
Clef's company handbook - yitchelle
https://github.com/clef/handbook
======
mseebach
This looks like the work of a bit of a control freak. It seems odd to codify
so many things in so much detail. It seems they are a pretty small and young
company (the handbook has multiple references to being less than 10 employees,
their Twitter account joined in 2012), so why do they feel the need to specify
how many weeks of vacation you should have taken in the year leading up to the
sabbatical you earn in _your fifth year of employment_?

Some of these things seem ripe for deviating from before they even see their
first legitimate use:

"It makes Clef look great when our employees speak at industry conferences"
\-- so employees are allowed to go four times a year, spending $1000 each
time, subject to approval, oh, and this is a "benefit"? Anyway, it's nice --
but does this mean that if there's a conference somewhere, everybody agrees
it's a great opportunity, but it's my fifth, and it will cost $1100, then we
just shrug and don't go? No, I thought not, so why have the rule at all? What,
exactly, is the problem they are solving by writing this stuff down?

I get it at a larger company, where you need to align expectations across a
larger body of employees, but when you're <10 employees, you can literally
just raise your voice in the room and say "Any reason we shouldn't send Joe to
FooCon to speak about the FizzBuzz? It's a bit pricey, probably $1100, but
it's it worth it right?" \-- that's a much more transparent decision than
anything written in a handbook.

~~~
chimeracoder
> when you're <10 employees, you can literally just raise your voice in the
> room and say "Any reason we shouldn't send Joe to FooCon to speak about the
> FizzBuzz? It's a bit pricey, probably $1100, but it's it worth it right?"
> \-- that's a much more transparent decision than anything written in a
> handbook.

This handbook doesn't preclude that; it just says that this is the minimum
that every employee can expect without having to wonder what is reasonable or
not. Every company, large or small, has exceptions to policy, and the handbook
is just a way of making those guidelines common knowledge, so everyone can
feel comfortable knowing what expectations are completely reasonable and what
will require special consideration.

> so why do they feel the need to specify how many weeks of vacation you
> should have taken in the year leading up to the sabbatical you earn in your
> fifth year of employment?

One disadvantage of 'unlimited' vacation policies are that expectations are
oftentimes unclear, and many people end up taking far less vacation time than
they otherwise would or could. This disproportionately impacts women and
minorities in the industry for a variety of reasons[0]. People who are used to
being marginalized in the workplace (not necessarily at their current job, but
in the past) tend to be less aggressive with their demands, even when their
demands are completely within reason.

Furthermore, for people looking at long-term planning (people with families,
or people with other obligations outside work), having clear expectations for
not just the short term but the long term as well is a _huge_ bonus.

[0] This isn't an argument not to have unlimited vacation policies at all -
just that, if you do, you should be conscious of mitigating this effect.

~~~
morgante
> One disadvantage of 'unlimited' vacation policies are that expectations are
> oftentimes unclear, and many people end up taking far less vacation time
> than they otherwise would or could.

That's why I advocate for minimum vacation. It sets a clear standard of how
much vacation is expected but doesn't make you carefully dole out vacation
days.

------
codinghorror
Absolutely zero remote work, yet I built Stack Overflow with a team of
entirely remote developers, and do the same with Discourse today.

I guess every company culture is a series of choices, but it is very hard to
be diverse -- which appears to be one of Clef's main goals -- when you only
recruit in a tightly limited geographic area.

~~~
cjbprime
I tried to read about Stack Overflow and Discourse's diversity, but all I
could find was these two pages of guys:

[http://stackexchange.com/about/management](http://stackexchange.com/about/management)

[http://blog.discourse.org/2013/02/the-discourse-
team/](http://blog.discourse.org/2013/02/the-discourse-team/)

Maybe you have better links? Or maybe you weren't saying that Discourse and
Stack Overflow did well on diversity; merely that you think Clef will do badly
too? (They seem to be doing reasonably okay right now to me.)

