InRhythm

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InRhythm’s success is built on the excellence of every employee, and the outstanding work they do every day continues to drive us to greater heights. While we look to hire the very best consultants at the outset, every employee is on their own career journey, and one of the cornerstones of our company culture is investing in the careers and lives of our people to help them be happier, healthier, and more proficient in their fields. Investing in this development has, for me, provided an enormous return in the form of profitability, productivity, and the overall wellness of our employees.

Personal Zen

InRhythmers already enjoy a company reimbursement for the music streaming service of their choice; music is a core part of the day for many of us, and it just made sense to keep everyone happy with their favorite personal playlists, unburdened by ads. Not everyone listens to music when they work, however, so this year we’re expanding the program to include audiobook services like Audible and wellness and meditation apps like Headspace, so each of our employees can define their own idea of work zen with our enthusiastic support.

Empowering our employees to find their focus and de-stress increases confidence and performance. Meditation, in particular, offers a number of benefits, including increased immune function and lowered anxiety, that pay huge dividends in and out of the office. We can’t always predict the future in this fast-moving industry, and no consultancy is immune from stressful days, but by giving InRhythmers the tools they need to stay grounded and happy, they can tackle the biggest problems and opportunities ahead of us.

A Better Future

We hire engineers and designers at all skill levels to work on some of the biggest industry-shaping projects, but each and every one of our consultants is ambitious and dedicated to growing their expertise. Our culture of learning and growth is designed to take every InRhythmer to the next level, whatever that might look like for them. InRhythmU, our suite of internal and client-facing training and development workshops, speaker series, and resources is a comprehensive platform for our people to learn from (and teach!) each other, sharing their mastery of everything from cutting-edge programming languages to soft skills like leadership, personal branding, and public speaking.

We also provide a coaching program that pairs our senior-level consultants with several mentees, each with their own specific goals for the year. Our coaches work individually with their mentees and consult with other coaches on guiding every InRhythmer toward goals they’ve self-identified. The result? Our people are working on everything from personal financial literacy to Chrome extension development, with our coaches and the entire culture of InRhythm as the wind at their back.

When you hire for the very best, you’ll find yourself surrounded by people who are naturally ambitious and hungry to learn. In practice, however, I see a huge deficit in the education provided by a lot of companies in our industry; while it’s fine for your employees to seek learning elsewhere, it’s also a huge missed opportunity to engage with your people and personally invest in their success. By providing these resources on-site at InRhythm headquarters and empowering our people to not only come to us to learn but also to teach each other, a richer culture is born.

P.S. We also encourage our speakers to open up their learning and growth events, where appropriate, to the general public. Whether you’re a current InRhythmer, looking to join the team, or just interested in the field, I encourage you to join our InRhythmU Meetup group to get the latest updates and RSVP info for upcoming events:

Design Sprints with Joe Cahill
April 24th | 5 pm | RSVP

Compassionate Coding with Brian Olore
May 16th | 5 pm | RSVP

GraphQL with Denny Temple
June 20th | 5 pm | RSVP

Advanced Design Patterns with Will Bratches
July 18th | 5 pm | RSVP

React Native with James Woods
August 15th | 5 pm | RSVP

We’ve got a lot of different events, owing to the wide-ranging interests of our consultants, so if there’s something that interests you, I look forward to seeing you at an InRhythmU event soon.

Thanks and Keep Growing,
Gunjan

The InRhythm Product Design Community

When you come to work at InRhythm, you’re part of a larger community of people—committed to learning and growing—who are as passionate about what they love as you are. InRhythm’s product design community is growing rapidly, and we continue to bring in the most talented and creative individuals who love helping users and building cool stuff. As Director of Product Design, I’ve made it my mission to use my 20+ years of design experience to mentor new employees and chart the course for this division’s success. Over two decades of work, I haven’t had a single day where I hated the career path I’ve chosen, and I want to foster that same energy throughout InRhythm. We’re more than a consulting company that places you on a client site; we’re more than a 9-to-5 job. Learning and growth at InRhythm is a lifestyle.

Fueled for Success

Product designers at InRhythm are some of the most passionate, driven people. We do everything, including UX/UI, design, research copywriting, and even Agile scrums and product ownership. Loving what you do as a designer does more than chart a successful career—it also influences people around you, and we want that same high energy and excitement in our everyday work and the educational pursuits of our personal passions. Not everyone understands the best practices or user psychology central to our practice; this is where you come in as a thought leader. Be the expert onsite, and elevate the quality of work for your teams.

Why is all this important? There’s a lot to be said for knowing your client, understanding their brand, being empathetic to their pain point, and creating embedded experiences that build new opportunities. Some agencies and firms only care about the end experience instead of understanding the process or story of a company; being an advocate for the users and the company is what makes for a premier user experience.

