
Ask HN: Guild/Studio structure for Software Engineers? - szemy2
Hi HN,<p>I am looking for examples of companies that consist of an ensemble of mainly software engineers (could be mixed skills with hardware, graphic, architecture), that work in a guild like fashion.<p>- They work mostly on internal products, mostly on a project-basis<p>- Are relatively small (&lt;15-20 people) and are primarily a flat, partnership structure<p><i>Do you have any good examples?</i>
======
jaredandrews
I joined a mailing list recently that discusses tech coops:
[https://npogroups.org/lists/info/tech-
coop](https://npogroups.org/lists/info/tech-coop) Some interesting discussion.

I found a repo with a lot of information and companies here:
[https://github.com/hng/tech-coops](https://github.com/hng/tech-coops)

It's really unclear to me how you would go about joining an existing studio
like this. At least in North America, there are so few, I think the answer is
to start one yourself.

~~~
walshemj
You join a coop the same way you do any other company as well as the joining
the cooperative normally after a probation

~~~
jaredandrews
I understand that. But I find the diversity of positions available to be low
in the collective space. I'm curious, do you work in a collectively owned
setting? What is your tech stack and customer base? Do you ever hire new
people from outside your network?

~~~
walshemj
I Used to work at Poptel back in the early 2000's and back then I was mostly
on the ASP side we also use LAMP.

Poptel was also a very early ISP / ADMD (x.400) mail provider

I answered an advert in the Guardian. COOP's tend to be liberal if not left
wing and attract members/workers with liberal or Left wing politics - the USA
coops are not as strongly Left wing compared the the US ones.

I am using UK/EURO definitions here

------
dvtrn
My org has an Engineering Guild that I am a "leader" of [in the sense that I
just organize calendars and "officiate" the call, it's completely flat
otherwise]-the guild itself doesn't make up the company, but rather just
exists as a small little "coven" within the larger enterprise, there's about
12 of us, though we don't publish anything out publicly for other teams to
emulate. Probably not a bad idea now that you bring it up. We've written code
for things that went to local non-profits, and written code that became a
fully-funded line of business for the company as a service offering (but
wasn't-at the time-part of any scoped or planned work, just an idea one of our
SREs had to improve an existing business product, built it, deployed it,
showed it to the executives).

What would you like to know?

~~~
bloudermilk
This is fascinating!

What line of business is your company in? Who is your guild accountable to?
What metrics are you measured by?

~~~
dvtrn
Public health accounting/medical billing software. Right now we are
"sponsored" by the CTO, but he's quite hands off and leaves us a lot of
autonomy. Our charter is heavily influenced by the scientific method and
intense, rigorous study, which is paradoxically not as regimented in the
business-level work we do because ever changing priorities and customer
influenced decision making by our project managers and enterprise leaders.

The guild, not beholden to the enterprise _itself_ we are INFINITELY better
about scope creep and velocity for the projects originating from and
ultimately brought into maturity by us-without that outside influence of the
rest of the business.

Metrics was actually the topic of our most recent congregation, looking into
new and creative ways of establishing both performance and delivery metrics
aligned with the DevOps way for our own "pet projects" as a guild, which we
(hope) translate back up and into what we do for the day-to-day business
objectives. So none. Yet :)

~~~
bostonvaulter2
Please write some more about this, I think it would be very interesting to
hear more about how you are still able to provide value to the business while
being able to push back on scope creep and velocity. Does the guild encompass
all of the programmers in the company?

~~~
dvtrn
Not all are members presently, but all are certainly welcome. It's a
completely voluntary join. Right now I'd say we have mostly long-tenured
programmers and two guys from our DevOps team and a young fella from UI.

I'll bring it up in our next congregation and see about getting some of the
writers in the group together and collaborate with our marketing team about
maybe publishing a blog series.

------
taurath
I’ve often thought of the idea of a “town programmer” that could solve
problems for businesses/people in the town. It feels like the biggest problem
with that is people don’t know what a generalist programmer can do. I think
just setting up Shopify instances and inventory/online ordering systems would
be a good use case.

