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Lessons from MySQL

Posted in , Mon, 26 Jun 2006 21:36:00 GMT

I picked up a copy for Fortune Magazine's Secrets of Greatness: Teamwork! issue for the flight to YAPC::NA. There was an insightful article on MySQL. MySQL has 350 workers in 25 countries and 70% of them telecommute. This structure has led to some hiring practices contrary to the norm in other organizations.

  • Employee characteristics: Given the decentralized nature of its organization, MySQL for skills, not the ability to play nice with a team.
  • Finding talent: MySQL finds some of its talent (50+ employees) through open source cntributions to its code base. Others also look for developers among those that actively check in good code.
  • Work schedule: CEO Marten Mickos says:
    The brightest engineers like the calmness and coolness of the night
    and likes hearing the following from prospective employees:
    question: How do you plan your day?
    answer: I always sleep until 11 A.M., and then I start working

While working late at night seemed common when I was in college, when I got to the workplace many developers seemed to work a regular schedule leaving around 5-6pm, albeit in a regular office environment as opposed to MySQL's telecommuting environment. Do you like to work at night and is it common to come in "late" and work late at places other than MySQL? Also, in a non-telecommunting situation, is this mostly for developers without kids? If you do have a start late / work late schedule, why do you like it and what time to you tend to start work?

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