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.
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.
<aside> 📝 Vignette \ vin-ˈyet
Noun - a short, graceful, descriptive literary sketch
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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.
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.
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.
Unless specifically called out as a law or policy, our handbook is written in the spirit of guiding principles.
The technology behind Stellate was born out of a shared frustration by Tim and Max that GraphQL APIs could not be cached easily.
Tim built the initial prototype of the gateway because he needed caching for another project he was working on. He quickly realized that more people could benefit from a solution to that problem, and started sharing it with friends. One of them happened to be Andreas Klinger.
Andreas knew that Max was looking to leave his last job, and that he had spent months building GraphQL caching to help scale his last startup.
This is why Stellate exists
This is how Stellate is executing towards its Vision today
In turn, enterprise adoption of GraphQL is growing rapidly:
Gartner says that “less than 10% of enterprises (not developers) were using GraphQL in 2021 […] and predict that will bump up to 50% by 2025” (source)
Culture is the invisible glue that binds us. It is what will hold us together in challenging times and it is what will embrace us during exhilarating times. Culture is what ultimately facilitates and accelerates expansive growth which is why we are very intentional about our culture.
Our culture is first and foremost about our people and how we connect and support each other. It is also about processes, implicit and explicit. We work together to define, refine, and live our culture everyday. It is strengthened by consistency and intentionality--reinforced by what we each say/don’t say and what we each do/don’t do. It is weakened by apathy and malintent, and loses clarity when it’s not lived consistently.
Our culture is intentional and yet imperfect, and that too, is intentional, because we aren’t seeking perfection or a state of being done. Our culture work is never “done” and we seek to continually learn and evolve.
That is why we are elated to share our culture with you and even more excited to see how you contribute to our ever evolving culture! We welcome your feedback and your lived-in perspectives and ask for your participation in reinforcing and improving our culture each day.
We are values-driven at Stellate. Shared values are the foundation of successful collaboration.
Intentionality is: purposefully thinking and taking action toward a specific outcome.
At Stellate, intentionality permeates everything we do. Our actions demonstrate our choices in the “how” and “why” of the way we show up to the broader ecosystem and to each other. Our intentional actions build the foundation of trust, vulnerability, and accountability, which enables us to do the best work of our lives.
Being intentional about our actions also means not taking action when it’s not the right place and time to do so. We are committed to driving focus by doing less because even seemingly small decisions can have deep ripple effects across Stellate.
“The whole is greater than the sum of its parts.”
We can’t win alone, we have to win together. Combining our unique experiences and skillsets allows us to achieve more together than we ever thought was possible. By fostering an environment of trust, collaboration, and growth we can maximize our collective potential and do the best work of our lives. Let's work together to win as one team!
The story of a startup has two ends: You change the world, or you die. In order to change the world, we need to build quality products that solve real problems in a way that is better, greater, quicker than everything that came before. We need to change peoples lives for the better. We enable everyone who is along for the journey to grow, learn and elevate those around them. Only by making this kind of impact can we succeed.
A startup is inevitably a race. It’s a race against running out of funds and a race against the competition. The only way to win this race is to run fast in the right direction, otherwise known as velocity.
We win if we repeatedly discover ways to solve problems engineering organizations face, aligned with our company vision and values, at speed greater than our competition and before the funds run out. The most effective way to do this is to test our assumptions with the market and iterate upon our learnings quickly.
We utilize even over statements to show how our values are lived everyday. Here is an excerpt from The Ready, whose founder explains the power of “even over” statements:
“Prior to the 1940's, the word priorities (plural) was rarely used. Because the word priority means that which comes before anything else. It's one thing! But these days, it's not uncommon for leaders and boards to demand multiple, often contradictory outcomes at the same time. We want faster output AND higher quality. We want to grow market share in our core category AND open three new categories. We want to hit the impossible target AND have work life balance. But as the saying goes, if everything is a priority, then nothing is a priority. What we need is a way to make tradeoffs explicit and strategic. And that's exactly what ["even over" statement does]. [It asks] us to put one good thing “even over” another good thing.”
<aside> 📝 Here’s our adapted version of the classic “party metaphor” of DEIB:
Diversity is being invited to the party. Equity is everyone having access to everything that the party has to offer. Inclusion is being asked to dance. Belonging is being able to dance your own dance, bring your own dish to add to the buffet, as well as freely contribute to the playlist.
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We integrate diversity, equity, inclusion, and belonging into our everyday--from day one--and in every part of our growth. DEIB isn’t just a checkbox, a percentage, or a seasonal initiative; it’s about the way we create space for every individual to show up and do the best work of their lives. No one can be their best when microaggression, covering, and discrimination are present. It is not to say that these elements are not present at Stellate, because as we build an all-distributed team across the globe, it is inevitable that we unintentionally impact, upset, or hurt each other. We are people and we will make mistakes. However, our culture is defined in how we acknowledge, learn, repair, improve, and reconnect.
It is not in zero-tolerance that we build our culture but rather in shared experiences of learning and growing together. Our focus on DEIB lies in humanity, connection, grace, learnings, and growth mindset. We strive to build a culture that allows for people to speak up with a strong but kind voice when transgressed upon. We strive to build a culture where we receive feedback with grace and humility. We strive to build a culture focused on learnings versus blame, through communication, education, alliance, and support.
We’re a 100%, all-distributed company. We are not bound by geography, arbitrary demarcation of nations, language, or social norms. We are building a company with the best talent, equally unbounded. We believe that this is the future of work.
ACTIVE: Jan 1, 2024 - Dec 31, 2024 Benefits & Perks