Founder here trying to come up with the best neurodiverse friendly workplace accommodations especially after this crazy chaos in the economy. Here’s what I came up with. 4 day work week. Full benefits to all part time employees All engineers and senior engineers are hourly, and overtime must be approved to discouraged rise and grind culture. Overtime pay takes effect at 32 hours. Employees are capped and must punch out at 32 hours unless overtime is approved by area director. Standup is renamed daily sync and runs at 11a pacific, every employee must attend but may otherwise work flexible hours as long as they work 8 hours a day Monday thru Thursday. Each engineer will be assigned a specific number of points per two week sprint. When they complete that number of points, they may choose to use the rest of the sprint to do research, complete a design presentation or may punch out for paid time off until the next sprint. Additionally, each employee receives 15 holidays and 20 PTO days per year. Sick days are unlimited, including for mental health days. Company will run a Simple Pension Plan to ensure that all employees receive a tax free bonus when company deems it appropriate, as solely merit based increases and bonuses are inherently biased against the neurodiverse. Open offices are banned. Company may have open collaborative areas but cubicles are required for each employee. This is for compliance reasons as well as overstimulation. Permanent Remote work is allowed for all employees, role permitting (this is a hardware play so not always practical, or may require periodic office travel). 4 pay bands are created, pegged to GSA pay bands 12, 13, 14, and 15. Step raises and cost of living adjustments are automatic in accordance with GSA guidelines. Pay bands 12-14 are all for software engineers, and 15 is for software leads. Where applicable all employees will receive an adjustment for metropolitan area increase. The company commits to voluntarily recognizing any union that our employees vote to join and pledges to negotiate collective bargaining agreements in the best of faith. The company encourages all divisions including engineering to unionize. Is there anything I am missing? I’m planning to put these up at the next board meeting (majority shareholder, #actuallyautistic #cofounder) #tech #healthcaretech
This sounds absolutely stifling for normal people. No thanks
Why? You get all your work done in 4 days you get the last four days off which doesn’t count against PTO. We’re using a functional language for our MVP so it’s a bit more efficient for us to run it this way.
Also I don’t care where any hardware or software folks work. Just has to be within US jurisdiction for us to stay compliant with FDA. For the most part, it’s SDET and assembly I need in the office.
Are you expecting to pay 25-30% more per hour? Otherwise you’re asking employees to take a pay cut or find a second job to make-up for a lost day of pay.
Yes it is a pay cut. The trade off is that all employees hired before series B are receiving 0.5 ownership of the company, any employee part time or higher receives a full benefit as well. Also we’re doing a seed fundraise in the midst of a serious VC downturn. This is a calculated method to extend our runway.
Oh and I forgot. We are also capping executive cash compensation to GSA Executive 3, which is 1 step higher than GSA-15. So executive cash compensation is capped to 180.
As a developer with ADHD, this all sounds amazing. How do I sign up?
I support this I wish we could have it if you find anything let me know
If I wasn’t employed and in a role I enjoy, I’d be all over this, aside from the hour tracking necessary to ensure I don’t go over 32 hours. Worked at a place where we talked management into a 9/80 because we couldn’t land a 4/10 schedule and it was great. Would also prefer offices to cubicles.
We were debating open cubes or cubes with doors. I’m voting for doors and so offices actually may make more sense for us.
University of Connecticut has a center for neurodiversity and really good resources on workplace accommodations
Looks a bit too rigid with salary and points rules but sure, try it, if it works for you then you're good. Also note for rank-n-file employees in a new startup options aren't worth much, it's playing the lottery. Getting lottery tickets is nice, but the rent needs to be paid with money.
Yes I know, I’ve been there before. That’s why we’re also adding full healthcare for all part time and up employees and a pension plan, not 401K
Am not a neurodiverse person but this sounds incredible to me. I suspect that the majority of my team is ND and can imagine them thriving in this environment. Love the part time options as well which will also be especially helpful to keeping women/caregivers on the team.
Based
How so?
Based on what