Company

About Fleet

Fleet Device Management Inc is an open core company that sells subscriptions that offer more features and support for Fleet and osquery, the leading open source endpoint agent.

We are dedicated to:

💍 growing the adoption of osquery (one agent to rule them all)
👁️ remaining the freshest, simplest source of truth for every kind of device and OS
🧑‍🚀 making IT developer-friendly
🪟 open source, as a more private, transparent, and trustworthy future for humanity
💻 building a better way to manage computers

History

2014: Origins of osquery

In 2014, our CTO Zach Wasserman, together with Mike Arpaia and the rest of their team at Facebook, created an open source project called osquery.

2016: Origins of Fleet v1.0

A few years later, Zach, Mike Arpaia, and Jason Meller founded Kolide and created Fleet: an open source platform that made it easier and more productive to use osquery in an enterprise setting.

2019: The growing community

When Kolide's attention shifted away from Fleet and towards their separate, user-focused SaaS offering, the Fleet community took over maintenance of the open source project. After his time at Kolide, Zach continued as lead maintainer of Fleet. He spent 2019 consulting and working with the growing open source community to support and extend the capabilities of the Fleet platform.

2020: Fleet was incorporated

Zach partnered with our CEO, Mike McNeil, to found a new, independent company: Fleet Device Management Inc. In November 2020, we announced the transition and kicked off the logistics of moving the GitHub repository.

Values

Openness

The majority of the code, documentation, and content we create at Fleet is public and source-available, and we strive to be broadly open and transparent in the way we run the business; as much as confidentiality agreements (and time) allow. We perform better with an audience, and our audience performs better with us.

be transparent
candor (faster, better decisions)
speak up (don't be afraid to ask questions, be direct, and interrupt)
open source is forever
"public by default"
declassify with care
prioritize accessible terminology and simple explanations to provide value to the largest possible audience of users
use small words so readers understand more easily
anyone can contribute
open source stewardship: the majority of the features Fleet releases will be free, etc
hospitality
- "be a helper" -mr rogers
- think and say positive things
- be customer-first
  - but apply customer service principles to all users, even if they never buy Fleet
- be outsider-friendly (inclusive)
- approachable
- talking with users and contributors is time well spent
- embrace the excitement of others (it's contagious)
- make small talk at the beginning of meetings
- be our guest
believe in everyone
legendary hospitality

Empathy

consider your counterpart
assume positive intent
role play as a user, contributor, or colleague
be punctual
end meetings on time
bugs cause frustrating experiences and alienate users
confusing error messages make people feel helpless, and can fill them with despair
- error messages deserve to be good (it's worth it to spend time on them)
- UI help text and labels deserve to be good (it's worth it to spend time on them)
contributor experience (but quality and commitments first)
developers are users too (REST API, fleetctl, docs)
design by consumer (closeness to the work)
use fewer words (lots of text == lots of work)
prioritize simplicity: people crave mental space (in design, in collaboration)
cognitive unload (via clarity, fewer and smaller words, fewer acronyms and idioms that might not translate)
but think fast, because i.e. "I would have written a shorter letter, but I did not have the time." -Blaise Pascal
legendary digital/human experience

Ownership

take responsibility
follow through on commitments (actions match your words)
prioritize honesty and kindness
think like an owner
be efficient
be valuable (consider business impact)
work on things that matter
- fast forward 12 months, consider total cost of ownership (the eternity of maintenance)
- understand why, or tell me why I'm wrong
- agree, or disagree and commit anyway
make time for self-care (to help you bring your best self when communicating with others, making decisions, etc)
- consider taking a break and going for a walk
- think about how to best organize your day/work hours to fit your life while maximizing value for the company
help unblock users, customers, and other contributors (including colleagues)
help team members and contributors get all the way done, delivered all the way to completion
we win or lose together (it's worth it to help team members and contributors)
less is more
- "boring solutions"
- prefer short calls to long, asynchronous back and forth discussions in Slack
- avoid bikeshedding
- bite off what you can chew
- finish what you start, or at least throw it away loudly in case someone wants it
- focus on fewer tasks at one time
legendary execution

Balance

Between overthinking and rushing, there is a golden mean.

think, fast
think for yourself (only you can)
from first principles
use reason
- believe in your brain's capacity to evaluate a solution or idea, regardless of how popular it is
take your own ideas seriously (great ideas come from everyone, write them out and see if they have merit)
take your own results seriously
- on a hero's journey
- you are capable of epic results
- even boring tasks are more motivating, fun, and effective when you care
- motivate yourself intrinsically with self-talk
- understand "why?"
be crafty
take pride in your results
- reread anything you write for users
- you don't need permission to be thoughtful
- every real-world edge case deserves handling (be thorough)
BUT balance thoughtfulness and planning, with moving quickly:
"everything is in draft"
pick low-hanging fruit (deliver value quickly where you can)
avoid gold-plating
aim to deliver daily
move quicker than 90% of the humans you know
iterate by taking baby steps
legendary results

Objectivity

be wrong
show your work
"may the best product win."
- be fair to competitors
be realistic (practical about your limits and what's possible with the time and resources we have)
speak computer to computers (assume it's your fault)
question yourself (why do I think this?)
use the scientific method when something isn't working
- when something isn't working, don't make assumptions
listen intently, and genuinely try to understand
facts, over commentary
ask great questions & take the time to truly listen
"strong opinions, loosely held"
prioritize truth (reality)
beware sunk cost fallacy (avoid getting attached to something just because you invested time working on it, or came up with it)
be curious
legendary rigour

Culture

All remote

Fleet Device Management Inc. is an all-remote company, with team members spread across 4 continents and 7 time zones. The wider team of contributors from all over the world submit patches, bug reports, troubleshooting tips, improvements, and real-world insights to Fleet's open source code base, documentation, website, and company handbook.

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