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Knowledge transfer is a fundamental part for human evolution; picture storytellers from ancient Greece traveling from city to city sharing tales. In Affihub we want to connect the globe with world-class experts. If we succeed, everyone will have access to the talent from all around the world.

To get there, we have an amazing and unusual employee culture. This document is about that culture.

Like all great companies, we strive to hire the best and we value integrity, excellence, respect, inclusion, and collaboration. What is special about Affihub, though, is how much we:

• encourage independent decision-making by employees
• share information openly, broadly, and deliberately
• keep only our highly effective people
• avoid rules

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Real Values

The real values of a firm are shown by who gets rewarded or let go. Below are our values, the specific behaviors and skills we care about most. The more these values sound like you, and describe people you want to work with, the more likely you will thrive at Affihub.

Judgment

• You make wise decisions despite ambiguity
• You identify root causes, and get beyond treating symptoms
• You think strategically, and can articulate what you are, and are not, trying to do
• You smartly separate what must be done well now, and what can be improved later

Communication

• You listen well and seek to understand before reacting
• You are concise and articulate in speech and writing
• You maintain calm poise in stressful situations to draw out the clearest thinking
• You adapt your communication style to work well with people from around the world who may not share your native language
• You provide candid, helpful, timely feedback to colleagues

Curiosity

• You learn rapidly and eagerly
• You contribute effectively outside of your speciality
• You make connections that others miss
• You seek to understand our members around the world, and how we service them
• You seek alternate perspectives

Courage

• You say what you think, when it’s in the best interest of Affihub, even if it is uncomfortable
• You make tough decisions without agonizing
• You take smart risks and are open to possible failure
• You question actions inconsistent with our values
• You are able to be vulnerable, in search of truth

Passion

• You inspire others with your thirst for excellence
• You care intensely about our members and Affihub’s success
• You are tenacious and optimistic
• You are quietly confident and openly humble

Innovation

• You re-conceptualize issues to discover practical solutions to hard problems
• You create new ideas that prove useful
• You keep us nimble by minimizing complexity and finding time to simplify
• You thrive on change
• You challenge prevailing assumptions, and suggest better approaches

Integrity

• You are known for candor, authenticity, transparency, and being non-political
• You only say things about fellow employees you will say to their face
• You admit mistakes freely and openly
• You treat people with respect regardless of their status or disagreement with you
• You always share relevant information, even when worrisome to do so

Impact

• You accomplish amazing amounts of important work
• You demonstrate consistently strong performance so colleagues can rely upon you
• You focus on results rather than on process
• You make your colleagues better

It’s easy to write admirable values; it’s harder to live them. In describing courage we say, “You question actions inconsistent with our values.” We want everyone to help each other live the values and hold each other accountable for being role models. It is a continuous aspirational cycle.

In describing integrity we say, “You only say things about fellow employees you say to their face.” We work hard to get people to give each other professional, constructive feedback - up, down and across the organization - on a continual basis. Leaders demonstrate that we are all fallible and open to feedback. People frequently ask others, “What could I be doing better?” and themselves, “What feedback have I not yet shared?”

We believe we will learn faster and be better if we can make giving and receiving feedback less stressful and a more normal part of work life. Feedback is a continuous part of how we communicate and work with one another versus an occasional formal exercise. We build trust by being selfless in giving feedback to our colleagues, even if it is uncomfortable to do so. It’s easy to write admirable values; it’s harder to live them.

Freedom and Responsibility

There are companies where people ignore trash on the floor in the office, leaving it for someone else to pick it up, and there are companies where people in the office lean down to pick up the trash they see, as they would at home. We try hard to be the latter, a company where everyone feels a sense of responsibility to do the right thing to help the company at every juncture. Picking up the trash is the metaphor for taking care of problems, small and large, and never thinking “that’s not my job.” We don’t have rules about picking up the real or metaphoric trash. We try to create a sense of ownership so that this behavior comes naturally.

