Our engineering values
How we’re scaling our culture
It’s easy to be cynical about company values. We’ve all worked at places where they’re not worth the white pixel space they’re written on. An empty aspiration, barely resembling the actual working day.
At Freetrade we developed our values early on.
What we’ve committed to is a reflection of how we already work. As we scale we’ll use these values to communicate and frame our decisions, improving and updating them as the company grows.
These are our company values. They’ve helped us move from a handful of people to a company that’s serving thousands of users. They’ll empower us to continue on that journey. And whatever changes we make to the product, these values are core to how we operate.
- We are transparent, honest & candid
- We make the complex simple
- We care deeply about our customers
- We own our work and deliver results
Having these at hand is a powerful tool. It removes the ambiguity when you’re making decisions and keeps us moving towards our North Star. The harder the decisions, the more powerful they become.
Our engineering values
Documenting our values ensures that as our team scales we all stay consistent. As well as being documented they’re reinforced through their usage.
We use them to make decisions, we use them when reviewing RFCs, we use them when building our roadmap, and we use them during feedback and performance reviews.
To this end, we’ve extended our company values to help us build and ship great products. Our engineering values are:
- We’re product-focused
- We’re always learning
- We’re pragmatic
- We help each other
- We avoid knowledge silos
- We constantly raise the bar
These values help us build the right products. In fact, the first one states exactly that: we understand that software means nothing unless it adds value to our users.
They also apply to the entire team. “We’re always learning” isn’t just about getting better at your craft as you become more senior. It’s about accepting new ideas and ways of working, especially if you’re senior.
The way we build software today will be different from the way we’ll build software tomorrow. The values underpinning us will remain.
We also believe that strong ideas come from within the team. By working across technologies and preventing silos we’re exposed to better ways of solving problems.
The most critical value for us right now is “We constantly raise the bar.” We want to constantly level up the team as we grow quickly. Bringing in new more talented engineers is good for the team and our customers. It redefines the norm and helps us achieve our ultimate goal of becoming the investment app.
If you’d like to work in a team that values these traits —we’re hiring! Check out our careers page.
We’re on a mission to bring fee-free investing to Europe and beyond. 🔥
Freetrade does not provide investment advice and individual investors should make their own decisions or seek independent advice. The value of investments can go up as well as down and you may receive back less than your original investment. Tax laws are subject to change and may vary in how they apply depending on the circumstances.
Freetrade is a trading name of Freetrade Limited, which is a member firm of the London Stock Exchange and is authorised and regulated by the Financial Conduct Authority. Registered in England and Wales (no. 09797821).
