Resources
Outside work that has shaped how we work. We adapt what fits KODE and leave the rest.
37signals Employee Handbook
The 37signals handbook showed us that a team can describe how it works in plain language, in public. We took ideas from these chapters. We didn't adopt Shape Up, their policies or their staffing model.
- Titles for Programmers: the starting point for our five engineering levels.
- Titles for Designers: the starting point for our design levels.
- Making a Career: growth through larger scope and better judgment, not only through promotion.
- How We Work: calm, written, asynchronous collaboration.
- Titles for QA: a model for describing levels in other job families.
- Our Rituals: regular, lightweight habits that keep a team aligned.
- Getting Started: what a new teammate needs in their first weeks.
GitLab Career Frameworks
GitLab's career frameworks show how competencies grow from level to level. We borrowed some of their progressions for our engineering and product management rubrics, and the idea that coaching and promotion are separate.
- Dev career framework: how code review reach, security, production awareness and written proposals grow with each level.
- Product Manager job family: the starting point for our product management levels and how scope grows at each one.
- Product Management Career Development Framework: the competencies product managers grow in, such as discovery, business acumen and communication.
- Engineering career development: coaching versus promotion, individual initiative, and regular career conversations.
DORA research
DORA studies what makes software delivery teams effective. We use its metrics and capability research to understand our own delivery, not to rank individuals.
- DORA's software delivery metrics: the definitions of throughput and instability we use when we talk about delivery performance.
- State of AI-assisted Software Development 2025: research on how AI tools change delivery outcomes, and the conditions that make them help.
- Generative organizational culture: research showing that trust and shared responsibility predict better delivery and well-being.
- DORA AI Capabilities Model: the practices that amplify the benefits of AI-assisted development.