~~~
sethhochberg
This kind of work is what keeps most of the small, local marketing agencies
you've never heard of afloat. The town programmer, town UI designer, etc all
generally work at a place like that with the town's small-business
salesperson.

They'll ususaly do anything from helping you claim/manage your Google Maps
listing to publishing your restaurant's menu online to creating your Shopify
store or Wordpress marketing site, alongside your print media or whatever
other needs.

~~~
colonelxc
Yes. I interned at a local ISP (DSL provider on AT&T lines), but most of their
business was essentially just this type of stuff. Building simple static
websites, running some software package for a business (doing the
admin+hosting work), and fixing/configuring computers and such at the local
businesses.

Businesses like this are really flexible, and seek to serve their local
customers with whatever IT needs they have.

------
solidsnack9000
I suspect what we are missing is has to do with IP ownership. To greatly
simplify, guilds had a straightforward way of handling the IP of the trade or
craft -- it was secret and you couldn't tell outsiders anything and every
tradesman was committed to a considerable term of service (decades) dedicated
to the trade. Trades were fairly closed communities. You couldn't steal the
IP, the IP you generated couldn't be stolen from you.

We have greater freedom in our lives today and lack the institution of bondage
to the company/craft (remember that a guild effectively represented both
things). It might be that trusts are an effective way to reintroduce
meaningful ownership. Any IP a developer generates, they retain a certain
residual interest in and right to; but it is administered by the guild (a
trust management company) and on favorable terms since it is assumed to be the
result of use of other IP managed by the guild.

~~~
thinkingkong
Yes.

All the work for this type of an environment will be innovation on IP and
revenue structures. So far nobody has done anything novel here that Ive been
able to find. Most coop and not for profit references seem like inappropriate
proxies.

~~~
solidsnack9000
This is our chance to innovate by introducing tiny trusts on the block chain.

------
mjewkes
Motion Twin is the classic example in the games space [http://motion-
twin.com/en/](http://motion-twin.com/en/)

They shipped Dead Cells, which is rated as "Overwhelmingly Positive" "96% of
50,435 reviews" on steam.

[https://store.steampowered.com/app/588650/Dead_Cells/](https://store.steampowered.com/app/588650/Dead_Cells/)

The HaXe programming language originally came out of Motion Twin, although
Nicolas Cannasse has since left to do his own thing.

------
agustif
I don't know of a company doing this, but a group of awesome developers does
this in the GraphQL + TypeScript Open Source Libraries space with great
success (As in useful libs, I don't know how they do economically but prob
great or fine!)

It's actually called the-guild.dev, they just don't promote much I think.

They're the creators of GraphQL Modules, graphql-tools, graphql-code-generator
etc...

I'm also a small contributor to an Authentication/User management library
called AccountsJS [https://www.accountsjs.com/](https://www.accountsjs.com/)
(Which uses gql-modules) under the hood, and the-guild members are active
contributors too (although not exclusively)

I would love to some day become a good enough developer to be part of that
team/org/guild!

------
jpgleeson
Motion Twin are a worker's co-op in France that have worked like this for the
past 20 years. They are back down to 6 people now but had been a bit bigger
until recently when a group spun off to make a more commercial structure to
support their big game. [http://motion-twin.com/en/](http://motion-
twin.com/en/)

------
cpach
Seems like Igalia might fit that description

[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Igalia](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Igalia)

~~~
szemy2
Yes, this looks good! Thanks, I'll read about them

------
axaxs
Where would you draw the line between Guild and contractors? I once worked
with an extremely talented closeknit small contract company in Canada. When
offered jobs at my company, they basically laughed and said they are well
compensated. So not generally what you think of when you hear 'outsourced
contractors.'

~~~
szemy2
Maybe it's just a specific type of guild/org I am looking for in which it is
different from contractors: they work on homebew products on a project basis.

------
gremlinsinc
No good examples, but I want to start one of these myself. The hard part is
finding team members who are in sync w/ the concept, though I consider it more
like a unified worker-coop-style agency. Than a 'guild'.

if you need a partner hit me up : patrickwcurl - gmail. I'm a laravel / vue /
inertia / livewire / alpinejs dev mostly.

