learned to code in C++ and Java. I also did some part-timing, working on simple image processing. It was then that I recognized the importance of web image optimizing and how many different factors affect website load time. I also did some odd jobs at editing content in Joomla. That gave me a whole load of insight as to how Joomla works with HTML and CSS.

The Stampede Time

I was having my internship with a data company in KL when I was asked to try out the position of Front-End Developer at Stampede. Being an undergraduate, seeing real web developers in action has always interests me so I jumped on the plane to meet the lead developer, Dov. With what very little knowledge in programming, I absorbed the work culture and training pretty quickly.

Throughout the learning process in April 2009, I was in Langkawi during the weekends and then hurry back to KL for my internship work during weekdays. Because of the limited time, most of my practice happened remotely.

Dov taught me a few essential front-end guidelines that are important to Stampede: paying very close attention to design details in PSD artwork, W3C validation, cross-browser testing, semantic code and proper documentation among all. Most importantly, he also encouraged me to Google things up to build my web vocabulary.

Under Dov’s guidance, I began work with my first project. It was for one of our clients in the US. I didn’t look back. Back in KL, I started to explore more about HTML/CSS. I’ve found that the only way to truly master building front-end pages is through a lot of practice. So practice and practice I did.

As a rookie, I did encounter issues that I was too green to fix myself. But then again, I have Google. During my first few months at Stampede, I relied heavily on Google and the rest are pure trial-and-error until I’m satisfied that the issues are fixed. Like most of us, I was having a hard time trying to render everything correctly on IE6 and IE7. I didn’t know that Stampede used to cater to IE 5.5 even!

How It Has Been

I think that a front-end developer holds a very unique position in a team. You have to be well-versed in both design and web programming. You need to know what the web designer wants to achieve and how to build the code efficiently for the web programmer. We’re very particular about design details (whitespace, text leading, typography etc) and it’s a very rewarding challenge for me to build webpages that are as accurate to the artwork as possible while still keeping them organized, efficient and valid. We are a company of perfectionists and working in this team has made me one too.

The Road From Here On

Despite the workload, learning new things is necessary too. You shouldn’t get too comfortable with the knowledge you have at present. Take the initiative to try something new and see how far you can go. I’m now going into some Javascripting and using frameworks like Mootools and jQuery. XHTML/CSS templating into Joomla is next on my list. Huge thanks to my Stampede team for their encouragement and guidance.

So that’s my story of how I became Stampede’s front-end developer. How about you? What’s your story?

(photo and more Lego Star Wars by Mike Stimpson)

On-Campus Interview

Shaza Hakim — Mon, 19 Apr 2010 18:41:31 +0000

“Suddenly you feel like an underdog. Ain’t life grand.”

Shaza Hakim fulfills her duty (so requested by Shaiful Borhan) as the chronicler of Stampede Design’s annual on-campus interview at Universiti Teknologi Petronas. Shaza is the Creative Lead at Stampede.

Consider An On-Campus Interview

You are an IT student, black circles under your eyes from that last attempt at submitting your Final Year Project in one coherent piece. You have an interview with a web company and you’ve heard all sort of cautionary tales and advise about your future career.

The university indulges you but being in IT, you can’t help but feeling marginalized over your fellow soon-to-be engineer friends. This is after all, an engineering university, where engineering future is made.

You are under-motivated, overworked and just barely made it to your 8.30 am interview. You heard you are one of six students selected from a pool of forty. You’re confident that your well-ironed shirt will leave a good impression, until you see another student arrived in a black suit with a sleek briefcase in tow, looking all polished and caffeinated. Suddenly you feel like an underdog. Ain’t life grand.

You walked into the interview room and exchanged greetings with the interviewers. They looked young and somewhat casual, probably mid-20s. They screened your resume and you started to sweat. You began to wonder if you spelled “proficient” correctly. Acting nonchalant, you flashed your biggest smile. Then one of them shot the first question,

“How good are you with PHP?”

I dare say the students we interviewed that Friday morning were in for a surprise.

Why We Interview?

To most companies, this is a blasphemy. “Of course you interview to hire more people in order to grow your business and generate more income.” I disagree.

Stampede’s hiring rate is one person a year, but we work hard and interview far and wide to get that one person. I believe that you do not have to hire many to achieve whatever goals you choose for your company. In most cases, you’re only adding unnecessary overhead to your otherwise agile and flexible team.

The number of employees you have is not a prerequisite to a successful business. You can be successful by staying small if staying small means keeping your people happy and giving your client work quality no bigger company can. By hiring at the rate of one person a year, Stampede is able to focus on training and introduction to our work culture, not by how quickly the person can start hacking codes. Most importantly, we are able to grow sustainably, without compromising our values.

Why Fresh Graduates?

Amazingly, this is the least-tapped pool of young talents in Malaysia. Most companies either look for candidates with significant industry experience or fresh grads with outstanding academic qualifications. Passion is often not in the equation.

Here’s what I think. People with experience tend to have one very big disadvantage: they bring with them culture from their previous work place. When they join Stampede, they tend to be highly individualized, not ready to share knowledge or responsibility. They sometimes conflict sense of teamwork with personal gain. Stampede is an office-politic-free environment. We keep communication flat so we can avoid elaborate hierarchical structure. This is not the case with other working environment where hierarchy is a way to manage and control.

In my years of interviewing and hiring, I personally find that fresh graduates should truly be the darlings of the industry. They are young and idealistic, eager to be an active part of the team. They are not (yet) affected by bad life choices. Most importantly, they bring a different level of energy to a company.

