Oxide Computer Company

Oxide organizes engineering work horizontally across disciplines and builds a deep stack that spans both hardware and software. The company emphasizes cross-functional collaboration, openness and shared ownership rather than internal silos; its stated mission and principles frame how teams operate (Principles).

Communication at Oxide favors written work while preserving spoken collaboration. Many meetings are recorded for transparency (though not every conversation), calendars are broadly open, and the company runs a weekly unstructured Demo Friday hour where anyone can demo work to the company to share learning and earn peer recognition; see Engineering a Culture.

Day-to-day decision making is guided by values such as candor, curiosity, empathy, integrity and thriftiness. Oxide focuses on customer outcomes rather than engineering metrics and discourages defensiveness, empire-building and gatekeeping. Practical practices, including a transparent compensation approach, are aligned with these values (Compensation as a Reflection of Values).

The organization is non-hierarchical in practice (while maintaining clear reporting lines), and employees are expected to be versatile, rigorous and responsible in delivering reliable systems.

Oxide builds hiring around its mission, principles and values; cultural alignment with qualities like candor, curiosity, empathy and teamwork is a core part of candidate evaluation (Principles).

The company practices compensation transparency early in the candidate experience: its compensation approach is communicated to candidates before team interviews to reduce negotiation uncertainty. Most roles follow a uniform, transparent base salary and employees receive equity; the company notes that some sales roles may use variable compensation with a commission component (Compensation as a Reflection of Values).

Because the product requires broad and deep technical work and the team is small, Oxide tends to recruit experienced candidates who can contribute across domains. The company does not rely on a formalized performance-review system, instead emphasizing ongoing feedback and peer collaboration as part of career development.