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Our values are defined as behaviors we consider positive for the healthy development of Strapi. They have an impact on every stage of our work, the hiring process, the decision-making process, and togetherness in our everyday interactions. They are a framework helping teammates to understand how we'd like to behave altogether in the organization and what to expect from each other. The values at Strapi have always been a fundamental subject that has been started very early on by the founders, then co-constructed with the team, and eventually came together through a round of interviews with a majority of current Strapiers.

Our values are set to encourage the behaviors that stem from our roots and also prevent dysfunctions in the company:

What we passionately want for Strapi is to create a safe & healthy workplace where any Strapier can strive and grow in happiness, trust, and confidence. These are not values but outcomes.

From our values, we excluded some principles that are within Strapi's DNA:

Our values are constantly evolving with the growth of our team. What is true at one stage might not be true with our evolution. Everyone is welcome to make a suggestion to improve them.

Because of a lack of time, we couldn't conduct interviews with every Strapier but feel free to comment or reach out to @Pierre Burgy or @Laurine RENELIER if you'd rather have a 1:1 to discuss values instead of commenting.

We often say that the only thing we know is that we know nothing and that the more we learn, the less we know.

Humility is very genuinely practiced at Strapi from the beginning. It has always been very important for the whole team. As teammates, we value humble Strapiers who see and accept their own strengths and limitations without defensiveness or judgment. But being humble doesn't mean that you can't feel pride in your work!

Any Strapier's success is your success. You are ego‐less when you look for the best solution and blameless in problem-solving. You make time to help teammates and you share information openly and proactively.

We are open to sharing and receiving feedback to make honest requests on how to improve our togetherness. Feedback is a way for everyone to learn and is based on facts rather than opinions. We value kindness by giving sincere, non-judgmental, and constructive ways to evolve. When receiving feedback, keep in mind that feedback is the best way to align with other people and that people giving you feedback are genuinely expressing needs they have that you can help them fulfill.

We embrace and accept that our journey of self-improvement and growth will never end. Instead of making big changes at once, we focus on making small improvements over time continuously.

We all do mistakes, and we all experience successes. When it happens, we encourage our fellow teammates to share any learnings. The objective is to maximize the understanding of situations, which happens in experiencing both failures and successes. We prefer to celebrate learnings, not successes or failures.

We took this great example from the GitLab handbook: Always make suggestions about examples of work, not the person, by practicing empathy with non-violent communication.

We consider it important to be able to look at your work from an external point of view. This will help you understand that any remark or comment is, in fact, not aimed at you but at your work. Remember: your past work is done; you cannot change it anymore. However, you can improve it for the future and, as a matter of consequence, improve yourself.

Embracing the value of Proactive Responsibility means being accountable, committed, reliable, and accepting ownership of one's decisions, actions, and behavior. Moreover, proactivity drives the performance and innovation of teams and organizations and boosts individuals’ well-being and careers. We value result-driven behavior, as we are in a fast-paced ecosystem and need efficiency and rigor to scale.

What's most important is not the number of hours you worked but the impact of what you achieved: the code you shipped, the satisfaction of a user or a customer, the healthy growth of our team. Write measurable objectives to understand what success is. We use OKRs for that.

You are responsible for the tasks you are assigned. Being responsible also means we expect you to solve problems by finding, suggesting, and applying solutions. If you see an issue, take the initiative to solve it, or if you can't solve it, proactively inform any stakeholders to find a solution together.

At Strapi, we encourage people to take risky initiatives in trying to improve things. As companies grow, their speed of decision-making goes down since there are more people involved. We should counteract that by having short toes.

Stepping on someone’s toes means offending someone by getting involved in their responsibilities. Having short toes means that we don’t mind people stepping in, ie we don’t get offended when someone contributes to something that’s within our scope for the greater good.

One of the biggest Strapiers’ strengths is their ability to question themselves, partnered with the transparency to discuss any subject openly. Anyone can share their opinion and thoughts on any subject, including people who don't work at Strapi, through Code Pull Requests or Social Media, for example. The Direct Responsible Individual (DRI) is the person who is responsible for making the decision, but they should always take each suggestion seriously and try to respond and explain why it may or may not have been implemented.

Once a decision is in place, we expect people to commit to executing it. We encourage you to wait for a certain amount of time to see if the decision was the right one or not. If not, any past decisions and guidelines are open to questioning as long as you act in accordance with them until they are changed. This is known as the disagree and commit principle.

Caring for others, our teammates, our community, customers, and oneself are one of the stepping stone on which Strapi is built. We are deeply convinced that the development of Strapi could not be possible without the help of all these stakeholders, and to achieve results, we strive to create a safe and inclusive community and team where members can work together effectively and where they feel they can get involved. We believe kindness, positivity, and humor can move mountains, as we noticed positive outcomes each time these values have been showcased.

