So, what's it like working at PostHog?
We're 100% remote
Our team is 100% remote, and distributed across more than 15 countries.
In addition to all the equipment you'll need, we provide a budget to help you find coworking space, or to cover the costs of coffees for those who prefer not to work at home.
Being all remote has a bunch of advantages:
- We can hire amazing people from a global talent pool.
- It encourages thoughtful, and intentional, written communication
- It creates space for lots of uninterrupted work.
- We judge performance based on real outcomes, not hours spend in the office.
We're extremely welcoming
This is so important to us that it has its own dedicated page.
We're extremely transparent
As the builders of an open-source product, we believe it is only right that we be as transparent as possible as a company.
This isn't just a meaningless corporate statement. Most of our communication happens publicly on GitHub, our roadmap is open for anyone to see, and our open-source handbook explains everything from how we hire and pay team members to how we email investors!
Almost everything we do is open for anyone else to edit. This includes things like the contents of this very Handbook. Anyone can give direct feedback on work they think could be improved, which helps increase our responsiveness to the community.
We're committed to much more than just public code.
We write everything down
We're an all-remote company that allows people to work from almost anywhere in the world. With team members across many countries, it's important for us to practice clear communication in ways that help us stay connected and work more efficiently.
- It creates clear and deep thought.
- We have an open core business model. This helps the community understand our decision-making.
- It is usually clearer than a conversation, so everyone can row in the same direction.
- It is very leveraged as we grow a large community and look to hire people around the world.
To accomplish this, we use asynchronous communication as a starting point and stay as open and transparent as we can by communicating through public issues, pull requests, and (minimally) Slack.
Putting things in writing helps us clarify our own ideas, as well as allow others to provide better feedback. It has been key to our development and growth.
We don't let others fail
Everyone should help everyone else raise their game. Fatigue sets in when you complete a task, so it's easier for outsiders to help those creating the work to raise their game.
We are direct about the quality of work. That doesn't always mean work needs to be completely polished, as it depends on the speed and impact of a task. Being great at giving and receiving feedback is a key part of our culture.
We bias for action
If given a choice, go live. If you can't go live, reduce the task size so you can.
- We are small, and can only win based on speed and agility.
- Going live forces a level of completion, on which you can build.
Default to not asking for permission to do something if you are acting in the best interests of PostHog. It is ok to ask for more context though.
We on the maker's schedule
We're big believers in the importance of the maker's schedule. If we have meetings at all, we'll cluster them around any stand-ups, so our day doesn't get split up.
On Tuesdays and Thursdays, we don't have internal meetings at all. Occasionally an external meeting will slip in on those days, such as interviews, but we try to keep those to an absolute minimum.
We're structured for speed and autonomy
Hiring high-performing and self-sufficient team members means we don't need the typical corporate processes that are designed to slow teams down. Instead, we're organized into small teams, which prioritize speed by delegating decision-making autonomy as much as possible.
Our management approach is super simple - James Hawkins, Tim, and the team leaders are the only managers, and everyone else reports to one of them. We don't want to create a fancy hierarchy of titles, as we believe this can lead, consciously or not, to people feeling less empowered to make changes and step on toes, especially if they are not in a 'senior' role.
It's up to you how to get things done. If you want to make a change, feel free to just create the pull request. If you want to discuss something more widely for a bigger piece of work, it might make sense to use an RFC for a change inside your team.
If your RFC could significantly impact other teams as well, it usually works best to book a call with them as well as it usually saves time – "fewer meetings" doesn't mean "no meetings", just that they should be meaningful and intentional, not routine.
Read How you can help to understand how you can contribute to this culture.