What Leo saw at PostHog, 4. Every flight, handled twice
PostHog offsets the carbon from every team flight. In 2021 each flight reached the same person twice, once to repay it and once to offset it. Leo suggested one record. PostHog moved repayment into its card tool instead.
We gave Leo PostHog's public handbook exactly as it stood on 31 December 2021, and nothing later. This one is small, which is the point: most of the work Leo finds in a growing company is like this.
PostHog had no part in this
We used PostHog's handbook because it is public and openly licensed (MIT, copyright PostHog Inc). PostHog did not take part, and nothing here is PostHog's view of Leo. Every quote below links back to PostHog's own pages and commits.
The claims, and where to check them
| Claim | Where to check it |
|---|---|
| A flight paid on a personal card was reimbursed by hand by the operations lead, and every team flight was also reported to the same person separately for carbon offsetting | PostHog's spending money page, 31 Dec 2021 (the page at that commit) |
| By the start of 2026 reimbursement ran through the company card tool's own request | PostHog's spending money page, 31 Dec 2025 |
| Carbon offsetting for work travel was still in place | PostHog's benefits page, 31 Dec 2025 |
The work as it was
PostHog offsets the carbon from every team flight, which says something good about it. The handbook set out how: "if you book a flight to meet up with someone, then please let [the operations lead] know the departure and destination airports, and he'll log it accordingly."
Separately, a flight paid on a personal card was reimbursed by hand: "please just let [the operations lead] know afterwards to get reimbursed manually."
So the same flight reached the same person twice, for two different jobs.
What Leo saw
Leo joined the card rules, the reimbursement step and the offsetting log, and saw one flight recorded twice.
The way forward
- Redesign: record each flight once. One shared record, with the airports, feeds both the reimbursement and the offsetting log.
What happened next
- 2023. Both steps were still by hand.
- 2024. Flights could be booked through the company card's travel tool for a while, with receipts attached automatically.
- By 2026. Reimbursement ran through the card tool's own request function. Offsetting for work travel was still promised.
PostHog took a different path from Leo's: rather than one shared record, it moved one of the two jobs into a tool it already had. Leo's card records it as a path it did not offer. The record does not show how flights reach the offsetting log now.
What this does not show
How many flights, how many hours, or whether the offsetting log is still fed by hand. A small example, told plainly.
Leo learns how a business really runs by reading what its people write and talking with them, lays out the ways the work could go, side by side, and keeps the choice with the people who make it. When they take a path, its card records it, including one Leo did not offer.