6 ms·

"Corporate culture engineering" has always struck me as a cargo cult. Large, immobile, boring companies try to reinvent themselves as small, nimble, exciting...

"Corporate culture engineering" has always struck me as a cargo cult. Large, immobile, boring companies try to reinvent themselves as small, nimble, exciting... by copying the symptoms of a great corporate culture, not the causes. Free food is not corporate culture. Scooters is not corporate culture. Beanbags is not corporate culture. They are the natural expressions of an already-working culture, and will not lead themselves to one just because you've decided to build airplanes out of straw and bamboo. Shortly before I left Amazon I was given a plastic (code) ninja action figure, which was, supposedly, some kind of new corporate mascot. We were all encouraged to take pictures with this ninja in interesting places, as some kind of "fun" thing. But of course, you can't order fun into existence, and the whole thing smelled very obviously of stuffy suits failing to get it. A fun, exciting company invents traditions like this, not vice versa.

RegEx 14y ago
Reading this saddens me. Amazon is where I'm hoping to end up in about 5 years...
- phene 14y ago
  Don't do it! Go find a small start-up doing something that interests you.
- enjo 14y ago
  That's the thing about "culture". It's defined very much by the people involved most directly in it. Within a company like Amazon you will have teams that foster amazing environments. You'll also have teams that hand out toy ninjas. The trick is to figure out how to land yourself in the former.
  - jmduke 14y ago
    This is a great point. I think the big difference in 'culture' at BigCos is that when you're thinking about scales of thousands of employees, its impossible to try and really instill cultural values at a micro level, especially with things like bean bag chairs. It occurs at a much smaller level -- the team.
- jmduke 14y ago
  As someone who's currently working at Amazon -- don't worry. I love it here.
- TheCowboy 14y ago
  Corporations are temporal things, tools to achieve a purpose. Don't put your dreams in them or make it a goal to make one of them part of your identity in X timeyearthings. Identify what you think is attractive and a positive value and pursue that in 5 years time.
- potatolicious 14y ago
  Don't be too married to the idea. I know many, many, many Amazon alumnus, and not a single one wishes they were back there. There are a few beacons of light in the giant swamp that is Amazon, but IMO there are very few redeeming corners of the company. Overall, in general, the place is a dump (employer-quality speaking, the work they do is unquestionably amazing). Try asking your recruiter about the average tenure of an Amazon engineer and see them scramble madly to dodge the question (I know the number, but for the sake of politeness I won't put it out there). They are, culturally, very much a big-giant-corp pretending like they are a small nimble startup. Everything from the "two pizza team" concept down to "frugal like a startup" (read: this is code to mean that your dev machine won't have been built in the last 5 years) is meant to evoke it, but really just elicits frustration and anger instead. Even in the "good" teams it will constantly feel like your boss is waging an epic battle against Evil just so you can have the peace to get your work done. Fun note: circa 2011 my dev machine was a Celeron 1.5GHz. My codebase took a whopping 15 minutes to build even though a $1000 machine could have built it in a tenth the time. I knew incrediby talented, amazing engineers who were given 2 15" monitors dating circa 2002 and told to live with it. I'm not one for exorbitant gear, but this is entirely indicative of Amazon's internal culture. I'm glad I cut my teeth at Amazon out of college, but I am extremely glad to have graduated out of both Amazon and Seattle, and have found much happier employment and residence elsewhere.
  - justinmk 14y ago
    > circa 2011 my dev machine was a Celeron 1.5GHz. Of all the negative anecdotes I've read about Amazon, this is the most effective. > glad to have graduated out of both Amazon and Seattle, care to elaborate on Seattle?
    - WiseWeasel 14y ago
      Seattle has terrible weather. You can tell by the quality of the raincoats everyone is wearing.
      - saraid216 14y ago
        Seriously. This fucking sunshine is like being in an oven.
- jaimebuelta 14y ago
  Don't think of big companies as a one, gigantic and monolithic culture. The fact is that inside big companies there are lots of departments, and they can be quite different one for the other... I had this experience with different big corporations, where department A is a really nice place to work and department B is awful... There are some shared things, of course, but it could be different enough to make a huge difference...
riffraff 14y ago
I have a bit of confusion about your situation so pardon me asking: If you work in a team of four and your manager hands you a toy ninja and says "let's take pictures with it!", that is cool IFF there is no higher management? Or, is it cool only if a peer thinks of it? Or, the issue is that the idea came from more people at a distance more than X? Or the issue is that they told you that you must take pics with it, rather than saying "you know what would be cool" ? Or is it just a general "this doesn't feel right". Because it would seem to me that your company _invented_ a tradition like that, it's just that you didn't like that it wasn't invented from the guy sitting next to you. I understand and have experienced the feeling of looking at BigCo and thinking "boy, they are trying too hard to seem fun", but I am wondering how much of the judgement is the _existing_ notion that they are a boring corporate.