Some managers balk at the training cost. It does take more effort and patience to guide these high-octane powerhouses towards the right direction, but at the end of the day, we are in the business of nurturing talent and giving them work they are passionate about.

When you have a team of people truly invested in their work, you are doing it right.

“How Good Are You With PHP?”

Because we have a web developer vacancy, Dov did the preliminary filtering this time around. He easily trimmed a stack of resumes into six short-listed faces – a feat I never quite managed to do. A resume can be very misleading, with happy internship pictures and big company name-dropping. The most essential element we looked for was promising web programming skill. You may have interned at Intel but if you’re not good in PHP, then we’d rather not be wasting your time.

Dov as usual, was very direct about his requirements. He’s very involved with the hiring process of any new programmer and can be brutal with questions. There were times when I wished I weren’t in the student’s shoe. I am sure Shaiful and Guo Lin know this well. When he’s interested with a student’s PHP work, Dov would reach across the table, grabbed the laptop and dissected the code himself. It wasn’t a pretty sight when he ever-so-gloriously did an SQL injection vulnerability test via the login prompt. The student went pale. He only got his colors back when Dov said “That’s okay, you’re new.”

My questions, on the other hand, were centered more on the soft skills – what aspect of web development that really interests the student, what he aspires to, what an ideal workplace is like to him. These are important because we are, at the most basic, a team. We spend a great deal of time working together so the next person to join the team should be just as fun. Besides, I was due for a Stampede dinner that weekend to relay the summary of our interview to the rest of the team.

Some of the students however, were interested in other fields. One was into computer networking and the other quite a decent ASP programmer. They were honest enough to let us know the type of work they’re interested in. You could easily see that these are good students, though perhaps misguided by their seniors to simply settle for any job opportunities.

My advise in return, don’t compromise your interest. There’s only so much opportunity in life to do what you love, so start steering your way towards that now.

Was It Worth It?

For sure. The students left the interview room happier than when they came in. That alone makes it a good interview day for me.

(wonderful photography by Antontang)

This Is How We Do It

Anita Zein — Tue, 30 Mar 2010 17:54:48 +0000

It takes more than adjusting to new work culture and job experience.

Anita Zein gives a sneak peek to the diverse work environment at Stampede that makes us the great team we are. Anita is the Project Manager at Stampede.

I’m sure many out there wonders about the unique work culture at Stampede. Working in an industry off-internet means putting yourself in a global environment. A team where people are not likely to be friends, not speaking the same language, sometimes people you won’t meet for the next few months.

In the beginning, the main challenge is knowing and understanding what your task entails and who are affected by it. Then as you move on being a more integral part of the team, you will find that it takes more than adjusting to new work culture and job experience. Communication is the main requirement of a team’s success and communicating with a team dispersed globally is in itself a great challenge.

Language

Each one of us comes from different background and have our very own native tongue. English is the predominantly first language here at Stampede but we make efforts to introduce new team members to the common English/web terminologies we use everyday. Most of us are semi-veterans in the field so our lingos can be overwhelming to the uninitiated. I converse often with new team members to give them confidence and shake away their fear of speaking in foreign language.

Timezone

Most of us at Stampede works on Eastern Standard Time, a 12-hour difference that makes daytime to our clients evening to us. Partly this is because we get to facilitate quicker response when communicating with the other side of the world. It is not an imposed rule though, everyone has the option to flexible work hours of their choice. Frankly, we’re all perfectly happy working nights anyway.

The time difference may seem extreme at first. There are meetings and voice conferences with international clients, rallying team members at 2am. But we have among the best clients a company can hope and a team to die for. Although like normal work hours, concentration does get pathetic around midnight. This is when having fun people to work with pays off.

Work Ethic

Work ethic is paramount here. Everyone must have sense of ownership towards the task at hand and take initiative to progress a project forward. We believe in diligence and hard work, the same goes for learning new things consistently. When things gets real hectic, it’s sometimes easy to forget that checking in with your fellow co-workers and clients is just as important as completing tasks on time. Having a strong set of ethical conduct in the background while the entire team is buzzing with work ensures that our Stampede values remain intact.

Culture

Our team is an ensemble of talent from different countries with different cultures and communication habits.

In Indonesia for example, we are used to an environment where people debate and discuss less. Conversation about a subject is done within a few small talks, nothing elaborate. It could come across as impolite or disrespectful at times, but it’s just the environment that demand fast result for all given instructions. No questions, no haggle, no debate.

It clearly differs from the culture in Stampede where communication thrives on everyone’s active participation. Major decisions are bounced around the team, analyzed and discussed. We share responsibilities and work together towards a goal. The ability to learn any cultural background and adapt quickly is therefore a necessity because effective communication ultimately leads to great work.

So you see, wherever we come from, we have the same opportunity here at Stampede. If you have interesting ways of handling diversity in your work environment, share them with us!

(photo by Barry Feldman)

Time difference is extreme between the team and the clients requires us to be ready when needed for meetings or communications in the form verbal with our international clients. And of course not every day, because the client also understands the condition.

At the beginning, very difficult to adapt to the hours worked in reverse. Adjust to the client working hours, with 12-hour time difference. With the time normally used for sleeping, now have to get up and work. And conversely, a break in the afternoon.

Concentration difficulties are common, nothing is easy. But if there’s a will, there is nothing impossible.

Just Another Day at Work

Dov Nazarov — Sat, 13 Feb 2010 19:12:41 +0000

“Workplace challenge? Scoff. Get an office cat.”

Dov juggles between his New York hours and now Madrid, all the while with ridiculous distractions from this furry little critter at Stampede. The partners are yet to agree on a name – to Dov he’s Luke and Shaza Hugo. Dov is the Development Lead at Stampede.