2021-12-28: Happy birthday Quality First Software GmbH. A big celebration is planned for the summer.
![[Translate to English:] Brief Weihnachtsfeier](/fileadmin/_processed_/9/c/csm_2021-weihnachtsfeier-brief_17ef07ece3.png)
2021-12-08, everybody at home: Due to Corona, there had to be another online Christmas party this year, which does not mean that it would be less creative. The evening started with a riddle in Gathertown, which we solved with the help of Caesar's cipher: "From Wilhelm von Humboldt we know One must wait for the future and enjoy or endure the present. We hope that you will also enjoy the second online Christmas party in a row and wish you a hopeful look into the future!" and a short presentation of the QFS Success Staircase 2021 with nice experiences from the past year.
The main part this time was Secret Santa. Everyone was assigned a different colleague and was allowed to make a gift for a budget of 50 €. Sweet treats and drinks were given away, but also individual matching gifts as well as a card on which the giver should write what the recipient particularly appreciates.
After the official part, we could still play "Set", "Who am I?" or "Monday Painter", "Gartic Phone" and "Werewolf" in various private Gather Town rooms or enjoy one or the other cold or warm drink.
Since 2019, each employee may additionally select a charitable organization to which donations will also be made. With the help of a PowerPoint slide, all employees present an organization at the Christmas party to which their donation budget goes.
"Many little people doing many little things can change the face of the world."
This gives attention to many different aspects:
Elterninitiative Intern3: Eltern helfen krebskranken Kindern
"Heimat Yesu" e.V . - Hilfe für Paruthiyoor, Thiruvananthapuram Kerala/Indien
Wie jedes Jahr haben wir auch an diese Organiasationen gespendet:
01.10.2021, Nuremberg, Germany: Where do you meet when one location is in Leipzig, one in Geretsried and one in Erlangen? Yes, exactly in Nuremberg. All employees arrived by train, saving CO2, and then the day began with a culinary walk through Nuremberg's city center with the Main Market Square, the Hangman's Bridge, and of course Nuremberg bratwursts and Nuremberg Elisen gingerbread.
After a short streetcar ride, the culinary experience continued with lunch at the Waldschänke in Nuremberg's Tiergarten. Because we could finally see each other live and in color, a new colleague was welcomed to the company with a school bag in QFS tradition. We spent the afternoon looking at animals, chatting, enjoying coffee and cake and lots of sunshine until we headed back home in the evening.
Sofya Levental: I am someone, who moved to the area to live closer to the mountains. So, you can imagine how surprisingly was it for me to find out that my colleagues, who like bouldering, running, hiking and spend the whole life near one of the two glaciers that left in Germany, have ever trod neither of the glaciers with own feed. We needed to change it as soon as possible! The choice of a route was obvious: climbing Zugspitze via Höllentalklamm offers enjoying beautiful views, hiking a glacier, climbing a via ferrate and the highest mountain in Germany. How happy (and a bit surprised) was I, when the stars really aligned for this tour!
Daniel Rieth: In fact, I had not done much alpinism before - that's why I had some doubts at first about whether I should try the tour. Was it perhaps too difficult for a rookie like me, who had to borrow about half of his equipment from friends (including hiking pants)? The route looked relatively strenuous at first glance, but there was no more direct route up to the summit. So this was clear for me, then as little distance as possible.
The first section of about two hours to the hut was nothing more than a nice walk. The caves and waterfalls of the Höllentalklamm were a beautiful, albeit a quite wet sight. At the hut there was first of all another cold shower, a good dinner and a cozy, if somewhat narrow mattress camp...
Gregor Schmid: I had been planning for more than 2 years to finally climb the Zugspitze and was thrilled when Sofya got down to business and initiated the project. I had a lot of respect for the tour - especially the route over the glacier. I would not have chosen that one for lack of experience. But thanks to the superb organization including a lot of borrowed equipment the adventure stayed well within limits and could be mastered without greater difficulties - not least thanks to the
absolutely perfect weather, which has made the tour a dream. Only the summit shock, which probably all Zugspitze hikers know, when you reach the summit after hours in the rock only to meet the throng of sneaker tourists, is a bit heavy. But I can't really complain as I was grateful for a descent in comfort with the train.
2021-06-29: At QFS we normally go out for lunch together 3-4 times a month. Due to the Covid-19 pandemic, working from home has become compulsory and these Tuesday lunch outings have been cancelled. Therefore, we had several remote lunch meetings, which were quite funny. Everyone picked up their food from a nearby restaurant or had it delivered, then we feasted and goofed off together from 12.00 - 13.00 o'clock, just like a normal lunch. For some of us, even in their own garden.
2021-05-06: Great Place to Work (GPtW) 2021 - and the winner is? It was exciting once again this year: are we going to be able to defend our first places from past years (2018, 2019) in this competition of employers?
“Almost”, you could say – third place among IT-companies nationwide and fifth place among employers from Bavaria (out of 172 companies with the size of 10-49 employees competing).
“Looking at the high two-digit placements of our competitors certainly makes me very happy that WE have landed among the front places. I think we can be proud to have such a great team especially in these peculiar times, and I am really glad to be a part of it. We are also a little spoiled with our two first place rankings. After all, only companies that are already doing great are participating in this survey/awards. So be proud of yourselves and us”, wrote Thomas Max in the company audit for QFS.
The GPtW-team tried to contribute to a party atmosphere with interviews by managing director Andreas Schubert with award winners and celebrities (Eckhardt von Hirschhausen) about the topic “good leadership”, and with lively rhythms for dancing (Dante Thomas).
What was missing was the excitement of the award ceremony (counting down to number one) and especially naming the special features. In past years we have already heard many good ideas by other companies and incorporated some of them into our company (such as: employees picking organizations they want to donate to, anticipation card for new employees…); on the other hand we also had the opportunity to explain our idea of the company success ladder at a previous award ceremony.
Alexandra Meßmer from Computerwoche gave an outlook to the IT-sector on the feedback from IT-companies to the question “What happens next after COVID?”: some companies prefer a hybrid work model (some employees on site, some on video chat). Others are preparing to get back to on site or office work. Another, entirely different direction is planning office day as an exception day, i.e. nobody should sit alone at their computer – instead, office day = holiday, with a barbecue etc. We at QFS have discussed this question in the past, between only working from home or only office work we will probably opt for a return to the tried and tested 2-3 days of home office/office work.
Speaking of celebrating: that didn’t go quite as well online… despite the party pack from GPtW; these tools will get good use for the QFS 20-year-celebration this summer.
2021-04-2021: This Tuesday evening we had our first game night via teams with two rounds of "Codenames" and two rounds of "Gartic Phone". It was a lot of fun! More photos will follow after the next game night, which is scheduled for May.
