Note to all-hands
Note to all-hands
Things around the office and on chat were looking kind of grim, and I was asked if I could say something to boost morale. I sort of mumbled this out at the all-hands meeting, and I figured I’d mumble it here, too.
We have a #nopolitics rule and it’s been a good one. But today is a pretty harsh day for a lot of people. And I was asked if I could address that, and talk about how people are feeling, so I’ll do my best. I’m not feeling great either.
I want to be clear: People vote their conscience and along certain issues. You can work here with any politics you want as long as you respect and participate in our culture. This is not about who you voted for yesterday, but rather about how our community feels today. And a lot of people here — in NYC and remote — are feeling pretty terrible today.
One of our co-founders is an immigrant from the Middle East. Women, people of color, people from the LGBTQ community, parents, veterans, atheists, committed Christians, more conservative people, less conservative people, white dudes, non-white dudes, lots of kinds of people work here. As a company we’ve made a specific goal to be diverse, to be welcoming, to be respectful and open to all, and just basically to have some values that we truly value. You can see the values in our mission statement. You can see them emerging in the diversity meeting we held last week.
I — we — just want to let everyone know, we’re going to keep going down that path. Our values haven’t changed and we’re still going to stand behind them. I know that doesn’t count for everything, and it doesn’t change what’s happening out in the world, at least not yet. But I hope it counts for something.
There’s another thing I want to say. The economy might or might not be a mess in the coming months. Postlight is an ambitious small business and we’re subject to the same forces as the rest of the world. But we’re building this thing to last. We were, and are, building a company that can handle tough times and face big challenges. We’ve made it through some large challenges in our first year and we’ll just keep meeting them. That was true Monday and it’s true on Wednesday.
Come in and do your work and we’ll go get more work for you to do, and we’ll stick to our mission and our values. That’s where our control begins and ends, so that’s our plan. Thanks for listening.
