By Scio Team

The importance of balance

“Success is feeling in control of my personal life”, states one of the responses we got. “Being able to feel like I’m doing something valuable, having the strength and motivation to continue doing the things I love, and also being happy with the ones around me.” This image of success, for example, points out the important balance between work and personal life, one of the core values of Scio regarding their collaborators. We consider this is an important topic because developing software is as much of a creative endeavor as a technical one, and having people who keep healthy boundaries is crucial to always arrive at the best outcomes. To this end, fostering a good culture of collaboration and camaraderie is the best approach to ensure that a project is completed successfully, as it can also mean that your work doesn’t go unnoticed. “I like that Scio’s culture promotes the gesture of congratulating the team, both individually and as a whole”, says another of the answers we got. “I like the post-mortem charts we have about our successful projects, where they make sure all the team knows we are aware of their achievements. We even have social meetings to celebrate successful goals, which I think it’s a good idea. So let’s continue promoting the gesture of congratulating our teams for their achievements.” This is one of the examples of the ways Scio tries to maintain mutual support in everything we do, and something as simple as notifying everyone that a team has achieved a goal, or having a group call to just chat and relax, goes a long way toward it.

Success beyond the office

However, for some, success transcends the workplace and instead focuses on how it affects a collaborator’s everyday life. “Having my own home, seeing my kids happy, and maybe even running a marathon in another country is success” was one of the answers we got, as well as “Feeling full, and having yourself, your family, your significant other, your mind, your work, and your world in balance” and “Being able to do what I like in life and enjoy every second.”

This topic keeps coming out because a clear balance between work and personal life has been increasingly desired among both developers and companies starting to embrace the advantages of remote work and hybrid collaboration models, so making sure a healthy equilibrium exists is one of our core values here at Scio. “Feeling happy and comfortable with where you are”, another one of our responses, sums it up very well.

We understand that, due to the nature of software development, sometimes keeping this balance is tricky, even if Nearshore companies like Scio offer plenty of flexibility and options to work, so taking the steps to ensure that our collaborators can define success beyond the needs of a project goes a long way.

This also ties with another concept that many developers find attractive in any workplace: the chance to learn and grow as they work, which seemed to be a focal point in many of the answers we received. “Meeting the objectives and goals, keep the things I learned, as well as learning from the mistakes to improve”, and “Creating something of value that has a positive impact on the people you care about” get to the point of it, as a successful person might also be one that learns, grows and creates useful things from the work they do.

“Looks like having a clean conscience, lots of self-caring, not reserving everything to myself, feeling useful, achieving a wisdom state” was an unexpected answer. A lot of people can see success in purely personal terms (i.e. “how I feel about this thing I did?), so creating an environment where collaboration and personal growth are on the same frequency tends to deliver the best outcomes.

The success of living well

And last, it’s not a secret that many go into software development because it’s a very in-demand field with lots of organizations to choose from to collaborate with, and compensation is always important for anyone looking to join an organization that shares their values. “For me, is to be financially stable enough to give my family a better life, while also being happy in your job and what you like. To be successful is also to be recognized in your work and know that you are an important part of your company”, reads one of the answers, highlighting success as having the means to support your loved ones while also working on something you feel passionate about.

“For me, success is when your lifestyle and quality of life improves significantly and money isn’t an issue at all”, continues another of the responses. “While also achieving your personal and professional goals, feeling full and happy. Then you have a balance of these ‘pillars’ and yet you are further away from where you started.”

As we reveal more responses, we can start to see that “success” is, at the end of it, directing your life in the way you want to, down to every detail, as this answer manages to explain beautifully: “For me, success has many shapes. From small achievements to the greatest goals, success can happen anywhere, in any place, both in our personal and professional lives, in the financial sense, or even with the people around you”, trying to get across how success is present in our daily lives.

“Even in defeat, we can see success in learning something, feeling good about it, making ourselves proud, and gaining more knowledge in return. If we see it like this, anything we achieve is a success.”

So what do you think? How do you personally define success and how does it get reflected in your personal life? Is it something concrete you work towards every day, or a state of life you want to achieve? Because no matter what your definition of success is, at Scio, we are willing to lend you a hand and achieve your best possible outcome.