Team Norms at Countable

Purpose

Establishes the norms and policies which guide our collaboration at Countable.

Scope

Covers our principles of diversity and inclusion, training, performance evaluation, and team events.

Diversity and Inclusion Principles

Here we outline core principles which allow us to approach our differences in a respectful and positive way, and focus on building a shared culture based on empathy and common goals.

  1. Countable does not tolerate non-meritocratic bias. We respect and support everyone the same, regardless of race, gender, religion or other attributes not related to our work. This also means there is as a general rule no special provisions made for these groups except to prevent, and to eliminate specific cases of, biases.
  2. Don’t conflate ignorance and malice. It’s the responsibility of minority groups coach the team on what’s considered respectful, and it’s the team’s responsibility to listen and make an effort to be culturally respectful.
  3. If any team member is aware of disrespectful conduct, it must be reported. A manager will issue a warning the first time, and if it recurs, immediate dismissal. The warning must be made public to the team so everyone can see what happened, worded in a way that doesn’t intrude on the victim’s privacy (the aggressor’s privacy is not an issue here).
  4. It’s the manager’s responsibility to create an environment where the victim feels safe and comfortable enough to speak up. Any victim is protected by the company against any retribution for speaking up and is celebrated for their bravery in doing so. Please do speak up so we can solve the problem for everyone.
  5. This policy is NOT intended to discourage negative feedback on our work. Negative professional feedback, offered with empathy and from your professional peers is one of the fastest professional development tools.
  6. Countable acknowledges that gender bias is sadly still prevalent in the technology industry in particular. Our goal is to lead by example in creating a safe and supportive environment for women (and everyone else of course) to work.

Compensation Strategy Principles

Covers our basic principles and approach to compensating our team; not everyone will agree with this approach, so it’s important we state it here so we don’t have someone with different expectations join the team.

  1. Our approach is to pay people enough to live in reasonable comfort and to generally be competitive with other opportunities but we would rather start with lower rates and give generous raises compared to other companies. This is very important, because if we pay too high initially it will result in many staff joining because of the high pay, and not because they are a good fit with our many unusual values and methods, in order to preserve our culture.
  2. Once an employee has completed some OKRs and demonstrated they can push the team towards our mission, they will get a substantial raise. At this point, we trust they’ve been vetted to be a cultural fit. The raise will be weighted towards stock so that our greated contributors are co-owners of Countable Web Productions Inc.
  3. This will absolutely lead to unequal pay - if you’re good you’ll be paid a lot more than someone who’s still learning to be productive. On the positive side, this allows us to afford to hire students who still have some basic knowledge to develop in order to be productive. I think this is great because it will attract people who propel us forward over time, and avoid accumulating people who coast, by encouraging them to either improve or leave. It’s much more motivating working with the former people.
  4. If you’re assigned a change in compensation, that will take a effect starting in your next pay period, not immediately, nor backdated to past hours.

Benefits

  1. Payment for benefits and expenses directly reimbursable will be included like other expenses, alongside payroll.
  2. If necessary, the company will purchase a linux computer for you. The specs will be commensurate with what your manager decides you need after discussing your job. You may not all get the same specs as others at the company.

Extended Medical

We don’t currently have an extended medical group insurance plan (partly as we don’t yet have USA employees who tend to be more reliant on this), but we’d like to help out a little when our team has dental or other uninsured medical costs. In the future, we plan to improve our coverage of medical costs but this is a start.

  1. Full time contractors (100h/mo or more) and employees receive 50% reimbursement for medical expenses, up to $1000 CAD per calendar year.
  2. Part time contractors (50h/mo or more) receive 30% reimbursement for medical expenses, up to $1000 CAD per calendar year.

Guilds and Teams

Countable is divided into Teams and Guilds. The job of Guilds is to be really good at specific things, and the job of Teams is to get results for customers. This document lists our existing Guilds and Teams.

List of Guilds

  • DevOps - Their goal is to ensure our software is delivered to customers as quickly, reliably and automatically as possible.
  • Developers Reference - Their goal is to improve our code, solve problems for users, and demonstrate working software to our team every day.
  • UX - Their goal is to help everyone, from users to product owners and developers, enjoy and benefit from interacting with our software.
  • Business Operations - Their goal is maintaining clear and open communication with our clients, and maintaining the roadmap to sustainable growth for our firm.

Cross-Functional Teams

We have cross-functional teams organized by Objective. For example, we have a bawkbox team whose top level objective is to make it easy for any website to install any 3rd party widget.

With each of our clients, we form a team with some of our staff.

Countable does not have functional team divisions by job role.

Other Informal Groups

On some occasions other groups may organize for professional development or other purposes. These are not teams in our company’s terminology.

Training at Countable

We have official training materials here: Training. Bill for your time doing any of these.

Books

If you buy a book for work, the company will reimburse you. Suggested reading in References: :doc:/philosophy/REFERENCES` that’s influenced our culture and methods.

Monthly Guild Meetings

Each month we hold a meeting for any technical specialty the team is interested in. Currently there’s a developer guild meet, a devops meet, an operations meet, and a design/ux guild meet.

Performance Evaluation Policy

See our dedicated /developers/EVALUATION

Team Event Basics

As a company with remote employees, we intend that half of recreational events can be attended online.

When in-person events are held in just one city, employees may self-organize events in their respective cities and be reimbursed by Countable. The default cap is $25/person, for other amounts please get approval from your manager.