“People work better when they believe in what they are working for.” – Alfred Garcia
Alfred is a member of Jamgo, a developer co-op based in Barcelona that has been around for nearly 15 years. On top of that, he lives in a housing co-op. We spoke with him about how a co-op’s structure should be just enough to flex around the complexity of the people within it.
In a co-op, you are an active decision maker. You don’t get to externalize decisions to a boss. You are all the boss, sharing the load together.
It’s like a bunch of entrepreneurs got together, put their hands in, and created Captain Planet (when will they make a Marvel Universe around him? Please bring Captain Planet back).
This interview goes deep.
We get philosophical.
We ask deep questions like:
- Why is it so hard to ask for help, and how can we change that?
- If profit isn’t just about money, what else can it mean?
- What does it look like for a business to honor the whole person, not just honor their productivity?
- What does ‘transparency’ look like in practice?
- How does equitable compensation work at Jamgo?
- How does the concept of ‘speed’ change when you look at co-ops? What is slower, what is faster?
- What is the difference between community-based support and support based in capitalism?
We also answer fun questions like “Why is Barcelona so full of co-ops? Is it… the anarchists???”
Oh yeah, this is a good one.
Action items from this conversation:
- What does profit mean to your organization?
- What does ‘transparency’ look like in practice in your organization?
- How do you celebrate the messiness of life?
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See Alfred’s web for more about him.
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Read the raw transcript:
[00:00:06] Janel: Welcome to Flying the Coop, a podcast about rethinking how business works and who it should work for.
[00:00:13] Anna: We are Janel and Anna, small business owners learning in public as we turn our company, Strange Birds, into a worker owned co op. Today we’re talking with Alfred Garcia, a software developer and member owner at Jamgo, a worker cooperative based in Barcelona. Jamgo builds technology with a social purpose, partnering with human rights organizations, housing co ops and public institutions to create digital tools that drive real world change.
But it’s not just the work that’s different, it’s how the work gets done. No bosses, no hierarchy, just a team of equals making decisions together and building systems rooted in trust, transparency and care.
[00:00:57] Alfred: Wow.
[00:00:57] Anna: In today’s conversation, Alfred is going to share what it’s actually like to work inside a tech co op.
[00:01:05] Janel: So I’ve known Alfred for a full decade and let me tell you, there’s possibly no one on this planet that has co ops as embedded into their DNA as Alfred.
When I asked him if he’d be on the podcast, he was like, sure, of course. But did you also know that you literally live down the street from three more I can name offhand?
Barcelona, where Alfred and I live, is a city that’s particularly well suited for co ops and we maybe will talk about why later in this conversation.
[00:01:30] Anna: So what inspired the creation of Jamgo back in 2011?
[00:01:37] Alfred: The founders of Jamgo were common workers in common in traditional companies.
So when they realized of this power dynamics that all these bosses has over their workers then realized that this was not the way that they wanted to make their living. So they started looking for alternatives. And then it was when they arrived to this idea of cooperative, they decided to create Jamgo. They were only three people and they started, they realized that this was great because it was aligned totally with their ideals.
I mean there was no any boss there, just they working in their projects, looking for the projects.
For sure it was not easy for sure at the beginning it was not easy because they were three developers, three programmers. They were not specialists in looking for projects.
But little by little they learned about that. They learned to move in the economy of in these companies and little by little also decided to to add a new member for managing projects, a project leader.
And then people came, just a designer, then a communicator. So yes, we have several roles there in Jamgo.
Well, it has been more than 10 years now. It’s almost 15.
[00:03:39] Anna: That’s amazing. I think this story is very similar to why I wanted Strange Birds to be a co op. The reason why I left my corporate job was I was turning into more of a manager and I just hated, felt bad. I didn’t like it and it wasn’t the way that I felt the best work could be done.
And running Strange Birds on my own for a while and then discovering co ops and going, ah, this is the way.
So like 10, almost 15 years in.
What’s been extra cool and extra challenging about co ops, the extra cool thing.
[00:04:22] Alfred: Is to be active decision maker in your daily life.
There is no other person that that is affecting what you are doing.
I mean there is no boss that hire people that you dislike or there is another person that decides that decides that you are going to do this project, you like it or not.
This is fucking cool.
The difficult part, there is extra work on a quo. In a traditional workplace you are externalizing decision to your bosses, to other people. But in a co op it doesn’t happen like that. In a co op you have to think about any area of the company, of the organization.
So you have to be very active and you have to put a lot of effort to make the co op work.
