February 29, 2024

#96 - Radical Transparency feat. Charles Gorintin // CTO @ Alan & Co-Founding Advisor at Mistral

1 hour 2 minutes

Radical Transparency in Salaries, Decisions, and People

Discover the power of radical transparency🧐 with Charles Gorintin, CTO of Alan (a French InsurTech) and founding force behind Mistral. He may work in a regulated space, but there is nothing typical about Alan’s setup when it comes to internal matters.

Public Salary Framework ✅Searchable Board Meetings ✅4 Managers for 90 FTE✅

Listen to find out:

Why the Manager Role is split into Leads🧑‍💻 and Coaches 🪔

How Transparent Compensation 💸works with public Salary Levels and Performance Reviews

How he hires 🤝: talent density, culture add and more specialized than him

Why he saw the need for Mistral 🇪🇺

How they leverage GitHub Discussions for public decision-making, ownership, and Chesterton’s Fence

Listen here

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Timestamps:

(02:00) Into

(03:33) What is Alan?

(05:37) Challenges and Successes in the Insurance Industry

(06:40) The Importance of Learning and Adapting in Entrepreneurship

(07:06) What is it like to work in a regulated industry?

(12:12) What 3 Master's Degrees gave him

(13:40) Why Mistral was founded

(16:00) His involvement in Mistral

(18:43) Why as CTO he is more focused on people than tech (Non-Technical CTO)

(21:12) Move Fast and Break Things

(22:36) Culture of Transparency

(24:07) Cross-team exposure: Bootcamp and Hacker Month at Meta

(26:04) Remote

(27:37) The Power of Transparency and Fairness in Business

(28:22) Why salaries should be transparent?

(30:17) Why Levels Are Public

(31:14) Public Performance Reviews

(31:35) Tools for Performance Reviews

(31:53) Company Strategy in the Open

(34:07) Leveraging LLMs for Internal Knowledge Management

(35:43) 3 Parts to Knowledge

(37:14) Leads and Coaches instead of Managers

(39:24) Transparency in Decision Making

(39:28) Silos in the Company?

(40:32) How are Coaches Assigned

(41:11) How Coaching Sessions Are Scheduled

(42:38) Leveraging LLMs in 1:1s

(44:44) Is Radical Transparency for Everyone?

(45:52) Distributed Ownership

(46:11) Power of Leveraging GitHub Discussion for Discussions and Decisions

(46:53) Company Culture of Freedom and Responsibility (ala Netflix)

(48:30) Why Talent Density is Important

(49:52) Honest Performance Reviews

(51:37) Hiring for the Culture Add

(53:37) Minimal Meetings

(55:30) Creating Culture in a Remote Environment

(56:23) 1:1s and Focus Time

(58:46) Company Onsite

(59:36) 3 Things

About Charles Gorintin#

Charles Gorintin is the co-founder and CTO of Alan (a French InsurTech) and Cofounding Advisor at Mistral. Prior to co-founding Alan, Charles Gorintin was a data science leader at fast-growing social networks, Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter, where he worked on fighting fake accounts, on growth, and on social psychology.

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By Tobias Schlottke - alphalist CTO Podcast

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