- dionidium 14y ago
  Because it would seem to me that your company _invented_ a tradition like that, it's just that you didn't like that it wasn't invented from the guy sitting next to you. Yes, but even if the reason for bucking the new "tradition" is spite or envy (and I don't think it is in this case) that's reason enough. The whole point is that culture emerges; it is not prescribed. It doesn't matter why it didn't emerge. If it didn't, it can't be forced.
- WalterSear 14y ago
  People do stupid stuff like taking pictures of plastic toys >because< they are having fun, which is a decent sign that the culture is good. Doing goofy shit isn't inherently fun just because its goofy. It certainly won't improve your corporate culture - it's the result not the cause.
- Domenic_S 14y ago
  Meh, I think it's a function of company size. FROM: Corporate Fun Squad <dl-funsqad@exchange.bigcorp.com> TO: All US-WEST Employees <dl-us-west@exchange.bigcorp.com> SUBJECT: Put your picture on Sharepoint!
- potatolicious 14y ago
  It is very much contextual. At my current job, if my manager hands me the toy ninja, I would happily try to take pictures with it. Because my manager is very much knee-deep in the trenches with the rest of the devs, designers, and QA folk day in day out. He has, without fail, and repeatedly, shown that he understands the situation "on the ground" and has always treated our concerns with the respect and gravity demanded. At Amazon there was not a chance - my manager was the guy barking orders from up high, funneling the whims of even higher management down with little to no filtering or defense for our ability to get it done. He was a straight pass-through, and it sucked. Him handing me the ninja would have been a damned insult (and it was). The question is not job titles, it's entirely about the working relationship, and this is also why "inventing culture" fails. When you have an incredibly segmented workforce, where management is entirely separated from the grunts, and neither side have any respect for the other, any such "culture" is naturally a decree enforced from the top, rather than a genuine expression of what employees already feel.
einhverfr 14y ago
I was recently playing around with modelling business growth using logistic equations, and I came upon a possible reason why large companies are unable to be nimble and dynamic in the way small companies are. Note: The basic logistic equation is 1/(1 + e^-t) which one can extend to be S = M / (1 + e ^ (-rt-y)) where M is the maximum growth capacity, r is growth rate, y is number of years to the 50% mark. Anyway, it produces nice S-shaped growth curves that generally approximate growth in a limited environment. Anyway working with these a few things occurred to me. Near the bottom of the growth curve, growth is very slow. It then picks up suddenly, grows to a certain point, then growth rate declines and the market size tapers off. Lack of immediate success along these curves may be due to a growth rate that is too low or a market size that is too small (duh) but when we vary both maximum size (M) and growth rate (r) something really interesting happens. If we have a curve that successfully predicts two or three years of growth but then overperforms what we observe, this has exactly two causes: Either M is much bigger than expected and r is much smaller (meaning smaller growth now but much more growth later), or M is much smaller and y is much bigger (meaning the market is already saturated). You can't differentiate these just looking at how a project is performing. A small business can bet against the short term and for the future. A larger, publicly held business is often less able to do so, so getting over the slow growth in the lead-in of the logistic sigmoid is really tough in a larger corporate environment. This is probably a good part of the reason why big companies have a much harder time innovating.
wpietri 14y ago
Sadly, there is a substantial market for helping companies pretend to acquire fashionable trait X without making any of the substantial changes that would require. I was involved in "Agile" before the term had been coined, and there was a ton of meat there. But year by year the substance was leached away, until most of the consulting money was in, as you say, adopting symptoms. In talking with manufacturing people, the same thing happened with Lean Manufacturing. And I see it starting to happen with the Lean Startup thing. It kills me. I originally thought this was driven by cynical assholes. Which I could have solved as soon as I figured out how to dispose of the bodies. But the problem is worse: it's all well-meaning people who just aren't paying enough attention to what's really going on.
mh_ 14y ago
Agree 100%. In fact in 2010 I wrote a post titled:Cargo Cult startups on exactly this: http://blog.thinkst.com/2010/04/cargo-cult-startups.html http://blog.thinkst.com/2010/04/cargo-cult-startups.html

