Fly with Bird. The Anti-Handbook.

Complexity is the enemy.

The only law we’ll fire you over, so it goes first. Your job is two verbs: create and delete. Most places only pay for the first; here, removing a dead process, a redundant layer, an abstraction nobody needed counts as much as shipping, often more.

We’d rather spend a week deleting a system than a year feeding it. Before you add anything, a tool, a meeting, a line, find the red dot: the one true thing the problem reduces to, and build only up from there. ‘That’s how it’s always done’ isn’t a reason. It’s the sound of complexity defending itself.

Clarity comes from doing.

You will rarely have enough information. Move anyway. Most decisions are doors that swing both ways: walk through, watch, walk back if you were wrong. The few that don’t swing back, slow down and pull people in.

While other companies are still aligning on the kickoff, we’ve shipped and we’re on the third iteration, not because we’re reckless, but because motion produces the truth that meetings only imitate. Build the thing. The thing will tell you what’s real.

Decide where the context is.

Permission chains are complexity wearing a tie, so we don’t have them. The person closest to the problem, usually you, makes the call, without waiting on a manager who knows less about it. Disagree as hard as you like; the moment we decide, commit all the way.

And when something or someone is blocking you, don’t route around it politely for three weeks. Go straight at it. Blocked by a person? Tell Robert, the actual CEO, directly. I would rather you wake me at 2am than let a real problem sit because you were being well-behaved.

Data beats hierarchy.

Truth here doesn’t flow downhill from the most senior person in the room. It comes from whoever holds the evidence. Bring data and you can overrule anyone, including me.

So candor isn’t bravery here; it’s the floor. A colleague’s idea is half-formed? Tell them, kindly, now. A decision is wrong? Say it before it ships, not after. The one unforgivable move is swallowing a concern to keep the peace. A problem you saw and stayed quiet about is the most expensive complexity there is.

Direct the machines.

We are AI-native in the literal sense: we ship an MCP server so agents can drive our own product, and we expect you to drive agents to do yours. If a task can be done by an agent you point at it, your job is to point well, not to do it by hand and call the hours diligence.

AI is your co-pilot for thinking and your accelerant for learning, and it’s the reason a handful of people here will out-build a department somewhere else. The bar rises to meet the leverage. Take it, then spend what it gives back on the problems only a human can solve.

Own the outcome, not the hours.

Whatever your title, the job is the same: own outcomes end to end, and unblock what’s stuck even when it ‘isn’t yours’. If it blocks progress, it’s yours now.

But hear this clearly, because most intense companies get it wrong: ownership is not being online at midnight. We’re remote and async. We measure what shipped and whether your team can count on you, never the color of your Slack dot.

If you’re routinely answering messages after hours, something upstream is broken, and broken-upstream is a complexity bug we want to kill, not a loyalty test you’re passing. When the network is genuinely on fire, everyone grabs a hose. That’s rare. The rest of the time: rest hard, log off, come back sharp. Burned-out people add complexity. They don’t remove it.

Growth is taken, not given.

We don’t have career ladders. A ladder is just a queue, and queues are complexity. Leadership here is earned the only honest way: impact. Do harder things, get trusted with more, fast. We recognize a breakthrough the day it happens, not at a review six months later.

Every Friday, write one honest paragraph on what you actually moved. It’s how you catch yourself spending a week on the nearest problem instead of the highest one.