21 ms·

What are your company's anti-values?

294 points by willsewell 5y ago

straffs 5y ago
There is a cultural aspect to this. American often try to be pro-stuff. French are always anti-stuff (pro life in the US, anti abortion in France, etc)
- bigDinosaur 5y ago
  Does that actually result in any meaningful differences between these countries in the debate?
  - blitzar 5y ago
    Its not an election issue in one of those countries, and in the other it is ... I doubt you even need to take a public stand on exactly what your position is on the issue to run for office.
    - straffs 5y ago
      It used to be, but the public debate moved away once legislation changed.
  - straffs 5y ago
    Usualy being against something is associate with being aginst change, and the other way around.
  - makapuf 5y ago
    On this specific topic, things are absolutely not similar otherwise, so it's difficult to compare. More generally, French people can tell you immediately that's not possible because... which sounds fatalistic but it s not, we're just saying here are the roadblocks I see, please convince me they can be alleviated and I'm totally in.
  - hackerfromthefu 5y ago
    I've had French people have tell me about this, that French people are whingers and complainers, and it's hard to get anything done because of it.
sfjailbird 5y ago
I like this, and I agree that it is a lot more expressive of company culture than generic positivity (would love to see this applied to politics, too). The only companies I can think of who do this are the Facebook example from OP, and some of the big investment banks, who make it pretty clear that they do not give a shit about anything except how much money they make. Unfortunately it seems only assholes and sociopaths are transparent in this regard :-/
- krageon 5y ago
  > it seems only assholes and sociopaths are transparent in this regard Every C-level employee is an asshole and probably a sociopath, if this was true every company would be transparent. As that isn't the case, we know that it does not necessarily have anything to do with being an asshole or a sociopath.
  - vimacs2 5y ago
    This. It has less to do with personal character and more to do with the incentives baked into the company.
  - sakarisson 5y ago
    > Every C-level employee is an asshole and probably a sociopath That's a big generalization without any argument to back it up.
    - krageon 5y ago
      What is there to give arguments for? Either you've worked in a few companies and you have friends that have also done so (in which case it'd seem obvious), or you're part of a class that doesn't work (or you are a C-level employee yourself). In the latter cases, nothing I say will convince you. In the former case, we have enough shared environmental background that you understand what I'm saying already. Given those facts, I didn't see why a further paragraph of background would be valuable: My point would not land with more people regardless of whether or not I wrote that paragraph.
lbriner 5y ago
The trade-off question is interesting. I think for us, an implied anti-value would be "Focus on the core product and say no to some customers" As OP said, no-one would deny that focusing on the core product is bad but at what cost? We have failed in the past by taking on custom work for the cash, and it helped us bootstrap. But to scale, the custom work needs to go away and we need to give the maximum value to the broadest number of customers through the core offering.
- deleted 5y ago
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- austincheney 5y ago
  I haven't seen that anywhere I have worked. Normally this is a form of double speak. Developers claim to "focus on the product" but typically the only focus is upon the developers' core strengths first and only then fit the product into the pieces left over. You can tell difference between focus on the product and focus on yourself with metrics and how readily people are eager to ignore numbers using excuses from poorly formed reasoning reflective of a more honest intent.
thenoblesunfish 5y ago
This is a very good test to determine priorities. If you simply ask "what should be done?", there are too many answers. A better question is "what needs to be done so badly that you would sacrifice other worthwhile things to do it?".
david_allison 5y ago
This mirrors Netflix's old culture slide deck[0] > adequate performance gets a generous severance package > We’re a team, not a family; We’re like a pro sports team, not a kid’s recreational team [0] https://www.slideshare.net/reed2001/culture-1798664/ https://www.slideshare.net/reed2001/culture-1798664/
- dusted 5y ago
  I'm finding that Netflix slide incredibly toxic, I'd never want to work for Netflix after reading that, no matter how skilled I was (they wouldn't want me anyway so nobody lost anything).
  - adflux 5y ago
    And that is totally fine and 100% the intent of that slide. You and Netflix don't match in terms of expectations. Id give kudos to netflix for being up front about it.
    - ignoramous 5y ago
      I fear "We're not a family" at this point is an oft copied mantra (I recall seeing this in GitLab's S1), same as Amazon's "missionaries over mercenaries" that's now prevalent (Coinbase, the most recent example), as well.
      - blitzar 5y ago
        I fear "We're a family" at this point is an oft copied mantra Of course I am assuming those that use said mantra are refering to the touchy feely version of family and we are not going down the 'what does family mean anyway' rabbit hole, where rivalry even Fratricide and Parricide, they even have a word for killing a family member.
      - ravenstine 5y ago
        Ironically, "we're not a family" may end up being nearly identical to "we're a family". People distrust "we're a family" because it's an illusion, not because of the potential for an actual sort of "family" or friendship. But they may also come to distrust "we're not a family" once it becomes as cliche and they realize that every company they work for that makes such a claim will inevitably devolve into making the employee-employer relationship out to be more than it actually is or should be. I disbelieve most corporate values because companies are run by humans, and humans are pretty bad at self evaluation. Well, that and I've had enough experience to tell me that explicitly stated corporate values usually mean very little in practice. Only you can unveil a company's values, though that's no easy task beyond some basic red/green flags.
nonrandomstring 5y ago
The most famous anti-value was "Don't be evil" and look where that ended up. "Don't be a dick" has good practical mileage. The Kantian ideal of the Kingdom of Ends is pretty good one if you formulate it as "Don't use people", but that's too high a standard for almost any business today (especially the ones whose entire model is "using people"). One of my personal maxims is "Lead people not into temptation". In other words, no addictive (engagement) features, no lock-in, don't create dependency, make sure the code you write enables people and gives then freedom and choice (migration/federation etc). Again, those values are almost impossible to maintain in todays climate of hyper-exploitation.
- d--b 5y ago
  Don't be evil, is not an anti-value. It's negatively-stated-yet-positive value. The article says people should state values as a tradeoff. So for google it should have been something like: Favor not being evil over making more money.
  - hammock 5y ago
    "Don't be evil [at all costs]" A truly uncompromising value, if that was the intent of Google's motto, sits at the pinnacle of the hierarchy and the tradeoff is literally everything else.
    - drewcoo 5y ago
      You could add "at all costs" to any value. That would likely make it less true instead of more bold.
      - hammock 5y ago
        You could only add it to values that are truly uncompromising, as I mentioned. Any value not at the tippy top of the hierarchy would bend to some other cost in some scenario.
  - xiaq 5y ago
ColinHayhurst 5y ago
Search without Surveillance
Aeolun 5y ago
Hmm, for my company it would be something like: Don’t upset the customer, so move slow and be careful. But that’s only what is desired by the company. Individuals inside the company still push people to do things quickly at the expense of quality. We also have leadership principles: ‘Play a team sport: so keep discussing everything with everyone until nobody disagrees (either through actual agreement or exhaustion)’.
- dustymcp 5y ago
  That sounds exhausting sometimes someone will need to take charge..
yathaid 5y ago
Disclaimer: I work for a small e-commerce firm named after a large river, opinions are my own. Writing in response since the company I work at is one whose values is quoted in the article. My initial approach to the values was a similar "Who cares, these are bland corporatese" one. It wasn't until a 10+ year senior engineer on my team discussed the trade-offs between the values in an architecture meeting that I really understood the purpose. Take two of the values[1]: "Dive deep" vs "Bias for action" - these have an inherent tension between the two. You can justify any action with either one, but it is about knowing when to apply what. You do not want to be Diving Deep as your first action when you are oncall and your alarms are going off in every direction, but it may need to be your third. "Have Backbone; Disagree and Commit" has opposite ideas written into it! Having backbone is about being able to back up your position with as much data and research as you can. Disagree and Commit is about not being emotionally invested in your position and not taking things personally when the team chooses to go another way. It is recognizing the fact that you may be working in an area of ambiguity where no one side can be proven right before the fact. Like most worthy things in life, there is a lot of nuance to these that cannot be expressed in a pithy 140 (or 280) character limit. But the idea that you should have "anti-values" is a very, very useful one. It allows you to think through different scenarios and explain what your team/organization/company would prioritize when there are competing priorities. [1] - https://www.amazon.jobs/en-gb/principles https://www.amazon.jobs/en-gb/principles
