Careers at Lambda

The goal of this document at Lambda is to answer the questions:

• Who gets hired? Rewarded? Promoted? Let go?
• What are the values and principles that have led to the success of Lambda and will continue to provide for its future success and prolonged existence?
• What company values will help Lambda succeed?

It's important to have a set of long-lived and timeless values. We will start this value document with the most important thing we need to do:

Always ask:

• "Does the customer care about this work?"
• "Will this delight the customer?"
• "How does the customer define success? Does this help them achieve that?"

Put yourself in the customer's shoes: How would they perceive this work? What would their experience be?

Start with the customer

Related to the goal of building a timeless document, it's nice to look back at some timeless principles. An excerpt from one of my favorite business books, My Life and Work by Henry Ford (1922):

But what business ever started with the manufacturer and ended with the consumer? Where does the money to make the wheels go round come from? From the consumer, of course. And success in manufacture is based solely upon an ability to serve that consumer to his liking. He may be served by quality or he may be served by price. He is best served by the highest quality at the lowest price, and any man who can give to the consumer the highest quality at the lowest price is bound to be a leader in business, whatever the kind of an article he makes. There is no getting away from this.

- Henry Ford, My Life and Work (1922)

Obsess over our customers' success. Work backward from the customer experience. Build products that delight our customers and help them achieve success.

Lambda's success starts and ends there.

Try to operate from timeless first principles

It's important to understand what you hold to be true in this world. There are many 'business first principles' that have been true for hundreds of years and will continue to be true in the future.

Some of those first principles:

• Customers want to buy high-quality products at a low price.
• The output of the company is the output of the people working at the company. Thus, the qualities of the people working at the company determine the quality of its product, its culture, and its success.
• The road to success is simple: write down your goal, write down everything you need to accomplish it, and then execute against that goal every day and never give up.

Build a team of brilliant people with an unstoppable culture

You can't just have sheer brilliance. You need brilliance paired with an ability to work together as part of a team. Our job is to build a team of smart, unstoppable people working hard together towards the same ambitious goal.

"We're not just collecting talent; we're building a team."

- Bill Belichick

Write your thoughts down so that you can share them

If you can't write your idea down into a one- or two-page document, you haven't thought about it enough. Writing a one-pager is the first step to accomplishing any great task.

As the company grows, written documents become the central source of truth for activity at the company.

The power of writing is the ability to inspire others, the ability to communicate through time and space, and the ability to plan and execute complex projects that can't sit inside one person's head.

Care deeply

Care about the company, care about the customer, care about the work you do, and care about your co-workers. Take pride in doing a great job. Care is taking pride in your work and doing a great job. Care is going the extra mile for the customer. Care is wanting to become GREAT at what you do.

The opposite of care is "just calling it in", "doing the bare minimum", "shrugging it off", "not caring."

Hacker culture

Hack the planet!

- Zero Cool in Hackers (1992)

Lambda was founded in San Francisco in 2012. Our first 'office' was Noisebridge, an anarchist hackerspace in the Mission District. Noisebridge values included Do-ocracy and Be Excellent to Each Other.

Do-ocracy: If you want something done, do it! But remember to be excellent to each other while doing so.

At Lambda, you'll find many passionate and intellectually curious individuals. Many of us are 'computer people' and many of us share an interest in open source, *nix operating systems, and a general love of building things.

Be excellent to each other

Be excellent to each other!

- Bill in Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure (1989)

Kindness, consideration, and respect are how we work together as a team at Lambda.

Thankfully, we have a 'no yelling' culture.

Low ego

We're focused on outcomes, not on titles. We value anonymous feedback. Own your mistakes. Be humble.

Run an experiment and get immediate feedback from the market.

Treating people at the company with respect, whoever they are.

Move fast

Usually, the only advantage that a small company has over a large company is speed.

Make decisions quickly, execute quickly.

Recognize when the decision can be reversed and when it cannot. If it's a reversible decision, then you can confidently make a decision quickly.

No politics, no crypto

'No politics, no crypto' means that we don't discuss cryptocurrencies or politics at work. We think it's best to avoid holy wars, and there are plenty of other places where you can vigorously debate those topics online and in person.

Common quotes and idioms overheard at Lambda and what they mean:

• "Every problem is a people problem. Every solution is a people solution."
  There is no such thing as a 'finance problem' or an 'engineering problem,' or a 'sales problem,' or a 'customer demand problem,' or a 'communication problem.' Every problem is the result of human action, decision-making, and behaviors by individual people at the company.
  
  Thus, the root cause of any problem at Lambda and the origin of any solution at Lambda start and end with the individual people involved.


• "Start with the customer experience, work backward to the technology."
  Ask how you are going to make the customers' lives better. Then, we will work backward to determine what technology needs to be invented on their behalf. Never build technology in search of a problem.


• "Real recognize real"
  Great people want to work with other great people.
  
  For example, a really capable interviewee will be assessing the talents and the capabilities of the people on the interview panel. If they feel like they can learn a lot from the people they're interviewing with, they will be eager to join the team.
  
  The same goes for customers during the purchasing process.

Simple methods for goal setting

Our goal-setting template document:

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1bvjooXcIaXGxfgr4-5fZ1SiC-0uJJh33DmNe5ZaNN30/edit?tab=t.0

Step 1:

Get a clean sheet of paper and write down ten goals that you would like to accomplish in the next twelve months.

Step 2:

Ask yourself this great question: "If you could only accomplish one goal on this list, but you could accomplish it within 24 hours, which one goal would have the greatest positive impact on your life and on Lambda?" This is a great question because it will jump out at you, you'll say "That's the one." Whatever it is, put a circle around that goal.

Step 3:

Write the circled goal at the top of this page and set a deadline for the goal. Then write a list of everything you can think of to achieve that goal and begin working on that list.

Here's the kicker: do something every day. Keep this paper with you, and just start making progress every day towards the things you need to do to achieve this goal.

My promise to you is that this exercise — selecting your most important goal, making a plan, and working on it every day — will change your life in ways that you cannot imagine. A week, a month, and a year from now, you'll be absolutely staggered at the difference it makes.

A simple method of goal setting and execution from Brian Tracy.