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I've been so fortunate to work at two companies in a row where this "psychological safety" is ingrained deeply in the culture. It's something I care so deeply a

I've been so fortunate to work at two companies in a row where this "psychological safety" is ingrained deeply in the culture. It's something I care so deeply about as a person who saw themselves learning and growing less directly as a result of not having this "safety" inherent to the organization. I think it's useful in all areas of a company but especially important for engineers. I would much rather have a junior engineer hit a roadblock and throw up the white flag asking for help than for them to sit there for a full day stuck, banging their head, and feeling dumb. It's so easy to course-correct when you explain the culture up front: "We're all wrong all the time, if you get stuck or have a question, or someone says something that doesn't make sense, ask them. No one here is smarter or better than you just because they have the answers to questions you haven't even had a chance to ask before." I would bail so quickly it would make my head spin if I had to work at a place where people are ever shot down for not knowing things and asking questions. The punchline is a lot of those people would tell you they're working on "the most interesting thing" and yet if you're working in a space where everyone is supposed to know all the answers... then there's nothing to learn. That doesn't sound very interesting to me.

brann0 9y ago
I never worked at a place like that, but now I want to... After over 15 years and a handful of jobs, from POS enterprise software to game porting, I started to think of psychological safety as a SciFi term :) I'll keep looking for my holy grail.
- khalilravanna 9y ago
  Keep at it. They're out there. Rev (rev.com) was fantastic for this in engineering. I'm currently at the Predictive Index and we effectively have a "no dbags" rule in the culture. If you're not nice or you're not helpful, you're not going to last. It's something we're really focused on keeping as keep growing. It's a hard problem, maintaining culture as a company scales but I'm really hopeful at least that one facet stays around. I wonder if it's something you can weed out companies for during interviews. I imagine you could iterate on some questions for the interviewer that, assuming they didn't lie, would give you a pretty good indication of this "safety" factor. Something like: "Can I go up and ask anyone a question about what they're doing?" It might rely on you speaking to real employees. I imagine if you're speaking to some very HR-y types, they might just be focused on saying "yes" to whatever question you have.

brann0 9y ago

I never worked at a place like that, but now I want to... After over 15 years and a handful of jobs, from POS enterprise software to game porting, I started to think of psychological safety as a SciFi term :) I'll keep looking for my holy grail.

khalilravanna 9y ago
Keep at it. They're out there. Rev (rev.com) was fantastic for this in engineering. I'm currently at the Predictive Index and we effectively have a "no dbags" rule in the culture. If you're not nice or you're not helpful, you're not going to last. It's something we're really focused on keeping as keep growing. It's a hard problem, maintaining culture as a company scales but I'm really hopeful at least that one facet stays around. I wonder if it's something you can weed out companies for during interviews. I imagine you could iterate on some questions for the interviewer that, assuming they didn't lie, would give you a pretty good indication of this "safety" factor. Something like: "Can I go up and ask anyone a question about what they're doing?" It might rely on you speaking to real employees. I imagine if you're speaking to some very HR-y types, they might just be focused on saying "yes" to whatever question you have.