All the A’s for your Q’s
Hi there, my name is Katarina and I’m the People Manager at FatCat Coders. Since I've been here quite a while, I gather and answer the most common questions about FatCat Coders.
Yes, FatCat Coders supports remote work for many of our roles. We believe in flexibility and choosing work environments that enable our team to perform at their best. Specific arrangements can vary by role and department.
The net working hours refer to productive hours. So on average daily we work six productive hours, amounting to 30 productive hours during a typical workweek. Breaks are not counted in six working hours, but employees can have as many breaks during the day. We offer a lot of flexibility, so our work hours and breaks can be arranged in various ways allowing us to accommodate personal needs and preferences. For example, we can split our work into three hours in the morning and another three hours in the evening. Alternatively, we could have eight productive hours one day and four hours the next or use any combination from day to day. We accommodate the productive time according to the tools and software necessary for your role.
We use an application to measure productive work time. This app records the time spent on specific applications and websites. If the content or tools are relevant to our work (such as Slack, blogs, emails, etc.), that time is counted as productive hours. We do not record the person or take screenshots. Employees can check all productive and non-productive hours at any time within the application. This tool provides the flexibility to manage personal obligations while keeping track of productivity during the week.
At the beginning of the workday, you turn on the app, and at the end of the day, you turn it off. During breaks, you can choose whether to turn it off or not (the app will track extended computer inactivity and won't count those hours as productive). Importantly, there's no need for daily reports or logging of what work was done.
The app can track time on all the applications and tools necessary for our work. Additionally, anyone can propose additional sites and tools to be added and tracked for productivity.
It's rare for anyone to forget to turn on the app as it quickly becomes a routine. However, if it occurs or if you have a meeting in the office, you can manually enter that time. Simply log the date and time you want to count as productive in the app, and it will be approved by your Manager.
If, for any reason, an employee has fewer project responsibilities and more free time, we expect them to communicate this to their People Manager and Tech Lead. This is important because other colleagues may need assistance, or the employee can use this time for training and development, or even for rest.
Our official working hours are from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m., and this is the time when most of our colleagues will be online. However, we have the freedom to organize our work schedule according to our personal needs. One day, an employee can work four hours, and the next day they can work for eight hours, as long as they have 132* productive hours by the end of the month.
*Hours may vary depending on the month's working days.
Working at FatCat is unique and we recognize the way we work at the moment is not for everyone. To succeed and advance at FatCat, it's essential to be proactive and take ownership. You might find work here challenging if you are not:
Used to challenging projects - our staff from the first week is taking on important tasks and they start working on projects. Our vetting period is incorporated with real work, there are no separate testing or vetting tasks. There is more responsibility to it, but also a great chance to study.
Willing to learn - as a small company, we experience changes in responsibilities and the scope of work. With the aim of ensuring our people continually develop and grow, we highly encourage constant learning.
Ready to give up repetitive tasks - many companies require you to achieve certain KPIs and help the company grow in that way. Once employees achieve a certain level of expertise in one field, we do our best to assign them more challenging tasks.
Like responsibility - flexibility is a benefit at FatCat Coders. However, it is also a responsibility. If you are not comfortable with taking ownership of your responsibilities and having the freedom to organize your time to fulfill them, then FatCat Coders may not be the right fit for you.
Agile, but for real - being a very creative and driven organization, it's not uncommon for decisions and strategies on projects and other work to change in favor of new ideas or better solutions.
Taking initiative and hiding behind metrics - it is expected to fulfill certain expectations, but we are encouraging you to go beyond them. We do not prefer people who are only focused on fulfilling the set goals, but also challenge them and take their own initiatives.
Comfortable with transparency and feedback - we want all our employees to have honest feedback that can be useful for their personal career development. In our performance reviews and performance plans we tend to be rather honest (and useful for both hard and soft-skill development ) and that is what we expect from you. No sugarcoating!
Enjoying startup atmosphere – FatCat Coders do not have strict rules or clear policies on certain topics, as is common in most large corporations. Our team members collaborate daily, and our teams work together as well. We value cooperation, friendliness, and direct communication with one another.
The developers at FatCat are all proficient in JavaScript, and the majority are FullStacks as well. We use React, ReactNative, Nodejs, Next.js, Nest.js, AWS, Postgres, MongoDB, Docker, Contentful, Redis, GraphQL, Terraform, etc.