Be the change you want to see happen

Though this is often attributed to Ghandi, I actually prefer the quote and context of the quote as written by Arleen Lorrance in 1974. Ghandi addresses the need to develop the self as a key component of outward change (which is good), but Lorrance talks about this in the context of a project to radically love students in inner-city Brooklyn school. This kind of care for others is a defining aspect of Radial, from its inception, to it’s modern version.

We’ve been doing this long enough to be burnt out and cynical twice over. We’ve managed the company through The Circumstances, amd we’ve had our ups and downs, but the simple idea that we care for our clients and our fellows is the unchanging tenant of the organization. I think that the status quo is that a service business has to get what it can out of and engagement because it’s never going to see anything more than it can negotiate up front, but over and over, our clients have reflected that we’ve always felt like part of the team, because that’s what we wanted: for everyone to be on the same team.

Does this have an impact on outcomes? It does. We’re always willing to work a little harder, push for things to be a little better, and willing to go the extra mile when needed. Do we always get something out of it? We do, but sometimes it’s just the feeling that we did something good for our clients when they needed it.

– Ben

We’ve been doing this for a long time

For about the last 2 decades, everything has been brand new about every 2 years. This means that if you stop learning for 2 years, you basically know the same thing as someone who started yesterday. There are a couple of noteable examples.

First, the way we make software in the broad sense hasn’t changed in over a decade. Managing inter-related software modules still has basically the same constraints. What is built new today to be simple will be made complex in 5 years to accomodate the full breadth of use-cases. Thus every new technology will become, in essence the old technology it replaced by the time it can do everything the old technology did.

As someone who has seen trend after trend, the reinvention of the wheel reminds me that the most important thing about software is what you do with it, not the software itself. In fact, nothing about making things for other people has changed in a very long time. It largely predates software altogether. This is why having someone on your team who has the long view is so helpful. Such a person is less likely to get caught up in unimportant trivialities and is more likely to choose something tried and true, and no less capabale of acheiving the same results.

Give First

Radial hardly has a monopoly on this idea. We learned it from the Boulder Open Coffee Club crew and from Brad Feld, of the Foundry Group (also of Boulder). They said it was essential component of the Boulder Formula – the reason that the Boulder startup community was so successful.

But we’re not just copying the formula – it resonates. The Boulder Formula was a validation of the idea that a rising tide lifts all ships. We recognize that if we’re going to make it, either in our local community, or beyond, we will have to be part of that tide and we don’t believe that will happen unless people choose to make it happen. We can’t afford to wait to “give back.” We have to start creating that value now.

So if what we do doesn’t make sense – if you don’t understand the motivation – look for where we are giving first and remember that we’re giving out of our abundance and excess because where we have it, we share it, hopeful we will get it back in the long run, perhaps many times over.

We hire junior devlopers and you should too

Our senior-most staff is highly experienced and absolutely carries our team, but what we do wouldn’t be possible without our junior staff. Specifically, we hire directly from schools like Turing in Denver and Thinkful (which is remote and national). We find that hiring individuals in their second or third career has been amazing. Not only does our junior staff know how to execute, but they also know how to think like our customers in a way that people whose whole career has been in software cannot.

We leverage each unique perspective as they come in by hiring people who will be a great partner for our clients.

Because they are fairly inexperienced, our entire culture is built around members of the team supporting each other. This means that waste time is virtually non-existent. It means that everyone on the team develops the expectation of being helped and helping – key skills for senior talent in the industry.

This “University Culture” as we call it allows us to ramp hires from junior to senior in about 18 months. We teach them the skills of project management, product management, staff-level infrastructure and deployment processes, architecture, data modeling, and service-oriented architecture. We then expect them to teach each other, to replicate their skillset, and to grow their communication and transferrable interpersonal skills.

It has long been said “What if we train them and they leave” and the reply, “What if we don’t and they stay.” Ultimately, we believe that if we create the kind of place people want to work, that we don’t have to worry about people leaving, and we celebrate with those that do – few leave who are not starting more lucrative challening jobs.

Our Values

Culture isn’t a candy wall or an annual retreat. It’s the things you do. It’s what happens on Monday, and in the best case why you decide you want to go in on Monday, after all.

We rebuilt our culture as a team in 2018 because we wanted to get it right, and we believe that these values are what has made us successful, and when we have failed, it is because it was because we lost sight of what we valued. We don’t want this list to just be a bunch of nice words, but literally words to live by.

Intentionality Do things on purpose.
Integrity Regardless of what pressures may be, be consistent.
Cooperation Getting ahead is about helping everyone get ahead
Purpose Do things that matter
Responsibility If it needs to be done, do it. Don’t look around for someone else to get it done.
Relationality Be loyal to each other by resolving your differences and communicating your needs.

We also don’t just post these on the wall, they are the basis of regular reviews, of policy change, of conflict resolution, and they are the power every staff member has to hold anyone, including management accountable.

Founders

Ben West

Owner, Sales, and Principal Architect

Ben tends to think of time as a limited commodity and has his own style for living life to the fullest. He’s going to ask you hard questions and he has the same kind of high expectations for everyone that he has for his staff and his two kids. Ben wrote PHP for 10 years, but his love affair with JavaScript goes back to 1998 when he was first writing it for Windows Scripting Host building desktop automation and data-management. He switched hard to Ruby on the backend in 2013 and really kicked off the current iteration of his professional journey to being more focused on agency work rather than freelance. He’s also a competent Python developer, can write C++, and CSS.

Marshall Smith

Managing Director, Principal Developer

Marshall Co-founded Radial with Ben in 2015 because he wanted to help create the kind of company that is welcoming to developers and professionals of all stripes and because he wants his work to be something that impacts real people, that solves real problems, and which creates lots of value for society, in-general. He also is an accomplished pianist – if you meet him, don’t forget to ask when his next “Sweater Rock” or blues gig is, or engage him in a spirited discussion of John Williams, Rachmaninov, or Debussy. Marshall is the senior front-end developer at Radial and contributes to all projects on design and visual implementation. He also is our resident data-analysis expert and experienced in Python, Ruby, and Javascript.