14 ms·

What defines a great company culture?

• reportgunner 6y ago
  Great for whom ?
  • etripe 6y ago
    From an employee perspective, the one fairly definitive upside I can spot is knowing what to expect ahead of time. Are you implying it's mainly/only great for management?
  • mft_ 6y ago
    Great question - it depends what (or who) you’re optimising for. I’m generalising, but as an example: The optimal culture to get very difficult things done far more quickly and efficiently than other companies could (think SpaceX) probably often won’t have the best work-life balance. In contrast, a culture which optimises (at least partly) for employee well-being will very likely lose some edge, efficiency, innovation, drive… along the way. There are of course myriad other variables, but there probably isn’t an ideal answer to the culture question: it all depends on what you want to do, and how you’re willing to act to do it.
• meheleventyone 6y ago
  I find this thread kind of confusing, it basically seems to say the culture itself doesn't matter. What matters is that it is strongly held. Which means top down, ritualized and vigorously defended against any attempts at change.
  • Aeolun 6y ago
    A good company culture is one that the whole company follows. As opposed to a bad company culture, where there is basically no global culture to speak of, and every manager has their own little fiefdoms.
    • meheleventyone 6y ago
      That's such a narrow definition it almost feels circular. If there is no global culture throughout a company can you even describe it as having a company culture?
      • Aeolun 6y ago
        Probably depends on who you ask :)
    • danjac 6y ago
      Fiefdoms are bad, but is a company monoculture necessarily a good thing? Perhaps different teams (especially if geographically dispersed) can adopt a culture that works for them rather than follow some top-down mandate that they'll follow half-heartedly if at all.
      • Aeolun 6y ago
        > that they'll follow half-heartedly if at all At that point it’s bad company culture right?
        • danjac 6y ago
          Arguably beyond a certain size and other than some basic rules around things like good behaviour and ethics, I'm not sure you can have a one-size-fits-all for a company (or any other) culture.
    • Draiken 6y ago
      So if I create a culture of fear and abuse, but everyone on the company follows it, it's suddenly a good culture? That's very reductionist.
  • beforeolives 6y ago
    The message is that consistency matters and that strong leadership can produce good results in the right circumstances. Top-down isn't necessarily a bad thing. And what are the alternatives? No consistency throughout the company would mean that there wouldn't be any company culture to speak of. And if your processes aren't (ultimately) top-down, then what's the company leadership actually for?
    • meheleventyone 6y ago
      I think it's basically the thought that a great culture is one that is strongly held. The wheels are liable to come off quite quickly if that's the only criteria. I'm confused because it's quite simplistic and reductive. The obvious alternative is a bottom up organization of culture although most companies are not setup for that to work well. The actual reality is going to be a combination of both. I'm sure everyone's worked in environments where the corporate values are treated as a joke.
    • watwut 6y ago
      It seems to me that it will prevent adaptation to changes.
    • michaelt 6y ago
      Some values ought to be universal across a company. I'm sure everyone at Volvo could agree that driver safety is a high priority. Other values may well vary between departments - People working on the car's software can do weekly releases at little or no cost with lightweight planning - but the injection-moulded door handle will need a $$$$$ mould and several months for every design change, so they'd certainly better have frozen the design several months before product launch. There might not be much common ground on ideas like starting with an MVP and iterating, moving fast, dealing with changing requirements, two week sprints, and so on.
  • dh2424 6y ago
    Yeah, it certainly doesn't define what great company culture actually is.
    • paulcole 6y ago
      I think it does. Great culture is different for everyone. I like a culture built around fast innovation. My friend likes a culture built around slow and steady progress. Neither culture is right or wrong, they are just different. But a great company culture is one (regardless of its core tenets) that’s followed strongly throughout the organization, top to bottom, starting with the CEO.
  • sokoloff 6y ago
    Though I’m an atheist, I think that many different churches do good things for their participants from a community and social perspective, even though they may differ from each other significantly in their specific religious doctrine.
  • teachingassist 6y ago
    The way I understand this is: consistency is important for managing expectations. Change is not a problem but consistent application of expectations is important (in my opinion, this would include expectations around how you manage change). If you have one set of expectations from one manager, and a different set of expectations from another manager, the complexity of your work just squared.