~~~
codinghorror
I just think it is super weird to be completely, categorically opposed to
remote work when a primary goal is diversity. It is a severe constraint on
hiring, and you want super flexible hiring to maximize diversity.

~~~
dragonwriter
Its not weird to be completely, categorically opposed to remote work when
you've found, e.g., that remote work usually doesn't work well in your
environment and that, even where it does, allowing some people to work
remotely and not others impacts overall morale in a way which offsets the
advantages from the limited circumstances where remote work is useful.

Wanting diversity doesn't mean having unlimited willingess to sacrifice
quality of work to get it.

------
zhte415
I was involved with the setup of a new department in a mega-corp that went
from 10 people to 464 people in 1.5 years.

It was tough. The big stuff, like getting projects pushed to our office
(mainly previously outsourced stuff) wasn't hard. The boss made a phone call,
and that was that. The small stuff was hard, the stuff from the employee
perspective, many fresh university graduates, was hard. From interviewing to
employee on-boarding checklists to establishing a training curriculum to
benefits, rewards, mentoring, performance measurement. That was hard. Being
part of a mega-corp didn't make this easier. Sure, there was stuff like a
solid IT infrastructure and policies established from a leadership
perspective, little implementable value existed as a turn-key solution, it all
had to be adapted, mixed and changed.

Which was in great contrast with my first company, where very clear,
consistent and gradually adapted policies existed (it was a small company,
1000 people, with a 400 year history and very very few people ever left).

Around a year later one of the internal consultants advising the department
(and me, in particular) created a global roll-out of a 'minimum standards'
type document to 20,000+ employees documenting everything discovered to be
undocumented. I still refer to this handbook that covers all that needs to be
understood in operations management to a minimum level (800+ pages).

Putting Clef's handbook on Github is fantastic. Not all of it might be
applicable for everyone, but it is something where often there's nothing. But
do think carefully, does this apply for us? If not, write it down.

~~~
miander
I'm guessing you'd have mentioned if it was, but is your handbook published or
otherwise available anywhere?

~~~
zhte415
Unfortunately not. The internal classification is 'confidential'. I'm not much
a believer of security by obscurity, but that's the company decision and I
respect that. When I say refer to (since I left this organisation), I mean
mentally. Putting all that in place established some solid structured thinking
which I'm looking to share, but that's not ready yet - when it is I will post
a link on HN :)

------
noelwelsh
I think it's great to see increased transparency in company procedures, and I
will probably steal some aspects of it. OTOH, the implementation is slightly
disappointing. No remote work plus "we expect full-time employees to be at the
Clef office between 45 and 50 hours a week" is definitely decreasing the pool
of potential employees. As a parent there is NFW I would sign up to 10 hour
days, but I'm glad the company is open about it's expectations, and they have
the right to create the kind of company they want (within the limits of the
law).

------
alextgordon
> Employees also accrue 1 hour of sick leave for every 30 hours of work, but
> cannot accrue more than 5 days of sick leave.

Six months to earn 5 days of sick leave. Why is sick leave a privilege? You're
either sick or you're not.

If I get the flu 3 months in, do I just take my two days off then come in and
infect the office?

~~~
beeboop
Welcome to America, land of the freedom to work yourself to death

~~~
lentil
Perhaps I've just been lucky, but I've been working in the US for the last 15
years, and the policy at all 4 of the companies I've worked for has been: "if
you're sick, don't come in".

None of the companies I've worked for has set a limit on the number of days
you could be sick for, nor encouraged anyone who didn't feel healthy to come
in to work. I appreciate that some companies may do that, but I've never
really understood how that works, given that illness is (mostly) not something
you can control.

~~~
beeboop
You've been pretty lucky. I would say 90% of workplaces do not have a sick
policy like that.

------
capisce
Codifying a 45-50 hour work week really doesn't help.

~~~
saryant
OTOH, at least they put it in public. Now people know not to apply.

~~~
thoman23
Man, no kidding. Why would anyone want to sign up for that? 45-50 hours
codified face time in your open office cattle farm. Get permission from a
founder at least a day in advance if god forbid you need to be out of the
office for something. Not only do I not want to work there, but I'll think
twice before signing up with them as my 2FA provider.

~~~
Stasis5001
Permission from one of several founders at a 10 person company is
proportionally equivalent to letting your team lead know you'll be absent.
That's not exactly an excessive standard, is it?

Further, an open expectation of 45-50 hours at a place that also encourages
spending 4 of those hours on self-study seems fine compared to the risk-
adjusted industry average.

~~~
jbapple
> Permission from one of several founders at a 10 person company is
> proportionally equivalent to letting your team lead know you'll be absent.
> That's not exactly an excessive standard, is it?