Our goal is to inspire people more than manage them. We trust our teams to do what they think is best for Affihub — giving them lots of freedom, power, and information in support of their decisions. In turn, this generates a sense of responsibility and self-discipline that drives us to do great work that benefits the company.

We believe that people thrive on being trusted, on freedom, and on being able to make a difference. So we foster freedom and empowerment wherever we can.

Policies

Our policy for social media, travel, work from home, sick days and other stuff is 5 words long: “act in Affihub’s best interest.”

Our vacation policy is “take vacation.” We don’t have any rules or forms around how many weeks per year. Frankly, we intermix work and personal time quite a bit, doing email at odd hours, taking off a weekday afternoon, etc. Our leaders make sure they set good examples by taking vacations, often coming back with fresh ideas, and encourage the rest of the team to do the same.

You might think that such freedom would lead to chaos. But we also don’t have a clothing policy, yet no one has come to work naked. The lesson is you don’t need policies for everything. Most people understand the benefits of wearing clothes at work.

In general, freedom and rapid recovery is better than trying to prevent error. We are in a creative business, not a safety-critical business. Our big threat over time is lack of innovation, so we should be relatively error tolerant. Rapid recovery is possible if people have great judgment.

One process we do well is effective scheduled meetings. We have a regular cadence of many types of meetings; we start and end on time, and have well-prepared agendas. We use these meetings to learn from each other and get more done, rather than to prevent errors or approve decisions.

Informed Captains

For every significant decision there is a responsible captain of the ship who makes a judgment call after sharing and digesting others’ views. We avoid committees making decisions because that would slow us down, and diffuse responsibility and accountability. Many times, groups will meet about topics and debate them, but then afterwards someone needs to make a decision and be that “captain”. Small decisions may be shared just by email, larger ones will merit a memo with discussion of the various positions, and why the captain made such a decision. The bigger a decision, the more extensive the dissent/assent gathering should be, usually in an open shared document. We are clear, however, that decisions are not made by a majority or committee vote. We don’t wait for consensus, nor do we drive to rapid, uninformed decision making. When the captain of any particular decision is reasonably confident of the right bet for us to take, they decide and we take that bet. Afterwards, as the impact becomes clearer, we reflect on the decision, and see if we could do even better in the future.

Context not Control

We want employees to be great independent decision makers, and to only consult their manager when they are unsure of the right decision. The leader's job at every level is to set clear context so that others have the right information to make generally great decisions.

Each leader's role is to teach, to set context, and to be highly informed of what is actually happening. The only way to figure out how the context setting needs to improve is to explore a sample of the details. But unlike the micro-manager, the goal of knowing those details is not to change certain small decisions, but to learn how to adjust context so more decisions are made well.

There are some minor exceptions to “context not control,” such as an urgent situation in which there is no time to think about proper context and principles, or when a new team member hasn’t yet absorbed enough context to be confident, or when it’s recognized that the wrong person is in a decision-making role (temporarily, no doubt).

We tell people not to seek to please their boss. Instead, seek to serve the business. It’s OK to disagree with your manager. It’s never OK to hide anything. It’s OK to say to your manager, “I know you disagree, but I’m going to do X because I think it is a better solution. Let me know if you want to specifically override my decision.” What we don’t want is people guessing what their manager would do or want, and then executing on that guess.

Open positions

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Benefits & perks

Health & wellbeing

Affihub offers top of the line benefits, including health, dental, and vision insurance.

Parental leave

Affihub offers new parents 10 weeks of paid time away to spend quality time with family. Biological, adoptive and foster parents are all eligible for parental leave.

Time off

We want people to take time off to rest and rejuvenate. Affihub offers unlimited paid vacation as well as 10+ observed holidays.

Commuting / transportation

Affihub offers monthly commuter credits.

“One aspect of innovation is inventing new devices; another is inventing popular ways to use these devices."

Isaac Walterson