[00:05:23] Janel: I imagine somebody who’s never worked in a structure like that before would immediately think, well, that doesn’t sound very efficient. We were talking in a previous episode that we recorded about how in the US in particular, a lot of people within the business world think that productivity and efficiency is like their God and it’s the one true thing that’s important that you have to maximize for. And I think that they’d probably listen to that and think like, well, it sounds like you probably don’t get a lot of work done then if you’re trying to do all of these things and have to go through these complicated decision making processes, what would you say to that?
[00:05:59] Alfred: What we try to do is to maximize our well being.
So maybe we are not the richest developers in this world at all. But we can say that we are very happy and if we are not the happiest, we are very close to that. We do what we like, we do in the way we like to do it. We do with people that we like.
There is a lot of trust. So this gives you a lot of peace.
[00:06:40] Anna: And in some states in the US if you are officially registered as a co op, you’re actually a not for profit company.
Because kind of what you’re getting at here, right is the intention isn’t to make profit for the company, right? The intention is to make profit for the members and profit doesn’t have to be money, it can be happiness, it can be a good life, you know. So I think that that’s.
It’s a not so subtle shift. It’s a pretty radical one.
[00:07:14] Alfred: Let me add, Anna, to all these things that you said that it’s important to understand that corps is different in each country. I mean, they all depend on the law of the country, specifically of that country.
And in the same way, every cop has their own personality.
I am talking about Django, but you could create your co op and be totally different.
[00:07:50] Janel: Alfred, you and I talked a little bit, I think, in our prep call for this, about how there’s a lot of co ops in Barcelona. And I don’t. I don’t know if you have the context as to why it’s a ripe place for them to exist. Do you know why?
[00:08:07] Alfred: I think it’s because there is some culture here from when we had the Civil war. Barcelona was full of anarchists.
They organized themselves in cooperatives.
And I think this has remained to nowadays.
So maybe this is my idea or this is what I want to believe.
[00:08:32] Anna: At least honestly, Janelle, when you asked that question, I thought of, it’s probably the anarchists.
[00:08:40] Janel: Right?
I want to dig a little bit more about, like you said, Jemgo’s personality as a co op. Can you like, think about any work you’ve been able to do there, you collective you have been able to do there, that that’s been possible because you are a co op. Things that got done in a certain way that are facilitated by how you’re structured.
[00:09:07] Alfred: From outside. If you look at us, you could think that we are a common company of developers.
But at the same time, if you look closer, you realize that all of our projects has some kind of human point of view.
For example, we have projects with the Barcelona City Council for helping people with lower resources.
We can have access to these kind of projects because we are a cooperative and because we are very active in, in the social economy here in Barcelona.
[00:09:52] Janel: I imagine part of it is a value match, you know, like the way in which you work represents the values that you hold. And so you attract in projects that hold similar kind of values and want to build a similar kind of world.
[00:10:06] Anna: So speaking of values, right, Jomgo emphasizes transparency as one of your core values. Transparency is a word that is thrown around a lot. It’s kind of like be authentic, be transparent. Like, what do you mean?
So for Django, what does transparency actually look like in daily practice or in planning for something.
[00:10:32] Alfred: In those assemblies as an Example, we deal with those numbers of the cooperative, those economical values.
[00:10:44] Anna: When you say numbers, like financial numbers are members sharing personal financial numbers, like in order to make rent and live my best life this month, I’m short. Or are you talking about the co op as a whole? Those numbers?
[00:11:01] Alfred: I was talking about co op numbers. You have to think about all these members of the co op, like the bosses of the co op.
So we all need to know how to. How the copies is functioning.
But if there were some problems, economical problems between, you know, some of our members, some of the Django members have some economical problems, we can share those problems in the group.
And the co op always will try to help all their members.
[00:11:42] Janel: Am I remembering this right from like when we talked before, that there’s.
That people are paid the same in the co op, but there is a supplement for people who have children.
[00:11:55] Alfred: Yes, we all earning the same amount of money at the end of the month.
But when.
When one of the members have some people that requires some care, say children or their elders, one of the things that the group does to support in their care, it’s to give a supplement, a small amount of money every month.
[00:12:24] Anna: Is that like a formal application process or you have to hit certain requirements in order to get it? I want to get into the nitty gritty of that.
Let’s say if someone, someone has a kid or all of a sudden they are caring for a parent or a grandparent, what is the process in order to get that supplement from the co op? Is it in the assembly and it’s a vocal decision or is there forms to fill out?
