16 Years of Kaz Software: Why we make our screens private

There are some simple rules at Kaz, and one of them is:

Our monitor should always be private.

Why?

Because, we trust ourselves and we also understand the nature of our work.

We trust ourselves to do the the work that’s assigned to us without the need for tracking and monitoring by anyone. And we also know that as a software developer we can be extremely effective one day, churning out amazing algorithms in minutes and be totally useless the next day - staring at our screen and wondering what it’s all about. That’s how human brain works. Our creativity, our energy and our performance are sometimes influenced and inspired by something - maybe by a dream from the night before, an article we read or an act of kindness by a fellow traveler on our way to work. And in the same way our energy can be diminished another day by a bitter experience, a sleepless night or a random bad news on the TV. We know that our performance will vary, but we trust ourselves to give our best, to make up our lost time of our bad days with the lightning speed of our good ones. Trust helps us do that.

The fact that the company, our managers, our colleagues and our juniors trust me, with my screen hidden, makes me perform my best. It gives me the safety that I need as a human. It makes me feel happy.