Always start from the idea that a person meant well or was doing their best, no matter what they say or do. When positive intent is first assumed, every person is given the benefit of the doubt, and you give yourself a chance to learn more unexpected details of the situation. Assuming positive intent makes it easier for the other person to engage in a productive conversation rather than getting defensive, and therefore leads to increased efficiency and collaboration.

Time is precious, as we have been reminded in the Extra Hour conference by Bao Dinh. In a fast-paced environment, we should aim to give time for actions bringing value and efficiency.

Team members should first search for their own answers in our Company documents, and if an answer is not readily found or the answer is unclear, ask publicly. If you ask yourself a question, there's a high probability that someone else asks themselves the same question. In some cases, it might make more sense to ask the DRI directly. Document any new information for better efficiency built on top of practicing proactivity and inclusion.

Be considerate of teammates' time when you organize meetings or ask questions. Practice self-learning and self-service. Prioritize asynchronous work over synchronicity. Try to avoid meetings, and if one is necessary, try to make attendance optional for as many people as possible.

On top of being a company, Strapi is an open-source product and a community. Strapi is also built thanks to a community of users giving us feedback, making contributions, and getting involved in many steps of our processes. We are a remote-first company with team members from many different cultures and countries. We hire globally and encourage hiring in a diverse set of locations. We do our best to make everyone feel welcome and to increase the presence of underrepresented minorities and nationalities in our community and company.

This cultural richness is one of Strapi's biggest strengths and is the internal answer to the multifaceted community of users and customers using our product. We believe that discussions among a more diverse group lead to better business outcomes as we incorporate diverse perspectives and uncover unconscious bias.

We are a remote-first company so that Strapiers can work from anywhere. Being remote first makes it more difficult to separate professional life from personal. We encourage self-care by taking breaks throughout the day, disconnecting from work, and making use of vacation days to relax and do a digital detox. We support parenthood with inclusive conditions and allow flexible working hours.

Very early on, Strapi strived to be a major actor in its ecosystem. The open-source philosophy makes us an unavoidable product in the developer's world. The adventure is all about overcoming the challenge of creating a unique quality product while bonding together with brilliant experts to create an awesome team. However, we are very cautious that our development is at all times in line with our values.

One image that we commonly use is that we are building a plane while flying in it. As Pierre says:

Strapi's ambition makes us grow at a very fast pace, but our growth is controlled at all times, with a clear vision of where Strapi is going.

We try to set a work environment where curiosity and continuous improvement are valued. We believe each Strapier can grow by developing skills, learning new ones through training, or learning from others. Simply replacing "failure" with "not there yet" transforms them into opportunities.

We also build systems and processes for growth through data analysis, experiments, and creative ideas. We set ambitious goals and try to explore new paths to seek more.

To continue to deliver satisfaction to our users, we aim for high-quality deliverables, challenge ourselves and strive for continuous improvement. We try to reduce the cycle time by releasing quickly and often and prefer to release regularly but quickly iterate to improve quality while implementing feedback.

We have strong convictions about how we consider the workplace: people-first, open-source, and remote-first. A company, like any organization, is as strong as the people who are part of it. We want every person who shares our values to feel great at Strapi, wherever they are in the world, and transparently.

Even though it feels like we are still a young company, we have an impact on many people's lives. We value result-driven actions and attitudes and appreciate inspirational teammates. We aim to make a significant impact in our ecosystem and foster an environment where anyone can grow.

Open-source is our DNA. We are a software company and also an open-source project, and therefore, we are open about as many aspects as possible. The Strapi repository is completely public as is our roadmap and our company handbook. We are transparent by default to build trust with the community, gather insightful feedback, and communicate strategic decisions. On the other hand, we don't over-share and adopt a rational approach when limiting access to information to balance our commitment to transparency with some specific situations like customer or teammate privacy or focus on results.

We are always looking for insights, contributions and are in a logic of community-led growth. We regularly conduct surveys and our roadmap is public. We publish RFCs to ask for insights on the next developments and when we are doing a major change, we publicly communicate about it (cf RFCs). We do our best to include all feedback from the community and our teammates but we also make sure to stay aligned with our vision.

We share all information available within the company through Notion and all teams sections are available to every Strapier. The board meeting notes are also shared, as well as all numbers and decisions. We do so to allow deliberate participation of all teammates as we believe that seeking different perspectives always makes better decisions. We conduct regular surveys to allow a safe space for any questions, feedback, or suggestions.

Strapi communicates transparently within the company, using the GitHub company issues, Lattice, and other tools. Even though transparency has a cost (misinterpretation, distraction, defocus, information overload), we believe the benefit is higher in terms of motivation, hiring, retention, belonging, and productivity. We share feedback with candidates on why they have been rejected, do quarterly reviews, and share all internal survey results with the whole team.

We prioritize communicating in public channels, to lower the threshold to get an answer and maximize efficiency. We employ multi-modal communication (Slack, Newsletter, Monday Meetings, etc.) for important information to make sure the information is reached by all whatever their preferred workflow is.