Values

We operate with six core principles at ESPROFILER that make up our CIRCLE of values.

Collaboration

• Knowledge is Power: Share your knowledge with others. This can be through writing documentation, handbook entries, creating tutorials, keeping a meeting agenda, or running workshops with others.
• Short Toes: Avoid the use of the term “I don’t want to step on anyone’s toes.”. Everyone should be more accepting of people taking initiative in trying to improve things. As companies grow, their speed of decision-making goes down since there are more people involved. We should counteract that by having short toes and feeling comfortable letting others contribute to our domain.
• Transparency: Be open about as many things as possible. By making information public, we can reduce the threshold to contribution and make collaboration easier. Use public issue trackers, projects, and repositories when possible.
• Trust: Trust in your colleagues to do the right thing. You should be able to delegate and believe in your team mates to build with quality.

Iteration, Iteration, Iteration

• Small Steps: Every mountain can be climbed with small steps. Make a change, reassess your direction, repeat. Scope down your work item, reflect, and scope it down again. Work should be minimal, but shippable.
• Bias for Action: Don't overthink, do what is the most natural in this moment. Do it now.
• Accepting Change: Be eager to accept change: Is it better than yesterday, and can we improve on it tomorrow?
• Everything is a Draft: Today won't be perfect, tomorrow will be better. Perfection is the death of progress.
• Decide where good is good enough: Understand where excellence is our company's edge, and accept "good" on everything else.

Results

• Results over Hours: We value results over the hours you spend working. We appreciate the effort, but value the results. Make users happy, care about the team member you helped. You schedule your day to make the most out of it for you. Don't brag about hours worked, take pride in your achievements.
• Disagree and commit: Discussion is healthy, but decisions do not need full consensus. Disagree with a point-of-view, make your case, but accept other solutions are valid too. Once a choice is made, commit as a team to follow it. Allow others to prove themselves. Reaching consensus for every decision does not scale.

Constructive Candor

• Be Thankful: Say thanks often, prefably in public in the Thanks space.
• Assume Positive Intent: When working remotely, intent can be lost. Assume positive intent when receiving feedback. Whe you feel defensive, it's okay to take a deep breathe and respond later.
• Feedback Aids Growth: It reinforces what is good and helps drive improvement where needed.
• Negative Feedback is 1-1: Give negative feedback in the smallest setting possible. One-on-one video calls are preferred. Negative feedback is distinct from negativity and disagreement. If there is no direct feedback involved, strive to discuss disagreement in a public channel, respectfully and transparently.

Learning

• It's impossible to know everything: It’s OK to admit you don’t know something and to ask for help, even if doing so makes you feel vulnerable. It is never too late to ask a question, and by doing so, you can get the information you need to produce results and to strengthen your own skills as well as ESPROFILER as a whole.
• Be a Teacher: The most important thing you can do in your career is to teach others. Be a multiplier of productivity, upskilling others means we work faster and better as a team.
• Be a Student: Always be open to learning, others around you all have their own expertise, listen to it, absorb it and apply it. We offer access to educational resources, make the most of it!

Empathy

• Focus on the customer: We want them to be successful. Pay attention to competition, but put the customer first, be empathetic to everything they do and are, not just in their interaction with ESPROFILER.
• Be curious, not judgemental: Understanding starts with asking questions. Aim to get a deep understanding of customers' and colleagues' desires and motivations.
• Listen to feedback: Be open-minded to the thoughts of others, and respond quickly and respectfully. Customers may be frustrated or potentially seem unreasonable - we are here to listen and help them move forward. Apply optimism, and be friendly.
• Show Empathy: You likely spend more time in and around our product than our customers do, be patient and show empathy in all interactions and choices. Our solutions aim to solve customer problems effectively and efficiently, if the customer isn't experiencing that, we need to learn from it.