Craft — it defines locally brewed beer, hand-carved wooden figurines at town art festivals and the remote worker seated in front of their laptop at the coffee shop.
It also imbues Notion’s culture. When Software Engineer Anny Yang chose this word to describe her company’s workplace, it seemed fitting, given that Notion’s platform is designed to help teams organize everyday work tools so they can pursue their craft more effectively.
Yang believes that this dedication to craft is what truly sets the organization apart from others in its industry. While it shows in the work she does to enhance the company’s desktop app, it also shapes other opportunities; recently, she had the chance to discover her peers’ passions through employee-led workshops, where she learned about flower arrangement, video editing and more.
“It was incredible to see Notion make space for this,” Yang said. “It perfectly illustrates how craft is at the heart of Notion’s culture.”
Craft makes the company’s workplace more inspiring, engaging — and empowering. As Yang shared, it has enabled her to pursue her work with vigor, giving her space to perfect the organization’s product and relish in the gratifying feeling that comes with delivering an impactful solution.
In a recent interview, Yang explained more about how craft is engrained in Notion’s culture and shared details about an exciting project she worked on that spurred her own professional growth.
About Notion
Notion enables teams to manage projects, calendars, roadmaps and more in one place. In addition to organizing information, the company’s platform allows teams to collaborate with colleagues, automate tasks and generate content using its AI assistant.
Describe Notion’s culture in one word.
Craft. Something truly special about Notion is how it values craft in both its product and culture. Whether it’s finding ways to make Notion load faster, making features more intuitive or designing the physical space for Notion’s first community conference, everyone here has their own craft and is passionate about it. This passion is inspiring to work alongside and resonates through both the product and the broader community of Notion users.
“This passion is inspiring to work alongside and resonates through both the product and the broader community of Notion users.”
Recently, Notion hosted a professional development week where employees could sign up for different courses based on their interests. Beyond the expected workshops on time management and communication, there were unique sessions run by Notion employees. I had a ton of fun at the flower arrangement course led by our employer brand lead, Morgan, though I missed other fascinating ones, like Vim tricks and video editing. I loved how these workshops felt like passionate craftspeople sharing practical introductions to their interests. It was incredible to see Notion make space for this — it perfectly illustrates how craft is at the heart of Notion’s culture.
What’s the coolest project you’ve worked on recently, and how did it help you grow professionally?
I work on Notion’s desktop app, and a feature I really enjoyed building recently was tab drag and drop. This feature lets users quickly create new Notion windows or reorder tabs between windows by dragging a tab out of the tab bar. While it seems simple at first, it was actually quite challenging to build. The browser enforces many restrictions that make dragging content into different windows difficult. Figuring out these restrictions, choosing the right libraries to simplify development and building a good user experience around these limitations pushed me to grow in new ways. I gained exposure to new challenges like consulting the HTML Standard and handling OS-specific quirks — things I’d never encountered while working on regular web front-end features.
After overcoming these technical challenges, there’s no better feeling than launching a feature and seeing positive feedback from users. As a Notion user myself, this was a product gap that really bothered me, so getting the opportunity to ship it was incredibly gratifying.
