[Music] welcome to the world of programming for me there is a journey a life journey literally starting when I was a little kid and got hooked on computers when I was just 13 years old back in 1971 and I thought this is gonna be the coolest profession ever and yet there was another line that was going on it was my love for what I did as a profession I was falling out of love with my career what I saw was a death march culture 24/7 wasn't unusual by the time I was in my mid-30s I thought I can't do this anymore I can't keep doing this if we take people and put them in their sensory deprivation chambers let him put earbuds in their ears turn down the lights down low let them come in weird hours and then later complain that they have communication challenges with other human beings why would we be surprised by that what programming is really about is solving hard problems and that's really how Mendel was taught all of us are seeking the tools that connect more with our humanity to actually produce good work every single day you can actually end up changing the world if the work that you do like this the work authorization board as we call it is a paper-based system some refer to us is the Amish of software development because of this we choose tools we believe work better for humans we want to accomplish something bigger than ourselves and in order to do that we need collaborators we all sit in a big open room together there are no walls offices cubes or doors what we were really counting on is the serendipity of people overhearing the ideas of ours we're all willing to make the personal sacrifice to change the style in which we individually would prefer to work and instead choose a way that we work together best we let some light in we played matchmaker and put two programmers on one computer so they would collaborate to create the best ideas and two sets of eyes is better at catching bugs early and those aha moments programmers have they share them so our physical office space is a reflection of our cultural values if I think of the history of idle smarts and the history of memo I think we were on a very similar journey change behavior change the world when we became aware of the influencer model here at Menlo it literally began to explain to us why this works imagine the things in your organization those things that you know you can accomplish but you're struggling and all you have to do is try harder influencer becomes the vocabulary and the actionable model in how we can actually drive change through the organization instead of falling back on try harder which doesn't work if you get these six sources working in your favor you can't help but succeed people often wonder does this produce business results we work 40-hour work weeks six times in our 15-year history we've been recognized by Inc magazine as one of the fastest growing revenue companies we have the data that suggests we go ten times as fast in this environment and produce work that actually gets out into the world delights people with solid working software as leaders I think our job is to pump fear out of the room if people feel safe at work they will begin to trust one another you'll start to get collaboration and ultimately teamwork and then you get to what I believe every company on the planet is seeking now creativity energy imagination innovation in venture it's taught me how to be a better wife has taught me how to be a better mom it's being a better person in general we can actually end human suffering in the world as it relates to technology which has been our mission from day one [Music]