We’ve decided to share some of our internal documentation for other companies to model and learn from.
If you decide to adopt any of these ideas for your company, please let me know! Here are a few highlights:
Remember, we’re bootstrappers. A bootstrapped company generates its own funding. That means everything we need to do must contribute to being profitable, either directly or indirectly. If we aren’t profitable, we don’t exist.
We pay fairly with regard to market values for roles and responsibilities. (AKA your paycheck!) We research pay scale information from multiple sources, based on your actual job duties. The info we use is based in Austin, Texas. As your job and responsibilities change, we make sure we keep up with changing market rates by researching pay scale information for every position, every year. We will share these changes during your annual review, along with providing an annual salary increase, guaranteed.
We are a creative, “knowledge worker” company. You’re not a factory worker. You don’t receive a checklist and then just go through it over and over again every day. Every job here has structure, but every job also has a strong creative element. Not creative as in “artsy,” creative as in you are actually CREATING something, whether that’s code or a unique exchange with another human in the form of a customer service email.
On Team Edgar, you show up for work the second you log in to Slack, our group chat program. If you’re running late or have to pop out of the office for a bit, please update your slack status to let others know your whereabouts.
We will always do our best to document clear performance expectations and to provide you with the tools and training resources you need. Despite our best efforts, there will be times when you feel confused/frustrated, when you don’t get the information you need, or when you aren’t being given clear expectations. When these situations arise, tell someone! Ask for what you need in order to make your training more effective.
First Day Q&A. A long-standing Team Edgar tradition — on a new team member’s first day, we host First Day Q&A on Slack. Everyone on the team will ask you a question — you get to ask one back to everybody.
House Cleaning: Many of our team members list having a clean and comfortable work space as a big part of their “ideal work day,” so we want to help! Since we work from home, we’re happy to cover the cost of a monthly house/workspace cleaning (for your entire home, not just home office). We find that cleaning costs anywhere from $75 to $200 depending on your location and home.
TSA PreCheck: As part of Team Edgar, we travel at least twice a year to meet up with other members of the team. All that time spent waiting in line, taking your shoes off, and organizing your stuff into separate bins is time we AREN’T having fun and working together in person! We’d like to ease the pain of the commute for you by paying your application fees for TSA PreCheck.
Vacation Days: Full-time employees get 4 weeks of paid vacation per year. Days expire at the end of the calendar year. These days accrue based on hours worked, but you can always use all 20 at any time in the year — you do not need permission to “go negative” on PTO.
See something you like? Something you think is unique? Check out the full documents and let me know what stands out to you!