RegEx 14y ago

Reading this saddens me. Amazon is where I'm hoping to end up in about 5 years...

phene 14y ago
Don't do it! Go find a small start-up doing something that interests you.
enjo 14y ago
That's the thing about "culture". It's defined very much by the people involved most directly in it. Within a company like Amazon you will have teams that foster amazing environments. You'll also have teams that hand out toy ninjas. The trick is to figure out how to land yourself in the former.
- jmduke 14y ago
  This is a great point. I think the big difference in 'culture' at BigCos is that when you're thinking about scales of thousands of employees, its impossible to try and really instill cultural values at a micro level, especially with things like bean bag chairs. It occurs at a much smaller level -- the team.
jmduke 14y ago
As someone who's currently working at Amazon -- don't worry. I love it here.
TheCowboy 14y ago
Corporations are temporal things, tools to achieve a purpose. Don't put your dreams in them or make it a goal to make one of them part of your identity in X timeyearthings. Identify what you think is attractive and a positive value and pursue that in 5 years time.
potatolicious 14y ago
Don't be too married to the idea. I know many, many, many Amazon alumnus, and not a single one wishes they were back there. There are a few beacons of light in the giant swamp that is Amazon, but IMO there are very few redeeming corners of the company. Overall, in general, the place is a dump (employer-quality speaking, the work they do is unquestionably amazing). Try asking your recruiter about the average tenure of an Amazon engineer and see them scramble madly to dodge the question (I know the number, but for the sake of politeness I won't put it out there). They are, culturally, very much a big-giant-corp pretending like they are a small nimble startup. Everything from the "two pizza team" concept down to "frugal like a startup" (read: this is code to mean that your dev machine won't have been built in the last 5 years) is meant to evoke it, but really just elicits frustration and anger instead. Even in the "good" teams it will constantly feel like your boss is waging an epic battle against Evil just so you can have the peace to get your work done. Fun note: circa 2011 my dev machine was a Celeron 1.5GHz. My codebase took a whopping 15 minutes to build even though a $1000 machine could have built it in a tenth the time. I knew incrediby talented, amazing engineers who were given 2 15" monitors dating circa 2002 and told to live with it. I'm not one for exorbitant gear, but this is entirely indicative of Amazon's internal culture. I'm glad I cut my teeth at Amazon out of college, but I am extremely glad to have graduated out of both Amazon and Seattle, and have found much happier employment and residence elsewhere.
- justinmk 14y ago
  > circa 2011 my dev machine was a Celeron 1.5GHz. Of all the negative anecdotes I've read about Amazon, this is the most effective. > glad to have graduated out of both Amazon and Seattle, care to elaborate on Seattle?
  - WiseWeasel 14y ago
    Seattle has terrible weather. You can tell by the quality of the raincoats everyone is wearing.
    - saraid216 14y ago
      Seriously. This fucking sunshine is like being in an oven.
jaimebuelta 14y ago
Don't think of big companies as a one, gigantic and monolithic culture. The fact is that inside big companies there are lots of departments, and they can be quite different one for the other... I had this experience with different big corporations, where department A is a really nice place to work and department B is awful... There are some shared things, of course, but it could be different enough to make a huge difference...

riffraff 14y ago

I have a bit of confusion about your situation so pardon me asking: If you work in a team of four and your manager hands you a toy ninja and says "let's take pictures with it!", that is cool IFF there is no higher management? Or, is it cool only if a peer thinks of it? Or, the issue is that the idea came from more people at a distance more than X? Or the issue is that they told you that you must take pics with it, rather than saying "you know what would be cool" ? Or is it just a general "this doesn't feel right". Because it would seem to me that your company _invented_ a tradition like that, it's just that you didn't like that it wasn't invented from the guy sitting next to you. I understand and have experienced the feeling of looking at BigCo and thinking "boy, they are trying too hard to seem fun", but I am wondering how much of the judgement is the _existing_ notion that they are a boring corporate.

