Working at Civil

Building a radically open, transparent and transformative workplace.

We aim no less than to change the world for good.

We believe journalism is liberating, just and worth fighting for.

We will give far more than we take, though we believe teammates should earn generously for the value they create.

We believe our ambitions require extraordinary individuals and world-class teams.

We value warmth, directness and a bias to help and ask for help.

Open, trustworthy and transformative

Civil seeks to create a new operating paradigm for journalism worldwide, and in the process, provide citizens everywhere an open and trustworthy place to make sense of what matters most and constructively contribute to the public discourse.

• We believe journalism is a crucial requirement for free society, but by no means inevitable or guaranteed.
• We believe journalism is the public’s most powerful weapon and most passionate ally.
• We believe journalism is either at the precipice of obsolescence and subversion, or at the dawn of a new beginning.
• We believe a future where the latter is true is more peaceful, productive and enriching, and it’s this future we’re committed to making a reality.

We intend Civil to become a fully decentralized, community-owned and community-operated platform for self-sustaining journalism. No advertisers, no traditional shareholders, no central authority, no outside influence, no hidden agendas. Just a community of communities consisting of journalists and citizens, working together and compensating each other in kind.

• We believe in compensating our colleagues top-market rates because we expect top-market performers at every position throughout the organization, however, it is not the intention or focus of this effort to make anyone wealthy for the sake of it.
• We imagine heavily reinvesting profits to further our growth and development long into the future, and where we may generate excess, we expect to invest it in education and other tangential, key societal pursuits.

We certainly don’t expect every employee who joins Civil to work here forever, however, we’re designing the company from the inside-out to be here for 100 years or more. This laser focus on the long-term impact we have on society is shared by everyone within the organization, and it’s a critical requirement for any new candidate to recognize and embrace throughout their hiring process.

Synchronicity and self-management

We don’t believe in traditional hierarchy or corporate structure. Instead, we intend to create a more dynamic and synchronous organization of self-managing individuals and high-performing teams.

We believe performance is measured at the team level, not the individual.

The competition for talent, capital and luck (market timing) is largely equal over the long run, so we believe team speed is what sets world-class organizations apart. Therefore, we believe star players are not defined by individual skills alone, but how they consistently lift their team to play at its overall best.

To be clear, skills matter a great deal and everyone at Civil is expected to possess and hone world-class expertise in their relevant skill set, but skills are not enough. Leadership, communication, innovation and conduct are just some of the intangible traits that we see in top teammates.

We believe in vesting as much autonomy and freedom into the individual as possible while still maintaining cohesion within teams and as an organization as a whole.

We believe star players expect a vast range of responsibility, to make decisions quickly and without hesitation, and to manage their own priorities fluidly. However, with this level of freedom and our need for consistent cohesion, Civil teammates also recognize the huge premium we place on communication, context, inclusion, and feedback. We are not a chaotic array of independent actors but instead of a highly coordinated team of self-directed players.

Civility and candor

Every Civil teammate is hungry to learn how they can get better every day, and welcomes direct feedback early and often in their pursuit for continuous improvement. We expect the best from ourselves and our teammates, but never at the expense of our mutual respect and shared desire for self-improvement. Teammates are expected to deliver candid and specific feedback — often instantly — in order to help each other, however, we all recognize the bright line between constructive criticism and cruelty.

In the long run, Civil will not be known for its technical prowess, its intuitive design, its business acumen or even its journalism, but instead its radical openness, trustworthy reputation and civil conduct. Anything that should undermine these cultural mandates is intolerable.

We seek to discover the best in ourselves and in our teammates. Where we can direct teammates to improve, we show them. Where we wonder how we ourselves may improve (which happens often), we ask for advice and feedback. This is what makes us communicative, cohesive, adaptive and rapidly improving at both the individual and team level.

Want to work at Civil?

• Volunteer free-time: Join Slack and check out our #roadmap channel.
• Part-time or full-time: Apply here.

Want more Civil?

• Read our founder’s original post on culture “Why Civil”.
• Read our whitepaper.