Work with us

• We look for authentic people who have sincere convictions.
• We are self-aware and comfortable with who we are. We should not be dismissive of others for having different convictions than our own, so long as those convictions are genuine and moral.
• We appreciate when you stick your neck out to advocate for something with your genuine belief.
• It’s much easier to be critical of ideas than to be the folks who bring the new ideas. It’s easier to be a critic than a creator.
• Being earnest generally correlates with being optimistic and being tolerant.

Opposite Value: San Francisco's very own "dismissive hipster"

• We look to create an environment where working together is more enjoyable and creates better output than working alone.
• When you're working on something hard, consult with someone else on the team.
• We value institutional knowledge and spend extra time and effort to document our work and share our learning with the rest of the team.
• Look out for these anti-collaborative behaviors - it's everyone's responsibility to correct these behaviors when we see them (h/t Hacker School). We'll all occasionally exhibit them, so the correct response is an acknowledgement, a quick apology, and then everyone moves on.
  • Well, actually - interrupting someone to make a minor non-material correction, usually of the form "well, actually, James Madison wrote most of that document"
  • High-friction skepticism - it's fine to question assumptions, especially in light of new information, but it should be done in a way that minimizes conflict. Our expectations should always be that the other people on the team are competent, reasonable, and operating in good faith.
  • Feigned surprise, except when used to set up deadpan humor in non-work-related discussions
  • Interrupting someone else who's speaking, in general
  • Elk pissing - Making changes to someone else's work that do not materially improve it, for the sake of leaving your own stamp on it (like an elk marking territory)
  • Playing devil’s advocate for fun instead as a problem solving technique
  • Arguing some viewpoint you don’t actually believe in (argument as a verbal sparring sport)

Opposite Value: Individualistic, cowboy, "no bullshit", high conflict/high friction

• We aim to evaluate the outcome of projects and initiatives based on how we executed them and how well we made decisions with the information we had at the time, rather than how they ultimately turned out.
• Luck and things outside our control have a significant role in the outcome of everything. We acknowledge that reality and try to appropriately attribute their contribution to our successes and failures.
• We believe that a strategy that has a better expected value and is executed well, but that ultimately fails, is better than a strategy with a low expected value or with poor execution, but that ultimately is successful by chance.
• Though we may not be able to control luck, we control our reaction to it. Bad luck is an explanation, not necessarily an excuse.
• We analyze and take responsibility for the parts that are in our control.
• Meeting deadlines and doing the right things are part of being focused on the process.
• Continually updating the process after a project regardless of the outcome is being focused on the process.

Opposite Value: Results-driven

• We analyze options and use data to shape our decisions.
• We believe it’s important to learn from our past mistakes and successes by reviewing what we’ve done.
• We aim to make thoughtful progress every day without analysis paralysis.
• We try to find the smallest progress we can make to confirm or reject our hypothesis.
• We are okay with redoing or changing our minds as we uncover new information.
• For every project, we start by clarifying the intention and exploring alternatives including “Do we need to do this at all?”
• We make our actions more thoughtful by soliciting input and documenting our decisions at every step, not by digging deeper without input.

Opposite Value: Move fast and break things.