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

alphalist.CTO Podcast - For CTOs and Technical Leaders

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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