  • jodoherty 6y ago
    The major takeaway for me is that with a strongly held culture, everyone in the company is playing the game by the same rules, making it clear how to succeed, how to fail, and as such, how to conduct business. It's also clear whether or not you would enjoy working there -- there's no finding the right team or department with its own culture if everyone has the same culture there. Of course, he doesn't explore whether or not the benefits of this are worth the disadvantages, and there's plenty of room for argument either way, especially with large organizations.
    • marcosdumay 6y ago
      Well, of course, the complement is that a diverse culture is one where most people can find some place they can add value and be recognized, and if they get in a team they don't fit well, they can just move into a different one, instead of a completely new job. Both of those versions are gross oversimplifications.
  • watwut 6y ago
    Yeah, it seems to me the same. I dont see that as massive positive.
  • TuringNYC 6y ago
    >> I find this thread kind of confusing, it basically seems to say the culture itself doesn't matter. What matters is that it is strongly held. Which means top down, ritualized and vigorously defended against any attempts at change. Yes, because you're taking a significant risk joining any company (in the sense that you have limited time and want to go where you can have the most impact for the firm and best outcomes for your goals). You often dont know details about projects, people, etc -- but if you vibe with the culture, you can easily find your place there. If the culture is all over the place, it is hard to know from the outside. And if the culture is a mismatch for you, better to neither waste your time nor that of the firm. Without a strongly projected culture, that is hard to do.
  • lostlogin 6y ago
    > I find this thread kind of confusing Having it split into tweets doesn’t help. I struggle to think of a worse format - perhaps a series of short videos would be worse?
• mightyRodri 6y ago
  "helps avoid politics" thats how we got where fb is now
  • happimess 6y ago
    I think the author is talking about office politics, not electoral politics.
• wunderflix 6y ago
  > They key to a strong culture is consistency from the top. The CEO's job is to make sure everyone on the management team is on the same page. If a senior leader wants to create their own unique culture for their part of the org, they can't be allowed to stay. I love this entire thread and it resonates a lot with me. I, too, believe that there is not THE right company culture that will solve everybody’s problems. Many in the agile or “new work” camp seem to believe that their way is the ONLY way, for example. Consistency is much more important than how the culture actually is.
  • throwaway823882 6y ago
    > Many in the agile or “new work” camp seem to believe that their way is the ONLY way, for example. I think many in the Agile camp are fed up with being held back by people who are unwilling to change, and are willing to break the mold (and some eggs) in order to find a new, better way to work. > Consistency is much more important than how the culture actually is. This just leads to a consistently toxic culture that nobody wants to work for. I have worked for plenty of places where nobody gives a shit and nobody tries to change anything, and it was terrible. Our working life should mean more than a stock ticker.
    • BlargMcLarg 6y ago
      The "Agile" problem is more like a bunch of consultants and managers polarizing the population while the middle waves their hands and goes "uh, guys, you know 'agile' isn't the same as Scrum, and many more implementations exist beyond it, right?". As the consultants and managers keep insisting that if you don't want to participate in "Agile Scrum" (how in the world did we get this abomination of a word anyway?), you "don't understand the values of Scrum and/or Agile". In turn, monopolizing the ideology of iterative, short cycle development. The last being absolutely insane, since both the values in Scrum and the values in the Agile Manifesto are extremely broad and abstract. Even the guide itself clearly states Scrum only being an implementation for those values, not the definition of those values.
      • yaml-ops-guy 6y ago
• TheOtherHobbes 6y ago
  Bad cultures ignore values, or have toxic values and toxic social outcomes. Good cultures incorporate values, live them consistently rather than just talking about them, and have good values and outcomes. This isn't just a moral position. Your culture is like code. Ethics define your edge cases. You do not want code - or a culture - that works of the time, but collapses when it has to deal with an input that is difficult or unexpected.
  • nabla9 6y ago
    That's not my experience. In fact it's the opposite. I suspect that incorporating values can work, but it's not universal. Best company cultures usually concentrate on good work, not values. Results to the society don't matter when people get things done. I think most companies should try to be as amoral as possible outside the purpose of the company. People choose to work in different companies based on their values or other needs.
