Chapter 1
Salt Insure is You
Chapter 2
What We Stand For
Chapter 3
What Influenced US
Chapter 4
Where We Work
Chapter 5
Who Does What
Chapter 6
Benefits & Perks
Chapter 7
Getting Started
Chapter 8
How We Work
Chapter 9
Our Rituals
Chapter 10
Making a Career
Chapter 11
Our Internal Systems
Chapter 12
A Note about Moonlighting
Chapter 13
International Travel Guide
Chapter 4:
Like most other organizations in the world, SALT Insure has developed a vocabulary specific to our work and company. It’s easy to overdo and it’s even easier to do cringeworthily. We don’t want to have a culture of team CRUSHING IT to get to the NEXT LEVEL with some super-duper PEAK PERFORMANCE, BRUH. The vast majority of the time, we can use the vocabulary shared with the rest of the English-speaking world, and we’ll be better off. On the other hand specific vocabulary can be helpful. Here are a few vocabulary items the Basecamp team uses that we’re working to adopt as our own:
Most problems can be solved in a thousand different ways. One way might take 100 hours, another might take 10. Judo is the art of problem restatement. Turning that massive, scary 3-month looking problem into one that can be done in 3 weeks instead. It’s often used when we get frustrated trying to solve something hard and we aren’t making sufficient progress: “Let’s figure out a way to judo this!”.
It’s a rare case when our initial aspirations for a feature don’t meet the boundaries of our cycle budgets. When that happens, our go-to tool for shipping is scope hammering. This basically just means shrinking the scope, removing features or configuration or fidelity, until the work is doable within the time left. It’s the opposite tactic to working longer days or weekends or to postpone the project into another cycle. Almost every project can be scope hammered, especially if you invite someone in to assist with the analysis who isn’t afraid to kill other people’s darlings. You’ll get better at doing that yourself after a few rounds too.
“Please do investigate”. Seen most often on to-do lists at SALT Insure to indicate uncertainty. It helps everyone on the project understand that we’re going to look into it but it may or may not be feasible, practical, or possible.