This is a ready reckoner for our rules, policies and some of the things that might need to know if you are working at Leftshift.
Everything here works on trust.
Be it taking a book from the library, working from home, or taking some hardware home, you are free to do whatever makes you most productive, as long as it does not bother those around you.
We assume you are here to make lovable apps. If you are getting held back by anything or have suggestions for improvements, please meet up with Sudhanshu, and tell him. (He can usually fix things)
As Uncle Ben said, “With great power comes great responsibility.” While you are here, please use your best judgement.
Some of us start work at 9am, and some start as late as 1pm. You are free to choose your own working hours.
We don’t keep a track of how many hours you spent in office. We keep track of the work that you are doing. As long as the work is great, it’s all good.
If you have stuff to do at home, you can come in early or leave late to avoid taking a half day off (as long as work does not suffer)
If you get to office after 1pm, please order a pizza.
There is no fixed number of hours that you need to spend in office. On some days 4 is more than enough, and on some even 12 isn’t enough.
We do not have a leave approval process. When you want to go on leave, you just need to inform your team that you will be on leave, and post it on #public-leaves on slack.
Since the decision about when to take a leave rests on you, please plan your leaves in a way that everyone on the project is not on leave at the same time.
Everybody gets 20 paid leaves in one financial year.
The leaves are calculated on a pro-rata basis. So if you join on the 1st of October, you get 10 days of leave. (If you get a weird number, just round it to the closest half day)
When you resign, leaves will again be calculated on a pro-rata basis. If you have used more than you have earned till then, they would be adjusted in your final settlement.
For leave with pay, weekends and holidays are not counted.
For leave without pay, weekends and holidays are counted. So if you take two months off, you will not be paid for weekends.
Leaves should ideally be planned in advance, so that the work schedule doesn’t suffer.
Leaves will not be carried forward to the next year. So make sure you pack your bags and go somewhere (Or just watch TV at home, that works too). We work hard as it is, taking some days off is always refreshing.
All ladies would also be entitled to a paid maternity leave of 90 days, which would include weekends and holidays.
All ladies would also be entitled to a paid maternity leave of 21 days if they legally adopt a child (this too would include weekends and holidays).
All men would be entitled to 3 days of paid paternity leave.
Everybody is entitled to 1/2 a day of leave for voting and other civic duties.
Everybody is entitled to a compensatory off if they were pre-approved to work full time on a weekend or holiday. (Rule of thumb, you would know before hand if you get a comp off for a certain day or not)
Everybody is entitled to work from home, if it is pre-planned and your work schedule has been defined. (Though we would love to see you in office)
If you are absent without requesting for leave, it would be counted as leave without pay.
When you pay for something, please make sure you keep the physical bill. If you get a soft copy of the bill, that would work as well.
When you are back in office (or anywhere for that matter), head over to https://sheets.google.com and create a list of all your expenses, and break them under the following headings - Travel, Lodging, Food.
A sample refund sheet is given here.
When you’re done, you can share the sheet with hr@leftshift.
All our books can be found in the shelf, or generally around in office.
If you would like to rent out a book, just pick it up and go.
At least for now, you do not need to mark anywhere. All that we ask for is give it back when you’re done reading it.
All our books have a stamp on the first page or the last page of the book. If you find one at home which is tagged with the office stamp and you’re not reading it, please bring it back.
If you lose a book, please let us know at hr@leftshift
If you would like us to buy a new book, please drop us an email at hr@leftshift . We do not promise that we will get it immediately, but we will try our best.
If you would like to borrow a monitor or machine or a phone for use at home for sometime, please feel free to do so.
It would be great if you could send an email to hr@leftshift to let them know that you’re taking something home.
We do generally give out salary loans.
If you would like to apply for one, please get in touch with hr@leftshift and we will try our best to give you one as soon as possible.
All employee loans are at 0% interest, so if you’re falling short of money for a purchase, this might be a better option than applying for a personal loan.
We conduct weekly standups where everybody gets a chance to talk about something new that they have learnt.
We loop through every person in the company in a specific order so that everyone gets a chance to speak.
Most talks are divided into platform groups like iOS, Android, Web and Design. However, you can attend anyone that you like.
Once you join the company, you will be assigned a week, sometime in the future, and you can pick up a date in that particular week and find a topic that you would like to speak on.
The details of the next set of talks is given in the following document - If you have a leftshift.io email address, you should be able to view it.
You would also find an archive and slides of the older talks in there.
You would get an email every Monday which gives you more details of the upcoming talks.
If there is no topic assigned to you in the ‘Next Up’ section, please reach out to sudhanshu with the details about your topic and the date you will be speaking on.
If you would like someone to talk about a specific topic, you can let sudhanshu know and he will add it to the Topics Available section.
When you submit your presentation, please make sure you add citations