Notion Company Culture & Values

Describe Notion’s culture in one word. What made you pick that word? 

I always describe Notion as “thoughtful.” From product decisions to engineering processes, there’s an attention to detail that’s easy to take for granted. In particular, I find our company communications to be surprisingly transparent and responsible. Notion is a growing startup, so change comes in many forms, and I’ve been impressed with the way we handle evolving strategies and structure. 

For example, when a product area transferred ownership from my team to another, there was a multi-month collaborative effort to make sure the transition happened smoothly. Engineers hosted workshops, flew in for in-person pair programming and organized sprints to write more documentation and tests, which allowed the new team to gain knowledge with lots of guardrails in place before my team officially handed over ownership. There was plenty of emphasis from leadership that these knowledge transfers require time and care. Notion operates quickly, but I appreciate that we know when to slow down so that we can move fast over the long term.

How long have you been with Notion, and what professional growth or development have you seen in that time?

I’ve been at Notion for three years now. As a product, Notion can be complex, which means the bar for user empathy and cross-functional collaboration is noticeably higher here. Decisions in one product area can impact many others, and one of our greatest challenges is being able to offer this complexity to users in an intuitive way. Whether I’m leading a user interface change, improving product performance or proposing a joint project with another team, I’m continually developing strengths in uncovering hidden complexities and communicating decisions effectively to stakeholders. I find that no matter the project or engineering domain, investing in these skills has carried me far. I’m grateful that Notion’s culture encourages broad learning and provides plenty of opportunities to apply these skills in meaningful ways.