skald labs

Culture

Our culture is derived from our Values, so your should start there. For reference, our values are:

Here, culture is not just BS, it's something we care for deeply and actively work on. Our values drive who we are and how we act, and if we find we're not acting in line with our values then we should consider either changing the values or nudging ourselves in the direction of our values if we still believe in and want to adhere to them.

Values should be revised at least once a year, meaning that we look at the company we've become over the last year and see if the values still hold. Values will change over time and it's ok for them to. The company is like an organism that grows and evolves as it goes through new experiences and brings new people in. Evolution is good, so it's fine to accept that we've changed and for our values to not remain static.

Beyond our values, there are a few other important bits about how we operate that are worth mentioning. These are more practical and relate to how we operate, but are still derived from our values, even if they don't exactly fit in as a value.

We're fully remote

We're a fully remote company, and this requires a lot of effort from everyone involved to work well. It means asynchronous communication is a priority, and that you should really write things down.

It also means you're flexible to structure your days in a way that you feel most productive and that we will meet in person at least once a year.

Keep meetings to a minimum and keep them short

Meetings are a good way to align, but looking for too much alignment goes against trusting in coordinated autonomy.

As a rule, consider whether you really need a meeting or if you can move forward via async communication, be it by sending messages on Slack or writing an RFC.

When a meeting is necessary because async communication was attempted and insufficient we should:

  1. Aim to keep it short
  2. Always have an agenda
  3. Make sure we've discussed the topic beforehand in an async format
  4. Always come out with actionable points

Note that this doesn't apply to meetings like pair programming, mentoring, meetings where you're teaching someone something, or coffee chats where you're just getting to know each other. These are encouraged and are left up to your discretion. They are part of being a compounding factor.

Unlimited time off

You have unlimited time off, with an expectation that you take a minimum of 25 days. This is in place to prevent a culture where unlimited time off turns into less time off than you would have otherwise had because the lack of a guideline leads to a race to the bottom. We will check in on you to ensure you take at least 25 days a year.

Unlimited time off means it's ok to take more time than your peers and that you won't be judged on it. However, while we don't care about the exact number of days you take off, we care about performance and your compounding effect on your team, and taking too much time off is very likely to impact your ability to deliver, as well as put a strain on the rest of your team.

We trust you to make sound decisions about this.

We care about performance

We give a lot of autonomy and we want to be a great place to work. We want you to take time off and we are flexible with schedules.

None of this means we don't care about performance. We strive to hire people we believe are great and will fit in well within our culture, and we both want you to and will help you be successful here.

However, we don't want to keep people around who for one reason or another did not fit in or are not performing to the team's standard. We care about compounding each other, and we believe the best way to do this is to be surrounded by top performers.