How detailed does this go?
[00:12:57] Alfred: Look at the beginning of its assembly. We all share how we feel, what is happening in our lives.
So it’s not a big deal to ask for this supplement just to say, hey, there is this problem.
And for sure the co op will always look for a way to help you.
[00:13:19] Anna: I ask because for a lot of traditional companies, getting support is really fucking.
[00:13:25] Janel: Hard for people who have never been to an assembly before. Can you talk more about that? What does it look like we’ve said? We talk about feelings. What else happens in an assembly?
[00:13:35] Alfred: Well, assemblies.
Not always, not all assemblies. Because one of the things, okay, Assemblies are a big world, okay? It’s not so easy to say, hey, an assembly is like this, like this, like this.
For sure, it’s about the people that are involved in that assembly.
And it’s also about the history of the group in very, very simple words. It’s just a group of people organizing Themselves to manage some problems that happens in the organization. There is nothing else than that in Djamgo. One of the things that we do is at the beginning we share how we feel. So we know that when you speak in the assembly, why, it could be a bit rough or, or not because you may be stressed. So this is, this is the reason.
[00:14:37] Anna: I love that I think so often, especially in business conversations, when it comes to running a company, emotions are not welcome.
[00:14:46] Janel: Right.
[00:14:46] Anna: We’re here to do business. Leave your personal life at home.
And in reality, it’s. It’s not about work, life, balance. It’s just this is life and everything impacts everything else.
[00:15:02] Alfred: Totally. Yes.
[00:15:03] Anna: Yeah.
[00:15:04] Janel: So, Anna, should we change our weeklies to be called assemblies?
[00:15:08] Anna: Sure.
[00:15:10] Janel: Sweet. Right now I’m a little reluctant to give up Phoenix and Hoatson unite.
[00:15:16] Anna: However, I mean, those are. It can be.
[00:15:20] Janel: Those are our bird names, Alfred.
[00:15:22] Anna: It can be Phoenix and Hoatzin. Assembly.
[00:15:27] Janel: Assemble. Assemble. Birds, assemble.
[00:15:29] Anna: Oh, it’s kind of like Avengers assemble. Like superheroes.
[00:15:33] Janel: Exactly.
[00:15:33] Anna: Okay, here we go.
[00:15:34] Janel: Yeah, we have to end it with an exclamation point. I’m in. I’m in.
We also have a structure in ours. We hadn’t called them assemblies yet, but we have a feelings bit. We usually do it at the end because it often is kind of a nice feeling of connection afterwards. But yeah, you put it really simply. It’s a group of people trying to organize themselves and like, what way is going to work for that group of people. And I imagine that when and if we expand to more, our weeklies will have to take a different form necessarily because the business will be different.
[00:16:11] Anna: Honestly, I’m now convinced that our emotional check in should be at the beginning. I think what Alfred said is. Is really smart.
[00:16:20] Janel: Right.
[00:16:21] Anna: When you have that emotional check in at the beginning of a meeting, you understand why people are reacting in a certain way.
[00:16:28] Janel: Right.
[00:16:29] Janel: You reminded me of another thing I wanted to ask you, Alfred, about feelings.
I know that you think a lot about working and living your life in ways that are sustainable. I don’t so much mean the green part of it, although I know you think about that as well. But like how you can do it in a way that’s ongoing and healthy and avoid burnout. I would be really curious to know if there are structures within Jamgo that are built to support this or how you think about it.
[00:16:59] Alfred: When you start feeling stressed in jamgo, you just need to raise your hand, say it in the assembly, and if somebody has some gap in their agenda and can help you with the project. For sure this will happen.
We all share projects. I mean, there is no big formula behind this. It’s just people trying to care for each other. No.
[00:17:36] Anna: What happened when someone is consistently raising their hand that they’re stressed?
Like there isn’t just. It’s not just a one time I need help, but it’s. It’s really frequent. Is there a different intervent intervention that happens then to help them out.
[00:17:58] Alfred: When this has happened? This is something that.
It’s not only the person that the ones that raises the hand, it’s the group, the one that raises the hand and ask for the person, how he’s feeling.
And the group is actively looking for solutions for this situation because at the end, what we all want is that all the members in the group are feeling okay. For sure. When we talk about assemblies and to solve problems using in the way that assemblies work, it’s slow when the group tries to find a solution for that problem, it requires weeks and weeks to pass to find the solution.
But yes, the group is taking care of the members.
