Posted by Prairie on Feb 27, 2024
Allison: Hello, Soft Chaos, and welcome to your performance review for the 2023 year. I think it's important that we take this time to reflect, see what we've done, see how we can improve, and see where we're going. So, I just have some questions for you about what you've accomplished, your goals moving forward with the company, and how we can make this the best work experience possible.
So, talking about the last fiscal year, I'd love to hear what accomplishments you are most proud of.
Squinky: I think being able to pay out a mostly consistent salary for the first time.
Jess: This is not an uncomplicated answer but in part what Squinky said, for the way that we conducted ourselves together in the summer workshop that we taught.
Allison: Oh, can you speak a bit about that summer workshop and what made you what made you proud?
Jess: So over the summer, we taught two game design workshops to two different groups of autistic youth, some of whom also had ADHD. I think that we did a really good job of creating a neurodivergent affirmative space while also taking as much care as we could of ourselves under the circumstances given that it was, you know, some intense days of high workload. It was also coming at a time when things were also very busy. I think we did a great job teaching and creating that space and I think that we did a great job reflecting on how we could improve that situation for ourselves in the future.
Allison: Thank you for expanding on your answer. Squinky, do you have anything you'd like to add?
Squinky: Yeah, definitely. I want to reiterate that while it was definitely a more challenging work circumstance than we anticipated due to a very sudden and unexpected increase in basically everybody's workload, I think we handled it pretty well and came out of what was a very stressful situation a lot stronger for it. Honestly, it is a pleasure to teach neurodivergent youth as neurodivergent people ourselves. That part of the experience was awesome and I would totally do it again
[At this moment Squinky’s cat enters the meeting]
Neko also approves.
Allison: Perfect. Sounds like you've taken some very strong learnings from the last fiscal and it's important that we reflect not only on what we did well, but where we could improve. So, a question to you Soft Chaos. It's a two-parter. What goals do you think you met this year? And what goals do you think fell a little short from where you wanted them to be?
Jess: You know, I think we are at a place now, at the time of this performance review, where we are meeting our financial targets and KPIs. I think where there's an area of opportunity is in work-life balance and feast or famine. My goal for us is always to work less and get paid more and that's that's challenging when there's a glut of work with exciting people.
Squinky: I definitely agree with those points. Like I said, we hit our financial goals, but making said money more consistent is definitely an area of opportunity.
Allison: Great. I love that you brought up meeting financial goals, but you also brought up something very important in this performance review, which is company culture. Looking forward to the coming year, how can we improve the company culture to make it a better Fit for Your Life(™)?
Squinky: I feel like the company culture already is a pretty great fit for my life given that I co-designed it. I like having the freedom to work from my cozy home office in my pajamas and more or less choose my own hours. I am excited to finally have a physical space that we have the option for working from, hopefully this year, but we've been working on that for a very long time. So having a physical space that can accommodate our studio needs and enable us to work on some cool physical fabrication stuff will be a definite boon for our company culture. Also, it would be nice to just have more excuses to see you two in person more often.
Jess: I agree. I think that the company culture is generally very great and very positive. Two areas for improvement involve less day-to-day working and more forecasting. Trying to anticipate, as much as possible, shifts in energy levels and also shifts in how much work we're gonna have. Also in boundary setting, basically, because I think we are an excellent team that cares so so much about the work that we do, so we're really willing to go the extra mile. Sometimes when we do that, we're overreaching beyond our ideal boundaries in terms of work-life balance.
Squinky: Absolutely agree with that.
Allison: Perfect. And in this review, part of my job is to try to figure out some tools or ways to support reaching the goals you have or addressing the opportunities that you've brought up. So what are tools that all of us can use to help meet the needs that have been brought up from this particular opportunity?
Jess: It's a hard one. I think if we had an easy solution, we would have already implemented it because we're very agile that way. I think maybe there's a way in which, without making ourselves too responsible for each other, that we can gently remind each other of these core values and what we're trying to achieve. Which, I think we already do in making these decisions.
