n8n Launches Refreshed Culture/Code to Guide Company Scaling and Community Values

n8n Launches Refreshed Culture/Code to Guide Company Scaling and Community Values At its April offsite in Berlin, n8n introduced its refreshed company values, known as the Culture/Code. The document formalizes principles previously maintained through informal interactions to protect the organization's culture amid rapid growth, remote work, and international expansion. The Culture/Code was launched at an all-company offsite in Berlin, where n8n was founded in 2019. Rapid company growth, US market expansion, and the founder's growing distance from daily interactions made explicit documentation necessary to avoid cultural drift. n8n aims to be a generational company operating for decades, requiring a culture designed to outlast its original builders. The document is split into two sections—values and daily behaviors—and extends internally to hiring and feedback as well as externally to community engagement. Drivers Behind Formalizing the Culture n8n has ranked among the top 30 projects on GitHub and is experiencing fast growth, making culture transmission via Slack or informal observation unfeasible for new hires. The founder also noted that expanding into a global team and building US operations increased the risk of cultural disconnect, necessitating written principles rather than reliance on osmosis. Remote Realities and Longevity Operating primarily as a remote-first organization across time zones and languages removes the ambient calibration found in shared offices. With the overarching goal of lasting twenty to thirty years or more rather than prioritizing scale alone, n8n introduced the Culture/Code to serve as a shared reference point across geographic boundaries. Community Inclusion and Everyday Accountability The framework highlights values such as being welcoming to reflect a worldwide user base, which historically saw its top community hub in Brazil. Divided into values and the behaviors that reflect them, the Code governs internal practices like hiring and reviews, while extending commitments to community members and emphasizing individual responsibility for shared tasks.

n8n 正式发布新版企业文化准则 Culture/Code 在柏林举办的全员大会上，n8n 正式推出了更新后的企业文化准则 Culture/Code。创始人通过阐述公司规模扩张、远程办公协作以及长期愿景，解释了将潜移默化的价值观正式成文并全面推行的必要性。 n8n 于 4 月在柏林举办的全员大会上发布了新版 Culture/Code，该准则分为价值观及具体行为表现两部分。 成文原因包括公司快速扩张并跻身 GitHub 历史排名前 30、创始人无法再参与所有日常决策、拓展美国市场防止文化脱节，以及远程优先模式下需要明确的文化锚点。 准则中强调了“包容性（We are welcoming）”与社群协作，确保公司内部团队与全球多元化用户及贡献者保持一致。 创始人以准则中“从战略决策到洗水槽里的盘子”为例，指出其核心在于主动承担责任的敏锐度与共同担当精神。 规范成文的动因与规模化挑战 n8n 创立于 2019 年，目前已进入 GitHub 历史前 30 名项目，随着团队每月迎来新员工，早期仅靠 Slack 讨论或现场决策自然传递文化的模式已不再适用。随着公司建立全球团队与拓展美国市场，创始人与员工的日常接触减少，无法亲临每个艰难决策的现场。为了避免文化漂移并实现跨越数十年的“世代企业”目标，n8n 必须将过去体现在拒绝不合伦理的投资人、裁撤文化不符人员等行动中的价值观明确记录下来。 远程协作与全球社群纽带 作为远程优先企业，缺少单一实地办公室的社交黏性，n8n 需要通过明确的文化准则来克服地理和时区限制。新规范特别强调“热情包容”，契合公司分布在各大洲的全球构建者生态。准则不仅规范内部员工的行为、招聘与反馈机制，也作为对外部开源贡献者、论坛常客及模板构建者的承诺，保证在面对故障处理与致谢时一视同仁。 从洗碗看共同责任感 创始人重点提及准则中关于“该做的事就去做——从战略决策到水槽里的盘子”的表述。该观点不仅指卷起袖子干活的谦逊，更是一种敏锐察觉问题并将非自身造成的事务视作共同责任的自律意识。准则将全面嵌入招聘和日常评估流程，成为团队长期发展的共同行为基准。