Requesting is different from informing. "May I work from home tomorrow?" is
not the same as "I am going to work from home tomorrow."

~~~
Stasis5001
If you tell your boss "I am going to take tomorrow off", and they say,
"Actually, you're scheduled for an interview, can you please come in? But take
Thursday or Friday off by all means", you're going to still go to work, right?
Informing, in practice, is identical to requesting, and this is really just a
language thing that makes it clear that you (a) should inform somebody you'll
be gone and (b) you can take any day off except maybe 5% of days have critical
meetings or whatever.

It seems reasonable to think this is codified this way because the alternative
language of informing doesn't imply suggestion (b), but sure, it could also be
due to the founders being control freaks.

~~~
jbapple
> If you tell your boss "I am going to take tomorrow off", and they say,
> "Actually, you're scheduled for an interview, can you please come in? But
> take Thursday or Friday off by all means", you're going to still go to work,
> right? Informing, in practice, is identical to requesting ...

In my experience, "you must ask for permission" is substantially different
from "you don't have to ask, but your decision may be overruled". It sounds
like your experience is different.

Perhaps the differences I see can be put into another context. Think about the
action "eating off someone else's plate", rather than "working from home". Do
you see the gap between informing and requesting in that circumstance? The
difference seems huge to me.

------
laurentoget
Unless i am missing something the idea of giving .9% equity to every employee
is not going to be sustainable if you grow.

I am curious how solve that bit when the company grows, in terms of numbers of
employees, or in terms of valuation.

Also, if everybody is getting the same valuation in the long term, are you re-
inventing the idea of a cooperative?

~~~
mperham
I also noticed they vest over six years, not four. Very unusual in my
experience and means that they're effectively giving 0.6%, 0.15%/yr.

[https://github.com/clef/handbook/blob/master/Hiring%20Docume...](https://github.com/clef/handbook/blob/master/Hiring%20Documents/Clef%20Offer%20Letter.md)

------
switch007
handbook/Operations Documents/Interview Process.md:

"Finally, the candidate should come in for a whole day of talking to and
working with the team.

..[after lunch] back to the office for one on ones with everyone."

Wow, I wonder how much they compensate you for a "team fit day".

~~~
mrmondo
Yes this seems inefficient, it would also distract the team every time someone
was being interviewed.

~~~
jacques_chester
Hiring is a strategic lever, especially early on.

I work for Pivotal Labs. For engineering hiring we do onsite pairing
interviews that last a day, divided across two teams. Whenever possible, which
is most of the time, on a real task on a real project.

The disruption is worth it, because engineers get to pick their peers.

~~~
sweetleon
I work at Pivotal Labs also. I don't even find it that disruptive to interview
candidates on our projects bc I'm still working on what I'd be doing that day.
It's certainly less disruptive than marching our entire team one after another
into a conference room where they grill the candidate for an hour at a time,
which is what most employers do.

------
leroy_masochist
One recommendation would be to title each section based on number so that it
doesn't default to alphabetical order, which presents things out of the order
in which you would want employees to read them. For example, the Onboarding
Documents section currently looks like this:

Direct Reports.md Internal Transparency.md Objectives and Key Results.md One
on Ones.md Product Manifesto.md Welcome to Clef.md

It should look like this, organized in the order you want people to read it
(this is my best guess, another order might be better):

00 Welcome to Clef.md 01 Product Manifesto.md 02 Objectives and Key Results.md
03 Internal Transparency.md 04 Direct Reports.md 05 One on Ones.md

------
crdoconnor
IMO a real commitment to equal opportunity would mean no at-will employment
(i.e. no firing for undisclosed reasons) and only blind interviews (e.g.
online pair programming without speech/video):

[http://www.theguardian.com/women-in-
leadership/2013/oct/14/b...](http://www.theguardian.com/women-in-
leadership/2013/oct/14/blind-auditions-orchestras-gender-bias)

"We interview for culture/team fit" also typically signals a desire to avoid
diversity.

~~~
Pyxl101
Making it difficult to fire ineffective people, or doing so slowly, is one of
the best ways to ruin an organization. The friction that exists around firing
in many countries seems to be part of why they have less effective business
innovation and investment. Companies can't hire someone without significant
risk, because firing them will be difficult if they don't work out, and so
they're averse to hiring. Meanwhile, poor performers stir dissatisfaction
among other employees, especially effective ones. This makes it harder to
start new companies and grow.

It's preferable for both employee and employer have the right of free
association. If it's not working for either side, just end it. See "‘Give Away
Your Legos’ and Other Commandments for Scaling Startups" for a recent
examination of this in startup hiring.

As organizations tend to grow larger, they tend to accumulate less effective
people over time, since people tend to hire those who are less effective than
themselves, rather than more effective. A counter-balance is necessary to
preserve organizational effectiveness, which includes making it possible to
fire genuinely ineffective people without a lot of hassle and drama. Some
countries have truly ridiculous firing processes that involve a committee of
one's peers, and the whole nearby office gets dragged into one person's poor
performance.

Employers and employees don't owe each other an obligation to keep providing
compensation or labor. If a company is unfair in its management practices, and
undervalues effective workers, then that company will flounder in the market
compared to companies that value them appropriately. The problem will fix
itself over time, without simultaneously saddling down fair and appropriate
companies with the baggage of making it hard for them to fire their bad
people.

