Team Rituals
+3
9 Participants
Shoutouts
Candor1
Support6
Speed3
Simplicity7
Be direct and thoughtful16
Jam often, learn fast11
Our culture is our other product8
Execute quickly with energy and grit42
Personal growth is professional growth6
About the team
5 Takes
Behaviors we don't like… 😤
- Idling – to overthink something and not to move forward is the same as not doing anything at all
- Not questioning why – I need thought partners on Candor, not just additional pairs of hands
- Long stretches of inactivity or silence / disengagement. When there are discussions on important topics, or specific topics tied to your work, it’s important to join in and share your opinions. Even pushes or updates considered minor are best shared in the moment. It makes our async team work feel more energized and maintains trust and alignment.
- Self-centredness vs. Team player approach. Ex: Taking credit for others’ work or never acknowledging the work of others.
- Public shaming. Not addressing concerns privately; instead, making people feel ashamed and awkward in front of teammates.
- Bad attitude
- Lack of flexibility
- Poor communication (someone who’s not direct and doesn’t communicate clearly)
- Hard to collaborate with
- Not addressing hard conversations / negative feedback
- Resistance to feedback
- Negativity
- Lack of empathy
More…
Full story6 Takes
Behaviors we're inspired by...
- Giving shoutouts to others
- Taking initiative
- Supporting others
- Going outside of your general role/scope to support our collective goals
In no specific order:
- Collaboration
- Ownership (autonomy, problem-solving, resposibility)
- Celebrate wins, appreciate teammates
- Participation in team dynamics
- Direct and clear communication
- Growth mindset
- Positive energy and speed
- Empathy
- Flexibility
- High level of caring and owning things: Avoiding redirecting people that approached us with a question to others. Focusing on understanding and addressing their needs. People saying rather "Let me ask around, I'll get back to you" instead of "I don't know."
- Supporting the drive in others: When someone wants to change the architecture or cares about doing things in a certain way, I love it when others trust them and focus on support them in maximizing delivered value for the team. When instead of saying things like "We do things this way", or "We may well enough not do it”, people ask things like "How will it speed us up?", "Here are the use cases that I believe are tricky. How would your approach address them?".
- Commitment to simplicity. The fastest team I ever worked at had a relentless approach to refactoring. Simplifying things and building a feature on top of that often takes a comparable time than building it on top of something that could be simplified. But if we simplify things we build upon, we also save the time of the person that will work on this code next week. Commitment to simplicity applies to non-coding activities too and involves taking people very seriously when they say that they see an easier way to do things.
- Embracing Teal’s sensing. I believe we devs have the tendency to look for fact-based reasoning. But often the main reason why we want things done in a certain way is that that’s what our intuition tells us. It’s just easier to discuss when we are open about it.
- Being very honest when giving feedback. Saying “Everything’s great” is just not very useful. I think people avoid talking about potential problems if they think that it might be partially on them or when they are not certain if they are right, but it still affects the quality of interactions, so I deeply appreciate when people are just fully honest.
More…
Full story5 Takes
How our culture is unique 🦄
No managers or rigid (unearned) hierarchy. I really love this aspect of our culture, but initially it took some unlearning due to past experiences—I had to shake off uncertainties in myself I was hanging onto. We expect a high level of autonomy and initiative from each other. Everyone is a major contributor and brings a lot to the table. We all belong at the table.
I have been lucky with my teams. Most of them have awesome culture. Still, there are areas where working at Candor stands out.
- Striving to be a Teal Organization is great.
- Decisions are made quickly and we’re not afraid to revisit things product-wise.
- There is a very strong commitment to flexibility.
- I haven't seen that level of transparency in a company before.
- I also haven't seen such strong cultural alignment between a company and its partners/customers.
In the past, I've worked in teams with hierarchical structures, where there was no autonomy for each person to develop their own work, nor was there the necessary collaboration to nurture personal and team growth. I learned that I wasn’t happy working this way and that I wasn’t learning enough.
What I appreciate the most about Candor is that the model we have allows more personal freedom and more autonomy to develop our own work on a daily basis. At the same time, we nurture a strong collaborative environment where the team shares their knowledge, collaborates on projects, and keeps honest feedback with each other.
More…
Full story6
5 Takes
Celebrating success 🎉
Weekly4
Public shoutouts3
#wins Slack/discord channel3
Emojis in slack/discord3
Quarterly1
More…
5 Takes
Our ways of working
Flexible working hours5
Mostly async work3
No managers3
Emoji use encouraged3
You can ask the CEO anything2
More…
3
3 Takes
Our biggest win 🥇
Seeing teams from notable companies across various industries get real value from Candor—tech, food/restaurant, and agriculture—including Fortune 500s.
When we landed the current implementation of profiles (the card wall).
Our culture ❤️
5
3 Takes
Areas for growth 📈
It'd be awesome to share even more in our personal Candor profiles and our Team Space 🐘
I'd love to learn more about the team, what they're happy about our processes, team dynamics, etc. and what could improve ✔️
I'd love to learn more about the team, what they're happy about our processes, team dynamics, etc. and what could improve ✔️
Animations
It would be great to have more feel-good educational sessions regularly.
Krzysiek Herod
Our mission ⭐️
Being more honest in a workplace. Connecting with coworkers in a more meaningful way. Creating more humane workplaces.
Full story1
5 Takes
Our meetings are for…
Status updates5
Problem solve4
Build relationships & connection3
Collaborate3
Feedback2
More…
2
Krzysiek Herod
Areas of expertise 🤓
Keeping things simpleMaintainable codingReactRubyPythonBasics of drummingMeditation
Full story1
2 Takes
Our strengths 💪
Everyone is a great thought leader for the product
Caring for others, caring for accessibility, caring for our codebase, etc.
3
Kelsey Bishop
Our work hours ⏰
9AM-2PM EST sync, the rest async
We're in many different timezones so this works well for scheduling meetings but also giving everyone freedom to do work when it's good for them.
Full story
Kelsey Bishop
Our stance on well-being
Personal development budgetFlexible working hoursPets welcomeParental leaveOffice setup budget
My personal goal for our culture is that it feels like a "take what you need" type of workplace. I'd like to create a space where people feel comfortable taking time off, sharing how they are feeling, adjusting work hours to suit their lifestyle, etc.
Full story4