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How HashiCorp Works

A website dedicated to making our implicit practices explicit.

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Individual Practices

Writing Practices and Culture

Our writing roots date back to the company’s earliest days, and it is the foundation of how we make decisions.

Relationship Building

An organization needs healthy employee relationships to stay organized around its goals as it scales.

Standard Communication Tools

HashiCorp is a remote-first company, meaning we optimize our workflows for decentralized remote teams.

There's No One Right Way to Work Remotely

Rather than trying to write a list of tips or general remote advice, we collected stories of HashiCorp employees' remote work habits.

Leading with Data

We use data to set shared expectations of what success looks like, and enable team members to contribute towards that success in clear ways.

Manager & Team Practices

Manager Journey

A robust, scaled, and global manager development program, which standardizes what we expect of HashiCorp People Managers and promotes consistent capability across a core set of HashiCorp manager competencies.

Best Practices for Effective Meetings

Our recommended best practices for different types of meetings span structured brainstorms, team meetings and project kick-offs, one-on-ones, ad-hoc meetings, and social events.

Clear and Direct Feedback

Giving and receiving feedback that is clear and direct is a critical part of how we interact.

Company Practices

Hiring and Interviewing at HashiCorp

HashiCorp’s success is driven by its people — and that makes hiring one of the most important investments we can make in the future of the company.

Operating Cadence

A company operating cadence is the drum beat that drives the business. Done well, it sets the company up for success.

Building a Principled Culture

Culture itself is not created. It is an emergent property of our organization’s people and systems, which are built on shared principles.

Resources

Scorecard Template

HashiCorp's Scorecard template is designed to help teams set annual goals and review progress towards those goals each quarter.

RFC Template

HashiCorp's Request for Comment (RFC) template is designed to help team members propose a solution to a problem and get feedback on that proposal.

PRD Template

HashiCorp’s Problem Requirements Document (PRD) template is designed to help our team members fully understand a problem and define what’s needed to address it.

About

Every organization has implicit cultural norms and working practices. How HashiCorp Works started as an internal resource to document these practices to help new employees be successful. This encouraged us to make the implicit explicit and turn siloed knowledge into knowledge that could be used by anyone across our organization.

Within How HashiCorp Works you'll find documentation on everything from setting up a successful at-home work environment to participating in HashiCorp's writing culture for making decisions. With over 1,100 HashiCorp employees working together all over the world, we are committed to helping all team members learn our individual, team, and company-wide best practices.

We open sourced How HashiCorp Works in March 2021. We look to other companies’ systems and processes as inspiration material for our own, and open sourcing our own various practices is our way of paying it forward. We recommend that other organizations use How HashiCorp Works as inspiration to find the aspects that make sense for their settings. Every organization is different.

Readers will notice that some of the guides reference internal documents; we decided to keep those references to maintain the same document for both internal and external readers. Those internal documents don't provide much additional information, just more prescription, so external readers aren't missing key content by not having access.

We update the guides in How HashiCorp Works every year, as our practices are always evolving. If you have feedback, questions, or want to learn more — you can reach us at hhw@hashicorp.com.