~~~
crdoconnor
>Making it difficult to fire ineffective people, or doing so slowly, is one of
the best ways to ruin an organization. The friction that exists around firing
in many countries seems to be part of why they have less effective business
innovation and investment.

It has nothing to do with innovation and investment and everything to do with
managers' desire to maintain their dominance over their employees.

>Meanwhile, poor performers stir dissatisfaction among other employees,
especially effective ones. This makes it harder to start new companies and
grow.

Not half as much as authoritarian managers do, and easy-to-fire policies
guarantees authoritarian managers.

>It's preferable for both employee and employer have the right of free
association.

Only if it were an equal relationship. Which it patently is not.

>As organizations tend to grow larger, they tend to accumulate less effective
people over time

You know what kind of organizations do that the most? The ones that know that
they can dispose of their employees at a moment's notice for any reason,
without reason.

Organizations that can't fire indiscriminately tend to be a bit more careful
about hiring. Which is good for job security, which in turn is actually _good_
for efficiency and good for innovation.

------
gailees
I've been spending a ton of time researching how startups build a diverse team
with an inclusive culture and honestly have struggled to find much literature
on it.

Though I don't agree with everything in the Clef handbook, it was an extremely
informative read. It's hard to spell out inclusion in words, but this seems
like a solid start.

~~~
famousactress
My (obv unsolicited) advice for inclusive+diverse: hire for empathy.

~~~
mistermann
What do you mean by that?

~~~
famousactress
I'm being totally literal. Prioritize empathy for others as a quality you look
for in candidates/colleagues. It's not all that hard to spot and interview
for, and I think it's crazy valuable in teams. Particularly (this is relevant
to my work) when you're not your own user (because you build for a market of
users that you aren't.. like tools for doctors or journalists, or I dunno).

This article[1] has some good things to say around this.

[1] [http://ideas.ted.com/the-secret-ingredient-that-makes-
some-t...](http://ideas.ted.com/the-secret-ingredient-that-makes-some-teams-
better-than-others/)

~~~
candu
> It's not all that hard to spot and interview for

I'd argue that it's a lot harder than you think - you might be able to spot
what you recognize as empathy, which is likely specific to a particular
culture or personality type. Even at that, under the pressure and power
imbalance of an interview, your hypothetical empathetic person might be trying
their best to appear calm and focus on responding intelligently.

For instance: I'm on the autism spectrum. In an interview, my empathy might be
masked by a general nervousness around newly met people, or by unintentional
gaffes of body language. I could very easily see myself showing up as a false
negative on your empathy test in an interview.

Another case: a highly qualified candidate from a high-context culture, who
might be inclined to demonstrate deference or politeness as a form of building
accord with their interviewer. If you're looking for a more effusive,
gregarious "personableness", this might too show up as a false negative.

~~~
famousactress
> I'm on the autism spectrum.

Me too. I find nervousness is generally a positive indicator for empathy.

> If you're looking for a more effusive, gregarious "personableness"

I'm generally not. In general I look less at how someone interviews and more
at choices they've made. How people behave in an hour isn't as interesting to
me as how they've behaved over the past years.

------
thisone
Bit of an interesting marketing campaign.

Put your handbook out, watch your target end users learn who you are and check
out your products.

The end users feel like they really know you and feel more positive towards
your products when they come to choose a vendor.

------
mrmondo
Fantastic idea, I'd love to see more of this. Not only does it promote
transparency and positive change but it also gives people a leg to stand on if
the company doesn't do what they public say they do.

------
PopeOfNope
_At Clef we’re working to build an inclusive company with a value-driven
culture._

Am I the only one who would rather work for an exclusive company than an
inclusive one? Inclusive makes it sound like the company will hire anybody,
regardless of the value they bring to the company.

------
GaiusCoffee
Damn it, I thought it's for Dr. Clef of The Foundation :(