[00:18:54] Anna: I think that you specifically called out. This stuff takes time, not just in assembly, but in helping members get through a rough patch. I think that there’s this horrible culture, especially in the United States, where sure, you can say you’re overloaded, but tomorrow you better be great.
Fix it today, you get one day of rest, come back tomorrow. And if this is a consistent problem, then you’re probably fired or you’re on probation or something. Right. Where it’s a. You need to figure it out. Your teammates can only help you so much. And if you can’t handle it, that’s on you.
[00:19:32] Janel: Right.
[00:19:32] Anna: And I like that you called out that recovery from burnout. Getting help over stress. It’s not a. It’s never a quick fix ever.
Yeah.
[00:19:44] Alfred: And maybe this is not. This is not something that has an end. I mean, when you have had a burnout, maybe you carry with that burden during very long time in your life because sometimes it’s because you realize of something that dynamics, inner dynamics of yourself and it’s something that it’s not easy to solve.
[00:20:13] Janel: I have two thoughts. One is just about speed and remembering when I first landed at Strange Birds and was still in corporate mode.
And Anna, you saying, just like Janelle, slow your roll. Everything is going to happen more slowly than you expect.
And I remember hearing those words and just thinking everything. How can you. What are you talking about? How can you know that? And you were right, as you normally are. And it’s really Stuck in my mind as that the pace of this is different because we choose for it to be different, because we think that doing work in this way is better for us in really tangible ways, because we want to build a business that cares for the people within it. And it sounds like Djam Go has much of the same ethos at its heart. So then there’s the second thing that came to mind for me, is that if you are truly building a business for the people that are within it, it’s going to be quite specific to the context and the character of the people that form the business. The thought that came to mind while you were talking about like how the assemblas work and you’re like, well, it’s a group of people trying to organize themselves. It’s not as though we have intricate processes for every single thing that we do because it’s dependent on the people within it and where they are at each moment. So the goal is to build enough structure that can stretch around that and grow with that, such that it continually makes sense for complex people and complex life.
Does that sound about right?
[00:21:54] Alfred: Totally, it sounds right.
And it’s not that we adapt to that, it’s that we celebrate all this complexity.
We welcome all these kind of things. We celebrate that and we really like that it’s like that.
[00:22:13] Anna: So if a traditional startup founder or an agency owner were listening to this interview, what do you think they could learn most from how co ops work?
[00:22:25] Alfred: To know that people work better, work better, even more when they believe in what they are working for.
For me, that has been a game changer in my career. I mean, what I do now, it’s what I believe.
And I know that I am more performant now than I was before.
And allow me to add also that when there is total transparency in your company, when you know what is happening, there is people involved even more in the company.
They feel the company more like something that is from them.
[00:23:19] Janel: I remember when shit hit the fan at my corporate employer, feeling a kind of resentment maybe.
I think that’s probably the right emotion, feeling a resentment for the little scraps of information that I got and the fuller story that I didn’t have access to and all the decisions that were made that I didn’t have access to, but still being asked to deal with the shit.
And I think that’s a pretty common feeling. And going out on, well, not entirely my own, going out arm in arm with the best business partner in the world, but doing our own thing in a way that not very Many people are doing. It also invites a lot of feelings, a lot of up and down feelings. However, that resentment is never one of them.
And that can only be true through transparency and building a business based off of the values that you actually believe in.
[00:24:26] Anna: And I think celebrating the messiness of life, I love that you called it celebrating.
[00:24:34] Janel: Right?
[00:24:35] Anna: It’s not just you accept it, it’s. No, celebrating is an active, intentional choice of like, yes, bring in the kid.
Yes, talk about your garden incessantly.
Yes.
[00:24:52] Alfred: I strongly believe in horizontal hierarchies because this makes all of us to get involved in what we do.
So yes, anything that comes from that, for me, it’s something that I really, really loved. I am living in a housecope and at the end it’s more or less the same thing. When we talk about housing, co ops and workers co op, the di is the same that when we are in a group, the group is stronger than a person. It’s more power, it’s more powerful than just one individual.
And as human beings we have achieved more as groups than not as individuals, closing ourselves and doing things for ourselves. And this is one of the things that I hate most of capitalism, that idea that of isolating or other person saying, okay, you are an individual, you work by yourself. All the, the rest of the world is competition, the rest of other companies are competition.
And then you realize when you work totally different that life is easier.
[00:26:07] Anna: Yeah. I think the first example that I ever saw of a co op that piqued my interest was a housing co op. And I was like, this makes so much sense. Housing costs are stupid high, almost unattainable for most folks.
