What we expect

Almost everything in our culture is a matter of judgement. This part is not.

The red lines

Mistakes are forgivable here. Almost all of them. These are the ones that aren't.

Lying

To a client or to a teammate. Faking progress. Hiding a mistake. Saying something is done when it isn't. The mistake is survivable. The cover-up is not.

Stealing — money, code, or credit

Company money or client money. Shipping copied code as our own. Taking credit for a teammate's work.

Conflict of interest

Taking money from a client on the side. Working secretly for a competitor. Declaring a conflict is always fine. Hiding one never is.

Faking credentials

Misrepresenting who you are, or what you know. To us, or to a client.

Harassment of any kind

Sexual harassment. Bullying. Intimidation. There is no version of this that is a misunderstanding, and no seniority that excuses it.

Discrimination

On gender, caste, religion, region, language, disability, age or background. We hire, pay and promote on the work. Nothing else. Ever.

Abusing a junior or an intern

Humiliation. Shouting. Dumping your work on them. Using seniority as a weapon. The people with the least power here are the ones we protect the most.

Leaking client data or code

Client code or business information leaving approved systems — a personal laptop, a public repository, a WhatsApp group, an unapproved AI tool.

What belongs to the client

People trust us with the inside of their business. Their numbers. Their strategy. Their half-finished ideas. Their worries. That trust is the reason we have work at all.

Assume it's confidential

Unless it's publicly launched and we have permission, treat every name, screen, number and conversation as secret. Default to silence.

Never post client work

Not in a portfolio. Not on LinkedIn, Dribbble or GitHub. Not without written permission.

Never discuss one client with another

Not even to impress them. Especially not to impress them. The moment a client hears you gossip about someone else's business, they know exactly what you'll say about theirs.

What we say no to

We are selective, and we have turned down real money. This is what we turn it down for.

• Work we don't believe in. If we honestly think a build will fail or waste someone's money, we say so. If they want it anyway, we walk. Taking money for something we expect to fail is a kind of lying.
• Work that's ethically wrong. Anything that misleads or harms the people who end up using it.
• Clients who mistreat our team. Rude, abusive, demeaning to our people — the money is never worth it.
• Work we're not the right team for. Sometimes the honest answer is “we're not the best people for this” — and then we point them to someone who is.

Any one of us can raise any of these. If a project feels wrong to you, say so. You will not be told to be commercial about it.

And when we get it wrong, we pay for it

We have gone well over on a project before. Weeks over. The estimate was ours to get right, and we got it wrong. We did not send that bill to the client.

We absorbed it. We finished the work. We learned to scope better. That decision cost real money — money that would have paid salaries.

Our mistake is our cost. That's not generosity. That's just what the word “partner” means.