- willsewell 5y ago
  Thank you for raising the point about contradictions in values. I tried to work it into the original blog post, but I felt like it detracted from my main point. I previously felt these contradictions are problematic because they make it harder to use values for prioritisation. It's a good point you make about different values being applicable in different contexts. I wonder whether the context can be incorporated into the value? For example "Bias for action when the cost of failure is low". In an oncall incident, restarting a stateless service is worth trying even before the problem is understood in depth, because risk of failure is low. There are potential actions in an oncall incident that could quite easily make things much worse - then it's probably worth diving deeper before taking action. It might not be pithy enough for the value itself, but I think it's at least adding this kind of context to the subtext like Amazon have done in the page you linked to.
qwerty456127 5y ago
Punctuality-maniac policy. Take your seat at 09:01 (or 08:59!) rather than at 09:00 precisely and you're fucked. A delegate from a partner company or an employment candidate who would arrive to an appointed meeting 10 minutes later or earlier is considered a dick and treated with lowest priority.
- cube00 5y ago
  Our old project manager mandated we must have daily stand-ups. They were always at least five minutes late for what should have been a five minute stand up because they knew we'd have to wait for them. I managed to get team agreement we start no later then 2 minutes past, no matter who isn't there, management included, no judgement for late comers but the meeting is starting as we have work to get on with. Suddenly said project manager started showing up on time. Who knew?
  - mepiethree 5y ago
    I really like the “no guilt, but start on time” model, especially now that we don’t have the disruption of someone entering the room. I am often late because I am in meetings 6 hours a day which can lead to a “doctor effect” of cascading lateness. But for things like standup, just GO!
  - SubuSS 5y ago
    What do you do when the management comes in late but demands a recap lol. Fwiw I have seen folks who say they don’t but rekindle a lot of discussions directly / indirectly and do it anyway. Obviously none at our current company - my team does slack daily updates. IOW - I see a lot of efforts at ‘curtailing’ mgmt powers. In my experience- Bottom up management or manipulation only goes so far - that’s not far. Pick your managers people. You want nice ones who also know how to hire well.
- mepiethree 5y ago
  Why is it considered a dick move to be early as an employment candidate? As long as the candidate is unobtrusive and keeps themselves busy, all it shows me is that they value the opportunity enough to budget extra time for things like traffic, etc. (Of course, now we do everything remote, so I wouldn’t even know if they are early)
ho_schi 5y ago
"Human Resources" Department I think that says enough about how company and it bosses think.
- sokoloff 5y ago
  Never forget: Human is an adjective in that phrase.
  - sharken 5y ago
    Still, it's better to be a resource than the next level, which is a cost. I actively try to use people instead of resources in a conversation, have never understood the need to use resources as a word. Could be it's just a relic from the HR department.
    - sokoloff 5y ago
      I fight that same linguistic fight. People seem to pretty quickly get it and usually appreciate hearing the tone aet that “our company uses this other perspective; please use people words when talking about people.” I’ve noticed a pattern that this usage seems to be somewhat more prevalent in south Asians. (I mean this only as an observation on word choice patterns, with zero conclusion or implication on underlying thought patterns. I haven’t had enough British colleagues to notice if it came from British other-colonies roots or not.)
      - marcosdumay 5y ago
        > I fight that same linguistic fight. I don't even think it's a fight. I say "computer" when I mean computer, why wouldn't I say "people" when I mean people?
- Traubenfuchs 5y ago
  "Human Resources" departments are a relict of a dark and long gone past. It's called "people and culture" now.
celnardur 5y ago
One of my favorites is “Tell it like it is” which has the heavily implied second part: even when the customer won’t like it.
andrewingram 5y ago
There's usually some "take initiative" value, which in practice is undermined by how the leaders lead.
GuerrerOscuro 5y ago
The point in the article that values should lead to decision making criteria is crucial, but not actually what they are used for in practice. I think it practice they are meant as a framework for doing performance assessments. At least this was how it was in my previous companies. I always thought that was horribly cultish, because tthe interpretation of such pithy sentences is really subjective. A sentence like "Move fast and break things" could be interpreted as "try a lot and don't worry if things fail once in a while" but it could also mean "keep up and leave anyone who can't lying in the dust". Those interpretations represent two different companies. The former I would be willing to work at, the latter, not so much.
mytailorisrich 5y ago
I don't see any clear meaning to the term "anti-value" in this article. It seems to imply that a "value" means "more". It does not. "Frugality" is a value of that is a behaviour deemed important to follow, it's not an "anti-value" (whatever that might mean). Similarly, "move fast, break things" means you value action and risk-taking. I was expecting "anti-value" to mean a behaviour deemed negative and to be avoided.
- sokoloff 5y ago
  Wasteful/free spending is the negative behavior to be avoided if you value frugality. Overly cautious, ponderous delivery is the negative behavior to be avoided if you value “move fast, break things”.
- rgun 5y ago
  I believe what author means by 'anti-value' is the other side of trade-off, which you are willing to compromise. Like in 'move fast and break things', you are willing to compromise reliability/stability in favour of speed.
- blurker 5y ago
  How is "break things" not a negative? That seems really clear to me and I think is an excellent example!
  - mytailorisrich 5y ago
    If you advise people to "move fast, break things" then obviously you consider that this is a positive. "Break things" is also obviously not to be understood in isolation. Of course breaking things for no reason is not positive. It means that you will break things if you move fast and take risk and that it is unavoidable and worth it.
    - blurker 5y ago
      I see it being like this: Value: move fast (positive) Anti-value: break things (negative) Breaking things is not positive normally, but it's the compromise for moving fast.
karatinversion 5y ago
A company always consists of individuals that have to make trade-offs, so to the extent it has a cohesive culture at all, it will have values that are expressed in those trade-offs. But values (or anti-values) that a company publicly espouses do not need to coincide with its actual values: a value statement of being inclusive does not prevent a culture of bullying, and a value statement of putting the customer first does not prevent the actual value being to screw the customer whenever profitable. "Descriptive" vs "aspirational" values, if you will.
- ivan_gammel 5y ago
  This actual vs described values mismatch is a red flag and it could be an easy way to discover toxic culture. When applying for a job, you usually have multiple interviews - HR, team, direct manager. It makes sense to ask all of them about their values and compare the answers.
  - puszczyk 5y ago
    I’d say the opposite, there needs to be a delta between values and actual behavior. I want to be a good husband, dedicated employee, etc. Am I? I’d like to think more often than not. But we all err, and I value the transparency/courage to ack that we are not perfect on our values and still have a long way to go. For me the a flag would be if a person/company is not willing to acknowledge they are not as good as they public values are. (Because how can they improve if they can’t even ack it).
    - marcosdumay 5y ago
      You mean that you should not hide of the difference between values and behavior? Because there's nothing on that comment that actually supports the difference. And if you are being honest, descriptive values should describe your behavior very closely.
      - ARandomerDude 5y ago
        The thing you're struggling with is the parent's humility. Value: be great at everything all the time Parent: I try very hard but often fail You: then you must be dishonest about your values Humility is a virtue not a vice.
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glenngillen 5y ago
> “Learn and Be Curious” - what might that cost us? Maybe focus (because it’s ok to go down rabbit holes in order to learn something). So how about “Optimise learning over focus”? Maybe, maybe not. A couple of the values pulled out here are from the Amazon Leadership Principles. So there's actually an answer to this question! The opposite of "Learn and Be Curious" is "Bias for Action" and "Deliver Results". The Amazon LPs are designed to have tension with each other. You can't embody all of them at the same moment. Which ones you prioritize are contextually dependent. Which is also helpful for dealing with conflict and disagreement because so many arguments are people talking past each other not realizing that they're actually misaligned on an underlying assumption and wasting energy arguing about how to execute. "I don't think this is a good path forward, we should take our time to 'Dive Deep' and do more research"... "Ah, that's the issue. We've already agreed as a group the prioritize for 'Bias for Action' because of <reasons>"... "Hrm. In that case I can understand why this path makese sense. If you're all confident that's the right priority here then let's go."
- alecbz 5y ago
  Do the LPs themselves make it clear when they're supposed to be applied?
  - mellavora 5y ago
    Don't worry, that is probably another one of the LPs. Maybe "Good leaders are right, alot"? So no True Scottsman^h^h^h^h good leader would ever be confused about which LP applied
  - jerglingu 5y ago
    No, and it's a source of strain for many people at Amazon. There are, however, two LP's that are understood to stand well above the rest of the others: "Deliver Results" and "Customer Obsession."
  - glenngillen 5y ago
    No. So while it (IMO) makes for a more productive debate (you discuss which of the LPs it’s most appropriate to prioritise), it also allows what people refer to as weaponising an LP. I know I’d had such a claim laid on me in that I’d use “Bias for Action” to justify what I wanted. Which there is some truth to. But as another reply mentioned the LPs of “Customer Obsession” and “Deliver Results” overruled all others. My bias delivered on those two so nobody seemed too concerned. As far as I can tell the system was working as designed. Most teams also have a set of tenets they embrace that are more team-local refinements of what you stand for and how you work. The group I was in had “Bias for Action” and “Earn Trust” as the things to prioritise. Make customers happy, increase their trust in you along the way, deliver results, and do it quickly… it made for a simple framework for decisions and left a lot of autonomy for working out your own plans for execution. You don’t need to reach consensus on _how_ you’re going to do it. Just do it.
keithalewis 5y ago
Allowing "Welcome to the insane asylum" to be the standard greeting new hires receive. It is a great way to instantly demoralize people and instill fear on their first day.
- cube00 5y ago
  - Can I get promoted? - You can't even get paroled.
- cto_of_antifa 5y ago
codeptualize 5y ago
The only values that are real are the ones that contribute to making money. Values go out of the window real quick whenever they negatively impact revenue, whatever they are. I like the idea of anti values, certainly much better, but even there you might as well not have them imo.
- hsn915 5y ago
  This is a common sentiment but it is wrong. Making money is just one of the operational constraints that a company has to take into account. Companies exist to fulfil a purpose. That purpose is not just "make money". Steve Jobs founded Apple not to just "make money". I think this does not need further elaboration. The same applies to Tesla and SpaceX, founded by Elon Musk. Companies that only exist to make money are probably terrible by any measure you choose.
  - danuker 5y ago
    While just "making money" may sound a bit short-sighted, it IS the reason for the company's existence. Hopefully, however, profit is correlated with/caused by providing value to humanity, which in turn encourages "good behavior" from companies. If a company is seen as "bad", it starts to lose clients.
  - codeptualize 5y ago
    That's not the point I'm trying to make. I agree that it's not the only purpose, and even if it was I don't think that's bad per se. You could also see it as fulfilling a purpose to make money, they often go together, it's probably the ideal situation. My point is; As long as making money and their values align it's all good, but if decisions need to be made that present a choice between values and profit/growth it becomes very hard to choose for values. Especially once a company goes public, gets acquired, or needs significant investment, it might not even have the option to live by its values. That's why I think values are only real/true if they align with profit/growth. Similar to what the article describes; what do they really mean? How much impact do they really have? How much of it is PR? What it comes down to imo is; Is there willingness to sacrifice growth and revenue for values? I'd say in most cases the answer to that is no, and I would much prefer it if companies are just clear and honest about that. If you do count other forms of companies, like not-for-profits, then it's a totally different story of course.
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im3w1l 5y ago
One thing people seem to forget regarding tradeoffs is that it's possible to do objectively bad ones: It's possible to have neither a bias for action nor curiosity. Mentioning both values is a reminder to be on the efficient frontier. Further, you probably dont want to pick an extreme tradeoff. Getting a drop more action at the cost of huge learnings is a mistake as is getting very irrelevant knowledge at a huge cost of action.
- marcosdumay 5y ago
  Yes, it's possible to have suboptimal situations. But no, communicating feel-good meaningless statements (like asking for people to both act fast without waiting for the details and to know the details about the consequence of their actions) is an infallible way to create apathy and move away from the Pareto frontier, not towards it.
  - im3w1l 5y ago
    I think you are slightly distorting both statements when you are constructing that contradiction. If you drill down into Amazons "bias for action", what they really want is that if an issue is urgent and blocking then people should feel empowered to deal with it without having a full knowledge. They should take that risk. That doesnt mean always acting fast without knowing details. Meanwhile staying curious isn't necessarily about researching decisions in particular. It involves for instance ongoing tech education. So if you think about it ongoing education is totally compatible with making occasional snap decisions.
cube00 5y ago
No bullshit [1] [1] https://web.archive.org/web/20210311001446/https://www.aussiebroadband.com.au/blog/what-aussie-means-to-us/ https://web.archive.org/web/20210311001446/https://www.aussi... Edit: Switched to an archive.org version in response to comments about a captcha being used at the source URL.
- sharken 5y ago
  Sorry, but the CAPTCHA is probably great at filtering out bots, but in this case it also filters out potential readers.
candiddevmike 5y ago
Unlimited* PTO policy *Maximum 25 days a year after 15 years of employment
prepend 5y ago
I thought that anti-values were the true, unstated values of an organization. Some examples from pockets of my org… “The more important you are, the less you touch code/servers/things” “Lots of meetings means you’re important.” (People will frequently humblebrag “I have 13 meetings today”) “Create a problem, present a problem, let someone else solve, celebrate the solution.” There’s also many positive values that I think outweigh these anti-values.
- huetius 5y ago
  I wonder if I’ve misunderstood, but as a developer, I like being given problems, rather than solutions. I’ve also found being able to formulate a customer or business problem well enough that others can come up with a good solution is a real skill which (IMHO) should receive recognition.
  - prepend 5y ago
    Oh yeah me too. I mean create a problem like “log in and delete the config so the system crashes” then say “it’s broken who can fix.” I love being presented with puzzles and problems. I hate people messing up, creating crises, and pushing the mess off to other people.
dmurray 5y ago
YC jobs used to have a good version of this, I think. They put two values in opposition, both couched in positive terms, and asked which one you prefer. Unfortunately I can't seem to find it now.
makach 5y ago
not necessarily my company's anti-values, but I had some fun making up some; * avoid negativity * hide the truth * ego outperforms facts * kiss ass * promote incompetence * stick to your guns
- tremon 5y ago
  What are your the values you came up with, if those are the anti-values?
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kaycebasques 5y ago
This idea of anti-values helps explain the brilliance of Google's "focus on the user", a value which I did indeed remember and frequently use as justification for a course of action frequently. The anti-value / tradeoff is implicit but clear enough: focus on the needs of end users over other stakeholders. This was a very useful heuristic in Web DevRel because there's often a tension between making something easy for developers versus making something easy for users. E.g. making a site accessible makes it easier for users at the expense of more work & complexity for the developers.
crazylifetwist 5y ago
Love the idea of anti-values. Although I feel what the author is doing is trying to upgrade values towards guiding principles, which really resonates with me. I'm a Lego Serious Play certified facilitator and what we do with one of our workshops is helping organizations defining what we call Simple Guiding Principles (SGP). SGP's are identified by an org as a set of principles that can help guide autonomous decision making. The example "Optimise learning over focus" is a perfect SGP as it gives the individual a practical principle to follow, for example when prioritizing his/her time.
svilen_dobrev 5y ago
btw the agile manifesto (and similars) has such "we value X over Y" phrases. Another thing; as this one says, the values are the rules (well, should be). Breaking (intentionaly) them is a compromise needed sometimes. While not following, is different matter.. https://8thlight.com/blog/stephen-prater/2020/09/15/values-rules-break.html https://8thlight.com/blog/stephen-prater/2020/09/15/values-r...
loudtieblahblah 5y ago
My companys antivalue? That wfh means you work in every time zone.
motohagiography 5y ago
Sometimes I think these values statements are a substitute for employees understanding why the company makes money and the factors that contribute to that. Without that understanding, it's like there is a hierarchy of companies where the companies where everyone "gets it" on revenue are in their massive exponential growth phase like startups with small teams, then there are the ones who factor it out into KPIs, and the job is literally to move the line on that KPI at scale without any other deep understanding, but their company explosive phase is over and their growth is linear - and then the final company type is where the real revenue factors are effectively secret, and there is a solid long term cash flow the company mainly optimizes its costs over, with no significant forseeable growth other than stock volatility. Depending on the growth phase of the organization, values and anti-values are sort of moot, as it's a question of what real growth factors your teams understand and are aligned with pushing in a confluent direction. I'd be concerned if someone were sincerely indexed on values, as it seems like a substute for, "we do this thing well that solves this problem for these customers and that makes money so that we can support our families," and anything beyond that seems kind of weird in comparison. Sure, I've worked for pre-PMF companies that looking back I suspect they were in-effect NFTs for financial/portfolio engineering so there wasn't really a clear way to make money, and they spent a lot of time on inspirational values stories, but that effort should have been spent on finding product market fit. To me, the only meaningful values quesiton is, when you know who the customers are, do you want to solve that problem for those people? Seems straightforward.
greenie_beans 5y ago
my old company had motivational posters plastered all over the place with these values: integrity, teamwork, excellence, fun. felt like i was in middle school again.
- tonyedgecombe 5y ago
  When my son was looking to buy his first house I noticed a lot of people putting motivational messages on their walls. These sort of things: https://www.aliexpress.com/item/32630732796.html https://www.aliexpress.com/item/32630732796.html I just don't understand some people.
gamerDude 5y ago
I just did this exercise with my own company values and it was great. By adding the anti-value, I realized a couple of our "values" aren't really our values. Very powerful!
nonfamous 5y ago
No discussion of company values would be complete without a link to Bryan Cantrill’s classic talk, “Principles of Technology Leadership”. https://youtu.be/9QMGAtxUlAc https://youtu.be/9QMGAtxUlAc Uber once had a stated company value of “Always be hustling”. Really.
sebastianconcpt 5y ago
In my social media profile image I use a Saint Augustine maxim for friendship: Ubi amicita est, ibi idem velle et idem nolle. "True friendship is in, same likes and same dislikes." [1] Is the best radar (sonar?) I've found to predict and sense how shallow or deep a friendship with any person you'll have. Now you can use it as a generator of the types of relations with individuals that you company has/wants to have: founders, developers, marketeers, commercial, support, partners and customers. [1] So the dislikes part you might take it as the anti-value notion proposed here but is still a value. PS: about the anti-value notion, I think we're still talking about values. Like a value matrix you have in your deep psychology that is symmetrical. It has the values of the things you're attracted to and the things you are repelled from. Like all the cells in the matrix being little vectors that will eventually synthesise a final position on everything you input.
- fidesomnes 5y ago
MattPalmer1086 5y ago
I like the idea of anti values, the idea you have to trade something off. It doesn't always make sense though. The only company I've worked at whose values actually resonated with me, and evidently a lot of other people there, was at Maersk. They are [1]: * Constant care * Humbleness * Uprightness * Our employees * Our name They were a great place to work and I saw those values embodied there. Hard to see what the anti values would be for those. The basic principle they are working on is building trust. [1] https://www.maersk.com/about/core-values https://www.maersk.com/about/core-values
olivermarks 5y ago
'The Purpose of a Business is to Create a Customer' Drucker - 'The Practice of Management' is full of common sense 'anti-values'
justanother 5y ago
We work hard to rapidly capture our market space! (But as a result, sales is allowed to bully engineering, and our technical debt is growing faster than the Internal Revenue Code)
fdjlasdfjl 5y ago
systemvoltage 5y ago
Honestly and respectfully, I would love to work for a company that does not have this theater of Diversity & Inclusion. To me, it is extremely fake and not genuine. Instead, work for a company that truly embraces people from all over the world with not a peep about racism/diversity/__insert_divisive_narratives__. It would be amazing.
skeeter2020 5y ago
If you choose values that have viable, realistic alternatives that a sane organization could reasonably target then you don't need anti-values explicitly stated. If this is not the case you have a bunch of platitudes. Your company values should often be interpreted (negatively) as strong opinions or even "an attitude". I think Basecamp does a good job of this, regardless if you agree with them.
santoshalper 5y ago
I call this "values in conflict", and it is by far the most interesting way to look at culture and values in an organization. For example: Almost every company today says that they value their customers. It has become fashionable to say that you are even customer obsessed. On the other hand, almost all companies also say that they value their employees and want to respect their work-life balance and QoL. But what about when a deliverable is going to be late and it will negatively impact a customer. What do you do then? Crunch hard to ship on time so the customer is impacted? Tell your customer the deliverable will be late so your employees can go home and spend time with their families? Try to split the difference down the middle and probably annoy everyone? That's when values get interesting. When they stop being a list of nice things, and start being a framework for how you intend to behave in difficult circumstances.
frozenport 5y ago
Write in Haskell
munificent 5y ago
Back when I worked at EA there were obviously many horrible aspects to its culture. But one thing I always thought was cool was that they had a notion of a "razor". This was a principle or guideline that was worded specifically enough to clearly slice up a set of options into whether they fit it or not. When designing a game, "The game is fun," is a shitty razor because it doesn't tell you how to prioritize or make trade-offs. "Multi-player is the most fun mode," is a better razor because if you're trying to decide which features to cut, the single player ones are clearly it. "Anti-value" is, I think, another way to say something similar. This touches on a cognitive mistake I see often. We often naturally think of choices in terms of "yes or no". Do I want to go out for dinner tonight? Should I ask that person out? Should I buy that house? But opportunity cost pervades all aspects of life. Our time and resources are finite and any "yes" choice is implicitly a "no" to the other options that give up the capacity to say yes to. It's very hard to make good choices without thinking of those other options. Framing your values in terms of "razors" or "anti-values" is a good way to get out of the "yes/no" mindset and into the more accurate "which one" mindset. It helps you discriminate among options.
- econnors 5y ago
  > When designing a game, "The game is fun," is a shitty razor because it doesn't tell you how to prioritize or make trade-offs coming from countless hours of playing games and near zero hours making them, I'm curious why "this game is fun" doesn't help you make tradeoffs. I feel like concentrating on the game being fun would help avoid repetitive mechanics that would be tiresome or tedious (inventory management), frequent non-skippable dialogue, etc. Why is that not the case?
  - wongarsu 5y ago
    If I understand GP correctly they use "razors" analogous to philosophical razors [1], as a quickly evaluated rule of thumb to shave away options. "This game is fun" doesn't work for that, because often "does X make the game more fun" requires prototyping X and having some people playtest it. You can definitely make great games that way, but you are not really applying a rule of thumb anymore. Compare that to "is this usable in multiplayer", "does it serve a narrative purpose", "can we show it in a trailer". All of those are quick to answer (but not all of them make for good games). 1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philosophical_razor https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philosophical_razor
exnot 5y ago
Assume positive intent -> Anti-value: Forgoing the ability of accurately assessing the other party's intent. Even the original value itself was problematic since rarely was the intent positive and assuming it was based your actions on a wrong assumption. Depends on the people you work with naturally, but in this particular organisation there was an abundance of people looking out for themselves mainly; e.g. avoiding work, shedding responsibilities, lying, twisting facts, etc, and especially so in management.
mfringel 5y ago
I've found you can determine a company's values based on who gets more resources: e.g. raises, promotions, etc. Similarly, a company's anti-values could be discovered by who gets less; e.g. passed over for promotion, given a 'window seat', laid off, etc.
aunty_helen 5y ago
> move fast and break things Is better represented as "move fast and break important things" but what kind of management is going to sign up to that. In essence it becomes "move fast", which becomes another way of saying, "get things done faster or you're not meeting company values and we can blame you for that." Yay for management doublespeak
LoveGracePeace 5y ago
This anti-value really bugs me. Too many companie's System Administrators view PC as meaning Windows. People seem to have forgotten there is Linux Desktop in the world as well as other operating systems. TL;DR PC means Personal Computer, Linux PC, Mac PC, Windows PC.
dbfclark 5y ago
Not my company, but Zocdoc has the best values I’ve ever seen exactly because they all have anti-values: Patients First Important, not Immediate Learners before Masters Together, not Alone Progress before Perfection Adaptable, not Comfortable
austincheney 5y ago
I work at a major bank and their anti-values are behaviors that tarnish their reputation. Examples of reputation damaging actions are regulatory investigations, fraud, illegal financial activity (even if unintentional or unknown to the bank at the time). As a software developer this is quite nebulous. The bank protects its reputation by prioritizing risk analysis and ethics first in all its internal decisions. As an industry these qualities do not exist in any professional capacity in software. In software, just like in absolutely every employer, we do whatever we want so long as it eases hiring, everything else be damned.

294 points by willsewell 5y ago

There is a cultural aspect to this. American often try to be pro-stuff. French are always anti-stuff (pro life in the US, anti abortion in France, etc)

bigDinosaur 5y ago
Does that actually result in any meaningful differences between these countries in the debate?
- blitzar 5y ago
  Its not an election issue in one of those countries, and in the other it is ... I doubt you even need to take a public stand on exactly what your position is on the issue to run for office.
  - straffs 5y ago
    It used to be, but the public debate moved away once legislation changed.
- straffs 5y ago
  Usualy being against something is associate with being aginst change, and the other way around.
- makapuf 5y ago
  On this specific topic, things are absolutely not similar otherwise, so it's difficult to compare. More generally, French people can tell you immediately that's not possible because... which sounds fatalistic but it s not, we're just saying here are the roadblocks I see, please convince me they can be alleviated and I'm totally in.
- hackerfromthefu 5y ago
  I've had French people have tell me about this, that French people are whingers and complainers, and it's hard to get anything done because of it.

sfjailbird 5y ago

I like this, and I agree that it is a lot more expressive of company culture than generic positivity (would love to see this applied to politics, too). The only companies I can think of who do this are the Facebook example from OP, and some of the big investment banks, who make it pretty clear that they do not give a shit about anything except how much money they make. Unfortunately it seems only assholes and sociopaths are transparent in this regard :-/

krageon 5y ago
> it seems only assholes and sociopaths are transparent in this regard Every C-level employee is an asshole and probably a sociopath, if this was true every company would be transparent. As that isn't the case, we know that it does not necessarily have anything to do with being an asshole or a sociopath.
- vimacs2 5y ago
  This. It has less to do with personal character and more to do with the incentives baked into the company.
- sakarisson 5y ago
  > Every C-level employee is an asshole and probably a sociopath That's a big generalization without any argument to back it up.
  - krageon 5y ago
    What is there to give arguments for? Either you've worked in a few companies and you have friends that have also done so (in which case it'd seem obvious), or you're part of a class that doesn't work (or you are a C-level employee yourself). In the latter cases, nothing I say will convince you. In the former case, we have enough shared environmental background that you understand what I'm saying already. Given those facts, I didn't see why a further paragraph of background would be valuable: My point would not land with more people regardless of whether or not I wrote that paragraph.

lbriner 5y ago

The trade-off question is interesting. I think for us, an implied anti-value would be "Focus on the core product and say no to some customers" As OP said, no-one would deny that focusing on the core product is bad but at what cost? We have failed in the past by taking on custom work for the cash, and it helped us bootstrap. But to scale, the custom work needs to go away and we need to give the maximum value to the broadest number of customers through the core offering.

deleted 5y ago
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austincheney 5y ago
I haven't seen that anywhere I have worked. Normally this is a form of double speak. Developers claim to "focus on the product" but typically the only focus is upon the developers' core strengths first and only then fit the product into the pieces left over. You can tell difference between focus on the product and focus on yourself with metrics and how readily people are eager to ignore numbers using excuses from poorly formed reasoning reflective of a more honest intent.

thenoblesunfish 5y ago

This is a very good test to determine priorities. If you simply ask "what should be done?", there are too many answers. A better question is "what needs to be done so badly that you would sacrifice other worthwhile things to do it?".

david_allison 5y ago

This mirrors Netflix's old culture slide deck[0] > adequate performance gets a generous severance package > We’re a team, not a family; We’re like a pro sports team, not a kid’s recreational team [0] https://www.slideshare.net/reed2001/culture-1798664/ https://www.slideshare.net/reed2001/culture-1798664/

dusted 5y ago
I'm finding that Netflix slide incredibly toxic, I'd never want to work for Netflix after reading that, no matter how skilled I was (they wouldn't want me anyway so nobody lost anything).
- adflux 5y ago
  And that is totally fine and 100% the intent of that slide. You and Netflix don't match in terms of expectations. Id give kudos to netflix for being up front about it.
  - ignoramous 5y ago
    I fear "We're not a family" at this point is an oft copied mantra (I recall seeing this in GitLab's S1), same as Amazon's "missionaries over mercenaries" that's now prevalent (Coinbase, the most recent example), as well.
    - blitzar 5y ago
      I fear "We're a family" at this point is an oft copied mantra Of course I am assuming those that use said mantra are refering to the touchy feely version of family and we are not going down the 'what does family mean anyway' rabbit hole, where rivalry even Fratricide and Parricide, they even have a word for killing a family member.
    - ravenstine 5y ago
      Ironically, "we're not a family" may end up being nearly identical to "we're a family". People distrust "we're a family" because it's an illusion, not because of the potential for an actual sort of "family" or friendship. But they may also come to distrust "we're not a family" once it becomes as cliche and they realize that every company they work for that makes such a claim will inevitably devolve into making the employee-employer relationship out to be more than it actually is or should be. I disbelieve most corporate values because companies are run by humans, and humans are pretty bad at self evaluation. Well, that and I've had enough experience to tell me that explicitly stated corporate values usually mean very little in practice. Only you can unveil a company's values, though that's no easy task beyond some basic red/green flags.

nonrandomstring 5y ago

The most famous anti-value was "Don't be evil" and look where that ended up. "Don't be a dick" has good practical mileage. The Kantian ideal of the Kingdom of Ends is pretty good one if you formulate it as "Don't use people", but that's too high a standard for almost any business today (especially the ones whose entire model is "using people"). One of my personal maxims is "Lead people not into temptation". In other words, no addictive (engagement) features, no lock-in, don't create dependency, make sure the code you write enables people and gives then freedom and choice (migration/federation etc). Again, those values are almost impossible to maintain in todays climate of hyper-exploitation.

d--b 5y ago
Don't be evil, is not an anti-value. It's negatively-stated-yet-positive value. The article says people should state values as a tradeoff. So for google it should have been something like: Favor not being evil over making more money.
- hammock 5y ago
  "Don't be evil [at all costs]" A truly uncompromising value, if that was the intent of Google's motto, sits at the pinnacle of the hierarchy and the tradeoff is literally everything else.
  - drewcoo 5y ago
    You could add "at all costs" to any value. That would likely make it less true instead of more bold.
    - hammock 5y ago
      You could only add it to values that are truly uncompromising, as I mentioned. Any value not at the tippy top of the hierarchy would bend to some other cost in some scenario.
- xiaq 5y ago

ColinHayhurst 5y ago

Search without Surveillance

Aeolun 5y ago

Hmm, for my company it would be something like: Don’t upset the customer, so move slow and be careful. But that’s only what is desired by the company. Individuals inside the company still push people to do things quickly at the expense of quality. We also have leadership principles: ‘Play a team sport: so keep discussing everything with everyone until nobody disagrees (either through actual agreement or exhaustion)’.

dustymcp 5y ago
That sounds exhausting sometimes someone will need to take charge..

yathaid 5y ago

Disclaimer: I work for a small e-commerce firm named after a large river, opinions are my own. Writing in response since the company I work at is one whose values is quoted in the article. My initial approach to the values was a similar "Who cares, these are bland corporatese" one. It wasn't until a 10+ year senior engineer on my team discussed the trade-offs between the values in an architecture meeting that I really understood the purpose. Take two of the values[1]: "Dive deep" vs "Bias for action" - these have an inherent tension between the two. You can justify any action with either one, but it is about knowing when to apply what. You do not want to be Diving Deep as your first action when you are oncall and your alarms are going off in every direction, but it may need to be your third. "Have Backbone; Disagree and Commit" has opposite ideas written into it! Having backbone is about being able to back up your position with as much data and research as you can. Disagree and Commit is about not being emotionally invested in your position and not taking things personally when the team chooses to go another way. It is recognizing the fact that you may be working in an area of ambiguity where no one side can be proven right before the fact. Like most worthy things in life, there is a lot of nuance to these that cannot be expressed in a pithy 140 (or 280) character limit. But the idea that you should have "anti-values" is a very, very useful one. It allows you to think through different scenarios and explain what your team/organization/company would prioritize when there are competing priorities. [1] - https://www.amazon.jobs/en-gb/principles https://www.amazon.jobs/en-gb/principles

willsewell 5y ago
Thank you for raising the point about contradictions in values. I tried to work it into the original blog post, but I felt like it detracted from my main point. I previously felt these contradictions are problematic because they make it harder to use values for prioritisation. It's a good point you make about different values being applicable in different contexts. I wonder whether the context can be incorporated into the value? For example "Bias for action when the cost of failure is low". In an oncall incident, restarting a stateless service is worth trying even before the problem is understood in depth, because risk of failure is low. There are potential actions in an oncall incident that could quite easily make things much worse - then it's probably worth diving deeper before taking action. It might not be pithy enough for the value itself, but I think it's at least adding this kind of context to the subtext like Amazon have done in the page you linked to.

qwerty456127 5y ago

Punctuality-maniac policy. Take your seat at 09:01 (or 08:59!) rather than at 09:00 precisely and you're fucked. A delegate from a partner company or an employment candidate who would arrive to an appointed meeting 10 minutes later or earlier is considered a dick and treated with lowest priority.

cube00 5y ago
Our old project manager mandated we must have daily stand-ups. They were always at least five minutes late for what should have been a five minute stand up because they knew we'd have to wait for them. I managed to get team agreement we start no later then 2 minutes past, no matter who isn't there, management included, no judgement for late comers but the meeting is starting as we have work to get on with. Suddenly said project manager started showing up on time. Who knew?
- mepiethree 5y ago
  I really like the “no guilt, but start on time” model, especially now that we don’t have the disruption of someone entering the room. I am often late because I am in meetings 6 hours a day which can lead to a “doctor effect” of cascading lateness. But for things like standup, just GO!
- SubuSS 5y ago
  What do you do when the management comes in late but demands a recap lol. Fwiw I have seen folks who say they don’t but rekindle a lot of discussions directly / indirectly and do it anyway. Obviously none at our current company - my team does slack daily updates. IOW - I see a lot of efforts at ‘curtailing’ mgmt powers. In my experience- Bottom up management or manipulation only goes so far - that’s not far. Pick your managers people. You want nice ones who also know how to hire well.
mepiethree 5y ago
Why is it considered a dick move to be early as an employment candidate? As long as the candidate is unobtrusive and keeps themselves busy, all it shows me is that they value the opportunity enough to budget extra time for things like traffic, etc. (Of course, now we do everything remote, so I wouldn’t even know if they are early)

ho_schi 5y ago

"Human Resources" Department I think that says enough about how company and it bosses think.

sokoloff 5y ago
Never forget: Human is an adjective in that phrase.
- sharken 5y ago
  Still, it's better to be a resource than the next level, which is a cost. I actively try to use people instead of resources in a conversation, have never understood the need to use resources as a word. Could be it's just a relic from the HR department.
  - sokoloff 5y ago
    I fight that same linguistic fight. People seem to pretty quickly get it and usually appreciate hearing the tone aet that “our company uses this other perspective; please use people words when talking about people.” I’ve noticed a pattern that this usage seems to be somewhat more prevalent in south Asians. (I mean this only as an observation on word choice patterns, with zero conclusion or implication on underlying thought patterns. I haven’t had enough British colleagues to notice if it came from British other-colonies roots or not.)
    - marcosdumay 5y ago
      > I fight that same linguistic fight. I don't even think it's a fight. I say "computer" when I mean computer, why wouldn't I say "people" when I mean people?
Traubenfuchs 5y ago
"Human Resources" departments are a relict of a dark and long gone past. It's called "people and culture" now.

celnardur 5y ago

One of my favorites is “Tell it like it is” which has the heavily implied second part: even when the customer won’t like it.

andrewingram 5y ago

There's usually some "take initiative" value, which in practice is undermined by how the leaders lead.

GuerrerOscuro 5y ago

The point in the article that values should lead to decision making criteria is crucial, but not actually what they are used for in practice. I think it practice they are meant as a framework for doing performance assessments. At least this was how it was in my previous companies. I always thought that was horribly cultish, because tthe interpretation of such pithy sentences is really subjective. A sentence like "Move fast and break things" could be interpreted as "try a lot and don't worry if things fail once in a while" but it could also mean "keep up and leave anyone who can't lying in the dust". Those interpretations represent two different companies. The former I would be willing to work at, the latter, not so much.

mytailorisrich 5y ago

I don't see any clear meaning to the term "anti-value" in this article. It seems to imply that a "value" means "more". It does not. "Frugality" is a value of that is a behaviour deemed important to follow, it's not an "anti-value" (whatever that might mean). Similarly, "move fast, break things" means you value action and risk-taking. I was expecting "anti-value" to mean a behaviour deemed negative and to be avoided.

sokoloff 5y ago
Wasteful/free spending is the negative behavior to be avoided if you value frugality. Overly cautious, ponderous delivery is the negative behavior to be avoided if you value “move fast, break things”.
rgun 5y ago
I believe what author means by 'anti-value' is the other side of trade-off, which you are willing to compromise. Like in 'move fast and break things', you are willing to compromise reliability/stability in favour of speed.
blurker 5y ago
How is "break things" not a negative? That seems really clear to me and I think is an excellent example!
- mytailorisrich 5y ago
  If you advise people to "move fast, break things" then obviously you consider that this is a positive. "Break things" is also obviously not to be understood in isolation. Of course breaking things for no reason is not positive. It means that you will break things if you move fast and take risk and that it is unavoidable and worth it.
  - blurker 5y ago
    I see it being like this: Value: move fast (positive) Anti-value: break things (negative) Breaking things is not positive normally, but it's the compromise for moving fast.

karatinversion 5y ago

A company always consists of individuals that have to make trade-offs, so to the extent it has a cohesive culture at all, it will have values that are expressed in those trade-offs. But values (or anti-values) that a company publicly espouses do not need to coincide with its actual values: a value statement of being inclusive does not prevent a culture of bullying, and a value statement of putting the customer first does not prevent the actual value being to screw the customer whenever profitable. "Descriptive" vs "aspirational" values, if you will.

ivan_gammel 5y ago
This actual vs described values mismatch is a red flag and it could be an easy way to discover toxic culture. When applying for a job, you usually have multiple interviews - HR, team, direct manager. It makes sense to ask all of them about their values and compare the answers.
- puszczyk 5y ago
  I’d say the opposite, there needs to be a delta between values and actual behavior. I want to be a good husband, dedicated employee, etc. Am I? I’d like to think more often than not. But we all err, and I value the transparency/courage to ack that we are not perfect on our values and still have a long way to go. For me the a flag would be if a person/company is not willing to acknowledge they are not as good as they public values are. (Because how can they improve if they can’t even ack it).
  - marcosdumay 5y ago
    You mean that you should not hide of the difference between values and behavior? Because there's nothing on that comment that actually supports the difference. And if you are being honest, descriptive values should describe your behavior very closely.
    - ARandomerDude 5y ago
      The thing you're struggling with is the parent's humility. Value: be great at everything all the time Parent: I try very hard but often fail You: then you must be dishonest about your values Humility is a virtue not a vice.

deleted 5y ago

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glenngillen 5y ago

> “Learn and Be Curious” - what might that cost us? Maybe focus (because it’s ok to go down rabbit holes in order to learn something). So how about “Optimise learning over focus”? Maybe, maybe not. A couple of the values pulled out here are from the Amazon Leadership Principles. So there's actually an answer to this question! The opposite of "Learn and Be Curious" is "Bias for Action" and "Deliver Results". The Amazon LPs are designed to have tension with each other. You can't embody all of them at the same moment. Which ones you prioritize are contextually dependent. Which is also helpful for dealing with conflict and disagreement because so many arguments are people talking past each other not realizing that they're actually misaligned on an underlying assumption and wasting energy arguing about how to execute. "I don't think this is a good path forward, we should take our time to 'Dive Deep' and do more research"... "Ah, that's the issue. We've already agreed as a group the prioritize for 'Bias for Action' because of <reasons>"... "Hrm. In that case I can understand why this path makese sense. If you're all confident that's the right priority here then let's go."

