Studios don’t usually write manifestos when everything is calm. Manifestos appear when people are tired — tired of the wrong kind of seriousness, the wrong kind of “professionalism,” the corporate adulthood where everyone performs inspiration while quietly dying inside their calendars.
The VESNA manifesto was born from this state: not as rebellion for the sake of rebellion, as a sober refusal to keep participating in rituals that drain energy and produce nothing. We didn’t need another page of polished values. We needed a document that does one practical thing: protects the conditions in which talent can work freely, with dignity, and with enjoyment.
So we acted the way any civilized micro-state would. We drew borders.
The sovereignty of VESNA extends across the entire territory of the Studio — including the kitchen, the meeting room, and the doormat at the entrance. Especially the doormat.
Funny? Yes.
Exactly the genre in which the most important things are often born. Real culture almost never starts with a PowerPoint presentation. It starts with fatigue. With the feeling: “we don’t want this anymore.” With the moment a team realizes that its time and its nervous system are not a free add-on to “ambitious goals,” but the main resource.
We wrote the manifesto when tolerance for noise ran out. For bureaucracy pretending to be care. For “corporate culture” that replaces respect with loyalty. For office theater where looking busy matters more than doing. For the myth that pressure is motivation, and shame is a tool for growth. For the habit of discussing problems “in the corridors,” because speaking directly feels uncomfortable.
Put into one formula, the reason is simple: we want talent to work. Not to survive. Not to prove it is “the right kind.” Not to play someone else’s expectations. To work — freely, with dignity, and with enjoyment. And this is where it becomes clear why a studio needs a manifesto at all.
People are used to thinking culture is atmosphere. Something subjective: “we have a great team,” “we’re toxic,” “we’re a family.” In reality, culture is a set of permissions and prohibitions. It is answers to questions that arise every day in any living system: can you argue with a manager; can you say “this isn’t okay”; what is considered normal when there is a deadline; where does humor end and humiliation begin; what matters more — the person or the process; how conflicts are resolved; what happens to those who do strong work but don’t fit the theater.
If these answers are not fixed, someone will give them anyway. Not with words, with behavior. And often in the worse direction. By default, chaos wins: loud people talk over quiet people, tired people become sharp, strong people get tired of explaining, and the system gradually starts protecting not the work, but itself.
A manifesto is needed as a cultural firewall. It doesn’t make people good. It makes the rules visible. It saves energy. It removes ambiguity. It prevents a studio from quietly turning into yet another place where talent is spent adapting to oddities.
We wrote this text in the genre of a “constitution” precisely for bad days. For days when someone is irritated, someone is burned out, someone confuses authority with the right to humiliate, and someone decides to “speed up” the team through pressure. On those days, the manifesto stops being funny. It becomes an instruction for preserving the human inside the professional.
And still, the humor is mandatory. Not for cuteness. Humor is a way to keep principles from turning into pathos. It is a form of intellectual hygiene. When you can laugh at yourself, there is less chance of building a cult. When overload can be called “archiving” and “defragmentation,” it becomes easier to see where normal work ends and violence begins under the label of “high standards.”
So the manifesto contains the serious — a ban on humiliation, violence, public shaming, and experiments without consent. It contains the everyday — the right to food, coffee, normal working conditions, and personal boundaries. It contains the fully legal: if something is not okay, it is discussed inside, not in the corridors. Respect is not smiles. Respect is a way of solving problems.
And of course, there is the reason any real document must include a separate article: a ban on oppressing the society of the Pink Unicorns Club, in which programmers historically participate. Strong cultures know how to protect the most vulnerable: engineers, cats, and common sense.
But the final thought of the manifesto is not about softness. It is about the bar.
We don’t write a manifesto so everyone feels nice. We write a manifesto so it is honest. There is no “corporation” here, but there is responsibility. There is no pressure for the sake of pressure, but there are professional standards. Being part of VESNA sounds proud precisely because it requires quality: in words, in work, in relationships, in how you argue, how you listen, and how you hold your level even when no one is watching.
A manifesto is not a declaration of how perfect we already are. It is an agreement about who we commit to remain when it gets hard.
The full text of the manifesto is available via the link. You can start with the doormat. It explains a lot.
2 Responses
Yep, I coined the “Pink” part 😄 I’m the host of the Pink Unicorns Club. If you want in, DM me, we keep it tight and we vet devs.
well, now we simply have to formalize this club 😂