    • watwut 6y ago
      > Results to the society don't matter when people get things done If the results to the society are negative, I prefer if you dont get things done. Because it would negatively harm me too.
      • nabla9 6y ago
        That's different discussion. Acknowledging that people can have high morale, and deep sense of purpose and fun when doing stuff that is net negative for the society is important if you want to improve society. When people associate causing harm with low morale, it distorts what people think is acceptable. "But my work is meaningful to me and we have a greatest team in the world".
    • Loughla 6y ago
      It's not that simple. I have never been convinced that there is actually such a thing as 'amoral' decision making. Making the sole decision to focus on good work and results (presumably making money for the company) is a moral choice. You have said to your employees and society at large that what is important is money. Make money. Ethical considerations are second. That is a moral stance. Let's say your company makes widget A. You can source part B for the widget from a company that is suspected of using child or slave labor overseas. They are half the price of part B's competitor. Your 'amoral' decision to focus on the purpose of the company (which, again, is presumably making money) would have you make a very, very bad decision, ethically. Ignoring your place in society and an organizations obligation to at least speak to the ethics of the people that work there is not really realistic in today's society, I would argue.
• orangepanda 6y ago
  > Zuckerberg's response: "I'm building a company that I would want to work for if I hadn't started FB. And I would want to work at a place that shares openly." Still sharing everything 15 years later
  • oblio 6y ago
    I don't understand this.
    • misterchicken 6y ago
      a joke about Cambridge Analytica scandal / facebook leak which happened few days ago most likely
    • guavaNinja 6y ago
      Maybe the leaks of facebook phone numbers?
  • twobitshifter 6y ago
    We know Zuckerburg is a secret privacy fanatic. The signal app on his phone, buying up all property that can see into his enclave, the tape over his webcam. When he launched he thought people who shared everything with him were “dumbfucks.” In other words, he wouldn’t have shared the type of information that others were giving away for free - as a college student.
    • fletchowns 6y ago
      I think it's important to separate a desire for privacy outside of work with the transparency/openness in running Facebook, I don't see these things as being closely related to one another. As for the "dumbfucks" thing - somebody young said something stupid, news at 11. Any time somebody brings this up like some big gotcha I just sort of roll my eyes.
• dmje 6y ago
  The thing I've seen, read and heard for years is "agency". Buzzword, but "having some ability to affect outcomes", so whether "I've moved the photocopier because people couldn't get to it where it was" or "I've moved the marketing team because they needed X" - as long as people feel they can make a difference, are listened to and their skills are used - they're more likely to be happy. And this, presumably mean "great company culture" too.
  • bluGill 6y ago
    But what you are allowed to do needs to be limited. That photocopier might be in a bad spot, but that is the only place where we have have enough power to run it. Marketing needs X, but they are by Y instead because I want them to be forced to interact with Y (at least when getting coffee), a team they would otherwise ignore to our eventual failure. Or worse the person I caught trying to use GPL-3 code in our proprietary code base. Agency is good, but only if people understand where they have agency and make changes in those areas and leave the others to someone else.
• mlthoughts2018 6y ago
  I do agree with the consistency thing. One bad culture failure mode is a case where one or two senior executives run amok enforcing their view of culture, while the CEO fails to enforce consistency and a bunch of other executives, directors, etc., just try to “stay out of it” and remain culturally neutral (which isn’t really possible). I saw this in one company where it was the CTO running amok with an aggressive culture of yelling in meetings, slamming doors, and emphasizing arbitrary deadlines. I saw it in another org where it was the CPO instead, trying to install Dilberty consultant snake oil with constant reorgs and zero accountability for product managers.
• edejong 6y ago
  In short: shared values.
• papito 6y ago
  You hire the right people and they make the culture. Culture is NOT enforced. It is simply the reflection of you as a good or bad hire-er.
  • yitchelle 6y ago
    Its a bit of a chicken/egg situation. The right people to hire are the people that meets your requirements. Some of the requirements would be what their cultural beliefs and behaviours. So the cultured is enforced by enforcing the right type of people you hire. It is a vicious circle.
