1 min lesson
What flat-and-lean asks of you
Answer "Why does Cursor run a 2-day on-site project as the decision round and how should that shape your prep for an infrastructure role?" Use one lesson detail to support it.
Step 1 of 2
What flat-and-lean asks of youthe behaviors it rewards
- Bias to ship: a working, scoped-down system this week beats a perfect design next quarter.
- End-to-end ownership: you take a vague problem, define the boundaries yourself and operate what you build.
- Cost/reliability judgment: you make explicit tradeoffs instead of gold-plating, because there's no one downstream to clean up over-engineering.
- Comfort with pace and ambiguity: you treat missing process as room to move and you bring the structure yourself.
- Spirited, evidence-based debate: you argue hard for a position and change your mind when the data says so.
The on-site project is a culture filter
The 2-day on-site - building real work with the team, sharing meals, presenting at the end - exists to filter people "just viewing it as a job." For infra, it's also a working sample of the flat culture: you'll be expected to scope, build and defend a real decision in two days, the way you would in week one.