4 ms·

Am I crazy or does the slide deck embedded in the article look totally normal? I would applaud if my senior management presented this.

• purple-again 9y ago
  It seemed completely fine to me. I went to business school and have sat through my share.
• ealexhudson 9y ago
  I wouldn't say it's abnormal, but I also wouldn't say it's positive. It's clearly a move to less autonomy and more decisions-from-above. Stuff like "constantly push ourselves out of our comfort zone" literally means "we want to make this an uncomfortable place to work". This type of culture is fine, there's nothing wrong with it, but we need to acknowledge that for people who joined in the previous setup, this is simply a management bait-and-switch.
  • jdowner 9y ago
    I wouldn't say this is a bait and switch, but it is a betrayal. It sounds like a lot of people joined the company because of the work environment. An environment that placed importance of the people in it, and making it somewhere that they wanted to be and where they felt comfortable being who they were. To now turn around and imply that those same values are bad is a betrayal. The slide deck is not surprising or positive to me either. For me, it is an example of the corporate neofeudalism that currently dominates the US workplace. Not only are you are cog in the machine, but you have to be passionate and optimistic cog too! It is not ok to simply do your job, you have to be outside your comfort zone! From my perspective, it is dehumanizing. People have value beyond their economic potential.
• gaius 9y ago
  It is much harder to take something away, than to have never granted it in the first place. Also if an employee chose to take a lower salary to work at a company with a relaxed culture, and that culture becomes just like any company, why wouldn't that employee expect their salary to be upped accordingly?
  • tanilama 9y ago
    This article itself never mentions complaints about money. It reads to me that some employees don't want to accept the revised growth focused values, thus getting let go and still felt salty/betrayed about this. If the culture will be gone no matter what because of the company's own reality, and they refuse to accept such changes, isn't departure an inevitable outcome?
    • gaius 9y ago
      This article itself never mentions complaints about money. Sure, but the point I am making is that it is a material change to established terms and conditions. Interestingly, one of the standard lies told during acquisitions is that "nothing will change", it's quite unusual for an acquisition target to do something like this. Usually its managers and even its previous owners if they become employees of the acquirer are taken by surprise when head office stamps on them.
• pjc50 9y ago
  It's not so much the text as the subtext. Putting "empathy" on the "bad things" list is the dead giveaway. Top-down mandated culture changes are never going to be popular, but this looks like a particularly big one.
  • ghaff 9y ago
    The deck as a whole seemed pretty reasonable but that bullet in particular would give me some pause. A culture can be results-oriented without being managed as if people are automatons.
    • lugg 9y ago
      I found it to be an odd mix, some was just simply them finally getting around to fixing problems employees have been complaining about. But then other times it was blatantly aimed at pushing people out of the company. Management now aims to: - Push teams further than they think they can - Give employees clear goals to meet, by definition unrealistic ones - Drive everyone harder to meet those goals. "No matter what / do anything." - Fire them if they don't perform.
• tanilama 9y ago
  Me too, and I don't think I am crazy. Seems like Meetup was a pretty ineffective company from the slides.
• odiroot 9y ago
  They basically say: be an adult, don't split hairs, do your job and think about the user.