Culture

Scrappiness

We are a startup so our code will not be perfect. We will always balance on an edge of "good enough for now". We do not pursue quality for the sake of purity or correctness. We make things of high quality only when it is easy or has a distinct business purpose. We win by iterating faster, not by getting everything right from the get-go.

Rough drafts are very very very good.

• It saves us all time in the long term
• Never work on something new to you for more than 2-3 hours without getting feedback (really)
• Ask how long something should take for the next version/due by when
• What does the first draft look like?
• I have never said, "I wish this were better"
• I frequently say "I wish you had shown me a draft so I could have saved you time"

What is a "draft"

• A conversation!
• Sketch on a paper
• Rows and columns on a spreadsheet
• Titles of a PowerPoint presentation
• Random bullet points

BUT ALSO, IN INTENTIONAL CONFLICT…

Excellence

Solve for Quality AND Speed. Bring your best to what you do."Don't half-ass two things, whole-ass one thing" ~ Ron Swanson

Examples

• Product 1 - Health Checks
• Team: "you gotta get with the program or you gotta get going"

Share "bad news" quickly

• Opposite of Boy Who Cried Wolf- you should cry!
• The code quality is becoming dangerous to our speed or quality
• System outages ("time sensitive")
• Always share potential bugs- even if you're not sure
• A problem in the code

Ownership

The project is yours- make sure it happens. We all have overdeveloped sense of responsibility.

Not Sema:

╳ not my problem

Yes Sema:

✓ I will fix it
✓ can I look at [the other part of the business]?
✓ could help but I bet someone else could do it better
✓ follow through with your responsibilities and accountabilities
✓ Keep track of requests E2E

AND

• Act like you are the CEO of the company- what’s the right answer in this situation-
• What best serves Sema in this moment
• What best improves code quality in the world in this moment

Competence

If you say you are going to do something, do it, or acknowledge that it was not done.

• No finessing / pretending to forget what the assignment was
• This means arguing upfront or as soon as the "doer" knows about whether/ how / when it's doable. Up front, the "asker" needs to set the timeline and quality level. She has an obligation to listen to the "doer" if the doer asks for clarity.
• Similar to integrity

Growth

Everyone at Sema is curious- we hire people who want to learn

Learning & Support

• Preferred to say you don't know than pretend otherwise
• "If you have a problem, raise a flag" and have someone help you
• Don't struggle with something for more than 1 hour (in your first week: only 5 minutes) before asking for help

Yes Sema: Collaboration

• Paired programming [shared ownership, too]
• Or paired QA
• Paired Health Checking
• Or paired anything
• Rubber-duckingMirroring

Bonus points for telling the CEO he's maybe/probably/definitely wrong

Communication Principles

The default is interacting in channels, not 1:1 slack messages. It is really, really rare that communication should happen 1:1.
‍
• If you are asking then others likely have the same question
• And, asking in public channels lets many people help, especially across time zones
• Asking publicly makes it MUCH easier for new colleagues to ramp up
• Asking publicly makes it MUCH easier to understand historical context
‍
:1 communication examples include critical feedback. Really nothing else.

If you find that there are too many notifications, then make your notifications silent… we need to encourage all of our knowledge getting shared.

I want to learn more about Liz.