The Old City-based software company
DMG CTRL (Damage Control) has outgrown its 2,200 square foot office above
Indy Hall. With twenty employees, many hired through apprenticeships, DMG CTRL has doubled its staff in the last year. On Monday, December 3, the company moved to a 5,000-square-foot space on N. 5th Street. At their current growth-rate, Jason Allum, the company’s cofounder, expects them to fill the space over the next few years.
The new address will include a classroom, a conference room, a kitchen and more windows as well as ping pong, a pool table and a beer keg. That may sound more clubhouse than growing company, but Allum—who was hired as a software engineer at age 16—says employees don’t hate coming to work.
"A lot of this space is built to facilitate communication," he says. "It’s a very sedentary job, so you have to have dedicated space for play."
A 2012 study by AIG Consulting found that 68 percent of software companies surveyed had more failed projects than successful ones. DMG CTRL often rewrites broken software from larger companies. Allum says his company has built over a hundred products and only two had less-than-optimal results. He attributes the company’s phenomenal success rate to the “collective intelligence” of his team. Each project item is tracked using revision control software and every piece of code is peer reviewed. Employees sit at shared tables and are encouraged to move around.
"It takes a fairly anti-social group of people—nerds—and makes them talk to each other," says Allum. "Everything is done by somebody and checked by somebody else. If you’re reviewing my code and I have more experience, you have a chance to learn my tricks. People are allowed the freedom to fail which is huge."
Allum was a founding member and initial financer of Indy Hall. Shortly after launch, Allum and cofounder, Mac Morgan, posted a Craigslist ad calling for a "minion." He hired a cellphone salesman with no background in computers. The new employee was given menial tasks—stuff Allum didn’t want to pay experienced professionals to do—and progressively moved to more challenging ones. Today that former minion writes software for the products he used to sell.
Since then, DMG CTRL has hired a waitress, a warehouse employee, several Art Institute graduates, retail personnel and a "Russian math wiz." They also get regular visits from a 78-year-old chemist who is learning to write code.
"We let people float through the orbit," explains Allum. "If it works out we’ll hire them. I’m a firm believer that there’s way more people who can do this stuff than know they can do this stuff—or that the world would allow to do this stuff."
Source:Jason Allums, DMG CTRL
Writer: Dana Henry