Clear, efficient, and respectful communication is the foundation of how we work. It is a crucial ingredient enabling us to move fast and maintain alignment in a rapidly changing industry. In a remote environment with teams spread across time zones and cultures, good communication hygiene is indispensable.
This page contains hints and rules on how we communicate at Matter Labs.
While small talk is nice at times, we should avoid it and respect the limited time and attention span of our counter-party. Every conversation started by us should clearly indicate a reason why the communication is required at all:
Good
Hello. We are going to upgrade the server next week, which will introduce a breaking change in our REST API.
We already prepared a new SDK library version, which supports both current and upcoming API versions, so you have to update the library to version 0.8.99.
The update is scheduled for Jan 21.
Will this be a problem for you?
Bad
Hi. Do you have some time?" - (wait for answer) - (problem statement).
We show politeness and respect both to our partners and to our team mates.
When there is a problem, we recognize it to be just an abstract problem. We seek to identify underlying reasons for it occurring and how we can prevent it in the future. We do not play a blame game to figure out who is at fault.
We don't say "you made a mistake". We say "we noticed inconsistencies, here are the docs on how to do it the correct way".
We don't say that someone in our team wrote bad code. We say "we discovered a problem in our deployment, and now it's being fixed".
Basically, no personalities are involved in any form of criticism (sharing words of respect, gratitude, and praise is encouraged).
The mission of our company is deeply political: Advocating for maximum personal freedom. We must focus all our energy on achieving this mission as a cohesive unit. Therefore, we cannot afford to engage in any form of activism or political discussions that might distract or divide us.
Both our team and the zkSync community consist of people from various countries, cultures, as well as ethnic and religious backgrounds. That's why it's a matter of politeness and respect to restrain from expressing strong opinions about politics, religion, or sex at the workplace — topics that can be taken very personally and cause irremediable emotional harm.