Hi, Slab Johnson here of Halide Computing, and today I'd like to talk to you a little bit about our corporate values, and how they set us apart from our competition—and why they matter so much to us.
Courage — We don't tell people who our customers are, and we're braver than every other startup for doing it.
Candor — We don't tell people who our customers are, and we're very direct about it.
Curiosity — If we told you who our customers are, you wouldn't be curious.
Diversity — Guess what we also don't publish lists of, or even statistics.
look i would keep going but there's fifteen of these things, plus another three "we're good people" bulletpoints, and also the five standard california startup action points, "be cool, have fun, love everyone, win on merit, and change the world"
i just wanted to point out that it's very funny there's a company with somewhere between 15 and 23 notes about how transparent, courageous and truthful they want to be, while also not publishing any diversity stats to back up the wishlist item, or listing customers, so potential employees can see who's actually paying the bills
look, i understand the need for load bearing cognitive dissonance, but that doesn't stop it being funny—especially the whole "we take risks, we have empathy" schtick combined with the "we're looking to hire people exactly like us" book report hiring quiz
sure enough, if you have enough values, they'll be at odds with each other, but feel it would be a lot quicker for everyone involved if the job advert lived up to the promise of candor:
"wanted: talented engineers to work on hard problems, ideally during the evenings and weekends"
pages of corporate mission statements mean nothing when the vibe is "please be so interested in what we're building that you're willing to put up with crunch time"