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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

#101

Post by johnnyanmac »

ElProlactin wrote: post #52

> Without good culture, everything else won’t work well Except the market is full of proof this isn't true. You can still do very well with a broken culture if you have an oligopoly, through tactics like vendor lock-in, by buying up upstart competition early, using VC funding to capture the market by selling below cost, etc. And now that you have hundreds of thousands of people who have been laid off from high-paying…

Those examples all had good culture at some point. It's just that once you're too big to fail (and/or have captured regulatory bodies) you get to tear apart the culture and extract the short term rewards. Literally killing the golden goose.

It's short sighted yes... And that's the point once your means of making money is not tied to societal productivity.

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

#102

Post by lukan »

ahsteele wrote: post #69
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…

> If you push for change long enough, and aren’t an asshole about it, just genuinely interested and motivated, there’s a chance you’ll see your vision for better culture materialize. Throughout my career, I’ve described this as “polite persistence is how you effect change.”

Unpolitely breaching walls and doors is also how you effect change, but I prefer the polite persistence for a better long term effect as well.

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

#103

Post by johnnyanmac »

derektank wrote: post #47
esseph wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Being able to work more quickly is pretty much the definition of productivity. Wrong. You can dig a tunnel that fills in and kills you. You can drive in a huge circle to get not the house next door. You can kick out 1M lines of code a day that you don't understand and can't read. It's only productive if the work produces value.

To extend these metaphors, AI is adding supports to your tunnel, nudging your steering wheel to keep you going straight, and ensuring that the code you produce doesn't have vulns.

Not by default. Not for the vast majority. The term of "AI Slop" didn't spread becsuse AI is known for quality output, even if a skilled user driving the AI could nudge it towards quality output.

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

#104

Post by noisy_boy »

Good culture is basically dont-be-an-asshole culture. Which is very hard to do.

In a distant past, my team was one of the teams under a senior manager. This guy never threw his weight around, asked questions, listened to us, trusted us and instead of pretending everything was an emergency, actually cut some slack but told us in no uncertain terms when we were supposed to be full steam ahead. Below him, my manager and me and other folks were technical people who just wanted to get stuff done.

It was amazing how excited we were to, not only do new stuff but improve existing stuff (sometimes by trying new things). The senior manager shielded us from the political games, his vertical got the credit for good stuff we did and we actually looked forward to coming to office. The pay sucked so I had to move on but I didn't see that experience replicated anywhere else - either the managers will just trying to slave-drive and/or there were always people trying to fuck things up for their own gain. Basically, asshole behavior.

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

#105

Post by discreteevent »

ricardobayes wrote: post #86
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", o…

> I've never seen a company that was a., successful and b., prioritizing tech debt/upkeep at the same time.

Maybe you have only worked in start ups? I have certainly seen products fail or partially fail because of tech debt. One product was extremely unproductive to work on because of a patched together architecture. To the extent that bugs were introduced easily but took so long to turn around that customers left the product and told us that was the reason.

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

#107

Post by gavmor »

discreteevent wrote: post #105
ricardobayes wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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", o…

> I've never seen a company that was a., successful and b., prioritizing tech debt/upkeep at the same time. Maybe you have only worked in start ups? I have certainly seen products fail or partially fail because of tech debt. One product was extremely unproductive to work on because of a patched together architecture. To the extent that bugs were introduced easily but took so long to turn around that customers left th…

What's the transition threshold at which paying down tech debt becomes worthwhile? Maybe it's a gradient.

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

#108

Post by mlrtime »

solatic wrote: post #82
roncesvalles wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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…

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

#109

Post by r_lee »

kaffekaka wrote: post #23
r_lee wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

this is just false...

Curious, how? To me it is obvious that an org with a good culture will be more able to identify and reach its targets than a dysfunctional org lacking trust and safety.

it's simply not equivalent to web search, I mean, I don't understand how one would come to that conclusion?

we can argue about how much more productive you get, but, it's definitely not the same as what we had before

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

#110

Post by yttt »

linuxhansl wrote: post #60

After 35 years in the industry in various capacities (from architect, engineer, VP, and different products, small and large companies, ...) I can heartily confirm this. A company with a good culture is like a good football or soccer team. They work with each other to win, they know each other (enough for the job at least). I am working at a bigger place now and the AI mandates handed down have been quite unproductive…

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