Why not put some collective power behind it?
Thinking about competition, I remember I, I play ultimate Frisbee. It’s the sport that I play. Anyway, someone that I play with is also a copywriter and a couple years ago was thinking about leaving her normal her corporate job to freelance to go.
[00:26:45] Janel: Out on her own.
[00:26:46] Anna: And I immediately was like, oh cool, let’s chat, you know, let me help you out. And she went, aren’t you my competition? And I was like, no, not because I’m better than you, but because there’s enough for every let me help you.
And it’s so interesting of how folks respond to just it’s a community based help versus I think there’s like a capitalist based help that has all these strings attached.
[00:27:18] Janel: Right?
[00:27:18] Anna: Well, because I help you, you owe me this, that and everything else in your life.
[00:27:23] Janel: Right?
[00:27:23] Anna: But rather this community support of no, we’re just Doing it together.
[00:27:29] Alfred: Yeah.
[00:27:29] Anna: Isn’t that easy? I love that you said it’s just easier.
[00:27:33] Alfred: Yeah. And it’s shameful that it’s so root in our culture. You know, we think like that without realizing that how. How is in our. Our way of thinking.
Luckily, there are some little cells that are doing this cancer to this capitalism system. And little by little, it will. It will fall.
[00:27:58] Janel: I think there’s a trust factor for that, gets in the way of more people giving collective ways of working, ways of living a go. I think people feel that if there’s no one forcing people to be nice to me and help me, then they will not.
And so I want to live in a structure that will obligate that help to be there or obligate that I get what I’m owed. In order to even contemplate doing something that’s more collaborative, less competitive, you have to first get over that.
[00:28:40] Anna: I think it goes to people not being able to ask for help.
There’s a crisis of asking.
Sure, there’s a crisis of loneliness, but that’s because there’s a crisis of being able to ask for help.
And I think that’s the cool thing about co ops, where, like, raise your hand, what’s going on.
Yeah, it’s built into it.
[00:29:04] Alfred: It’s also in the way that we are also managing our relationships.
This morning I was with a friend in the hospital because she was to have a surgery, and she was telling me, wow, Alfred, for sure, this is a wonderful day for you. The whole day in the hospital, she was saying it ironically. And I said, it’s not that for me, it’s not a day, a full day in the hospital. It’s a full day that I am going with a friend, that I am just there. And this, for me, this life is the way that I want to live. For sure. Life is not always fireworks, not at all.
We think about this like another kind of work, you know, like something that you have to put effort. You have to do this, you have to do the other thing.
I think we have to switch. We have to change our mindset in this sense.
[00:30:10] Janel: That’s such a cool topic. I want to, like, read several books about it and, like, deepen my understanding of it, because I have no idea how I answer the question, like, how do we start doing that?
Because I think the three of us here are already at least a good way bought into having that at our core and living that in our lives.
But a lot of people are not. And I don’t know how you go about shifting that narrative in the wider world.
[00:30:39] Anna: I think it’s a question of just how we live.
[00:30:43] Janel: Right.
[00:30:45] Anna: I had a friend who really needed help cleaning out her basement and she was like, I just keep putting it off. It’s going to take me all day. And I was like, I could help. She was like, oh no, it’s going to be awful. Like just like all these boxes. And I’m like, yo, I could help. We got it done in an hour.
She thought it was going to take it all day. And you know what? I know that she offers help like that to other people now.
[00:31:10] Janel: Right.
[00:31:10] Anna: Because she never would have thought to ask. Ask for help with that thing. And I think it’s a.
It’s not about paying it forward or whatever that phrase is, because that still feels capitalist to me. But it’s just about it just showing up and saying, yo, what do you need? So I think it’s just asking. It’s showing up. And it’s not that. Those are the small cultural shifts within our own friend group that then cascades out is the hope for me at least.
[00:31:39] Alfred: I think it’s like that.
I agree with you.
I think as that famous sentence says, be the change you want to.
I don’t know, but you know what I mean.
[00:31:55] Anna: Yes. Be the change you want to see in the world.
[00:31:58] Alfred: Yeah, exactly.
[00:31:59] Anna: Yeah.
[00:32:02] Speaker E: Flying the Coop is brought to you by Strange Birds, a strategic messaging co op for businesses who care loudly. From websites to onboarding flows, launches to long term strategy. If you want your brand offers and experience to tell the same story so your content actually supports your growth, we can help. Find us at Strangebirds Land.
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