At BuzzFeed, we believe that every member of the Tech team, regardless of their level or role, can and should strive to become a leader. Laid out below are a series of principles - core beliefs that we value and attempt to live up to with every interaction we have and each artifact we create - that help us evaluate our decision-making and nudge us in the right direction when we lack clarity.
Being leaders at BuzzFeed means that we...
When disagreement or conflict arises, it's tempting to make assumptions about others' motivations, skills and attitudes. At BuzzFeed, we encourage challenging ideas and assumptions, but know it's simultaneously imperative to assume the best intentions from our coworkers and to approach each other with empathy. We put ourselves in each others' shoes and attempt to deeply understand each other's goals and challenges so that we can solve problems together more effectively.
At BuzzFeed we recognize that communication is a critical factor in the success or failure of a project, team or cross-departmental collaboration. We place a high premium on transparency, always erring on the side of over-communicating, even (especially) when the news is bad, a project is off-track, or our team isn't functioning as well as we'd like. Leaders at BuzzFeed embrace the idea of Radical Candor and communicate their ideas, challenges and concerns in a straightforward and empathetic manner.
We do what we say we will. At BuzzFeed, when we commit, we commit fully and deliver on time, and communicate proactively if we need more time or help.
As leaders, we have a strong point of view and advocate for our opinions. We push ourselves and our teams to do the best work possible by being vocal when we disagree and backing up our opinions with sound logic. At the same time, we strive to discover and support the best idea. We are open to our own ideas evolving and recognize that, once a decision has been made, we must commit fully to keep the team moving forward.
We are always aware of how ourselves and our teams spend their time and attention. We ensure that the conditions and processes are right for great work to happen, on timelines that allow that work to happen. If we find ourselves working against an overly-aggressive timeline or crunching to meet a deadline, we stop and evaluate the way we’re planning and staffing our work so that we can execute at a high-level without running the risk of burnout or shipping hurried, bad work.
Our products are only as important as the impact they have on the people who use them. As leaders, we seize opportunities with the best data available and go after work that generates the most value for the greatest number of users. We avoid over-optimization at a local level, and instead always try to think globally about our audiences and products, and also remain flexible as our audience and product needs change. We believe that our internal processes are tools to help us create value, and that if we’re being hindered by our own process we should question and then change or remove it from our project.
We are always looking for opportunities to share our experience with people around us. Whether mentoring or sponsoring a colleague, helping out when someone is stuck or teaching our craft to a coworker from another department, we are generous with our knowledge and our time, because it makes us better collaborators and people.
We hold ourselves and each other to high standards, and are always on the lookout for ways to improve our skill sets, our products and our culture. We regularly challenge our anchors, and endeavor to raise the level of execution and discourse across our teams and all of Tech: whether by questioning the goals of a proposed or ongoing project, seeding and leading new Tech-wide initiatives, running retrospectives to find potential future adjustments or helping out colleagues from other departments.
Leaders at BuzzFeed know that we need to move quickly to achieve our goals, and excel at breaking big ideas down into smaller, measurable, individually-valuable pieces that can be shipped to users and inform future work. We work to keep ourselves and our teams focused and shipping on a regular cadence, so that we consistently deliver new value to our users and maintain momentum so that we can achieve our larger, long-term goals.
You’ll never hear, “That’s not my job,” or “That’s someone else’s fault,” from a leader at BuzzFeed. We are quick to jump in and help people, and frequently engage with other teams, disciplines and parts of the product. When we see an opportunity to solve problems - in the product, on our team or in the culture - we dive in headfirst and get the right people involved. And when things go wrong, we take responsibility and ownership rather than pass the blame onto others.
As leaders, we are experts in our assigned product area, developing a deep understanding of our audience, external industry trends, key stakeholders across the company, and the business strategy surrounding our product. When successful, the problems of our stakeholders and users become our problems and we become trusted partners with other departments at BuzzFeed. We use our expertise and the trust we’ve built not only to inform our product work, but to also inform our business leaders, content creators and other collaborators so that they can make better, more data-driven decisions.