  • bluGill 6y ago
    Sort of. However you need to be careful about unexpected consequences. The vast majority of programmers are male, so if you only hire the best you might go a long time without hiring any females, thus developing a male-only culture. I've been told the worst case of this is one female the rest males, as the one female encourages that bad parts of male only culture to ensure that she is always the most powerful female in the room (because she is the only one). None of this needs to be true, but when you only have 3 males total you need to ensure that you are not developing female hostile culture by accident. Once you have a few females around they can moderate the male only culture, but going from 1 to a few is hard because the great females you want to hire will check your culture and not even apply thus locking you out of that market. I used females, but there are plenty of other minorities. If the subject was nurses you would reverse the minorities, some of their cultures are male hostile.
  • ebiester 6y ago
    I once worked at a place with a strong, great culture. They acquired another place with a strong, great culture. The cultures were diametrically opposed. It turned into an awful culture for both. People find like-cultured people. Don't hire someone who is a mob programming advocate into a culture that thrives on individual work, or vice versa. Don't hire someone who wants a completely transparent culture into Amazon.
• ysavir 6y ago
  This thread isn't really clarifying or defining what a "great" culture constitutes, and it strongly suffers from survivorship bias. The author is pointing out that a necessary ingredient (among others omitted) is strong culture--which is something of a tautology. Of course a company with great culture has a strong culture; if it were a weak culture, it wouldn't be pervasive or definitive of the company. A company with weakly held cultures wouldn't be described as a "company with great culture". At best it would be described as a "company with great team cultures", at worst a "company without culture". But none of these three statements hold any inherent truth about how productive the company might be, how happy people might be working at said companies, the values of the people working for these companies, or how the collective values of the employees impact the company. The author is also looking at two companies that have been around for 15+ years. Where is the evaluation of all the companies with similar leadership values to Amazon and Facebook that didn't survive? Was their strong culture an aid or a hindrance? Did they fail despite their strong culture or because of it? Where is the evaluation of companies with similar success and longevity that don't have top-down cultural values? Can we say definitively that they don't have great culture? I appreciate that the author has a lot of respect for and values the culture of previous employers, but when asking the question "What defines a great company culture?", I would hope for a more substantive answer. Reinforcing that "whatever the cultural values might be they have to be strongly endorsed by the leadership" can be part of that, but that's describing something other than the "great culture" itself.
  • EGreg 6y ago
    This kind of comment is underrated. A lot of advice is really survivorship bias descriptions! Relatively useful: “All you need is access to capital, or a lot of stuff that can only be done with capital, and that’s what you’re missing, girl.” Not useful at all: “What you really need is this cargo-cult aspect that the successful companies have years after their success, but also tons of failed companies have that we never consider, and it isn’t the main reason for the company’s success”
    • riffraff 6y ago
      "Built to Last: Successful Habits of Visionary Companies" is a very good book on what makes companies great, and a lot of the points echo this twitter thread, especially "cult-like culture". It's also very interesting because quite a few of the "visionary companies" have failed in the 30 years since it was written.
• maverickJ 6y ago
  Great thread. It reminds me of reading Bezos annual shareholders letters. The culture of the place could be seen from reading those letters. A couple of those values since day one are: 1.We will continue to focus relentlessly on our customers. 2.We will continue to make investment decisions in light of long-term market leadership considerations rather than short-term profitability considerations or short-term Wall Street reactions. 3.We will continue to measure our programs and the effectiveness of our investments analytically, to jettison those that do not provide acceptable returns, and to step up our investment in those that work best. This blog https://leveragethoughts.substack.com/p/jeff-bezos-amazon-and-thinking-as https://leveragethoughts.substack.com/p/jeff-bezos-amazon-an... breaks it down further.
• throwaway823882 6y ago
  > Amazon's most memorable value was "ruthlessly escalate." This removed any question about how decisions would be made. It encouraged a culture where people would debate strongly held ideas, knowing the solution to disagreements was to bump it up to the next level of management. "Ruthless" anywhere in your value system is terrible, unless you are the military, or your mission statement is to "fight" something like cancer or child hunger. Second, management never knows how to solve a problem better, they just pick one and go with it. Third, a culture where everyone is always asking their boss to solve their problems? Yikes.
  • deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
  • carmen_sandiego 6y ago
    > Second, management never knows how to solve a problem better, they just pick one and go with it But if your (presumably intelligent, qualified) engineers are at a stalemate between two things, what's to say both options aren't fine and they need just exactly that: someone more senior to pick one, given the pros and cons of each.
• shoulderfake 6y ago
  lol culture at a big co...dont bs me plz.I've worked at big co's, and theres no culture there. Only places with any sort of character are small - mid sized startups.
  • oblio 6y ago
    That would assume that all big companies are the same. Which is provably false.
  • beckingz 6y ago
    Chaos is a culture, right?
  • bluGill 6y ago
    You don't seem to know the difference between character and culture.
• kache_ 6y ago
  The amount of money that gets direct deposited into my bank account, biweekly
  • m463 6y ago
    You should try to get past that to post-scarcity thinking, possibly interstellar.
    • bluGill 6y ago
      There doesn't seem to be any hope of me living that long. Interesting to think about in a science fiction world, but for now there are a lot of toys that I can't afford. I don't think we will ever get there. The energy required for interstellar is too high, and global warming is a concern with anyone using too much energy. (Dyson spheres sound good, but mathematically they are tricky because they imply some form of global warming that you need to work around)
      • m463 6y ago
        too late to explore the world, to early to explore the universe. btw I was alluding to this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Culture https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Culture
  • paxys 6y ago
    The thing with salaries is, there is a certain number (different for everyone obviously) at which you are happy and comfortable, and each incremental dollar from there on matters less and less. That is the point where you can afford to care about things like social impact, company culture, fulfillment and more.
• strathmeyer 6y ago
  As an advanced programmer it always seemed I was getting rejected for jobs because of 'culture' because I wouldn't put up with their abusive environments.
  • mrits 6y ago
    Maybe it's because you refer to yourself as an advanced programmer?
    • slumdev 6y ago
      The GP might be a prima donna, or he might just be stating the facts. We have to be able to distinguish apprentices from people who have all of the breadth, depth, and color that comes with experience. In sane professions, they don't call someone "senior" after 3-5 years.
  • bluefirebrand 6y ago
    Right. Say anything in an interview to suggest you won't work 60 hour weeks every week and you're suddenly not a good culture fit. Workaholism is a real problem in North America I guess
    • bluGill 6y ago
      Find a different industry. There are plenty of companies doing boring everyday things and going home at 5 scattered around that would love to hire you. Sometimes you take a pay cut to work there - your willingness to do this reflects on you.
      • carmen_sandiego 6y ago
        There are plenty of well-paying tech jobs that don't require you to work nights and weekends. No need to 'find a different industry'. You kinda sound like you buy in to the overwork and are trying to convince others of your own decision. I would say: the company never really appreciates or rewards it, and becoming a kool-aid salesman is often a path to ruin.
• numair 6y ago
  Before you listen to any one connected to early Facebook discussing their “company culture,” I suggest you read the link below and understand what I am saying. There are deep, dark reasons why the word “consent” has never been part of Facebook’s culture. There are a lot of lottery winners in Silicon Valley who leave out the “turned a blind eye to the sexual predator” part of their success stories, whether it involves founders or investors. You couldn’t be part of “the mafia” if you didn’t think that sort of stuff was okay. The day of reckoning is coming. https://numair.medium.com/15-years-is-enough-time-silicon-valleys-rape-problem-ee1a022a079f https://numair.medium.com/15-years-is-enough-time-silicon-va...
  • solosoyokaze 6y ago
    Are you planning to name this person? You should, to help protect others. I remember early FB employees talking to me about how they were spying on people's private activity (who was looking at who's page for instance). I have no doubt there were and are many unethical things going on there. It is indeed a joke to suggest they have a "good" culture.
    • isomorph 6y ago
      It’s Sean Parker.
  • carmen_sandiego 6y ago
    I read all of it against my better judgement and I still have no idea what you're really talking about. There was no substance, just vague allusions. But anyone can make those. I could tell you Zuck is a lizard person and make odd hand gestures as I whisper about dark secrets. So what? It comes off as being written by a crank.
    • isomorph 6y ago
      See full discussion here https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26724522 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26724522
  • 6y ago
• cosmodisk 6y ago
  There are lots of variations but my list is this: No hypocrisy ( you all need to work hard while I'm only working 2h/day) No superstars (high performers are fine but no high performing jerks) No gossip Fair and easy to understand reward structure Things aren't made difficult deliberately ( 6 layers approval process) Laziness and poor attitudes aren't tolerated.
  • bluefirebrand 6y ago
    A big one for me these days is "No pressure to attend non-mandatory outside-of-work-hours outings like after work happy hours". I don't really drink, I don't like bars, I often like to spend my evenings with my SO or my friends, not my coworkers. I don't like being made to feel like I am "not a team player" for not wanting to participate in "team building" outside of work hours.
    • Cyph0n 6y ago
      You took the words right of my mouth... I also don't drink, but my main gripe is that I'm joining a team, not a family. I have other obligations and relationships that need to fit into my already limited non-work time.
    • cosmodisk 6y ago
      I do drink and I'm happy to go to a bar or restaurant or whatever else is there but only when I feel like it. There's no "team building" happening in a bar,unless people think that having a few beers together makes you a stronger team.
  • Uhhrrr 6y ago
    Gossip is useful, though, because social networks around work usually outpace org chart changes by (ballpark guess) 10x.
• sitkack 6y ago
  Autonomy, agency, trust and shared goals. Knowing that everyone is doing their 80% and looks out for the team, not themselves.
• Ozzie_osman 6y ago
  > Strong cultures are well-defined with sharp edges, and well-understood by everyone in the organization top to bottom. Strong founders with unapologetic personalities set the culture early and maintain it. I can think of numerous historical examples of organizations (typically nations or empires) where this was true but the outcome was very bad for everyone involved.
• CountDrewku 6y ago
  How about none at all? I'm not joining a cult. I go to work to get paid and that's it. I don't need some weird culture shoved down my throat and I certainly don't need to be thinking about work 24/7.
  • bluGill 6y ago
    Not having to think about work 24/7 is culture. You need to look for a job where that is part of the culture.
  • challengly 6y ago
    Take a typical 9-5 job. Problem solved.
  • themolecularman 6y ago
    Agreed. I'm not sure what this "culture" talk is. I've been in the bay area for a decade now and have worked at a small YC startup with a modest exit, a big-ish company that got acquired, and a bigger company that's gone public. In all cases each company talks up it's "culture" - to me it's just a phrase that elicits an eye-roll. Another commenter suggested you look for a "typical 9-to-5", but even there I'm sure they'd talk up their amazing culture.
  • tkiolp4 6y ago
    Agree. Professionalism is what I look for in a company, not culture.
  • borvo 6y ago
    You just described a culture.
  • mhh__ 6y ago
    That in itself is a perfectly valid culture - e.g. happy and relaxed employees who actually want to come into work in the morning are probably more useful than even extremely clever people bored out of their minds being berated by egotistical managers.
    • 6y ago
• shadowtree 6y ago
  It's a function of growth and success. If the company is growing, winning deals, all people are busy it feels great. A lot of energy is pointed outwards, competing, hustling, convincing. Literally no time for internal politics. Once a company stalls, the energy, actions, focus, drift inward. "Politics". Shit culture. Now, what is correlation, what is causation? I suspect results drive culture. Culture can't make up for overall failure.
• winrid 6y ago
  I have found that the more a company talks about culture, probably the worse it is... :)
• deeblering4 6y ago
  Agree to disagree. These are two obscenely rich companies. I don't believe that it is possible to dominate market(s) and maintain "great culture". In my view there is an inverse relationship between ethics and profits. I don't see any reason to assume that these companies have "great culture" simply because they are very rich. Quite the contrary.
  • fractionalhare 6y ago
    I don't think the author is drawing any connection between great company culture and great company ethics. The culture refers more to group dynamics, which values are embraced and which are ignored, the kind of leadership, etc. In this context, great has more to do with efficacy and consistency. The author would probably say a company can have a great culture and still be very polarizing or controversial.
• plank_time 6y ago
  A great company culture is one where everyone is aligned to the mission of the company and everyone is aligned, empowered and incentivized in this exact same direction. I’ve worked at a couple of companies that had great culture and the best was Uber. Uber, post-shenanigans and pre-Susan Fowler memo, was hands down the best company I’ve ever been at. Everyone was aligned together which meant that everyone was working together, everyone had the same mission and understood it and we were empowered to do great things. Similar to Facebook, TK had weekly Q&A that was incredibly open and transparent. TK, contrary to the popular narrative, was an extremely progressive person and it showed in the company. Things weren’t perfect, but perfection isn’t the enemy of great and it was great working at Uber between about 2014 and 2017. The Susan Fowler memo was an inflection point that lead to its culture being essentially destroyed. People were no longer aligned or empowered, and the incentive system was changed to basically destroy engineering culture. By 2020, when I left, the engineering culture was a bad joke. The only thing on most people’s minds was “How do I get promoted?” and the incompetency of engineering leadership lead to decisions like “Toil vs Talent” which meant incentivized people to create their own microservices and not work together with others. I don’t discount anything Susan Fowler wrote in her memo, everything she wrote was verified by Thuan Pham himself. I didn’t know her personally but I know people that did, and she was known to be very smart. But her experience was not the majority experience. I think most people and especially most women had very positive things to say about working at Uber. But it was a wake up call that things needed to be changed, but what they ended up changing ruined what made it great. It’s a fascinating topic that I daydream about writing a multi-part Medium post about but never will.
  • challengly 6y ago
    > People were no longer aligned or empowered, and the incentive system was changed to basically destroy engineering culture. Same with Google. The intentional misrepresentation and ousting of Damore was a turning point where engineering culture was run over by activist culture.
    • tolbish 6y ago
      Would you argue that the outsing of Gebru and others is a turning point where engineering culture is running back over activist culture?
• codehawke 6y ago
  A company that does not micro-manage and trusts its employees to do the right thing. Anything else is secondary.
• rchiba 6y ago
  I'm a big fan of this thread because it helps correct the preconceived notion that culture is on a 1 dimensional spectrum between "bad" and "great". At our 30-person company, we did an experiment where we took a culture framework that was evaluated on 2 axes, and took internal surveys between two years to determine where on the spectrum employees felt our culture was currently at, and what their ideal culture would be. For anyone curious, I have a data visualization of it here: https://ryochiba.com/2016/11/22/what-is-a-company-culture.html https://ryochiba.com/2016/11/22/what-is-a-company-culture.ht... For anyone in a position to explore these questions at an organizational level, I would highly recommend doing an exercise like this. It gives more agency to the employee to express what direction they think would be optimal and brings awareness to the fact that totally different cultures can both be considered "great".
  • taxcoder 6y ago
    Interesting, and thanks for the framework. As someone who leans heavily toward the right side of your framework, it's good to have a reminder there are "left-sided" companies that are successful. It seems to me managers may prefer the right side, while many employees see the left as optimal. Did your data shed any light on this?
• ecf 6y ago
  When company culture is created without it becoming the defining factor in performance reviews. Or having your calendar filled with daily culture events that just make entire coworker relationships feel forced.
• spaetzleesser 6y ago
  To me a great company culture is trust and honesty. Being able to speak truth and people trusting each other.
• nitwit005 6y ago
  I find the idea of success through culture hard to believe for companies that are both old and large. Hiring processes are very random, so if you hire vast numbers of people, you're going to end up with typical employees eventually. Setting an example as a CEO might have some effect, but I honestly have no clue what my CEO, or the people immediately below them, are up to. People do seem to realize this, which is why you end up with lists of "company values", but if you look at a few of those lists, you'll notice that every company claims to have fairly similar values. People mostly just ignore it as a result.
• deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
• cwkoss 6y ago
  Is there any reason to think Facebook or Amazon are examples of "great company culture"? From the outside looking in, these companies seem like the two most toxic workplaces in big tech. What makes their culture great?
  • doctor_eval 6y ago
    Came here to say the same thing. Neither company represents cultures or values that enrich the communities they are a part of.
    • gonzo41 6y ago
      I think parasitic capitalism is a feature not a bug. no pun intended. There's not many companies that give back these days. Look at how hard Amazon pushed back against unions.
