What we hold ourselves to
We are building a travel model. MarcoPolo plans from places that exist: in our benchmark it invented none of its 115 stops, 114 carry a bookable ID, and it finished a trip in a median 14.7 seconds, up to 4.6 times faster than the general models. It is a big goal for a small team, and these are the commitments we hold ourselves to while we go after it.
Five commitments, in plain words. They follow from how we want to work: good work, respect, fair comments, straight ambition and a life outside the job. Each says what we do and where we stop claiming.
Career growth and learning
We expect people to get better at the job, and we help them. The best teacher here is real work with honest feedback.
- Harder work as you earn it
- You take on more as you show you can, and we tell you when we think you are ready.
- Feedback soon, and specific
- Given soon after the work, by someone who knows the area. Criticism is private and credit is public. Where it matters it is written down, so you can reread it.
- Say what you want next
- Ambition is welcome. Tell us the role you are aiming for and we will tell you honestly how close you are.
- Ask for what helps
- A book, a course or a conference that would make you better at the job. We say yes when it pays back in the work, and we say why when it does not.
Open to everyone who can do the work
We hire on the work. Skill and evidence decide, and anyone who can do the work is welcome, whatever their background. Once you are here, we expect everyone to be treated with respect.
- What counts
- What you have built, sold or written, and how you think about the problems we have.
- What does not
- Your age, gender, race, religion, disability, school or accent. We do not ask about things that have nothing to do with the job.
- How we treat each other
- Be courteous to customers, suppliers and colleagues. We disagree about the work and never about the person.
- How we keep hiring fair
- The same steps for every candidate, and a decision we explain. See how we hire.
- The law
- Explore Beyond AI, Inc. is an equal opportunity employer.
Environmental sustainability
We are a software company, so our footprint is mostly the computers we use. We keep that small, and we say plainly what we have not measured.
- The right size of model
- We use the smallest model that does a job well and keep the large ones for the jobs that need them. MarcoPolo is our own model and does one job, planning trips from places that exist.
- A site that does little
- The pages on this site are static files, so reading them does not run our servers.
- What we do not claim
- We have not measured our emissions and we do not call ourselves carbon neutral. When we have a number we can defend, it goes on this page.
Social impact
We are a small software company and we do not claim to change the world. We build for the businesses that make a destination, and we keep the demand with them.
- The brand keeps the traveller
- Travellers plan inside the brand they will book with, so the traveller, the data and the booking stay with the tour operator, host agency or destination.
- Real places, credited
- MarcoPolo plans from places that exist and can be booked, and in our benchmark 114 of its 115 stops carried a bookable ID. We credit the photographers whose work we show on our terms page.
- Your data
- How we handle personal data is set out in our privacy policy.
Work-life balance
We want people who are motivated and good at the job, and comfortable with a good life outside it. The two go together.
- Results, not hours
- Nobody is measured by when they send a message. A good week of work done in a normal week is what we hope for.
- Heavy weeks are said out loud
- Launches and customer deadlines happen. We say so up front, keep the push short and give the time back afterwards.
- Quiet by default
- Nobody is expected to answer messages at night, unless something customers rely on is down.
- Time off
- Holiday is yours to take, and the work is planned around it.
