Small Is Beautiful is a collection of essays by British economist E. F. Schumacher, published in the early seventies. One of the book's recurring themes is how modern organisations stripped the satisfaction out of work, making the worker a mere anonymous cog in a huge machine. Craft skill was no longer important, nor was the quality of human relationship: human beings were expected to act like adjuncts to the machines of the production line.
I haven't really read the book, but it makes for a great title and an even better comparison point to Tribe Four. People here at Futurice are divided into Tribes (a fancier word for teams) and the main motivation for this is the exact opposite of what was described in Mr Schumacher's book. Tribes exist so people can work in an environment that’s familiar, encouraging and (for lack of a better word) fun. Small enough to cater to the individual, big enough to make an impact.
Nowhere is this more apparent than in Tribe Four, as we are the smallest of the bunch. There’s some fifteen of us and that’s already counting a few pets. We might be small in numbers, but we’re big on heart and personality. Now we want to welcome new members into our team.. sorry, tribe and as you, dear reader of this post, might well be our future colleague, I thought it might be a good idea to show what working at Tribe Four is like:
Formal working attire is mandatory.
Prepare to carry your colleagues if need be.
Good personal hygiene is appreciated but not a must.
Carry the tribe heraldry with pride and honour.
Back to work guys. See you later!
On a less serious note, Tribe Four is a great place to be. For instance: Futurice is an international company with offices in Helsinki, Tampere, Stockholm, London, Berlin and Munich. In those offices we have approximately 30 nationalities. When you join Tribe Four / Futurice, you become a part of an international crew. Your home base is in Helsinki, but you will have the opportunity to work in an international team at one of our offices abroad.
In Tribe Four we do highly ambitious, world class projects for clients such as TeliaSonera, Lassila&Tikanoja, Wärtsilä and VR. We need experts in every field, back-end front-end, project management and design. The technologies we use the most are (but not limited to): Node.js, React, Scala, Swift, Heroku & AWS.
For a further introduction on work life at Futurice please see this blog post. It is written from tech peoples' point of view but the key values there apply to other fields as well. We are anxiously waiting to hear from you (like literally pressing the refresh button on our mailbox right as you read this line). So pretty please, now.
Joakim SchonertPrincipal Designer