Squinky: Yeah, I do want to mention that an indirect thing that might fit some of our objectives is refocusing on Soft Chaos Originals and making sure we take care of ourselves as creative people. I do find that often we can get really really into our client work because it's the stuff that pays us The Money but also it's fun to just have that space where we can freely play with our most creative and maybe less marketable ideas. I think that is a part of how we care for ourselves as creative people, again, without stressing ourselves out over it. But yeah, I definitely find some kinds of work more energizing than others and some work more draining than others. I find that having the option to be able to work on stuff for fun on the side, at least for me, has been great for my well-being. I'm happy that we have that.
Allison: Perfect, Squinky. That question leads right into our next performance review question. So, we've talked about what you've done that you're proud of in the last year. But what have you enjoyed in the last year about our company culture? What has been the most fun and enjoyable in 2023 for Soft Chaos?
Jess: I really enjoy working with local community organizations and the fact that in 2023 we got to do work with Pixelles. Pixelles is the reason that I got started in games. So, it's very exciting to me to be able to now, 10 years later, have started to work with them in this other way and continue to contribute to that community. So that's something that I really enjoyed and the skills that I am getting to use on that project are ones that I don't necessarily get to stretch professionally all the time, even though they're things that I really enjoy, such as visual arts. And again, like I mentioned, there were things about it that were difficult, but I really did enjoy most of the teaching that we did over the summer. Getting to share our enthusiasm and knowledge about games and communicate it to people who are also excited is just incredibly rewarding.
Squinky: On a similar note, I have particularly enjoyed teaching programming, both when it comes to the students we had over the summer, but also giving mini Godot tutorials to you two as part of our current Soft Chaos Originals project. I enjoy programming – that's definitely mostly a me thing – but I also enjoy the joy I get from explaining programming concepts to people and then watching them understand it and have it make sense. That makes me really happy.
Allison: And I enjoy deeply that you enjoy that...
Squinky: Heh.
[After a small ADHD sidebar about organizing a Soft Chaos creative retreat, Allison returns to the review]
Allison: We're gonna go right into the hard-hitting questions. What are your ideal working conditions at a job? And have we been able to meet those for you? Other than pajamas [referencing the earlier sidebar], which I'm all for.
Squinky: Don't get me wrong: I love dressing up, but dressing up and being comfortable enough to think a lot at the same time is a little challenging because sensory issues.
Allison: Business casual is a deep punishment for people who are not suited to it.
Jess: This is a good question. I think that for me, my ideal working conditions are that I get to set my own schedule, you know, no meetings before 10 am. That may be a grad school remnant where if you set a meeting at 8 am you are a monster. If you are setting meetings at 9 am, you're really skirting the line. So yeah, that and setting my own deadlines as well. Being able to just work on a thing until it's done, with a general kind of deadline in mind. Being able to focus largely on creative work while also being able to work on transmitting and sharing knowledge. And like, you know, the capitalism. Pay is important. I like that we have a four-day work week. So generally those needs are met. I know there are some things we're working on, again that sort of feast of famine and predicting capacity. But yeah, those are the things that make work nice for me individually
Squinky: Yeah.
Allison: That's great to hear. That's what every company wants to hear from their workers [laughs] worker-owners in this case. So here's a big one. THE big one. What motivates you to do the work you do for Soft Chaos?
Jess: Spite.
Allison: Oh wow.
Jess: I'm just kidding. In some contexts, I will admit that I am motivated by spite. But, I think with Soft Chaos, there's a lot of joy. Joy about creating together, but there is also a part that's about feeling that as an industry we can do better and trying to prove it. That in part feels a bit like spite but I think it's also deeply hopeful. So I think optimism, the joy of creation, and you two!
Squinky: Yeah.
Allison: I don't think spite is as negative as people think. Especially when you're trying to do something like prove how wrong people are about the viability of healthy work environments. So that's wonderful to hear. And Squinky, what motivates you?
Squinky: Besides all of those things, which are also very strong motivators, I like that like we own this. We own this studio and we own what we do and we have that control and autonomy. It makes such a huge difference. I think about previous jobs where I worked for someone else and it was just really hard to stay as motivated because I knew that even if I really care about this project it might get cancelled at any time. So I'm just not gonna care so much, and with you two we have built so much trust and are structured in such a way that we do get to call the shots. That's so important and a huge motivator.