~~~
phtrivier
I would have assumed the "hard part" would be funding in such a structure,
since you're not going to be able to operate at the desired level of autonomy
with investors, and you're probably not going to sustain yourself without a
product to sell - which would be at odd with "working mostly on internal
products" as opposed to "selling something that the market wants".

I'm probably missing something here.

~~~
nrmitchi
My understanding is that most organizations that operate this way start off
effectively as a consultancy. They do paid work for others in order to fund
day-to-day operations, and support work on the projects that they "own" (want
to do personally). Once you get enough smaller projects off the ground, with
enough income/MRR to support the business, you can start focussing full time
on internal product development (and drop the consulting)

~~~
phtrivier
I have mixed expérience with this kind of company (even as private ones) where
the consultancy part sucks the time and life of everyone, before - if you're
lucky - some of the customer becomes dependant on your work enough that they
buy you. But it's just my experience, I'm sure others managed to build
companies out of side projects.

------
theoretick
Holacracy might work?
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holacracy](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holacracy)

~~~
szemy2
Oh the structure has a name, thanks!

------
cheriot
Seems like the challenge is that software is rarely and end goal in itself.
Either it's for end users and needs design, marketing, etc or it's for
businesses and needs sales people, account management, etc.

I'd love to see someone find a way to make it work, though.

------
yasuakikudo
Some useful links, I hope

[https://agaric.coop/show-and-tell](https://agaric.coop/show-and-tell)
[https://community.coops.tech/](https://community.coops.tech/)
[https://github.com/hng/tech-coops](https://github.com/hng/tech-coops)
[https://patio.ica.coop/](https://patio.ica.coop/)
[https://facttic.org.ar/](https://facttic.org.ar/)

------
shawticus
We've started a co-op like this to build cross platform spatial web apps
(MMOs, metaverses, online virtual storefronts, etc). The project is MIT
licensed but we're going after big contracts, especially trying to fill voids
in the events and retail space. While things are being developed, everyone is
living on a bit of runway contributed by one of the partners to make the
project a reality.

If you're interested, code is here:
[https://github.com/xr3ngine/xr3ngine](https://github.com/xr3ngine/xr3ngine)

Happy to discuss more about structure on Discord or w/e

------
Pfhreak
I've really wanted to be a part of a tech co-op, and I wish more existed.
There are several in most major cities that I've found, but they tend to spin
up and down after a while, so I'm not sure what's current.

------
achileas
Different from co-ops, but a lot of small funds (micro-VCs, etc.) have this
kind of structure to help their portfolio companies - I actually interviewed
at one earlier this summer. There are also similar places like Betaworks
([https://betaworks.com](https://betaworks.com)). A small few operate as a
true collective, but there aren't many.

This article I read recently talks a bit about some of these less-traditional
setups:
[https://www.instapaper.com/read/1341389477](https://www.instapaper.com/read/1341389477)

------
endlessvoid94
It can be difficult to do the guild structure in such a small organization.
Not impossible but difficult, as many different people tend to play a diverse
set of roles.

At least, that's how it's been in my career. Prove me wrong!

Edit: here's a classic from Spotify, which is much larger but potentially
relevant: [https://blog.crisp.se/wp-
content/uploads/2012/11/SpotifyScal...](https://blog.crisp.se/wp-
content/uploads/2012/11/SpotifyScaling.pdf)

------
jarofgreen
I'm not sure what you mean by Guild, but for tech co-ops mainly in the UK try
[https://www.coops.tech/](https://www.coops.tech/)

~~~
dayjah
My understanding of "guilds" is the notion of people coalescing around
projects based on needs and interest vs a top down hierarchy. Like Valve vs
Amazon, etc.

At a prior employer (~1000 person company) we used the word "guild" for a
cross organizational team that are tackling a short term, low-medium value
problem - with the notion you go back to your existing team when you're done.
Or you handle 2x load while the guild work is necessary. These are similar to
"tiger teams", but those are generally top down endeavors vs guilds are bottom
up.

