- Internally, revenue, costs (including salary), and the like will be publicly available.
- Our overarching goal is clear, and we have metrics that point us in the direction we need to go.
- Our targeted metric is prominently big-boarded; projects have their own metrics that are treated similarly.
- There is a living document that records our goal and all the factors that contribute to and detract from it. All metrics are clearly located on this document, so that we can all understand how each piece affects the whole.
- Business metrics are not available in real-time.
- There are several tiers for salaries; the tiers provide a base salary, but actual (financial) compensation is increased based on reviews from peers and management, and is weighted heavily by projects and their outcomes.
- Short-term gain projects and long-term gain projects will be treated distinctly in the above weighting.
- Salaries can change as frequently as monthly, though tier moves are at most quarterly.
- There is no curve or ranking; if we're all amazing, then we all get treated the same (amazingly).
- Non-financial compensation (healthcare, conference attendance, etc.) is treated identically for all.
- ? Are equity grants tiered, as well?
- Team leads give feedback to their teammates at least weekly; this is tied into the overall project progress updates.
- Management gives feedback at least monthly, based on project/team updates and outcomes.
- Feedback will always be given when requested.
- We're all here to contribute to the same goals, so feedback is always constructive.
- We have regular retrospectives at the team and company level to figure out what is and isn't working.
- We start with trust; we build confidence.
- We value diversity in all areas except one: we are all committed to the vision of the company. We all want to succeed, together. We seek out diversity of background, opinion, and work interests in our hires.
- We are a distributed company; communication is key to our success.
- Vacations are built into the schedule. The minimum is 1 week away / quarter. If we have projects that take longer than a quarter to deliver anything (making people feel like they can't get away), we've failed ... massively.
- We don't all want to work on the same things, and that's a strength.
- Until we reach a certain size, there's going to be work that no one wants to do -- maybe customer support, maybe sales, whatever. We understand that, but if we're committed to succeeding, we'll all pitch in on those. This won't be permanent, however, and we'll establish clear guidelines on when we need to find someone interested in those areas (for instance, once we hit 10 support emails a day)
- There are very few required meetings -- let's aim for <3 / week (for an individual person). This should serve as a marker that you might be stretching yourself too thinly.
- Negativity in internal chat will happen -- we all get frustrated at times -- but it's a sign that something is wrong. It bears discussion.
- Our users are vital; we all talk to them (and, importantly, we listen to them).
- Default to internally-public (chat, etc) channels unless there is a very good reason to go private. This means that you probably shouldn't "take the conversation offline" unless you commit to recapping the offline discussion and making it public as soon as possible.
- Recognize that attention is a scarce resource; regularly review automated messaging (errors, deploys, commits, etc.) for usefulness and to make sure that it's using the correct channel.
- Keep the audience(s) and goal(s) in mind for every communicative action.
- Possibly: practice opt-in email transparency (ala Khan Academy; seen influences)