• Wile E. Coyote ACME Rocket Sled ACME Super Cannon ACME Jetpack, ACME corp
• Road Runner, Evasion

Here at LABSS we work in a team that is collaborative and easy going. The team has two equally important goals:

1. work effectively to realize high quality research
2. ensure the well-being and continuing development of the team members

Goal n.2 is not less important than n.1. We do not want those team members who might be a bit less fast, less performant, and less knowledgeable to feel less useful, less listened to, less happy than the others. We aspire to create a group of people that will be happy and proud to be, or to have been, members of LABSS, while being aware that this is not a shared priority in the community at this point in time – a point in time when science is blighted by acceleration and individualisation.
As a research institute, our main commitment is to research itself. We think that the best way to serve research interests is to create an environment where, within the constraints imposed by reality, research is pursued because of curiosity. We also believe in slow science (see the slow science manifesto).

For a successful experience at LABSS, we are specifically looking for the following characteristics in you:

• Are curious. Love to learn. Love to study. Love to solve problems, especially challenging ones
• Are independent and proactive. You bug us with new ideas, things we can do, problems we can solve, etc…
• Enjoy discussions in a creative and stimulating atmosphere
• Are reliable and professional. When there is work to do, it needs to be done properly and on time. When this is not possible it is important to raise the issue as soon as possible.
• Are persistent. Do not give up easily on problems.
• Work with passion
• Are polite and collaborative. While there are excellent developers, researchers, consultants and geniuses that are rude, our group can live without them. Quality of life and a pleasant working environment are of utmost importance
• Are pragmatic. We like to test and build things, not “just” develop theories. We like to build things that work and are usable in practice. We also publish in top places, but we do NOT write papers for the sake of writing papers and getting credit. We do not build tools that only run on PowerPoint. We do not do research that is useless just because it is “publishable”. we do it because it is useful, and eventually may lead to a better world.
• Are intellectually honest

In terms of team behavior, we would love if you can try your best to achieve the following

• respect ALL team members, without exception
• do not think you are any “better” than the other (if you are too cool for us, please go somewhere where your genius can be appreciated and be put to work. it will also help us as a team with a single genius is worse than a team without the genius)
• do not think you know everything and the others know nothing
• listen very carefully to what everybody says, without dismissing a priori any proposal
• try to help anybody who needs and think at their development. Even if this means delaying your work a bit, or delaying the work
• try to make sure that in every written and verbal communication you always behave in such a way that
• make people willing to keep communicating with you
• keep people enthusiastic in proposing ideas,
• make people feel valued,
• keep people enthusiastic about what they are doing
• make people feel part of the team as a first class member
• make people willing to share all kinds of constructive opinions, thoughts, emotions
• make people feel they whenever they talk to you or inside in any communication thread that includes you, they can be free to express themselves because they are not going to receive any sort of – even moderately – aggressive or hostile behavior

None of this is easy to achieve, we all make mistakes and we all need to practice for this.

Credits: we owe the idea for this page to Prof. Fabio Casati.