If you need constant management, this isn’t a place for you. We value a self-starting and action-oriented attitude in the people we hire. That means all Forecasters are strong self-starters who are able set goals and get others excited about them, define the plan to reach them, find the needed resources, and execute.
We expect everyone to understand the broader context, prioritize, and take action to get us closer to the company-wide vision. Your team and team lead will always support you and help you learn, but don’t expect someone to lead you by the hand and tell you what to do
We're not fans of office politics or optimizing for your own success at the expense of others. That's why we only hire people who are motivated to help others around them succeed.
We value all Forecasters and will endeavour to create a safe and positive working environment where all workers are treated with dignity and respect.
Our management style is based on our beliefs that all Forecasters are honest and trustworthy and should be treated with respect and confidence.
We’ve got off to a great start, but we’re still at the beginning of reaching our vision. We’re all extremely motivated by the huge amount of things we’ll build and improve together in the coming years. Since day one, we’ve focused on building a good foundation for scaling: we have a healthy company culture and a stellar team that’s driven to constantly exceed expectations in building the best product and service to delight our customers.
Our product is built on a sustainable infrastructure that allows us to develop new features and functionalities fast. Our world-class customer support gives us competitive edge in the market. Our ambition is that the vast majority of our customers, small and large, will have a natural wish to recommend us to their peers, and that they’re eager to continuously build a better product and service closely together with us.
But that’s just an early start. Over the next years, we’ll have to learn to do things we haven’t done before. Luckily, we’re better equipped than ever before to grow and scale Forecast.
Everything at Forecast works using a term called Commanders Intent which roughly translates to "How we all can pull in the same direction with full autonomy".
Commander's intent is taken from and plays a central role in military decision making and planning. It acts as a basis for Forecasters to develop their own plans and orders to transform thought into action, while maintaining the overall intention of their commander.
Many books have been written about organizational structures. We seek to be efficient and lean in our approach, meaning that we keep a very flat structure. This means a single Chapter should be able to go from idea to deploy as independently as possible. This is where we try to emulate a living organism that is fully self-sustaining and capable of making autonomous decisions.
A Chaplain is the single person responsible for driving a Chapter. A Chapter is a small cross-functional self-organized team with less than 10 people. They have end-to-end responsibilities and they work together towards their long-term mission. In chapters the key drive is autonomy.
A product Chapter is run by a Chaplain and then consists of people from design + experience, full stack devs. that also do functionality testing and data science that take care of our machine learning capabilities. This ensures that we have teams that can go all the way from initial idea or concept to a fully deployed feature in Forecast. Combined with our automated testing and deployment process we can thus ensure that we have decoupled releases.
Our working hours are very flexible, but to have great team cohesion we encourage most people to be in one of the physical offices (Copenhagen or London) at least 3 days a week. This has two clear benefits; one that questions are easily resolved and two that fewer balls are dropped and thus our velocity can be maintained at a continuously high pace. At Forecast we value the balance of speed, power and precision.
Before you WFH please ensure you're following these guidelines:
- Let your manager know directly at least 24 hours in advance.
- Be available and responsive via email, chat, and phone from 9:00-17:00
- A WFH day is not a vacation day. Be at least as productive from home as you would be in the office.
- In general, prioritize face-to-face meetings over dial in.
While people sometimes choose to push themselves to work some extra hours at times when something big is going out the door, for the most part working overtime for extended periods indicates a fundamental failure in planning or communication. If this happens at Forecast, it’s a sign that something needs to be reevaluated and corrected. The thing we work hardest at is hiring good people, so we want them to stick around and have a good balance between work and family and the rest of the important stuff in life. If you find yourself working long hours, or just generally feel like that balance is out of whack, be sure to raise the issue with whomever you feel would help.
In case of absence due to sickness, let your nearest line manager know directly as soon as possible and no later than 8 a.m. on the first day. Subsequent days you need to do the same. If your manager is not available, please speak to a manager at the same level as your own manager. Remember to report the time as sickness in Forecast as well.
If you're sick for more than 8 consecutive days, we might require a Statement of Fitness confirming being unfit for work from your doctor for the remainder of the absence. But if you're reasonable, we'll be reasonable, so this shouldn't be an issue.
Vacation and holiday entitlement has been detailed in your Employment Agreement. We follow the official public Holidays in the country you're employed, so one office might be closed when others are still open.
Vacation is accrued according to the rules of the country you're employed. Please inform your manager at the earliest if you inted to take vacation so he/she can plan for how to cover in the period.
Vacation requests will generally be allocated on a first come, first served basis, and Forecast Technologies reserves the right to ensure that allocation at busy times is fair in all the circumstances and that there is sufficient coverage to enable it to operate effectively, which may mean that the request for a vacation is refused. Please see more details on this page - Holiday policies
Whether you work on the product development or not, your voice and observations can help determine what we should be working on. The way to exert this influence is to pitch your idea to a few of your fellow Forecasters. If they like it and it doesn't have an impact on the product or commercial roadmap, then go, go, go for it!
If it has an impact because it requires design, development or other Forecasters involvement you just write down the idea in a task and put it in for analysis. The product team will then pick it up and decide if it's something we should build and when we can fit it into our roadmap.
New ideas in Forecast is always prioritized taking the following things into account:
- Focus must be on our ideal customer.
- We’re targeting business users (CxO, PM, TM).
- The underlying customer teams must though also love the product.
- Everything must be prioritized according to ease of implementation and impact!
Nobody has ever been fired at Forecast for making a mistake.
It wouldn’t make sense for us to operate that way. Providing the freedom to fail is an important trait of the company -- we couldn’t expect so much of individuals if we also penalized people for errors. Even expensive mistakes, or ones which result in a very public failure, are genuinely looked at as opportunities to learn. We can always repair the mistake or make up for it.
Screwing up is a great way to find out that your assumptions were wrong or that your model of the world was a little bit off. As long as you update your model and move forward with a better picture, you’re doing it right. Look for ways to test your beliefs. Never be afraid to run an experiment or to collect more data.
Actually, if you never make a mistake you're probably not pushing yourself enough... Just don't be Bart Simpson, ok?
I must not fear. Fear is the mind-killer. Fear is the little-death that brings total obliteration. I will face my fear. I will permit it to pass over me and through me. And when it has gone past I will turn the inner eye to see its path. Where the fear has gone there will be nothing. Only I will remain. -- Frank Herbert, Dune