A Community Like No Other

At InRhythm, we don’t just drop you off with a client and go silent for six months—we’re a growing community that stays connected, whether it’s through Slack channels, happy hours, book clubs, and Meetups. We’re all here for the same thing: to grow and learn. Everyone is at your disposal because the best growth happens with the support of your peers, so if you want to learn something new or fill gaps in your existing knowledge, just ask!

Another benefit of working with us is the comfort and freedom to talk about your work and passions. InRhythmers lead and attend “lunch and learn” sessions on client sites, panel discussions, and interactive workshops at InRhythm HQ. You’ll never be alone in your ventures, and our community is here for everything from preparation and coaching to supporting you at your event as enthusiastic audience members.

Work Smarter, not Harder

It’s no secret that Agile and Design Thinking are hot industry buzzwords in our industry. These methodologies are great tools for making work more fun and efficient while inspiring the group collaboration that is at the core of our learning and growth culture. We embody those collective ideals, and design thinking can shape our experiences throughout our lives. When you download a new app, get a new piece of hardware, or even see how text and images are presented in a television show, you’ll find yourself starting that Design Thinking process. How did this feature get included? Why did they do this? Is this design fully effective for their target demographic? Or even something as simple as, “damn, that looks cool!” We research, sketch, iterate, and build experiences ourselves that we know will impact the end user in ways that will make a huge difference without them even realizing what went into it.

When you’re at work representing InRhythm, you’ll always be presented with challenges. Whether it’s interpersonal differences, tight deadlines, or just broken processes, InRhythmers always stay positive, focus on the drive that brought us here, communicate openly, and elevate the game for the people we work with. Regardless of who signs the paychecks, we all have a common goal to build something amazing on our client sites. No company is perfect (if they were, we wouldn’t be there to change things!) but how you show up, identify opportunities for improvement, and forge a path forward is what matters, and what sets InRhythm apart.

Leadership Takes Ownership

In my work at InRhythm, I listen to our clients’ needs, assess what they’re looking for, and our best-in-class recruiting team finds the perfect match to become a new InRhythmer. We want to hear about your process, why you make decisions, and how you ultimately reached those decisions. Anyone can push pixels, but it takes a specific type of person to talk about their work at the level we expect. Whether you’re just starting out or have been designing since the 90s, the type of devotion to your career and the disciplines behind it is what makes or breaks our hiring decision. Our selective process ensures not only your growth as a professional and person but also makes sure our clients thrive through work with some of the most impressive talent. Along the way, I make it my mission to check in with you and make sure your client work is on track to keep you challenged and growing constantly.

We hold biweekly calls that give you the opportunity to chat about everything from client site problems to the latest from your fellow InRhythmers. No one has all the answers, but we can supply you with the tools and stories you need as a group with a common mission. My primary focus is around your learning and growth; when you leave InRhythm, you’ll be better than when you arrived. We shape consummate professionals, teammates, and leaders within our community, and our accountability on all sides is why we’re built to succeed.

This year we plan on adding more UX/UI designers, visual designers, prototypers, UX researchers, scrum masters, dog lovers, thought leaders, cosplayers, crazy people, and—most of all—people who want to stand in front of a room of people and say, “let me tell you why knowing about *your subject* is important!”

Is that you? We’re hiring. Looking forward to meeting you.

 

Spread the Love—Life at InRhythm

 

Valentine’s Day is a great opportunity to share a little love with that special someone in your life. We remember the days of giving out Valentines to everyone in our class; in that spirit, we encouraged InRhythmers to share a little love this Valentine’s Day with an internal Love Day! Check out these photos of the gifts our InRhythmers enjoyed this past Thursday:

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We assigned secret Valentines to our ops team members, who were tasked with making their Valentine feel special all day without revealing themselves. While a few people gave themselves away to their Valentine early, there was so much festivity, free coffee, candy, cards, stickers, and shoutouts on Slack that we forgot all about the secrecy rule and just had a great time together!

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While we never need an excuse to share the love with our coworkers, we’re all about promoting the best environment for our people here at InRhythm, so any chance to celebrate is an opportunity to get to know each other better and have a little fun. When’s the last time you showed appreciation for your favorite coworker? Valentine’s Day may have come and gone, but you can definitely spread positivity where you work all year round. We sure plan to.

Stay up to date on the latest on life at InRhythm by subscribing to our blog below.

Moving the Needle: The Year for Women in Tech

The year after the birth of the #MeToo moment was a big one for women in STEM fields, and as we make our way into 2019 the new year presents new challenges and new opportunities to make the tech field more accessible and welcoming for women all over the world. The Women in Tech group here at InRhythm has a lot in the works—including volunteer efforts with high school girls and future panels featuring leading women in the field. In the meantime, we’ve rounded up articles and links into a digest for anyone looking to get more involved in our movement, catch up on the biggest stories, and follow thought leaders. For the latest on our own Women in Tech efforts, follow us on social media @GetInRhythm on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram, and @InRhythm on LinkedIn.

