At Kombo, we strive to be the fastest-moving engineering team. This goal is guided by a set of principles initially established by Niklas and Aike during their early startup days, which have been continually refined through new experiences and team inputs. These principles have repeatedly proven their value by guiding us to make the right decisions and avoid potential pitfalls. By applying these principles, you can progress at Kombo and make a significant impact.
Engineers at Kombo are builders and creators. We love putting things out into the world and having them appreciated by our customers. Our pride comes from creating software that we are proud of. This isn't about perfectionism but the deep fulfillment that comes from building things the right way.
We started Kombo because we want to win. Winning in the software industry means being 10x better than any alternative, and that's only possible when the pursuit of excellence runs through our entire organization. We don't accept "good enough" because good enough doesn't win.
This commitment to quality helps us attract exceptional talent. The best engineers want to work somewhere they can be proud of their craft. They seek environments where their colleagues care as deeply about quality as they do. By maintaining these high standards, we've created a talent accelerator where great engineers become exceptional.
When we do make trade-offs on quality, they are deliberate experiments or explicitly temporary solutions. We don't compromise on our standards out of convenience or to save time. This extends beyond our own code—we choose our tools and vendors with the same discerning eye, refusing to accept subpar solutions just because they're available.
This pursuit of excellence isn't just about building great software—it's about building great builders and creators. We invest heavily in our team's growth because we believe that exceptional people, given the right environment, will create exceptional outcomes.
The cornerstone of engineering at Kombo is simplicity. This principle has enabled us to move quickly and minimize errors since our inception. Many other principles stem from this one. Here’s how simplicity benefits us:
To maintain simplicity, we avoid adding new libraries and tech unless absolutely necessary. Libraries often introduce unnecessary complexity and bloat. Instead, we build what we need ourselves, making it easier to extend and debug. Similarly, we limit new infrastructure and services to avoid maintenance overhead and potential bottlenecks. For example, we use only one database (Postgres), one memory store (Redis), one hosting solution (GCP), and one Datawarehouse. That’s it.
We use proven technologies like Postgres and NodeJS and maintain a mono repo to deploy the entire codebase at once, ensuring compatibility and ease of review. Our CI guarantees that our entire codebase is compatible with all our components, and our CD ensures that all services are deployed together. This setup allows for frontend, backend, and infra changes in a single PR, simplifying review processes and reducing dependencies.
At Kombo, we embrace a fullstack mindset, meaning every engineer can work on the frontend, backend, infrastructure, and with customers. This approach offers several advantages: