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Programming Your Culture

bhorowitz.com

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Re: Programming Your Culture

#11

Post by Matt_Cutts »

davros wrote: post #7
Matt_Cutts wrote: post #4

There's good stuff in this post, but I think a lot of a company's culture surfaces at moments that are thrust on you when you least expect it. At Google, I can think of a few points that influenced my perceptions: - the first DMCA request we got, from the Church of Scientology - the day that we turned on Netscape. It turns out we didn't have enough server capacity, so we turned down Google so that we could serve the…

Those are all great and very interesting examples where senior leaders create a culture by taking tough and visible decisions. I wonder if they worked in the same sort of way that the post describes where new people talk about them and it makes them engage with the issues around the culture? That is, did they have a long-lived effect on culture or were they one-off boosts to it? I think you've got a culture when all…

Actually, I think for half of the examples I mentioned it was rank-and-file Google employees who forged Google's response. I've seen a bunch of examples of regular colleagues galvanizing Google to do the right thing. Often regular Googlers drag execs to the answer we think is right. :)

I think each of the four examples I mentioned did have a long-lasting effect on the company as well, e.g. the Data Liberation Front ( http://www.dataliberation.org/ ) is a natural result of the pledge not to trap users' data.

Re: Programming Your Culture

#12

Post by codeonfire »

Some companies need to kill the college dorm culture they are trying to emulate.

How about a culture that says 'I put college behind me and I'm worth a few extra square feet and a place to hang a picture or two.' Where can I find that culture?

Re: Programming Your Culture

#13

Post by MaxGabriel »

codinghorror wrote: post #8

> we instituted a ruthlessly enforced $10/minute fine for being late to a meeting with an entrepreneur. So, you are on a really important call and will be 10 minutes late? No problem, just bring $100 to the meeting and pay your fine. When new employees come on, they find this shocking, which gives us a great opportunity to explain in detail why we respect entrepreneurs. Except.. this doesn't actually work. http://www…

I imagine that the fine at Andreesen Horowitz isn't so much a financial incentive but instead signaling and shock value that respecting entrepreneurs is important, in the same way that book budgets at startups aren't so much a financial incentive but signaling how the company treats engineers.

There's also the matter of who's imposing the fine. For the day care, imposing a fine negated the social incentive not to be late because the parents saw themselves as adhering to the contract the day-care set up. Conversely, the entrepreneur didn't set up such a 'contract' between him or herself and AH, so there's no understanding that it's ok to be late if you pay the fine.

Re: Programming Your Culture

#14

Post by jfoutz »

guiambros wrote: post #10
codinghorror wrote: post #8

> we instituted a ruthlessly enforced $10/minute fine for being late to a meeting with an entrepreneur. So, you are on a really important call and will be 10 minutes late? No problem, just bring $100 to the meeting and pay your fine. When new employees come on, they find this shocking, which gives us a great opportunity to explain in detail why we respect entrepreneurs. Except.. this doesn't actually work. http://www…

Sure not. Unless the fine is high enough to hurt financially the person that is infringing the rules, it will have the opposite effect. It'll allow a false sense of entitlement; "I'm paying for it, so it's now ok to arrive late to pick up my child. It's my right" .

It's not false if you're paying for it. you've bought the right.

Re: Programming Your Culture

#15

Post by halvsjur »

Matt_Cutts wrote: post #4

There's good stuff in this post, but I think a lot of a company's culture surfaces at moments that are thrust on you when you least expect it. At Google, I can think of a few points that influenced my perceptions: - the first DMCA request we got, from the Church of Scientology - the day that we turned on Netscape. It turns out we didn't have enough server capacity, so we turned down Google so that we could serve the…

> the day that we turned on Netscape. It turns out we didn't have enough server capacity, so we turned down Google so that we could serve the traffic from Netscape.

What is this referring to?

