Important mantras

Unshipped work is work not done

Shipping is the top priority, always. If we ship and people use our product then we can worry about making it better. If no one uses our product, you'll have no code to write.

3 Laws of Engineering

  1. Make it work
  2. If you really need to, make it beautiful
  3. If you really really need to, make it fast

Work Ethic

Execution

We focus on delivery through iteration and fierce execution. It's best to make mistakes and learn from them rather than trying to make something perfect and taking too long.

Disagreeing

It's very healthy to have a team that disagrees on a subject. Great results often come from discussion and debate. Inversely there comes a time when we disagree but commit, endless discussion adds no value. Do not confuse this with silent disagreeing, if you feel you're not being heard then speak up, say it clearly, be transparent and we'll all improve together but absolutely don't just agree to accommodate others.

Bikeshedding

NOT ALLOWED! Converge fast, execute and iterate later. It's always better to make decisions and fail fast than try to be perfect (on product or endless discussions/meetings) and take all the time in the world. The one thing we don't have is time, speed is of the essence for any successful startup.

No consensus

Consensus is not needed nor wanted. Consensus takes time and is a convergence methodology that takes too much time to achieve. Rather focus addressing a subject with the main stakeholders and seek a quick decision (fast is better). If you need to make a decision that will affect a larger group then instead of addressing the whole group reach the ultimate decision maker (ie: Paulo in Eng.) and ask who should be involved in landing that. No one should be a bottleneck and eventually we'll have dedicated groups to make decisions but for now we rely on everyone to be active and proactively taking decisions and being involved.

Productivity

Not working with deadlines nor a working schedule means we rely a lot on high productivity. The only way you can be productive is if you take good care of yourself, rest, eat and keep yourself healthy. A productive streak of work makes a 1 hour be worth more than 10h.