alecbz 5y ago
Do the LPs themselves make it clear when they're supposed to be applied?
- mellavora 5y ago
  Don't worry, that is probably another one of the LPs. Maybe "Good leaders are right, alot"? So no True Scottsman^h^h^h^h good leader would ever be confused about which LP applied
- jerglingu 5y ago
  No, and it's a source of strain for many people at Amazon. There are, however, two LP's that are understood to stand well above the rest of the others: "Deliver Results" and "Customer Obsession."
- glenngillen 5y ago
  No. So while it (IMO) makes for a more productive debate (you discuss which of the LPs it’s most appropriate to prioritise), it also allows what people refer to as weaponising an LP. I know I’d had such a claim laid on me in that I’d use “Bias for Action” to justify what I wanted. Which there is some truth to. But as another reply mentioned the LPs of “Customer Obsession” and “Deliver Results” overruled all others. My bias delivered on those two so nobody seemed too concerned. As far as I can tell the system was working as designed. Most teams also have a set of tenets they embrace that are more team-local refinements of what you stand for and how you work. The group I was in had “Bias for Action” and “Earn Trust” as the things to prioritise. Make customers happy, increase their trust in you along the way, deliver results, and do it quickly… it made for a simple framework for decisions and left a lot of autonomy for working out your own plans for execution. You don’t need to reach consensus on _how_ you’re going to do it. Just do it.

keithalewis 5y ago

Allowing "Welcome to the insane asylum" to be the standard greeting new hires receive. It is a great way to instantly demoralize people and instill fear on their first day.

cube00 5y ago
- Can I get promoted? - You can't even get paroled.
cto_of_antifa 5y ago

codeptualize 5y ago

The only values that are real are the ones that contribute to making money. Values go out of the window real quick whenever they negatively impact revenue, whatever they are. I like the idea of anti values, certainly much better, but even there you might as well not have them imo.

hsn915 5y ago
This is a common sentiment but it is wrong. Making money is just one of the operational constraints that a company has to take into account. Companies exist to fulfil a purpose. That purpose is not just "make money". Steve Jobs founded Apple not to just "make money". I think this does not need further elaboration. The same applies to Tesla and SpaceX, founded by Elon Musk. Companies that only exist to make money are probably terrible by any measure you choose.
- danuker 5y ago
  While just "making money" may sound a bit short-sighted, it IS the reason for the company's existence. Hopefully, however, profit is correlated with/caused by providing value to humanity, which in turn encourages "good behavior" from companies. If a company is seen as "bad", it starts to lose clients.
- codeptualize 5y ago
  That's not the point I'm trying to make. I agree that it's not the only purpose, and even if it was I don't think that's bad per se. You could also see it as fulfilling a purpose to make money, they often go together, it's probably the ideal situation. My point is; As long as making money and their values align it's all good, but if decisions need to be made that present a choice between values and profit/growth it becomes very hard to choose for values. Especially once a company goes public, gets acquired, or needs significant investment, it might not even have the option to live by its values. That's why I think values are only real/true if they align with profit/growth. Similar to what the article describes; what do they really mean? How much impact do they really have? How much of it is PR? What it comes down to imo is; Is there willingness to sacrifice growth and revenue for values? I'd say in most cases the answer to that is no, and I would much prefer it if companies are just clear and honest about that. If you do count other forms of companies, like not-for-profits, then it's a totally different story of course.

deleted 5y ago

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im3w1l 5y ago

One thing people seem to forget regarding tradeoffs is that it's possible to do objectively bad ones: It's possible to have neither a bias for action nor curiosity. Mentioning both values is a reminder to be on the efficient frontier. Further, you probably dont want to pick an extreme tradeoff. Getting a drop more action at the cost of huge learnings is a mistake as is getting very irrelevant knowledge at a huge cost of action.

marcosdumay 5y ago
Yes, it's possible to have suboptimal situations. But no, communicating feel-good meaningless statements (like asking for people to both act fast without waiting for the details and to know the details about the consequence of their actions) is an infallible way to create apathy and move away from the Pareto frontier, not towards it.
- im3w1l 5y ago
  I think you are slightly distorting both statements when you are constructing that contradiction. If you drill down into Amazons "bias for action", what they really want is that if an issue is urgent and blocking then people should feel empowered to deal with it without having a full knowledge. They should take that risk. That doesnt mean always acting fast without knowing details. Meanwhile staying curious isn't necessarily about researching decisions in particular. It involves for instance ongoing tech education. So if you think about it ongoing education is totally compatible with making occasional snap decisions.

cube00 5y ago

No bullshit [1] [1] https://web.archive.org/web/20210311001446/https://www.aussiebroadband.com.au/blog/what-aussie-means-to-us/ https://web.archive.org/web/20210311001446/https://www.aussi... Edit: Switched to an archive.org version in response to comments about a captcha being used at the source URL.

sharken 5y ago
Sorry, but the CAPTCHA is probably great at filtering out bots, but in this case it also filters out potential readers.

candiddevmike 5y ago

Unlimited* PTO policy *Maximum 25 days a year after 15 years of employment

prepend 5y ago

I thought that anti-values were the true, unstated values of an organization. Some examples from pockets of my org… “The more important you are, the less you touch code/servers/things” “Lots of meetings means you’re important.” (People will frequently humblebrag “I have 13 meetings today”) “Create a problem, present a problem, let someone else solve, celebrate the solution.” There’s also many positive values that I think outweigh these anti-values.

huetius 5y ago
I wonder if I’ve misunderstood, but as a developer, I like being given problems, rather than solutions. I’ve also found being able to formulate a customer or business problem well enough that others can come up with a good solution is a real skill which (IMHO) should receive recognition.
- prepend 5y ago
  Oh yeah me too. I mean create a problem like “log in and delete the config so the system crashes” then say “it’s broken who can fix.” I love being presented with puzzles and problems. I hate people messing up, creating crises, and pushing the mess off to other people.

dmurray 5y ago

YC jobs used to have a good version of this, I think. They put two values in opposition, both couched in positive terms, and asked which one you prefer. Unfortunately I can't seem to find it now.

makach 5y ago

not necessarily my company's anti-values, but I had some fun making up some; * avoid negativity * hide the truth * ego outperforms facts * kiss ass * promote incompetence * stick to your guns

tremon 5y ago
What are your the values you came up with, if those are the anti-values?

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kaycebasques 5y ago

This idea of anti-values helps explain the brilliance of Google's "focus on the user", a value which I did indeed remember and frequently use as justification for a course of action frequently. The anti-value / tradeoff is implicit but clear enough: focus on the needs of end users over other stakeholders. This was a very useful heuristic in Web DevRel because there's often a tension between making something easy for developers versus making something easy for users. E.g. making a site accessible makes it easier for users at the expense of more work & complexity for the developers.

crazylifetwist 5y ago

Love the idea of anti-values. Although I feel what the author is doing is trying to upgrade values towards guiding principles, which really resonates with me. I'm a Lego Serious Play certified facilitator and what we do with one of our workshops is helping organizations defining what we call Simple Guiding Principles (SGP). SGP's are identified by an org as a set of principles that can help guide autonomous decision making. The example "Optimise learning over focus" is a perfect SGP as it gives the individual a practical principle to follow, for example when prioritizing his/her time.

svilen_dobrev 5y ago

btw the agile manifesto (and similars) has such "we value X over Y" phrases. Another thing; as this one says, the values are the rules (well, should be). Breaking (intentionaly) them is a compromise needed sometimes. While not following, is different matter.. https://8thlight.com/blog/stephen-prater/2020/09/15/values-rules-break.html https://8thlight.com/blog/stephen-prater/2020/09/15/values-r...

loudtieblahblah 5y ago

My companys antivalue? That wfh means you work in every time zone.

motohagiography 5y ago

Sometimes I think these values statements are a substitute for employees understanding why the company makes money and the factors that contribute to that. Without that understanding, it's like there is a hierarchy of companies where the companies where everyone "gets it" on revenue are in their massive exponential growth phase like startups with small teams, then there are the ones who factor it out into KPIs, and the job is literally to move the line on that KPI at scale without any other deep understanding, but their company explosive phase is over and their growth is linear - and then the final company type is where the real revenue factors are effectively secret, and there is a solid long term cash flow the company mainly optimizes its costs over, with no significant forseeable growth other than stock volatility. Depending on the growth phase of the organization, values and anti-values are sort of moot, as it's a question of what real growth factors your teams understand and are aligned with pushing in a confluent direction. I'd be concerned if someone were sincerely indexed on values, as it seems like a substute for, "we do this thing well that solves this problem for these customers and that makes money so that we can support our families," and anything beyond that seems kind of weird in comparison. Sure, I've worked for pre-PMF companies that looking back I suspect they were in-effect NFTs for financial/portfolio engineering so there wasn't really a clear way to make money, and they spent a lot of time on inspirational values stories, but that effort should have been spent on finding product market fit. To me, the only meaningful values quesiton is, when you know who the customers are, do you want to solve that problem for those people? Seems straightforward.

