Stellate Handbook
Introduction
Welcome
Welcome to the Stellate handbook V1.3! This is a living, collaborative document that reflects the way we work, collaborate, and support each other in our collective goal to build a lasting company.
About This Handbook
This handbook is written in vignettes and that is intentional.
Literary vignettes are writings that capture the essence of the meaning in short, succinct pieces.
There’s a lot of pressure that comes with a blank page and expectations that come with any handbook. By reducing the pressure & expectations by intentionally writing in vignettes--short, succinct writings--we reduce the barriers and friction in creating the handbook.
Vignette \ vin-ˈyet
Noun - a short, graceful, descriptive literary sketch
We are intentionally optimizing for breadth in this first iteration of the handbook. We want to start with the lightest MVP of a handbook and cover as much ground as possible to ensure we have captured the ethos of our culture and written down as much of our thinking behind our processes as possible.
Once we have established the initial thinking, we’ll focus on depth. We’ll go deep in subtopics as we grow and mature as a company. We’ll capture our experiments and learnings as we go, so we can share the evolution of our thinking with every new person that joins Stellate.
Language
We standardize on English as our primary language.
As of February 2023, we are a fully distributed company across nine countries. As such, it is important to standardize on a communication language, which is English.
We also want to recognize that English is not the primary language for 90% of the people working at Stellate today. This is a meaningful recognition as it creates space for us to optimize for the effectiveness of the communication versus the correctness of language.
Everyone Is a Contributor
Culture belongs to everyone, thus everyone in our company is an author of our handbook.
Everyone is encouraged to help expand and add to the handbook. We will always have two versions available in Notion at all times. One version is the official (latest) version of the handbook, locked down for any edits until a new version is adopted. A second “working” version of the handbook to which everyone will be encouraged to update, expand, and add to will always be available.
Suggested edits will be reviewed in regular intervals for cohesiveness to our values and to ensure compliance with laws and regulations. Compliance is an important step in reducing future friction, especially for a globally distributed company like ours. The edits will be adopted and released in a new official version. Rinse and repeat.
Guiding Principles over Policy & Rules
Unless specifically called out as a law or policy, our handbook is written in the spirit of guiding principles.