Updating company values

[christinaforney]

@nicksnyder and I felt that there was a gap in our values that would help with hiring decisions, growth conversations, process decisions, and more. We also felt that a short, clear list of values would help more clearly communicate the values in a way that can be digested and remembered. The details are valuable for clarifying the shorter list and adding more color to what this means to us but isn't necessary for communicating the high level understanding of values.

The newly added values have empty sub-sections and TO DOs. I propose we merge as is, and can follow up with additional explanations.

Specifically, we have tweaked two of the existing values:

• 'We not I' -> 'Work as a team'
• 'High quality' -> 'Be iterative' - this was sending the wrong message (as indicated by the need to clarify in company meeting). Instead, what we value is being iterative to creating value of high quality work. This still needs more work, reverting back to high quality here to move the PR forward and open up a follow up PR to clarify.

[sourcegraph-bot]

Notifying subscribers in CODENOTIFY files for diff fae1d52...8c91901.

Notify	File(s)
@sqs	company/values.md

[nicksnyder]

The actual content under the "be iterative" detail probably needs to be reframed, but that isn't blocking merge of this.

[dadlerj]

Thanks! Love the index at the top, I've wanted it in the past, too.

I'm a little hesitant about adding values that we don't have a description for, though. It leaves them up to the interpretation of whoever on the team (or otherwise) is reading them at that moment. Would you be opposed to leaving them off until that's available in a follow-up PR that I assume you'll be adding?

[nicksnyder]

I'm a little hesitant about adding values that we don't have a description for, though. It leaves them up to the interpretation of whoever on the team (or otherwise) is reading them at that moment.

Are some of these not clear to you or is this just a hypothetical concern?

1. It won't be in this state for long. We are going to continue to iterate on this.
2. I don't think we have any teammates who will interpret any of these things in the wrong way lacking a more detailed description.
3. Even with more detailed descriptions, I think there is always going to be room for interpretation and judgement, which is a good thing.

Would you be opposed to leaving them off until that's available in a follow-up PR that I assume you'll be adding?

If the only objection to this PR is "content is missing" then I think we should merge. If there are actual concerns with the proposed values then that is worth discussing before merging.

[dadlerj]

If the only objection to this PR is "content is missing" then I think we should merge. If there are actual concerns with the proposed values then that is worth discussing before merging.

My point definitely wasn't that "content is missing". It was:

It leaves them up to the interpretation of whoever on the team (or otherwise) is reading them at that moment

So in response to your question about whether I have actual concerns about the proposed values, I'm not really 100% sure? I guess I'm 99% sure I'm fine with them—in this case, it feels low risk since the titles are reasonably clear (e.g. "Grow continuously" I don't think there's much left to interpretation, but "Be human" is slightly more vague).

I just noticed the one-liner descriptions at the top in the TOC though. They definitely help alleviate my concern a bit, and simply copying those short descriptions down to each of the sections would be better...

This is purely a process comment, not any sort of opposition to the new values.

[dadlerj]

It won't be in this state for long. We are going to continue to iterate on this.

This was actually my assumption, called out in my last note. My personal preference is to make incremental-but-complete improvements to this page than leaving TODOs.

[christinaforney]

@dadlerj:

I just noticed the one-liner descriptions at the top in the TOC though. They definitely help alleviate my concern a bit, and simply copying those short descriptions down to each of the sections would be better...

The intention is that the most important thing on this page is that top level summary, and that those alone would help guide the team. The longer descriptions below are clarifications and more about what this means at Sourcegraph. I was worried about having all of the extra content on this page taking away from that top section, and tried to reduce header size and add a divider to visually indicate this. Let me know if you think we can improve upon this. Here's a screenshot:

Based on your feedback I also copied the one-liners below into the details sections so that there aren't TODOs on the page. Even though it's repeated, at least the section isn't empty.

[AlicjaSuska]

Thank you for adding those @christinaforney Great changes!

• I think that 'high-quality' point would be clearer if we add:

'High quality doesn't mean perfect or fully complete. High-quality isn't the opposite of iterative...'

That would indicate that iterating is supported.

• regarding 'open and transparent' - I've seen many people referring to this value when sharing their work. This interpretation is also important imo. We could add something like this:

'Being open and transparent means also to share your work frequently. You should keep others informed on what you're working on, your progress, and plans. It is helpful in getting more diverse feedback and spotting dependencies between the teams and the solutions. It's your responsibility to make everyone feel welcomed to share their point of view.'

[chrispine]

I like it!

I did find some of the usages of "we/us" vs "you" a little confusing. I wasn't sure if there was a clear idea of when to say "we" or "everyone at Sourcegraph" and when to say "you". It was really only jarring to me in one place, and I left a suggestion on that line.

[pecigonzalo]

LGTM, I agree with some of the comments by @tsenart but they dont seem blockers at the moment.

[beyang]

Great values, thanks for making this change!

[nicksnyder]

I pushed some changes to address comments and reduce the size of the diff. I think this PR got a bit sidetracked on some values that aren't actually changing and I think we should focus the discussion here on the top level summary and additions.

@AlicjaSuska your suggestions are good, but they feel out of scope of this PR given those values already exist and aren't changing here. Can you open a separate PR with those suggestions?

@tsenart I agree the high quality description has room for improvement, but again I think that is best discussed in a separate PR.

@christinaforney You can own taking another pass at this and deciding if/when this is ready to merge.

[christinaforney]

Thanks for helping with this @nicksnyder! I just added one more reorder to help with reducing the diff size. I would like to merge as is as soon as we get final approval from @sqs (he said he can look at this tomorrow).

Here is a follow-up PR to start to address the concerns outlined above from @AlicjaSuska and @tsenart: Addressed in #1760