How about none at all? I'm not joining a cult. I go to work to get paid and that's it. I don't need some weird culture shoved down my throat and I certainly don't need to be thinking about work 24/7.
What defines a great company culture?
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Re: What defines a great company culture?
#72It's a function of growth and success.
If the company is growing, winning deals, all people are busy it feels great. A lot of energy is pointed outwards, competing, hustling, convincing. Literally no time for internal politics.
Once a company stalls, the energy, actions, focus, drift inward. "Politics". Shit culture.
Now, what is correlation, what is causation?
I suspect results drive culture. Culture can't make up for overall failure.
Re: What defines a great company culture?
#73There are lots of variations but my list is this: No hypocrisy ( you all need to work hard while I'm only working 2h/day) No superstars (high performers are fine but no high performing jerks) No gossip Fair and easy to understand reward structure Things aren't made difficult deliberately ( 6 layers approval process) Laziness and poor attitudes aren't tolerated.
A big one for me these days is "No pressure to attend non-mandatory outside-of-work-hours outings like after work happy hours". I don't really drink, I don't like bars, I often like to spend my evenings with my SO or my friends, not my coworkers. I don't like being made to feel like I am "not a team player" for not wanting to participate in "team building" outside of work hours.
You took the words right of my mouth... I also don't drink, but my main gripe is that I'm joining a team, not a family. I have other obligations and relationships that need to fit into my already limited non-work time.
Re: What defines a great company culture?
#74Earlier quoted context omitted.
> 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…
I’ve always found it ironic when coming across discussions of people’s frustration with Agile (uppercase A) only to see the “you’re doing it wrong” comment-which I’ve seen often right Here on HN, among other places.
Mainly because wasn’t one of the foundational elements of agile (lowercase A) “people and tools over processes”?
Lately Agile feels as ritualistic and process-heavy as a checklist for a rocket launch.
Re: What defines a great company culture?
#75I have found that the more a company talks about culture, probably the worse it is... :)
Re: What defines a great company culture?
#76Agree to disagree.
These are two obscenely rich companies. I don't believe that it is possible to dominate market(s) and maintain "great culture".
In my view there is an inverse relationship between ethics and profits. I don't see any reason to assume that these companies have "great culture" simply because they are very rich. Quite the contrary.
Re: What defines a great company culture?
#77This thread isn't really clarifying or defining what a "great" culture constitutes, and it strongly suffers from survivorship bias. The author is pointing out that a necessary ingredient (among others omitted) is strong culture--which is something of a tautology. Of course a company with great culture has a strong culture; if it were a weak culture, it wouldn't be pervasive or definitive of the company. A company wit…
Agreed! Microsoft is a great example of a company which had... a) many cultural shifts over time b) still is a company with many different sub team cultures ...and regardless of where they were on the spectrum they have always managed to sell Windows, Office and SQL Server very well.
I saw a video once, the goal of which was to sell to Microsoft execs how to market the first Xbox. The video explained that the target market wasn't fortysomething guys wearing suits in cubicles. It was skateboarders with tattoos on their neck. (And many other demographics that varied significantly from middle-aged IT people).
Re: What defines a great company culture?
#78Agree to disagree. These are two obscenely rich companies. I don't believe that it is possible to dominate market(s) and maintain "great culture". In my view there is an inverse relationship between ethics and profits. I don't see any reason to assume that these companies have "great culture" simply because they are very rich. Quite the contrary.
I don't think the author is drawing any connection between great company culture and great company ethics. The culture refers more to group dynamics, which values are embraced and which are ignored, the kind of leadership, etc.
In this context, great has more to do with efficacy and consistency. The author would probably say a company can have a great culture and still be very polarizing or controversial.
Re: What defines a great company culture?
#79This thread isn't really clarifying or defining what a "great" culture constitutes, and it strongly suffers from survivorship bias. The author is pointing out that a necessary ingredient (among others omitted) is strong culture--which is something of a tautology. Of course a company with great culture has a strong culture; if it were a weak culture, it wouldn't be pervasive or definitive of the company. A company wit…
Yeah, a lot of this is just retroactive justification and narrative building, which then gets cargo culted because everyone wants to repeat the success. But in fact what makes these billion dollar companies successful is the outlier confluence of product-market fit, timing, strong execution, and a million small decisions along the way that compounded returns on a few lucky breaks. I don't doubt the importance of company culture to operate effectively, but I am very skeptical of crediting the success mega corps to any particular aspect of company culture.
Re: What defines a great company culture?
#80I 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.
The major takeaway for me is that with a strongly held culture, everyone in the company is playing the game by the same rules, making it clear how to succeed, how to fail, and as such, how to conduct business. It's also clear whether or not you would enjoy working there -- there's no finding the right team or department with its own culture if everyone has the same culture there. Of course, he doesn't explore whether…
Well, of course, the complement is that a diverse culture is one where most people can find some place they can add value and be recognized, and if they get in a team they don't fit well, they can just move into a different one, instead of a completely new job.
Both of those versions are gross oversimplifications.