greenie_beans 5y ago

my old company had motivational posters plastered all over the place with these values: integrity, teamwork, excellence, fun. felt like i was in middle school again.

tonyedgecombe 5y ago
When my son was looking to buy his first house I noticed a lot of people putting motivational messages on their walls. These sort of things: https://www.aliexpress.com/item/32630732796.html https://www.aliexpress.com/item/32630732796.html I just don't understand some people.

gamerDude 5y ago

I just did this exercise with my own company values and it was great. By adding the anti-value, I realized a couple of our "values" aren't really our values. Very powerful!

nonfamous 5y ago

No discussion of company values would be complete without a link to Bryan Cantrill’s classic talk, “Principles of Technology Leadership”. https://youtu.be/9QMGAtxUlAc https://youtu.be/9QMGAtxUlAc Uber once had a stated company value of “Always be hustling”. Really.

sebastianconcpt 5y ago

In my social media profile image I use a Saint Augustine maxim for friendship: Ubi amicita est, ibi idem velle et idem nolle. "True friendship is in, same likes and same dislikes." [1] Is the best radar (sonar?) I've found to predict and sense how shallow or deep a friendship with any person you'll have. Now you can use it as a generator of the types of relations with individuals that you company has/wants to have: founders, developers, marketeers, commercial, support, partners and customers. [1] So the dislikes part you might take it as the anti-value notion proposed here but is still a value. PS: about the anti-value notion, I think we're still talking about values. Like a value matrix you have in your deep psychology that is symmetrical. It has the values of the things you're attracted to and the things you are repelled from. Like all the cells in the matrix being little vectors that will eventually synthesise a final position on everything you input.

fidesomnes 5y ago

MattPalmer1086 5y ago

I like the idea of anti values, the idea you have to trade something off. It doesn't always make sense though. The only company I've worked at whose values actually resonated with me, and evidently a lot of other people there, was at Maersk. They are [1]: * Constant care * Humbleness * Uprightness * Our employees * Our name They were a great place to work and I saw those values embodied there. Hard to see what the anti values would be for those. The basic principle they are working on is building trust. [1] https://www.maersk.com/about/core-values https://www.maersk.com/about/core-values

olivermarks 5y ago

'The Purpose of a Business is to Create a Customer' Drucker - 'The Practice of Management' is full of common sense 'anti-values'

justanother 5y ago

We work hard to rapidly capture our market space! (But as a result, sales is allowed to bully engineering, and our technical debt is growing faster than the Internal Revenue Code)

fdjlasdfjl 5y ago

systemvoltage 5y ago

Honestly and respectfully, I would love to work for a company that does not have this theater of Diversity & Inclusion. To me, it is extremely fake and not genuine. Instead, work for a company that truly embraces people from all over the world with not a peep about racism/diversity/__insert_divisive_narratives__. It would be amazing.

skeeter2020 5y ago

If you choose values that have viable, realistic alternatives that a sane organization could reasonably target then you don't need anti-values explicitly stated. If this is not the case you have a bunch of platitudes. Your company values should often be interpreted (negatively) as strong opinions or even "an attitude". I think Basecamp does a good job of this, regardless if you agree with them.

santoshalper 5y ago

I call this "values in conflict", and it is by far the most interesting way to look at culture and values in an organization. For example: Almost every company today says that they value their customers. It has become fashionable to say that you are even customer obsessed. On the other hand, almost all companies also say that they value their employees and want to respect their work-life balance and QoL. But what about when a deliverable is going to be late and it will negatively impact a customer. What do you do then? Crunch hard to ship on time so the customer is impacted? Tell your customer the deliverable will be late so your employees can go home and spend time with their families? Try to split the difference down the middle and probably annoy everyone? That's when values get interesting. When they stop being a list of nice things, and start being a framework for how you intend to behave in difficult circumstances.

frozenport 5y ago

Write in Haskell

munificent 5y ago

Back when I worked at EA there were obviously many horrible aspects to its culture. But one thing I always thought was cool was that they had a notion of a "razor". This was a principle or guideline that was worded specifically enough to clearly slice up a set of options into whether they fit it or not. When designing a game, "The game is fun," is a shitty razor because it doesn't tell you how to prioritize or make trade-offs. "Multi-player is the most fun mode," is a better razor because if you're trying to decide which features to cut, the single player ones are clearly it. "Anti-value" is, I think, another way to say something similar. This touches on a cognitive mistake I see often. We often naturally think of choices in terms of "yes or no". Do I want to go out for dinner tonight? Should I ask that person out? Should I buy that house? But opportunity cost pervades all aspects of life. Our time and resources are finite and any "yes" choice is implicitly a "no" to the other options that give up the capacity to say yes to. It's very hard to make good choices without thinking of those other options. Framing your values in terms of "razors" or "anti-values" is a good way to get out of the "yes/no" mindset and into the more accurate "which one" mindset. It helps you discriminate among options.

econnors 5y ago
> When designing a game, "The game is fun," is a shitty razor because it doesn't tell you how to prioritize or make trade-offs coming from countless hours of playing games and near zero hours making them, I'm curious why "this game is fun" doesn't help you make tradeoffs. I feel like concentrating on the game being fun would help avoid repetitive mechanics that would be tiresome or tedious (inventory management), frequent non-skippable dialogue, etc. Why is that not the case?
- wongarsu 5y ago
  If I understand GP correctly they use "razors" analogous to philosophical razors [1], as a quickly evaluated rule of thumb to shave away options. "This game is fun" doesn't work for that, because often "does X make the game more fun" requires prototyping X and having some people playtest it. You can definitely make great games that way, but you are not really applying a rule of thumb anymore. Compare that to "is this usable in multiplayer", "does it serve a narrative purpose", "can we show it in a trailer". All of those are quick to answer (but not all of them make for good games). 1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philosophical_razor https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philosophical_razor

exnot 5y ago

Assume positive intent -> Anti-value: Forgoing the ability of accurately assessing the other party's intent. Even the original value itself was problematic since rarely was the intent positive and assuming it was based your actions on a wrong assumption. Depends on the people you work with naturally, but in this particular organisation there was an abundance of people looking out for themselves mainly; e.g. avoiding work, shedding responsibilities, lying, twisting facts, etc, and especially so in management.

mfringel 5y ago

I've found you can determine a company's values based on who gets more resources: e.g. raises, promotions, etc. Similarly, a company's anti-values could be discovered by who gets less; e.g. passed over for promotion, given a 'window seat', laid off, etc.

aunty_helen 5y ago

> move fast and break things Is better represented as "move fast and break important things" but what kind of management is going to sign up to that. In essence it becomes "move fast", which becomes another way of saying, "get things done faster or you're not meeting company values and we can blame you for that." Yay for management doublespeak

LoveGracePeace 5y ago

This anti-value really bugs me. Too many companie's System Administrators view PC as meaning Windows. People seem to have forgotten there is Linux Desktop in the world as well as other operating systems. TL;DR PC means Personal Computer, Linux PC, Mac PC, Windows PC.

dbfclark 5y ago

Not my company, but Zocdoc has the best values I’ve ever seen exactly because they all have anti-values: Patients First Important, not Immediate Learners before Masters Together, not Alone Progress before Perfection Adaptable, not Comfortable

austincheney 5y ago

I work at a major bank and their anti-values are behaviors that tarnish their reputation. Examples of reputation damaging actions are regulatory investigations, fraud, illegal financial activity (even if unintentional or unknown to the bank at the time). As a software developer this is quite nebulous. The bank protects its reputation by prioritizing risk analysis and ethics first in all its internal decisions. As an industry these qualities do not exist in any professional capacity in software. In software, just like in absolutely every employer, we do whatever we want so long as it eases hiring, everything else be damned.