How we work
Archive Standards
We expect everyone here to develop & maintain the highest level of expertise in their area of responsibility. We expect high effort and execution of our Standard of Performance.
Customer obsession.
- We exist to serve our customers and solve their problems. We work vigorously to earn and keep customer trust.
- We can't build good software without deeply understanding our customers, their goals, and their existing workflows.
Amp it up.
- Speed is a competitive advantage. We always ask “How do we do this faster?” We ship faster than we are comfortable.
- Our company is built and run for performance, full stop.
- We maintain an ongoing level of concentration and focus that is abnormally high.
- We set relentlessly high standards-that to others may seem unreasonable.
- We believe we can do anything but not everything. We are quick and decisive to cut things that aren't working or a good use of time.
- We constantly raise the bar across our people, products, and process.
The question is how you go about amping up your organization. How much faster do you run? How much higher are your standards? How hard do you focus? It is a performance 'triad because they amplify each other. The compound effect can be electrifying.
Frank Slootman
CEO of Snowflake
You’re an owner, Act like one.
- We’re all responsible for building this company.
- We each behave as CEOs of our projects & teams. We don't say "that's not my job” and are willing to go the extra distance.
- We operate with extreme self-awareness. We reward problem identification, even beyond one's direct areas of responsibility.
- We do not let defects get sent down the line. We fix problems so they stay fixed.
Integrity.
- We sweat the details and ship work we're proud of. When something fails to meet our bar, we call it out.
- We call out the truth, and our opinions, even when contradictory.
- We have no problems with confrontation, not with peers nor managers.
- We recognize and face our mistakes and are intellectually honest in our pursuit of truth.
Level up. Always Curious.
- We exhibit a ferocious and intelligently applied work ethic directed at continual improvement.
- We know that all can be learned and we are never done improving.
- We embrace candid feedback as the recipe for progress, even when delivered suboptimally.
- We geek out about new possibilities and ideas.
Compound interest is nothing more than dogged incremental constant progress over a very long time frame.
Peter Kaufman
CEO of Glenair
Championship team.
- Archive should continually earn employees' commitment and, likewise, expects employees to earn their seat at the company.
- We have an intense work culture, and are regularly pushed out of our comfort zones. We value grit and resilience-we persevere when others would not.
- We take rest seriously, to improve productivity over the long term. We help one another to achieve our greater mission. We prioritize loyalty to the company over any individual or subfaction.
Efficiency.
- We recognize the importance of impeccable work hygiene for individuals and teams to move fast.
- We hate wasting time. We regularly challenge, kill, and redesign our meetings.
- We value deep work and understand the benefits of large, uninterrupted blocks of time.
- We disapprove of performative work and indirect conversation, both are wasteful.
- We show up on time, present, prepared, and write everything down.
- We do not tolerate broken impeccable agreements as they erode trust and spread the virus of unproductiveness.
- We default to communicating and working in public because it increases context and transparency.
- See Communication Principles
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