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Good Culture Is the Biggest Productivity Hack, Not AI

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Re: Good Culture Is the Biggest Productivity Hack, Not AI

#81

Post by shimman »

dolni wrote: post #46
shimman wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Argue the need to implement workplace democracy: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Workplace_democracy The idea that we shouldn't be able to vote for our bosses is completely ridiculous. If we had truly collaborative workplaces it would probably unlikely another $50 trillion worth of value once you give workers the ability to exercise their voice (passionate workers want stable working environments, if executives are nev…

As a worker, you can exercise your voice... by getting another job. That is your vote. The power of your vote is proportional to the value you bring. A while back I threatened to quit because I had a team dynamic that was untenable. I made a management change mandatory. I got a new boss. The old boss was later terminated.

No, this is called exit and it assume that monetary reasons are the only important thing in an economy. That is false, workers should be allowed to exercise their voice about bad management and change bad management. If you want to leave that is fine but thinking that every worker wants the same thing as you is extremely foolish.

Congrats as a single individual doing something, LMK when it amounts to real material change like obtaining a pension, or securing more PTO, or getting better health insurance.

Re: Good Culture Is the Biggest Productivity Hack, Not AI

#82

Post by solatic »

roncesvalles wrote: post #75
dirtbag__dad wrote: post #57

[for companies with idk 100 or less headcount] Good culture boils down to: 1. Predictability. Flavors of it: deliver features on time, roadmap stays mostly stable, on demand requests are known about ahead of time, business struggling or doing well transparent, tech debt / upkeep are first class citizens of planned work. All of this is project management and communication. 2. Org pays market rate and has good benefits…

>Org pays market rate and has good benefits. This is so important. One of the things that kills company culture before the company even takes off is getting a sense from the founders that they're just trying to fool desperate/clueless people into working for them for less than what they're worth. The startups that actually succeed have the philosophy "find the best people and pay them a lot". All the successful unico…

By definition, paying employees well means paying them above-market, not market rate. If you pay people market-rate, nobody writes home about the compensation. Market-rate is also not "underpaying" i.e. below-market.

Paying above-market rates is walking a tightrope. On the one hand, experienced employees who are well-versed in your systems and your organization are indeed worth more than market-rate (i.e. someone new), and compensating them as such will retain them. On the other hand, it also retains poor performers, who you want to steer to finding roles elsewhere. Being ruthless about firing fast is one option, but it's a deal with the devil - it erodes psychological safety among people who stay unless the firing is unanimously desired and there is a consensus among everyone who remains that it was necessary. So if you handle the firing wrong, you affect performance and social cohesion everywhere. If you pay market-rate, it's easier to just make someone miserable until they self-select out and find work elsewhere.

Unfortunately (or fortunately?), all successful startups pay above-market because equity compensation in the right company can be a life-changing amount of money. So most successful startups seem to successfully walk that tightrope.

Re: Good Culture Is the Biggest Productivity Hack, Not AI

#83

Post by claw-el »

aesthetics1 wrote: post #16

AI accelerates dysfunction. It will help you get to the wrong place faster if you're already heading there. I do believe the opposite is true too. If you have a strong culture, a product or idea with promise, and a team of smart and capable people, it can move you faster in the right direction too. The problem is that every person or company in group 1 thinks they are in group 2.

I think that every person or company in group 1 thinks they are in group 2 because they see ‘speed’ in ‘completing work’ as a signal in better performance. Especially since VCs are pushing for speed (https://x.com/Alfred_Lin/article/2084636778791858256), a lot of misguided person and company who is moving fast thinks they are in group 2, when the speed they have only doubles them down group 1

Re: Good Culture Is the Biggest Productivity Hack, Not AI

#84

Post by dosisking »

sghiassy wrote: post #31

I worked on a 20-ish team of good-but-not-brilliant engineers. Our secret weapon was liking each other and having very low turnover over the course of 10 years. As a principal engineer at Meta and LinkedIn, it’s still the most productive team I’ve ever been on

Given that you work for Meta/LinkedIn, I don't think 'productive' is the correct adjective. It would be like saying that Ted Bundy was more 'productive' than Jeffrey Dahmer.

Re: Good Culture Is the Biggest Productivity Hack, Not AI

#86

Post by ricardobayes »

dirtbag__dad wrote: post #57

[for companies with idk 100 or less headcount] Good culture boils down to: 1. Predictability. Flavors of it: deliver features on time, roadmap stays mostly stable, on demand requests are known about ahead of time, business struggling or doing well transparent, tech debt / upkeep are first class citizens of planned work. All of this is project management and communication. 2. Org pays market rate and has good benefits…

I agree with most of this. However in my time I've never seen a company that was a., successful and b., prioritizing tech debt/upkeep at the same time. I presume AI will fix this however maybe not since it's so tempting to defer strategic decisions to it.

I have seen tech companies flourish which had tech, or tech-adjacent leadership. I've never seen a really good tech company that was lead by an MBA, a "vibe bro", or someone looking to get rich quick. It almost always comes from a genuine passion to solve problems in a certain domain.

One key point is also hires, hiring slowly and not keeping bad hires around. Bad hires really pull everyone down and it's really difficult to work around bad coworkers.

I personally actively filter out companies who don't use Slack. The way communication is done in a company reflects practically every company decision. (Conway's Law)

Re: Good Culture Is the Biggest Productivity Hack, Not AI

#87

Post by junior44660 »

tikhonj wrote: post #51
dolni wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a worker, you can exercise your voice... by getting another job. That is your vote. The power of your vote is proportional to the value you bring. A while back I threatened to quit because I had a team dynamic that was untenable. I made a management change mandatory. I got a new boss. The old boss was later terminated.

You can also exercise your voice by... talking. That might mean trying to convince leadership, it might mean trying to coordinate a bunch of people who agree with you but don't want to act on their own, or, who knows, it might mean something else. But there are quite a lot of things you can do that are short of threatening to quit or simply leaving. (And sometimes just leaving really is the best step!)

It just gets you in the bad books of the management for pointing out faults.

Re: Good Culture Is the Biggest Productivity Hack, Not AI

#88

Post by ricardobayes »

zug_zug wrote: post #5

I think the points being made here are mostly good-ish. The last place I worked created a team of principles whose whole goal was to create a system to turn jira tickets into PRs and it was incredibly demotivating and bore no fruit before I left. But, and maybe I'm just a curmudgeon, but I kind of wonder why we write articles like this. Like if a culture is bad, is it likely a CEO is going to be looking for random bl…

I think most small or mid-sized company CEOs are much more incentivized or even, interested to "do it right". Once a board or shareholders get involved, it's different, because their (the CEO's) job also changes: they have a duty to serve the shareholders financial interest, not to create a good corporate culture.

Re: Good Culture Is the Biggest Productivity Hack, Not AI

#90

Post by interludead »

dirtbag__dad wrote: post #57

[for companies with idk 100 or less headcount] Good culture boils down to: 1. Predictability. Flavors of it: deliver features on time, roadmap stays mostly stable, on demand requests are known about ahead of time, business struggling or doing well transparent, tech debt / upkeep are first class citizens of planned work. All of this is project management and communication. 2. Org pays market rate and has good benefits…

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