Culture and Values

What binds us together

"Corporate culture is the only sustainable competitive advantage that is completely within the control of the entrepreneur." David Cummings

Culture and values are not just pretty words on a wall. They are the dimensions by which we hire, we promote, and we demote.

We also believe that a company culture needs to be opinionated to be effective and attract the right people. It cannot be right for every person, or it would mean we don’t have a culture. You cannot please everyone and that’s perfectly fine for us. We will continue to iterate and refine our values along the way as we grow as one family.

Here are the values we deeply believe in:

Generosity | Open-source

We are humble and aware we live in a privileged country and in a sector that is not going to know any crisis soon. We realize that if we are here today, it's thanks to a great and accessible public education that has shaped us to be the computer scientists and leaders of tomorrow. We therefore see it as normal to give back to the society that has given us so much. And we achieve this by

• open-sourcing everything we do to the public (except any work done under a NDA with a customer). This consists of our company handbook but also various code repositories and articles.

• Offering free education program in our upcoming offices in Africa

• Organizing one team building per year where we help people in great needs

Transparency and Candour

We’re huge believers in “Diversity in counsel, unity in action.” Several heads are always better than one to solve any problem. The more diverse the views, the more enlightened the decision will be. This entails several things:

• We consider opinion whatever the seniority or expertise you have on a topic. Any missing information is a risk and we push everyone to be fully transparent on his/her ideas.

• Any opinion or concern needs to be shared. Saying “I knew it would turn out like this…” is not acceptable if you didn't share your view beforehand.

However, “unity in action” means for us that we don’t believe in consensus, and that even if you don’t believe in the decision that was made, you must commit to it and give it a chance to succeed. Consensus results in diluted solutions. At the end of the day, we move on with what has been decided as best solution and we commit 100% to make it work.

Humility and Maximizing Growth

Smooth collaboration can’t work without humility. Humility means that you’re open minded towards others’ opinions, and let others speak their minds, whatever their role.

Leaving ego at the door means you don't defend a point just to win an argument. We are a team in search of truth, not in search of winning points.

We prioritize progress over perfection. We are thankful towards errors of action, provided we learn and get better.

We should never pull rank. If you have to remind someone of your position, you're doing something wrong.

We leverage our time, and we enable others to leverage their time:

• We stay away from low-impact tasks. If they exist, we question their existence, and we kill them, we automate them or we externalize them.

• We are never a blocker. We respond to ALL communications (internal or external) within 12 hours.

• We stay critical about past decisions and existing processes ("Is this meeting really useful?").

Being Intentional and Owning the Outcome

We always want to stay mindful about the projects we are working on, and why we are working on them. We need to understand the value we expect to bring, the audience we want to address, and the metrics we want to impact.

If we see some big changes in metrics, we need to understand why. We don’t take things for granted.

We expect our team members to complete their assigned tasks. For any given task, it is your responsibility to anticipate and solve problems, overcome challenges, and inform others (i.e., stakeholders, managers, team members waiting to build on your work) of any issues that might delay or prevent you from completing the task.

Trust and Caring

All of this can only work if you can feel comfortable being vulnerable with your colleagues; you must be able to trust them.

Constructive feedback should be on a one-on-one basis. If you are unhappy with anything, please let the other person know as soon as you realize it. It doesn’t matter what their role is.

Assume positive intent. We assume that people have the best intentions, so we assume the positive interpretation of behaviors and feedback, as opposed to the negative one. We think of mistakes as the tuition for learning.

Address behavior, not people. For constructive feedback to work, it should not be tied to the individual.

Don't let others fail, if you can help. We succeed together. We keep an eye out for others who may be struggling or stuck, and see how we can provide assistance when needed.

Ever-learning environment

Live as if you were to die tomorrow. Learn as if you were to live forever.

Gandhi couldn't be more right about this quote and it is even more important in the sector where we operate where new technologies emerge every now and then. We cannot permit ourselves to rest on our laurels and must constantly be on the lookout for the new disruptive technologies.

We embrace this mindset by setting an environment where learning is part of the job; either during a project or by defining fixed training schedule. On average we try to stick to a proportion of 10%-15% of our time dedicated to learning. Training also goes in hands with innovation workshops, attending conferences and be speaker at major events.