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This mirrors Netflix's old culture slide deck[0] > adequate performance gets a generous severance package > We’re a team, not a family; We’re like a pro sports team, not a kid’s recreational team [0] https://www.slideshare.net/reed2001/culture-1798664/
This mirrors Netflix's old culture slide deck[0] > adequate performance gets a generous severance package > We’re a team, not a family; We’re like a pro sports team, not a kid’s recreational team [0] https://www.slideshare.net/reed2001/culture-1798664/
I'm finding that Netflix slide incredibly toxic, I'd never want to work for Netflix after reading that, no matter how skilled I was (they wouldn't want me anyway so nobody lost anything).
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> it seems only assholes and sociopaths are transparent in this regard Every C-level employee is an asshole and probably a sociopath, if this was true every company would be transparent. As that isn't the case, we know that it does not necessarily have anything to do with being an asshole or a sociopath.
> Every C-level employee is an asshole and probably a sociopath That's a big generalization without any argument to back it up.
Given those facts, I didn't see why a further paragraph of background would be valuable: My point would not land with more people regardless of whether or not I wrote that paragraph.
The most famous anti-value was "Don't be evil" and look where that ended up. "Don't be a dick" has good practical mileage. The Kantian ideal of the Kingdom of Ends is pretty good one if you formulate it as "Don't use people", but that's too high a standard for almost any business today (especially the ones whose entire model is "using people"). One of my personal maxims is "Lead people not into temptation". In other…
The article says people should state values as a tradeoff. So for google it should have been something like:
Favor not being evil over making more money.
But that’s only what is desired by the company. Individuals inside the company still push people to do things quickly at the expense of quality.
We also have leadership principles: ‘Play a team sport: so keep discussing everything with everyone until nobody disagrees (either through actual agreement or exhaustion)’.
My initial approach to the values was a similar "Who cares, these are bland corporatese" one. It wasn't until a 10+ year senior engineer on my team discussed the trade-offs between the values in an architecture meeting that I really understood the purpose. Take two of the values[1]:
"Dive deep" vs "Bias for action" - these have an inherent tension between the two. You can justify any action with either one, but it is about knowing when to apply what. You do not want to be Diving Deep as your first action when you are oncall and your alarms are going off in every direction, but it may need to be your third.
"Have Backbone; Disagree and Commit" has opposite ideas written into it! Having backbone is about being able to back up your position with as much data and research as you can. Disagree and Commit is about not being emotionally invested in your position and not taking things personally when the team chooses to go another way. It is recognizing the fact that you may be working in an area of ambiguity where no one side can be proven right before the fact.
Like most worthy things in life, there is a lot of nuance to these that cannot be expressed in a pithy 140 (or 280) character limit. But the idea that you should have "anti-values" is a very, very useful one. It allows you to think through different scenarios and explain what your team/organization/company would prioritize when there are competing priorities.
I think that says enough about how company and it bosses think.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'm finding that Netflix slide incredibly toxic, I'd never want to work for Netflix after reading that, no matter how skilled I was (they wouldn't want me anyway so nobody lost anything).
And that is totally fine and 100% the intent of that slide. You and Netflix don't match in terms of expectations. Id give kudos to netflix for being up front about it.