We are Happy Dev, a network of more than five hundred web professionals.

Beyond the values described in our manifesto

Today's economic life is mainly governed by multinational giants who are often more powerful than our democratic states. These players are led by a shareholder base on which we have little visibility and are often governed by the short term, sometimes even against all common sense. This situation is harmful to the general interest and dangerous for our democracies. As workers, we now have the choice between placing ourselves under the protection of these giants, and accepting to be the pawns of a system to which we do not adhere, or living as independents, putting us in a situation of loneliness and economic insecurity.

We created Happy Dev because we do not accept to limit ourselves to this choice. We believe that it is possible to move forward collectively without losing control of our professional lives. We believe that it is possible to have direct democratic control over the economic entities in which we work. And, with the digital revolution, we believe that it is possible to organize large human collectives in an agile way, as initiatives such as Wikipedia have shown. We believe that this is not only possible, but above all necessary.

Happy Dev aims to have a community model that allows it to reach the capacity of a large company without ceasing to be at the service of its members. Large companies have the ability to carry out major projects and offer good material conditions to their employees thanks to economies of scale, a certain bargaining power, financial strength and a high profile. Yet these companies suffer from harmful administrative inertia, and make their decisions without taking into account the aspirations of their employees.

By pooling only what is necessary within a federation of collectives of independents, we believe that it is possible to obtain the same collective power, without giving up agility and development. We believe this model is more effective than the traditional hierarchical model. Leaving people as much autonomy as possible allows them to make better decisions without being burdensome. Having a common framework gives strength to our choices.

Happy Dev is a network of freelancers. Maintaining strong growth is an assumed objective in order to have a significant impact and influence in the face of the giant organizations that surround us. In general, a start-up seeking rapid development raises capital to invest massively, build a hierarchical administration, impose leadership on the company and capture significant profits to return capital. At Happy Dev, we believe that in the 21st century another method is preferable.

The business world today suffers from an ever-widening gap between the management methods applied and the aspirations of the individuals who work in it. The evolutions of the last decades have transformed autonomous humans into pawns in the service of issues that do not make sense to them. By growing, centralizing, industrializing, and disconnecting the task from its effect, the company gradually cut itself off from what gave it meaning: it dehumanized itself.

We are convinced that reproducing this scheme will lead us to the same nonsense. This is not a people's problem, but a system problem, and the same causes will inevitably produce the same effects, regardless of our good intentions. What made Happy Dev's strength in its early years was the community dynamic on which it was based. Growing up must not take us away from the decentralized model that we have tried to put in place. This should not add inertia in decision-making or administrative burden in day-to-day management.

Growing up with a decentralized model means maintaining agility in day-to-day operations, allowing everyone to make decisions evolve according to the conditions they encounter. It is about creating collective intelligence by letting each person express themselves and decide at their level on the best direction. It means ensuring the resilience of the system, ensuring that if a link is missing, the network will last. It also means encouraging innovation, by allowing everyone to embark on the experiments they want, without being hindered by a conservative hierarchy.

But it is also an invaluable economic potential, a vector for significant growth. Removing bottlenecks allows each mesh in the network to grow freely. Being able to approach and move away from the network in a fluid way means limiting the cost of member engagement, and thus including more broadly and more quickly. Encouraging open contribution encourages the emergence of new lines of activity that we would not have imagined. And not having a binding link means building the collective on a common will to move forward together. Thus each member, each meeting becomes a positive message, a vector of growth. Above all, however, an open model makes it possible to give everyone a chance, by limiting discrimination, which is a waste of potential.

We must therefore grow to a size that will allow us to have an impact, but we must do so in accordance with our model and our values, otherwise we will only reproduce the existing model. For us, this means limiting the locks, to allow anyone who wishes to do so to add their strengths to ours. It also means limiting closed power and decision-making centres. It means giving up personal power over the collective, but it means taking advantage of a community with an unparalleled dynamic that will give us individually the same power of strike as the big company. We call these human and financial benefits, from which we all individually benefit up to our investment in the network, the Community dividend.