Slab, a team wiki and knowledge base company, posts on writing culture, startup lessons and engineering topics.
HN commenters mention Slab as a lighter, more opinionated alternative to Notion, and one posts its engineering job openings.
Firstly, I work at Slab.com — a knowledge hub for teams. So, obviously I'm slanted in my perspective. But I'm not going to pitch the specifics of Slab here for you. Rather, I'm going to share a post we recently published designed to help teams document/write overcome knowledge hoarding (regardless of what tool/system they use):
https://slab.com/blog/knowledge-hoarding/
It's not a direct pitch to use Slab. In it we talk about the three reasons we discovered most folks hoard knowledge:
1. Leverage: If an employee hoards their knowledge, they may feel like they are irreplaceable.
2. Fear: Putting yourself out there can be intimidating. What if colleagues or supervisors respond with negative feedback?
3. Competition: If your workplace rewards personal triumphs over shared victories, employees are less likely to want to share their "secrets."
Also, no matter what documentation tool you use, it's worth reading this first: https://slab.com/blog/documentation-tools/
Many teams initially gravitate toward more generic document editors (Google Docs) as their first team wiki, for logical reasons:
- These editors are familiar to most people, meaning they can be easier to adopt across an organization
- Most companies already use (and pay for) at least one of these tools
- Teams realize the need for documentation, but aren't thinking of how their documentation tool will scale alongside their business
But there are some issues with these document editors that teams discover as they…
Slab | Engineering | Remote (Worldwide) | Full-time
At Slab (https://slab.com), we believe that knowledge is the foundation of any organization's success. When a team's collective knowledge is more accessible, that team's potential is limitless.
Our product helps teams easily create, organize, and discover knowledge across the entire company, from non-technical to tech-savvy. Each day, thousands of customers rely on Slab across their entire workforces, including Asana, Benchling, and Fivetran.
You'd be joining a team of thoughtful and experienced engineers, distributed worldwide across North America, Europe, and Asia.
Stack: React, GraphQL, Elixir, Phoenix, Kubernetes
Take a look at our open roles:
- Frontend Engineer - [https://jobs.lever.co/slab/287fe35f-9e9d-4d5a-a2d5-d1d7fc67c347?lever-origin=applied&lever-source%5B%5D=Hacker%20News](https://jobs.lever.co/slab/287fe35f-9e9d-4d5a-a2d5-d1d7fc67c347?lever-origin=applied&lever-source%5B%5D=Hacker%20News)
- Backend Engineer - [https://jobs.lever.co/slab/e97d694f-2ef9-47e7-8599-c6e624e4d084?lever-origin=applied&lever-source%5B%5D=Hacker%20News](https://jobs.lever.co/slab/e97d694f-2ef9-47e7-8599-c6e624e4d084?lever-origin=applied&lever-source%5B%5D=Hacker%20News)
A couple of technical posts from our engineering:
- Upcoming CSS Features to Look Forward to: [https://slab.com/blog/upcoming-css-features-to-look-forward-to/](https://slab.com/blog/upcoming-css-features-to-look-forward-to/)
- Why we…
Slab | Software Engineer | San Francisco, CA or Remote | Full-time | REMOTE
At Slab (https://slab.com), we are on a mission to make the workplace a source of learning and purpose. Our product is a knowledge base, reimagined to be powerful enough for engineers and remain intuitive enough for the entire company. The founding team has previously started and sold a productivity company to Salesforce and we are backed by top-tier investors, including Matrix Partners, CRV, and NEA.
With our core values (https://slab.com/about) in "Stay Lean" and "The Best Prevails", we achieved seven figures in revenue with a small team, while attracting brands like Asana, Benchling, Fivetran, Glossier, and Vox Media as customers. Our team has been globally remote from the start, so we have the infrastructure to enable flexible work arrangements.
Technologies we use:
* TypeScript + React
* GraphQL + Apollo + Absinthe
* Phoenix + Elixir [1]
* Postgres
* Docker + Kubernetes
* Google Compute Platform
You can find our job descriptions and apply at https://slab.com/jobs?ref=hn.
[1]: Our Elixir story is featured on elixir-lang: https://elixir-lang.org/blog/2020/11/17/real-time-collaboration-with-elixir-at-slab/
In a past life I helped optimize >$1b of online transactions as a CRO professional and learning to objectively "write well" could be quantified in two ways:
1) Message Density - there's a great quote attributed to Mark Twain that nails this "If I'd had more time I would have written you a shorter letter".
In practice Jeff Bezo's push to making executives build "4 page memos" for meetings outlines this idea clearly: "the reason writing a good 4 page memo is harder than "writing" a 20 page powerpoint is because the narrative structure of a good memo forces better thought and better understanding of what's more important than what, and how things are related"(1)
2) Message Accessibility - Making your message broadly accessible is a good forcing function to writing clearly. An easy "hack" in this department is to utilize the "gunning fog index"(2) which is a structured way to estimate "the years of formal education a person needs to understand the text on the first reading" and there are many tools online that can spit out a score.
(1) https://slab.com/blog/jeff-bezos-writing-management-strategy/
(2) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gunning_fog_index
Slab | Engineering | Remote (Worldwide) | Full-time At Slab (https://slab.com), we believe that knowledge is the foundation of any organization's success. When a team's collective knowledge is more accessible, that team's potential is limitless.
Our product helps teams easily create, organize, and discover knowledge across the entire company, from non-technical to tech-savvy. Each day, thousands of customers rely on Slab across their entire workforces, including Asana, Benchling, and Fivetran.
You'd be joining a team of thoughtful and experienced engineers, distributed worldwide across North America, Europe, and Asia. Stack: React, GraphQL, Elixir, Phoenix, Kubernetes
Take a look at our open roles:
- Sr. Frontend Engineer - https://jobs.ashbyhq.com/slab/d3dff44e-e8f7-4407-8eae-1b491f7fc1b8?utm_source=yD58vZvkWJ
A couple of technical posts:
- Why we use Elixir: https://elixir-lang.org/blog/2020/11/17/real-time-collaboration-with-elixir-at-slab/
- Quill 2.0: https://slab.com/blog/announcing-quill-2-0/
Slab | Software Engineer | REMOTE (Worldwide) | Full-time
At Slab (https://slab.com), we believe that knowledge is the foundation of any organization's success. When a team's collective knowledge is more accessible, that team's potential is limitless.
Our product helps teams easily create, organize, and discover knowledge across the entire company, from non-technical to tech-savvy. Each day, thousands of customers rely on Slab across their entire workforces, including Asana, Benchling, and Fivetran.
You'd be joining a team of thoughtful and experienced engineers, distributed worldwide across North America, Europe, and Asia.
Stack: React, GraphQL, Elixir [1], Phoenix, Kubernetes
Apply here for Software Engineer role: https://jobs.lever.co/slab/1c6fae7c-980e-4875-be9f-76ae1ebfad96
[1]: Why we use Elixir: https://elixir-lang.org/blog/2020/11/17/real-time-collaboration-with-elixir-at-slab/