Why passion is key and competition should be cherished
NOTICE: Originally posted on May 11th 2018. We were known as ‘Lunar Way’ until late 2019.
In my last post, “A look under the hood”, I gave you a teaser about a more technical post about Android that’s coming soon — but I just had to write this piece first 👨💻
You may have heard Lunar Way has just received three awards for our app and design at this year´s Digital Danish Awards. When you look at the strength of the Danish tech scene and all the great work that’s being done, it makes us even more honored and truly humbled to have received the awards. But what is it about Lunar Way that makes our solutions worthy of recognition?
In this post, I will talk a bit about the work culture at Lunar Way and why I think we have the edge over others in our industry.
It’s about more than skills
Skilled people are a given at Lunar Way, we have an abundance of talent. But what really separates us is our commitment to a common goal. Lunar Way is filled with passionate people. They don’t see being part of Lunar Way as an ordinary job, but more like their hobby.
This is unique and something I have only seen to the same degree at other startups. It is a common occurrence that if any error emerges 75% of the tech team will be online within minutes ready at their computers no matter if it is 22:00 at night or Sunday morning. It is inspiring and satisfying to see this level of passion.
I’d like to share a common phrase at Lunar Way: SOFU = Sense Of Fucking Urgency. Introduced to us all by Founder and CEO Ken Villum Klausen. SOFU is used all the time to remind everyone of the speed we need to operate at to always be at the forefront.
This permeates every part of Lunar Way, with developers finishing new features faster than ever, to the support team answering inquiries before you expect a reply. Response times below 4 minutes! Just saying. This again ties back to the passion every employee at Lunar Way has. We would never be able to cope with the fast-paced environment if each individual weren’t 100% focused on the task at hand.
Competition is a positive
In earlier posts, we have talked about how we work in feature-squads, but across the feature- squads, we have our app teams focusing on either iOS or Android transcending features. Each developer loves their own platform and friendly jokes are part of the daily routine between the different platform teams. A fully fledged platform war is always lurking under the hood.
This brings me to my main point: This healthy competition between the mobile platforms heightens the quality of our output to a level it would not otherwise reach.
Let me explain.
As app developers, we always try to make everything as easy and pleasant for the user as possible. That is our main goal, but also a constant struggle because there is no single solution, and we could potentially take multiple paths to the same goal. Things become very interesting when a developer on the opposite platform comes up with a solution you hadn’t thought about, and you simply have to invent the wheel again to be ahead in the ongoing trench war. Several of the elements in our app came to life this way. It started out as a concept by our designers but evolved into something else even more impressive over time due to healthy competition and creativity.
In more traditional companies finding their feet in app development, there can still be this top-down approach to development. A final design is handed over by the design and product team and the developers just attack the problem of coding it all up without asking any questions or improving anything.
This works just fine, but it will never achieve the same level of quality and finish as a development process where every stakeholder questions the solution based on their unique professional background.
We often have heated discussions because of the passion everyone has. But we seem to be able to reach common ground most of the time, because of our common goal.
So while the tech and fintech industries are strong in Denmark, we believe these attributes are what set us apart, and are one of the reasons our team received recognition at the Digital Design Awards. The level of skill, commitment, and passion is something I’ve rarely experienced before, and probably will have a hard time finding again somewhere else.
NOTICE: Originally posted on May 11th 2018. We were known as ‘Lunar Way’ until late 2019.