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@alexmcpherson
Last active August 29, 2015 14:19
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Culture for Kapost Bonsai

Practical / Tactical

Be on time to meetings or alert an hour ahead of time if you'll be late

Meetings need a goal and a runner to get that goal accomplished

Defend your time from distractions and use it effectively on moving product forward

Prefer Slack over email over in person interruptions over a set block of time

Plan and communicate WFH/remote working days at least the day before when possible


Working with each other

10 minute rule: don’t get stuck on anything for that long, someone else can help you solve it faster

Ask questions well

Seek out criticism on your designs and code

     What could I be missing?

     Where will this not work?

Be assertive AND flexible. Strong opinions, weakly held

Pairing is healthy for our minds and products and we should try to do it for an hour a day


Being a good person

Learn about well-actuallys, drive bys, and feigning surprise. And don’t do them.

Watch your air time during conversations and meetings. Engineers in particular can be quiet or slower to speak

Don’t be a jerk. Don’t assume you’re not a jerk. You might be.

Help your coworkers get better! For more serious matters HR can be involved.


Code Quality

Take responsibility for outcome of projects

QA is your responsibility

Be the CEO of the feature. Proactive running back.

Write code to account for happy, sad, evil, and weird cases


Career

Be able to set goals for your career

Meta-cognition about your learning style, working style, communication challenges, strengths and weaknesses

Constant learning and industry awareness, even outside the scope of our product’s technology choices

Seek to understand the entire product you are working on, not just the scope of your features.


Signals of a poor team fit

Ignoring or shifting problems that are hard

Blaming users or PMs or QA for bugs

Focus on the letter of the tasks assigned, not the spirit

Taking code review personally

Sowing discontent, gossiping

Thinking you’re the smartest person in the room

Being a jerk

Being unwilling to learn, grow, and explore

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