Zappos tried this out a few years ago, so did some other well known tech co.
though the name is escaping me right now. It seems to be called Holacracy and
there's this webpage about it:
[https://www.holacracy.org/](https://www.holacracy.org/)

------
JamesAdir
Wix employs guild structure for all it's teams.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tMpeY_jahjI](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tMpeY_jahjI)

------
orta
Plausible Labs has always been one I've looked up to:
[https://plausible.coop/about](https://plausible.coop/about)

~~~
szemy2
This is an interesting case, where it says that they have external investors.
Wonder how they manage ownership.

------
jdmichal
I saw Andrés Angelani of Cognizant Softvision speak about the model employeed
there. There's guilds, which are centered around professional skills. And then
pods, which are teams of blended skills to get projects done.

[https://www.cognizantsoftvision.com/our-
approach/](https://www.cognizantsoftvision.com/our-approach/)

~~~
konstantinentia
although not a small company, reminds me of the spotify approach [1]

[https://youtu.be/4GK1NDTWbkY](https://youtu.be/4GK1NDTWbkY)

------
casi
Tech co-ops

[https://github.com/hng/tech-coops](https://github.com/hng/tech-coops)

------
juancn
Valve uses a holacracy.
[https://steamcdn-a.akamaihd.net/apps/valve/Valve_NewEmployee...](https://steamcdn-a.akamaihd.net/apps/valve/Valve_NewEmployeeHandbook.pdf)

~~~
jedberg
Here's a question I've been trying to get an answer to for years. How does
compensation at Valve work?

Like, what are the logistics? Their handbook talks about the stack ranking,
but it doesn't talk about how that translates into an actual salary.

Who actually sets the salaries? If they have no bosses, who actually hands you
the memo that says "this will be your salary next year". Who fills that out
and writes down the number?

I assume someone somewhere has to attache numbers to the rankings, I'm curious
about that process in a bossless environment.

~~~
ctvo
There's no doubt an HR and finance department. Why do you need a "boss" to
hand you your bonus / raise?

The handbook offers a hint:

> Once the intra-group ranking is done, the information gets pooled to be
> company-wide. We won’t go into that methodology here. There is a wiki page
> about peer feedback and stack ranking with some more detail on each process.

Naively I imagine a pool of money representing what the company has available
this year to allocate to raises, bonuses, compensation adjustments, etc..
Those ranked higher get a larger percentage of that pool once the math is
done.

Think you're underpaid vs. your peers? Talk to HR and ask. There's no need for
a manager to be involved in this process at all.

~~~
jedberg
Unless there is an objective formula to translate ranks into money, that still
leaves some subjective power with someone.

I guess what I'm getting at is, who has the subjective power over your salary?

~~~
insomniacity
There could very easily be such a formula.

The only interesting things in it are whether you set firmwide/regional
minimums/maximums, and how far you allow the ranking to move your numbers from
everyone getting the same increase - eg, does the top ranked employee get 5%
more than the median employee, or 50% more?

------
seibelj
I know of some highly profitable software businesses that operate like law
firms with partners. Think along the lines of gambling and similar “on the
edge” industries that won’t receive VC for what they do.

------
0xfaded
I can't name names, but if you look at some of the security/exploit dev shops,
a lot of them have this structure. Small number of engineers, lots of internal
tooling, and good money

------
pabs3
Igalia are a co-operative of engineers and others working on Free Software &
Open Source projects:

[https://www.igalia.com/](https://www.igalia.com/)

------
emmanueloga_
I don't know the inner working of them but seems to match [http://motion-
twin.com/en/team](http://motion-twin.com/en/team)

~~~
szemy2
Sounds like a really nice place to work!

------
2rsf
My, now decommissioned, Microsoft branch tried to move to the Spotify model.

Many of us worked on internal products, but never got to a level of flat
partnership structure.

------
mzzter
Does Latacora count? Though I don’t know how big they are at the moment.
[https://latacora.com/](https://latacora.com/)

~~~
chc
Aren't Latacora just a security consultancy?

~~~
lvh
We are, but we also largely a bunch of software engineers working on project-
based work and delivering software, so I don't think GP's completely off the
mark :)

------
walshemj
Poptel in the UK was a worker COOP that was about 45-50 ISP / Web

------
brudgers
Might be worth looking at "programmer anarchy."

------
LegoFan
What is going on?

