How we work

It’s important to elaborate on the way we work. Not only because it leads to exceptional quality but also because it creates specific constraints that clients and contributors need to be prepared for and adhere to. Here is a list of the main points:

General Principles

• Our consultancy and design studio don't work the way a normal company works and it may not be attractive for everyone. It's more like a collective of experts with a shared standard for quality. Granular documentation of workflows and projects ensures that the quality of our work stays consistent.

• All experts at Deep Work work on projects because they love the work they do and it's a part of their life. Everyone is compensated appropriately, but money is not the primary motivator for work.

• To make sure we learn and get better as a team, projects have a strict process that we rarely diverge from. Generally speaking, every project is, therefore, better and of higher quality than the previous one.

Project-Related Constraints

• On each project, we guarantee a team of industry experts with deep domain knowledge who constantly learn and develop themselves. To work here, they have to prove their skills first and then are both free in their availability and in committing to the project fully. They optimize their scheduled days to be 100% focused on a project. To make sure they are happy working on each project and keep working with us, we all have to decide on the schedule before the project and adhere to it.

• A project is only confirmed to our team once the upfront payment is made.

• Because nobody is on a payroll, changes of schedule during a project are usually difficult and will result in either delayed overall timelines, increased cost, or worst case - cancellation of the project because the freelancers booked other work.

• We let clients into our internal design process, so not only will they know exactly what is being designed but actively participate in all design decisions. They will also learn our unique design process and will be able to apply it in the future. It saves a lot of time but requires the team to block time to participate in our sessions.

• This also means that instead of the traditional back-and-forth feedback, teams will be guided through collaborative online sessions where we help align the team members and our experts give expert advice before making decisions on how to proceed. Distraction-free participation in the workshops is a project policy with our clients.

• All of this is designed to optimize for an enjoyable collaboration, a predictable deadline, no endless project bloat, and very high-quality results.

Operational Details

• Our hiring processes rely on experts establishing mentor-mentee relationships with someone they trust. There is no centralized HR department and in most cases experts work with their friends or recommend each other from the community.

• We rarely sign NDAs or legal agreements due to our open community and the difficulty of keeping intellectual property created during projects secret. This especially relates to ideas or designs that can act as inspiration for other projects. We always respect our client's requests for privacy, regardless of legal agreements.