Our mission, values and approach to running Console.
Console's mission is to help developers find the best tools.
Developers are an important group that make big decisions, yet they face an onslaught of marketing and sales combined with an unrelenting velocity of releases to keep up with. Our aim is to become the place developers go to find the best tools. The independent voice that developers trust to help them discover the best and most interesting tools.
Read about our mission and how the age of the developer is just getting started.
- Developer first
- Transparency
- Simplicity
- Considered discussion
Developer first means aiming to create a high-quality experience for developers as the Prime Directive for everything we do. This flows into all our other values: transparency (like the open-source hacker ethic), simplicity (like the Unix philosophy), and considered discussion (like RFCs).
Following the hacker ethic, open access is the default. Internally, very few things are private. This means documentation, metrics, and discussion are all open. Good decisions require all the facts and we want our team to contribute their skill and experience at solving problems.
- Share key business metrics internally, such as costs and revenue.
- Explain and discuss what is going well and what isn't going so well.
- Share issues where we are one of several stakeholders e.g. team personal issues, or commercial agreements with our partners.
Following the Unix philosophy, we should do only what is absolutely necessary, and do it well. Can you solve a problem in less steps, do you really need this new tool to do the job? Strive for simplicity in everything you do.
- Build compact, minimalist, modular, well documented, well tested.
- Prototype and iterate, then polish and pay attention to the details.
- Create elaborate or cluttered visual UIs where text would work just as well.
There's a reason why scientific peer-review and RFCs are important - ideas are improved through debate and disagreement! This is not about being difficult or confrontational, but by challenging in a friendly way and always giving people the benefit of the doubt, we can improve how we do things.
- Debate the idea, not the person.
- Actively encourage everyone to provide feedback without fear.
- Use an aggressive or overly adversarial approach to debating.
When we call a meeting, we respect that everyone's time is valuable. Meetings should therefore be focused on the issues at hand, tightly run, and short. The scheduled time is when the meeting starts, not when you begin to arrive.
We don't mind sacrificing the short term for our longer term goals. Whether this means declining short term revenue because the partner doesn't meet our selection criteria or choosing the more expensive, but more environmentally sustainable option, we are willing to think long term.
Group chat is the best way to stress out your team. Although we have and use chat through Campfire in Basecamp, we use it primarily for socialising and sharing interesting things. We prefer long-form posts as Basecamp Messages rather than discussing things in chat.
We do not expect an immediate response (to chat or messages) and you can choose when and whether to participate in any discussions. If it will matter after today, don't put it in chat - create a message instead.
- Use chat to socialise, share links, talk about general topics.
- Use Basecamp Messages for anything that everyone needs to see.
- Put anything important in chat or expect immediate attention.
Knowing when you're done is hard. We always aim to deliver the highest quality work, but we try to avoid perfectionism undermining our ultimate goals.
- Spend the extra time to get something right.
- Make time to revisit and improve things over time.
Iterate forever. Some things really are “done”, and we move on.
As a small team, everything we work on matters and should contribute to our mission and goals. There are no small projects. If you don't understand how what you are working on fits into our goals, then you're either haven't been given the context you need or aren't doing the right thing.
Our time and energy are the resources that matter most. Say no to the projects that don't contribute to the mission.
Discuss how every proposed project contributes to the company mission. Say no to new ideas that take us away from our focus.
Stray into areas away from our core focus without discussing how they meet the mission.
We acknowledge that in life there are many different perspectives and that healthy debate is important for society. However, whilst we may all agree about the existence of a problem, we expect people to have different opinions about how to solve it.
Following the example of Coinbase, we refrain from advocating for causes unrelated to our mission because we believe it harms inclusion. We are building a community for developers. Anything outside of that mission should be discussed in person, not on company systems like chat or email.
- Create an environment of inclusion for everyone where we can all feel welcome, safe, and able to work together towards our company goals.
- Support the freedom of our team to engage with issues outside of work through groups and activism as well as personal media like your own blog, Twitter, Signal, etc.
- Engage with broader societal, policy, and political issues unrelated to our mission.
- Use company systems such as chat and email to discuss or debate broader societal issues unrelated to our mission.