I’m going to start this post by talking about dishes. Yes, it’s a metaphor. But it’s literal, too. We recently launched our refreshed company values, in the [Culture/Code](https://n8n.io/careers/culture-code/builders/), at our all-company offsite ‘IRL’ in Berlin in April, which is fitting, since Berlin is where I started n8n in 2019. Somewhere between the bigger ideas about building infrastructure for a new era of work and what it means to operate with integrity, there’s a line in there about doing the dishes: “When something needs doing, you do it - from the strategic call to the dish in the sink.” This might be my favourite line in the whole Code, because it gets at something essential about what we’re here to do at n8n, and how we’re going to get there. But, we’ll get to that shortly. So why do the values refresh now? The obvious answer is speed. We’ve been growing fast, faster than most, and we’re in the top 30 projects of all time on [GitHub](https://github.com/n8n-io/n8n). Moving at the pace we do is a genuine test of how well a culture can flex and absorb change. Because culture doesn’t transmit automatically. Every month, people join n8n who didn’t experience the company when it was small enough for the culture to be felt rather than explained - when a thread on Slack, or a decision made in front of everyone, naturally set the tone. That’s not how it works at our size anymore, nor should it be. The less comfortable reason for this values refresh is me. As a company scales, a founder necessarily gets farther from the day-to-day contact, which used to be the main way how vision and values traveled. I still love meeting every new hire, I just have less time with each of them than I used to, and less of the ongoing back-and-forth and daily interactions that used to follow. I can’t be in every room where a hard call gets made. And as we build out our global team and our US operations - a market with its own norms, pressures, and pace - the risk of cultural drift, or disconnect, is something we couldn’t ignore. Scale, however, isn’t our central goal - impact and longevity is. **We want n8n to be a generational company** - one that’s still here, still trusted, and still building in twenty, thirty, and more years. **For that to be true, the culture has to outlast the people who built it** - understood, inherited, and owned by everyone who comes after. There’s also the remote-first reality. Building a coherent culture across time zones, languages, and working styles, without the ambient social glue of a single shared office (we do have local hubs in some major cities), requires more intentionality than most companies admit. The kind of informal calibration that happens when people are close to each other - overhearing a decision, reading the room, absorbing how a leader handles something under pressure, or recognising just how central our community is to how we make decisions - none of that exists for us by default. We have to create it deliberately, and the [Culture/Code](https://n8n.io/careers/culture-code/builders/) is part of how we’ll do that. It’s not a substitute for real human connection, of course. But it’s certainly useful as a shared reference point that helps us to beat stubborn little things like geography, or daylight savings time. Our values have always been present in the decisions we made: turning down investors over ethical concerns, letting go of talented people who weren’t right for the culture, treating free users and paying ones alike. But we can’t rely on osmosis anymore - so we’ve written them down. Another favourite part of our new [Culture/Code](https://n8n.io/careers/culture-code/builders/) is ***We are welcoming.*** That entire value gets at something really special about n8n: **we are a truly global community**. You can find people building with n8n on almost every continent. We may have started in Europe, but for a long time, our #1 community hub was in Brazil. If you have a dream and the drive to build something great, you belong here. That’s the only entry requirement we have. This breadth matters because n8n is a product for everyone: solo builders and global enterprises, developers and the people just starting to learn how to code, teams operating across dozens of countries and industries. And this is why that same inclusive spirit must be protected in our [Culture/Code](https://n8n.io/careers/culture-code/builders/): if the people building n8n don’t reflect the extraordinary diversity of our community, then I fear we will end up building something far narrower, and far less impactful, than we’re capable of. Importantly, n8n has always been more than a bunch of people with the same email signature - our community of contributors, users, template-builders, and forum regulars is part of how we actually work, and how we’re going to thrive. And this new [Culture/Code](https://n8n.io/careers/culture-code/builders/) is a promise to them too: how we show up in our forums, how we respond when something breaks, how we credit the people building alongside us. The same values that govern how we treat each other internally have to govern how we treat the people building with us. Anything less than that is just corporate theatre - and that isn’t us. The [Culture/Code](https://n8n.io/careers/culture-code/builders/) is written in two parts, because a company’s culture has two parts: the values you stand for, and the behaviours that demonstrate how you live those values every day. And the roll-out starts now. We’re embedding it everywhere, from how we hire to how we give feedback. We’ll ask whether people are living it. We’ll ask people to challenge us when we’re not. Which brings us back to the kitchen sink. I like the line about the dishes because it’s not about the dishes at all. **It’s about the discipline of noticing. Not just the humility to roll up your sleeves but the naturalness of doing so**. The sense of community that means you apply effort to something that maybe wasn’t your fault, but you still see as your shared responsibility. Not because anyone’s tracking this stuff, but because leaving it for someone else to do isn’t who you are. When I read the n8n [Culture/Code](https://n8n.io/careers/culture-code/builders/), I see a mirror reflecting who we are, but I also see a map - helping us understand where we’re headed, and how we’re going to get there, together. The only thing I don’t want to see… is the dish in the sink. **Want to know what it’s like to work at n8n?** The [Culture/Code](https://n8n.io/careers/culture-code/builders/) is the most honest preview we can give you, and [we're hiring](https://n8n.io/careers/) across the company. Have a look at our open roles, and hear from the people already living it.