dionidium 14y ago
Because it would seem to me that your company _invented_ a tradition like that, it's just that you didn't like that it wasn't invented from the guy sitting next to you. Yes, but even if the reason for bucking the new "tradition" is spite or envy (and I don't think it is in this case) that's reason enough. The whole point is that culture emerges; it is not prescribed. It doesn't matter why it didn't emerge. If it didn't, it can't be forced.
WalterSear 14y ago
People do stupid stuff like taking pictures of plastic toys >because< they are having fun, which is a decent sign that the culture is good. Doing goofy shit isn't inherently fun just because its goofy. It certainly won't improve your corporate culture - it's the result not the cause.
Domenic_S 14y ago
Meh, I think it's a function of company size. FROM: Corporate Fun Squad <dl-funsqad@exchange.bigcorp.com> TO: All US-WEST Employees <dl-us-west@exchange.bigcorp.com> SUBJECT: Put your picture on Sharepoint!
potatolicious 14y ago
It is very much contextual. At my current job, if my manager hands me the toy ninja, I would happily try to take pictures with it. Because my manager is very much knee-deep in the trenches with the rest of the devs, designers, and QA folk day in day out. He has, without fail, and repeatedly, shown that he understands the situation "on the ground" and has always treated our concerns with the respect and gravity demanded. At Amazon there was not a chance - my manager was the guy barking orders from up high, funneling the whims of even higher management down with little to no filtering or defense for our ability to get it done. He was a straight pass-through, and it sucked. Him handing me the ninja would have been a damned insult (and it was). The question is not job titles, it's entirely about the working relationship, and this is also why "inventing culture" fails. When you have an incredibly segmented workforce, where management is entirely separated from the grunts, and neither side have any respect for the other, any such "culture" is naturally a decree enforced from the top, rather than a genuine expression of what employees already feel.

einhverfr 14y ago

I was recently playing around with modelling business growth using logistic equations, and I came upon a possible reason why large companies are unable to be nimble and dynamic in the way small companies are. Note: The basic logistic equation is 1/(1 + e^-t) which one can extend to be S = M / (1 + e ^ (-rt-y)) where M is the maximum growth capacity, r is growth rate, y is number of years to the 50% mark. Anyway, it produces nice S-shaped growth curves that generally approximate growth in a limited environment. Anyway working with these a few things occurred to me. Near the bottom of the growth curve, growth is very slow. It then picks up suddenly, grows to a certain point, then growth rate declines and the market size tapers off. Lack of immediate success along these curves may be due to a growth rate that is too low or a market size that is too small (duh) but when we vary both maximum size (M) and growth rate (r) something really interesting happens. If we have a curve that successfully predicts two or three years of growth but then overperforms what we observe, this has exactly two causes: Either M is much bigger than expected and r is much smaller (meaning smaller growth now but much more growth later), or M is much smaller and y is much bigger (meaning the market is already saturated). You can't differentiate these just looking at how a project is performing. A small business can bet against the short term and for the future. A larger, publicly held business is often less able to do so, so getting over the slow growth in the lead-in of the logistic sigmoid is really tough in a larger corporate environment. This is probably a good part of the reason why big companies have a much harder time innovating.

wpietri 14y ago

Sadly, there is a substantial market for helping companies pretend to acquire fashionable trait X without making any of the substantial changes that would require. I was involved in "Agile" before the term had been coined, and there was a ton of meat there. But year by year the substance was leached away, until most of the consulting money was in, as you say, adopting symptoms. In talking with manufacturing people, the same thing happened with Lean Manufacturing. And I see it starting to happen with the Lean Startup thing. It kills me. I originally thought this was driven by cynical assholes. Which I could have solved as soon as I figured out how to dispose of the bodies. But the problem is worse: it's all well-meaning people who just aren't paying enough attention to what's really going on.

mh_ 14y ago

Agree 100%. In fact in 2010 I wrote a post titled:Cargo Cult startups on exactly this: http://blog.thinkst.com/2010/04/cargo-cult-startups.html http://blog.thinkst.com/2010/04/cargo-cult-startups.html