Words that Moved Us:

Making Gains for Women in STEM Fields Will Take More Effort | New York Times

How to Attract More Women (and not the way you think) | Hacker Noon

When Honest Women Replace ‘Self-Made’ Men | New York Times

Silicon Valley’s Year of Reckoning | TechCrunch

Move the Needle: Opportunities for Improvement

More than 60% of teen girls regret not studying STEM | Computer Weekly

Tech’s Biggest Challenge: Tackling The Pervasive “Confidence Gap” | Refinery29

Oberland Agency Confronts Industry Bias with New Videos | Ad Age

Accounts to follow:

@STEMforHer – A non-profit,D.C. Metro area-based foundation using education to encourage girls and young women to pursue STEM-related careers.
Women in Tech (@WITWomen) – nonprofit aimed at providing women in the tech field with networking and professional development opportunities
@GirlsinTech – a global non-profit focused on the engagement, education and empowerment of women in technology and entrepreneurship
@CodeFirstGirls – Uk-based organization providing courses and resources to get more women into tech and entrepreneurship.

Other Resources:

Geek Feminism Wiki’s list of women in tech groups
Jay Jay Ghatt’s 2018 edition of 200 Black Women in Tech to Follow on Twitter
Women in Tech Meetups happening in the NYC area

On the subject of Leadership vs Management

In a business environment, there is a huge difference between a leader and a manager. In many circumstances and in many companies these two terms are conflated and treated similarly. Arguably, I believe they are different and should not be performed by the same person (if your organization is large enough, that is. At a startup you cannot afford one person per role).

An important component in understanding the difference between leadership and management is to understand that these are responsibilities, not roles or titles. One’s title can be anything. My business card could say “Lead Software Engineer” or “Code Monkey Level 3,” but it does not change what my actual work and responsibilities are. Similarly, a responsibility is not the same as a role. Two people that have “Director” in their title could be, and are likely to be, responsible for managing different humans, different budgets, the outcomes of different projects, and in their day-to-day could work on completely different things. In the rest of this article we’ll take a look at the definitions and differences between leadership and management and how they can be applied.

Leadership

I define leadership as having a responsibility for the direction and success of your team. In many, if not most, cases leadership means you are not only responsible for direction and success, but also education. Leaders are responsible for providing growth opportunities and for the success of the project that they are attached to.

From an engineering perspective, “success” may mean that you have a product with zero known bugs and strong test coverage or a streamlined development process so your team can work as effectively as possible. From a product perspective, “success” may mean getting the product to market smoothly, communicating progress with any interested parties, and hitting all your desired/required features.

Leaders are supposed to be at the top of whatever technical chain they’re in. You can find leaders in engineering, product, business, design, and any other career track. This is reflected in how we use phrases like “industry leaders” to describe those who are setting the bar that all the rest of us aspire to grow to. Nobody says “industry managers” … I suppose because that would imply some sort of cabal or oligarchy. You’ll notice that I haven’t talked about employees, their hours, benefits, communication, or anything else related to that. Leaders are not responsible for humans, they are responsible for teams. They are responsible for providing resources to their team but they are not responsible for human needs.

Management

Management is all about the humans. Managers are responsible for making sure that the humans they are charged with are happy, productive, and meeting expectations. People who have management responsibilities tend to be responsible for things like making sure that people get in on time (if your company has a start time), making sure that employees feel good about their job using techniques like one-on-ones, and helping the humans on their team when someone is struggling to meet expectations or struggling to communicate their needs. You may also work on group cohesion or reporting to the rest of the company about your team’s accomplishments. As a manager, your number one priority is the specific humans that you manage.

Company Hierarchies

While personally, I’m a fan of keeping company hierarchies as flat as possible, that’s not always possible or easy to achieve. When it comes to the creation of leadership or management hierarchies, I believe those responsibilities should be delegated to different humans if and when possible. In a recent position, I had two different people serving as my Leader and my Manager. Neither of them had a title that included either of those words, but both understood that from a technical perspective, one would be my guide and the other would manage me from a human/HR perspective. This model worked out fantastically for our team, as we had very well-defined responsibilities instead of just calling one person my “boss” and having that one person be responsible for everything about my worklife. If, in your organization, you can set up separate Leadership and Management chains, I would strongly encourage it. By better defining people’s roles and responsibilities in smaller, more measurable ways you’ll have better communicated your expectations all around and everyone involved should be happier and more productive at their particular responsibilities.

This post is brought to you by InRhythm’s own Jack Tarantino. Check out his blog for more thinking like this.