These are the company values of Buffer from February 18th, 2015 (v0.5)
- Choose Positivity and Happiness
- You strive to approach things in a positive and optimistic way
- You avoid criticizing or condemning team members or users
- You avoid complaining
- You let the other person save face, even if they are clearly wrong
- You are deliberate about giving genuine appreciation
- Default to Transparency
- You take pride in opportunities to share our beliefs, failures, strengths and decisions
- You use transparency as a tool to help others
- You always state your thoughts immediately and with honesty
- You share early in the decision process to avoid “big revelations”
- Have a Focus on Self Improvement
- You are conscious of your current level of productivity and happiness, and make continual changes to grow
- You have a higher expectation of yourself than Buffer does of you
- You regularly and deliberately do things that make you feel uncomfortable
- You practice activities and develop habits that will improve your mind and body
- Be a “no-ego” Doer
- You don’t attach your personal self to ideas
- You let others have your best ideas
- You approach new ideas thinking “what can we do right now?”
- You are humble
- You always ship code the moment it is better than what is live on our site – no matter what
- Listen First, Then Listen More
- You seek first to understand, then to be understood
- You focus on listening rather than responding
- You take the approach that everything is a hypothesis and you could be wrong
- You are suggestive rather than instructive, replacing phrases such as ‘certainly’,’undoubtedly’, etc with ‘perhaps’, ‘I think’, ‘my intuition right now’
- Have a Bias Towards Clarity
- You talk, code, design and write in a clear way instead of being clever
- You over-communicate, repeating things more times than you would intuitively
- You use more words to explain, even if it feels obvious already
- You don’t make assumptions, you instead ask that extra question to have the full picture
- Make Time to Reflect
- You deliberately find time for reflection, because that’s where your life-changing adjustments come from
- You have a calm approach to discussions and ponder points in your own time
- You find time to jump out of the trenches into the higher level thinking that will move the needle
- You understand the value of patience and treat it as a muscle which needs practice to grow
- Live Smarter, Not Harder
- You value waking up fresh over working that extra hour
- You always aim to be fully engaged in an activity, or resting
- You single task your way through the day
- You are at the top of your game, as you focus on expanding capacity of your mental, physical, emotional and spiritual energy
- You choose to be at the single place on Earth where you are the happiest, and most productive, and you are not afraid to find out where that is
- Show Gratitude
- You regularly stop and are grateful for your circumstances
- You are grateful for the work co-workers do to push the company forward and help you move faster
- You approach customer conversations with humility and the knowledge that it’s a privilege to serve these people
- You have gratitude for platforms, tools and open source that laid the foundation for the possibility of the company: “If I have seen further it is by standing on the shoulders of giants” – Isaac Newton
- Do the Right Thing
- You choose what’s best for customers and the company in the long-term
- You correct the mistake even when no one would notice
- You strive to provide the best solution, even if that means foregoing profit
- You get excited about opportunities to help others