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If you're willing to let a value slide, its not a value. Values should be things you're willing to stick to even when it hurts you. I think that misunderstandin

If you're willing to let a value slide, its not a value. Values should be things you're willing to stick to even when it hurts you. I think that misunderstanding/lie is the problem with most "values" list.

deleted 7y ago
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nostrademons 7y ago
But that's the point - where are you willing to be hurt? That's a more interesting question than what you are ostensibly willing to stick to, and much more revealing about the organization's culture. Everybody wants all the nice things, but what really reveals your values is when you want two nice things that are contradictory - which do you choose? That's why Facebook's "Move fast and break things" is so powerful (and so revealing) as a value statement, as it showed that Facebook was willing to break any number of things to move fast. Google's "Don't be evil", as words, is utterly useless, because nobody considers themselves evil. Google shutting down their consumer-facing site so that they could honor the terms of their AOL deal, however, spoke huge volumes, as did them pulling out of China in 2010 regardless of the cost to their market. Similarly, them going back into China regardless of privacy and human rights violations also speaks volumes.
- agnokapathetic 7y ago
  > Google shutting down their consumer-facing site so that they could honor the terms of their AOL deal What was the story here? I'm not familiar with this and I can't seem to find anything on Google about it :)
  - nostrademons 7y ago
    When they were young (2002) Google signed a contract with AOL to become the default search provider there. When they flipped the switch, AOL gave them so much traffic that they lacked server capacity to service all the requests. Rather than renege on the contract, they shut down google.com and redirected all hardware resources toward servicing the AOL traffic until they could build more servers and make any necessary software optimizations. The story was told to me as a Noogler (in 2009) as an example of Googliness, and also as a significant milestone in the company's development. The backdrop of this was the dot-com bust: web companies were failing left and right, and nobody knew who would be left standing. By shutting off their own consumer brand to honor the terms of the contract, Google made a name for themselves as someone who would move hell or high water for their partners, which built critical trust in what was then a promising but unproven startup.
CPLX 7y ago
The word value is literal. It is a means of stating the value you assign to a concept or ideal. The implicit statement of a list of values is that these are things that are valued highly. But of course, some things are valued more highly than others, and other things not on the list are also valued, at different levels. Sometimes positive traits can be assigned a very low value, in a company statement such as this. For example, Netflix famously does not value a highly stable workforce. It's not that they don't want stability, or think it's stupid, it's that they value other things much more highly. Or, in other words, the concept of value is not binary.
- codeulike 7y ago
  Thats exactly what I'm talking about, thanks
bambax 7y ago
But no... When a value is put forward then the inverse value (or competing ones) have to be downplayed or actively discouraged. Inverse values are unnamed; it would be interesting to know what they are and decide if we agree to let them go.
shantly 7y ago
> If you're willing to let a value slide, its not a value. I suspect this is so strict that if we poked at it it wouldn't allow for the existence of values. Simply, it's probably nearly impossible to make a useful list of even two values that can't possibly come into conflict—if you cannot compromise either, period, what then? So now we can only have one value. But I doubt even a list of one would fare much better under scrutiny and a few reasonable thought experiments & socratic questioning.

deleted 7y ago

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nostrademons 7y ago

But that's the point - where are you willing to be hurt? That's a more interesting question than what you are ostensibly willing to stick to, and much more revealing about the organization's culture. Everybody wants all the nice things, but what really reveals your values is when you want two nice things that are contradictory - which do you choose? That's why Facebook's "Move fast and break things" is so powerful (and so revealing) as a value statement, as it showed that Facebook was willing to break any number of things to move fast. Google's "Don't be evil", as words, is utterly useless, because nobody considers themselves evil. Google shutting down their consumer-facing site so that they could honor the terms of their AOL deal, however, spoke huge volumes, as did them pulling out of China in 2010 regardless of the cost to their market. Similarly, them going back into China regardless of privacy and human rights violations also speaks volumes.

agnokapathetic 7y ago
> Google shutting down their consumer-facing site so that they could honor the terms of their AOL deal What was the story here? I'm not familiar with this and I can't seem to find anything on Google about it :)
- nostrademons 7y ago
  When they were young (2002) Google signed a contract with AOL to become the default search provider there. When they flipped the switch, AOL gave them so much traffic that they lacked server capacity to service all the requests. Rather than renege on the contract, they shut down google.com and redirected all hardware resources toward servicing the AOL traffic until they could build more servers and make any necessary software optimizations. The story was told to me as a Noogler (in 2009) as an example of Googliness, and also as a significant milestone in the company's development. The backdrop of this was the dot-com bust: web companies were failing left and right, and nobody knew who would be left standing. By shutting off their own consumer brand to honor the terms of the contract, Google made a name for themselves as someone who would move hell or high water for their partners, which built critical trust in what was then a promising but unproven startup.

CPLX 7y ago

The word value is literal. It is a means of stating the value you assign to a concept or ideal. The implicit statement of a list of values is that these are things that are valued highly. But of course, some things are valued more highly than others, and other things not on the list are also valued, at different levels. Sometimes positive traits can be assigned a very low value, in a company statement such as this. For example, Netflix famously does not value a highly stable workforce. It's not that they don't want stability, or think it's stupid, it's that they value other things much more highly. Or, in other words, the concept of value is not binary.

codeulike 7y ago
Thats exactly what I'm talking about, thanks

bambax 7y ago

But no... When a value is put forward then the inverse value (or competing ones) have to be downplayed or actively discouraged. Inverse values are unnamed; it would be interesting to know what they are and decide if we agree to let them go.

shantly 7y ago

> If you're willing to let a value slide, its not a value. I suspect this is so strict that if we poked at it it wouldn't allow for the existence of values. Simply, it's probably nearly impossible to make a useful list of even two values that can't possibly come into conflict—if you cannot compromise either, period, what then? So now we can only have one value. But I doubt even a list of one would fare much better under scrutiny and a few reasonable thought experiments & socratic questioning.