Allison: I love hearing this from you two. A big part of this performance review that we haven’t touched on yet is us getting ready for the coming fiscal. So, what do you hope Soft Chaos accomplishes? In the next year, what is your dream for Soft Chaos that you hope you'll be able to say when we do our performance review next year?
Jess: I think there are two ways of taking this question. One is in a less realistic direction and then there's the more realistic direction. I’ll go with realism because you know, I want to make a SMART goal in my performance review. (You know, specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, timely). Realistically, I think being able to meet certain salary goals regularly, being able to let go of some side projects possibly because I'm not currently full-time with Soft Chaos. And I think also finding ways to push our own creative work. When I'm not feeling well or when I'm stressed, the first thing to go is often creative time, particularly personal creation time. I'm like ‘I could do that or I could be resting and right now I'm a little bit sick’. I'm feeling that very strongly right now so making sure that there's a way to protect creative time and Soft Chaos Originals time in some way would be a goal for me.
Allison: That's a great SMART goal. Thank you.
Squinky: I definitely feel both of those things, honestly, especially the making time for for personal and Soft Chaos Original creative projects. They are the things that are likely to go. This is actually realistic but we are forecasted in such a way that I can finally get a full-time salary from Soft Chaos this year, which is very exciting. I hope we can continue that momentum. This year I am excited to be able to afford hiring more professionals (like accountants) to deal with stuff that we've had to do on our own and has been stressful.
Allison: That's amazing. And yeah, to add to that, we've also been able to bring on a professional artist for a project, which is exciting. I personally hope that we do one ridiculous frivolous creative thing as a cooperative over the next year like a Fringe festival or a crowdfunder or some sort of game festival. One thing that has no financial gain but is just for fun and just for us. Because I think that's one thing I missed in 2023.
Squinky: Definitely.
Allison: Now a question about Soft Chaos as a whole. What do you think are the main drivers of Soft Chaos's success, if you could identify them?
Squinky: I think degrowth is one of them. We have managed to stay this tiny (at the bare minimum legal co-op size) for this long, while occasionally bringing on guest artists and, of course, partnering with clients. The fact that we have stayed this small and self-contained instead of trying to grow too big too fast is contributing to our long-term prosperity. Even though in the short term it may seem less impressive.
Jess: I agree. I think our willingness to take it slow and organically allowing things to grow feels really good to me. Being very honest, I think we are incredibly skilled at what we do. I think we know meritocracy does not exist, but I think our skills definitely are compatible to each other and are fairly unique in their combination. We're also pretty adept at learning new things and thinking laterally and creative problem solving. I think that is a big driver of our success. The other thing I would say is our continued adherence to our values.
Allison: Yeah, I completely agree. I think we're very good at finding where our unique niche of skills is the most useful, which is sometimes a challenge when you have very unique skills.
Squinky: Yes.
Allison: And I have one final question to end off our performance review with: what is your favorite part of working for our company? Just one.
Jess: It is the cats in business attire.
[from https://softchaos.games/]
Allison: Oh, that's a big one.
Squinky: It's so hard to choose one. I love our job titles. Like, you will never see such cool titles anywhere else.
Allison: No rock stars here.
Squinky: Yeah.
Allison: And then this is the last question for real, which I have been advised is to be asked in every single performance review. What do you think we can do to make our company culture more inclusive and diverse?
Squinky: I think we should hire a cis white guy. Honestly. That's the one thing we're missing.
Allison: It's true. We need a token one of those for our diversity for our diversity statements.
Jess: Again, good question. I like Squinky’s answer. You know, gotta collect them all.
Allison: Perfect. Great, and that is the question I was told that we should end every performance review on, so thank you for taking the time to let me know how you've been doing this last fiscal year. We'll take all of these comments into account when planning for Q1 2024 and I'll see you all again next year.
Jess: Did we make it accidentally sincere and awkward when we were supposed to give joking answers?
Allison: We always do sincere and awkward.
Squinky: Perfect.
[end of review]