  • mhh__ 6y ago
    At very least they are large enough to exhibit most scenarios, good and bad. If you take IBM as an example, on the one hand you have the IBM people like to make fun of but then you also have teams inside IBM who are extremely sharp (e.g. the people working on their Silicon). That being said culture isn't technology.
• SkyMarshal 6y ago
  Sometimes I think there's too much obsession over culture, to point its become too naval-gazing and even cargo-culting. Culture is the result of doing other things right, like hiring smart, relentlessly resourceful people who get things done and who are deeply interested in their work. Beyond that, maintain a standard of excellence and integrity throughout the organization, and you're pretty much done. From that point, success is up to hard work and some luck (timing, right place at the right time, etc).
• luigeus 6y ago
  Humans place a high value on fairness. Companies where employees feel like everyone is getting a fair opportunity consistently report more positive employee experiences.
• benlivengood 6y ago
  I tend to agree with the commentors saying that culture is secondary to business reality. Most startups and even a lot of established companies have a nebulous and weak business model; success or growth is not assured. Culture moves the deck chairs into different patterns but the odds are still that the ship goes down. People who want culture to drive growth are misguided.
• closeparen 6y ago
  This really doesn't match my experience about what the interesting parts of "culture" are. How much do we value doing the work vs. talking about it? Are the highest-status people the most skilled practitioners, or something else? Are policies and processes designed with empathy for practitioner workflows, do they make any intuitive sense to practitioners, or are they decrees from clueless faraway box-tickers? Are people on top of their shit and constantly improving it, or do they not even realize what's wrong with it until you tell them? When you file bug reports and feature requests are they responded to promptly and taken seriously? How much do we value consistency, reliability, stability - both in our work product and in our interactions with each other? Are APIs stable? How are migrations handled? Do platform teams provide nice off-ramps? Do they continue providing adequate support for the old thing until you're actually off, or just shrug and say you should have been using the shiny new? When you get a "monthly newsletter" - was there an issue last month? Will there be next month? If you come across a 2-year-old "approved" design doc in unfamiliar territory, what are the chances it was actually executed? I have seen all these things vary quite a bit between teams and over time.
• _carbyau_ 6y ago
  My take is to ask: for who? "Who" is this great company culture for? Is it for the company to be more competitive in the market and make more profits? Well, Amazon seems to be doing not too bad. But as an individual, would I want to work there? Not from all reports...
• k__ 6y ago
  When people talk about company culture, I always have to think about a new CEO that started in a company I worked for. He was there for a few months and always talked about how things we do (and did for years, since the company existed) weren part of the company culture. Like he could simply walk in and say what the culture of the company is. I understand that he wanted to turn the company around, but he talked like some kind of history revisionist. No man, this is the culture here, it grew over decades, try to make new policies and hope it changes. But simply saying it's not like it is won't achieve anything.
  • gonzo41 6y ago
    Well I've seen culture change in a day. If you have enough power and can unilaterally change an incentive structure you can get people to fall in line really quickly. When I worked at a bank we had pretty predatory selling practices and a fitting culture. This was starting to catch the eye of the media and government so the Bank exec stepped in and said the parties over and If anyone doesn't conform to these new rules then they're out on the street. That day, the culture changed, and everyone was happy to changed because they didn't want the existential consequences to happen to them. There's the softly softly approach over years and then there's the speeding u-turn. Both can work. The latter just takes more grit.
  • dan-robertson 6y ago
    It is an important part of the job of the CEO to say what the values of the company should be, and make sure that the company tends towards following those values. The culture then follows by that. It is allowed but insufficient for the ceo to declare that the company is to be more open or collaborative—they must also make sure that management below them are deciding things (eg distribution of work to teams, how performance is assessed) in ways which promote those values. And sometimes values do need to change quickly to change the focus of a business. Maybe VC money runs out and profitability becomes more important than growth. Setting values can distribute the work of changing a business across all its staff.
• girlinIT 6y ago
  A positive company culture has values that every employee knows by heart. These values and this mission are accessible and branded into all of the company’s internal and external communications. Not just colleagues, but friends: A great work environment is a breeding ground for genuine friendships. When coworkers choose to spend time with each other, even outside of the office, you know that the professional dynamic is going to be just as positive.