Re: Programming Your Culture

#16

Post by codinghorror »

guiambros wrote: post #10
codinghorror wrote: post #8

> we instituted a ruthlessly enforced $10/minute fine for being late to a meeting with an entrepreneur. So, you are on a really important call and will be 10 minutes late? No problem, just bring $100 to the meeting and pay your fine. When new employees come on, they find this shocking, which gives us a great opportunity to explain in detail why we respect entrepreneurs. Except.. this doesn't actually work. http://www…

Sure not. Unless the fine is high enough to hurt financially the person that is infringing the rules, it will have the opposite effect. It'll allow a false sense of entitlement; "I'm paying for it, so it's now ok to arrive late to pick up my child. It's my right" .

I'm pretty sure that $10/minute isn't hurting anyone working at a VC firm enough to matter. Maybe $10k/minute?

A fine that was high enough to cause financial harm would surely have other unanticipated effects.

Re: Programming Your Culture

#17

Post by codinghorror »

MaxGabriel wrote: post #13
codinghorror wrote: post #8

> we instituted a ruthlessly enforced $10/minute fine for being late to a meeting with an entrepreneur. So, you are on a really important call and will be 10 minutes late? No problem, just bring $100 to the meeting and pay your fine. When new employees come on, they find this shocking, which gives us a great opportunity to explain in detail why we respect entrepreneurs. Except.. this doesn't actually work. http://www…

I imagine that the fine at Andreesen Horowitz isn't so much a financial incentive but instead signaling and shock value that respecting entrepreneurs is important, in the same way that book budgets at startups aren't so much a financial incentive but signaling how the company treats engineers. There's also the matter of who's imposing the fine. For the day care, imposing a fine negated the social incentive not to be…

I was late to a VC meeting today. Because I am a dumbass and did not plan my travel well.

Should I, or anyone else, be fined for that?

I apologized when I arrived (and e-mailed as I could beforehand) because it's rude to be late for a meeting with people you are in business with, regardless of whatever monetary incentives someone wants to arbitrarily hang on that.

If you need a fine system to make that work, I'd argue you have deeper problems, problems that money isn't going to do much to solve.

Re: Programming Your Culture

#18

Post by MaxGabriel »

codinghorror wrote: post #17
MaxGabriel wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I imagine that the fine at Andreesen Horowitz isn't so much a financial incentive but instead signaling and shock value that respecting entrepreneurs is important, in the same way that book budgets at startups aren't so much a financial incentive but signaling how the company treats engineers. There's also the matter of who's imposing the fine. For the day care, imposing a fine negated the social incentive not to be…

I was late to a VC meeting today. Because I am a dumbass and did not plan my travel well. Should I, or anyone else, be fined for that? I apologized when I arrived (and e-mailed as I could beforehand) because it's rude to be late for a meeting with people you are in business with, regardless of whatever monetary incentives someone wants to arbitrarily hang on that. If you need a fine system to make that work, I'd argu…

I don't mean to hold a position that Andreesen Horowitz's fine is effective, so I can't answer that -- I just think that the situation of the daycare and Andreesen Horowitz differs enough that we can't draw conclusions about one by looking at the other.

Re: Programming Your Culture

#19

Post by [deleted] »

codinghorror wrote: post #8

> we instituted a ruthlessly enforced $10/minute fine for being late to a meeting with an entrepreneur. So, you are on a really important call and will be 10 minutes late? No problem, just bring $100 to the meeting and pay your fine. When new employees come on, they find this shocking, which gives us a great opportunity to explain in detail why we respect entrepreneurs. Except.. this doesn't actually work. http://www…

[deleted]

Re: Programming Your Culture

#20

Post by rdl »

halvsjur wrote: post #15
Matt_Cutts wrote: post #4

There's good stuff in this post, but I think a lot of a company's culture surfaces at moments that are thrust on you when you least expect it. At Google, I can think of a few points that influenced my perceptions: - the first DMCA request we got, from the Church of Scientology - the day that we turned on Netscape. It turns out we didn't have enough server capacity, so we turned down Google so that we could serve the…

> the day that we turned on Netscape. It turns out we didn't have enough server capacity, so we turned down Google so that we could serve the traffic from Netscape. What is this referring to?

Google started providing search results for the Netscape browser. Google didn't have enough server capacity to provide fast search results for normal www.google.com traffic and the new Netscape browser search traffic, so they started dropping queries to www.google.com until they could increase performance.

i.e. they put their customer, Netscape, ahead of their own website's performance.

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