The amount of money that gets direct deposited into my bank account, biweekly
You should try to get past that to post-scarcity thinking, possibly interstellar.
What defines a great company culture?
61–70 of 176 posts
Re: What defines a great company culture?
#62Earlier quoted context omitted.
Fiefdoms are bad, but is a company monoculture necessarily a good thing? Perhaps different teams (especially if geographically dispersed) can adopt a culture that works for them rather than follow some top-down mandate that they'll follow half-heartedly if at all.
> that they'll follow half-heartedly if at all At that point it’s bad company culture right?
Arguably beyond a certain size and other than some basic rules around things like good behaviour and ethics, I'm not sure you can have a one-size-fits-all for a company (or any other) culture.
Re: What defines a great company culture?
#63Autonomy, agency, trust and shared goals. Knowing that everyone is doing their 80% and looks out for the team, not themselves.
Re: What defines a great company culture?
#64> They key to a strong culture is consistency from the top. The CEO's job is to make sure everyone on the management team is on the same page. If a senior leader wants to create their own unique culture for their part of the org, they can't be allowed to stay. I love this entire thread and it resonates a lot with me. I, too, believe that there is not THE right company culture that will solve everybody’s problems. Man…
I think consistency is overrated, and a cause of countless undue issues.
We seem to mostly agree that diversity is important, and having employees from different background help bring different ideas and solutions to the table, react with more agility on unforeseen situations.
On a fundamental level, applying the same vision and forcing the same values and rituals on everyone looks to me at odds with what diversity is supposed to bring.
As an aside, if a company has a credit card processing division and mini-game producing divisions, I'd see a clear case for them to not have the same values nor the same priorities, and in the end the same culture. That's what I also felt reading accounts from UX designers at Google in the early days, when they seemed to be crushed by the 100% data driven culture from which they tried to carve a small niche.
Re: What defines a great company culture?
#65> They key to a strong culture is consistency from the top. The CEO's job is to make sure everyone on the management team is on the same page. If a senior leader wants to create their own unique culture for their part of the org, they can't be allowed to stay. I love this entire thread and it resonates a lot with me. I, too, believe that there is not THE right company culture that will solve everybody’s problems. Man…
> Many in the agile or “new work” camp seem to believe that their way is the ONLY way, for example. I think many in the Agile camp are fed up with being held back by people who are unwilling to change, and are willing to break the mold (and some eggs) in order to find a new, better way to work. > Consistency is much more important than how the culture actually is. This just leads to a consistently toxic culture that…
The "Agile" problem is more like a bunch of consultants and managers polarizing the population while the middle waves their hands and goes "uh, guys, you know 'agile' isn't the same as Scrum, and many more implementations exist beyond it, right?". As the consultants and managers keep insisting that if you don't want to participate in "Agile Scrum" (how in the world did we get this abomination of a word anyway?), you "don't understand the values of Scrum and/or Agile". In turn, monopolizing the ideology of iterative, short cycle development.
The last being absolutely insane, since both the values in Scrum and the values in the Agile Manifesto are extremely broad and abstract. Even the guide itself clearly states Scrum only being an implementation for those values, not the definition of those values.
Re: What defines a great company culture?
#66> Amazon's most memorable value was "ruthlessly escalate." This removed any question about how decisions would be made. It encouraged a culture where people would debate strongly held ideas, knowing the solution to disagreements was to bump it up to the next level of management. "Ruthless" anywhere in your value system is terrible, unless you are the military, or your mission statement is to "fight" something like ca…
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Re: What defines a great company culture?
#67I find this thread kind of confusing, it basically seems to say the culture itself doesn't matter. What matters is that it is strongly held. Which means top down, ritualized and vigorously defended against any attempts at change.
>> I find this thread kind of confusing, it basically seems to say the culture itself doesn't matter. What matters is that it is strongly held. Which means top down, ritualized and vigorously defended against any attempts at change.
Yes, because you're taking a significant risk joining any company (in the sense that you have limited time and want to go where you can have the most impact for the firm and best outcomes for your goals).
You often dont know details about projects, people, etc -- but if you vibe with the culture, you can easily find your place there. If the culture is all over the place, it is hard to know from the outside. And if the culture is a mismatch for you, better to neither waste your time nor that of the firm. Without a strongly projected culture, that is hard to do.
Re: What defines a great company culture?
#68> They key to a strong culture is consistency from the top. The CEO's job is to make sure everyone on the management team is on the same page. If a senior leader wants to create their own unique culture for their part of the org, they can't be allowed to stay. I love this entire thread and it resonates a lot with me. I, too, believe that there is not THE right company culture that will solve everybody’s problems. Man…
I think consistency is overrated, and a cause of countless undue issues. We seem to mostly agree that diversity is important, and having employees from different background help bring different ideas and solutions to the table, react with more agility on unforeseen situations. On a fundamental level, applying the same vision and forcing the same values and rituals on everyone looks to me at odds with what diversity i…
>On a fundamental level, applying the same vision and forcing the same values and rituals on everyone looks to me at odds with what diversity is supposed to bring.
IMO the difference is that consistency brings people together to agree on the same goals but diversity brings different perspectives on how to reach said goals. It's a bit of nuance, like the distinction between strategy and tactics.
Having disjointed strategy wreaks havoc because people can't agree on what's ultimately important in determining success. Differing tactics brings a bit of experimentation to the table where groups may try out different paths but are all honed in on the same end goal.
I've worked in organizations that couldn't align on strategy and it was horrendous. One level wanted the focus to be on creating an organization that is known for high-quality "world-class" work. The other wanted to move fast and bring in as much work as possible, sometimes at the detriment of quality. Leadership couldn't get on the same page and it created a fracturing of the workforce into competing camps, neither of which trusted (and at time worked to undermine) the other.
Re: What defines a great company culture?
#69As an advanced programmer it always seemed I was getting rejected for jobs because of 'culture' because I wouldn't put up with their abusive environments.
IMO that's a feature, not a bug. I really would not fit into that culture, so I'd love for them to reject me based on my refusal to work overtime, except in emergencies... Which had better be pretty seldom.
Re: What defines a great company culture?
#70> Strong cultures are well-defined with sharp edges, and well-understood by everyone in the organization top to bottom. Strong founders with unapologetic personalities set the culture early and maintain it.
I can think of numerous historical examples of organizations (typically nations or empires) where this was true but the outcome was very bad for everyone involved.