"Human Resources" Department I think that says enough about how company and it bosses think.
"Human Resources" departments are a relict of a dark and long gone past. It's called "people and culture" now.
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What are your company's anti-values?
101–110 of 274 posts
Re: What are your company's anti-values?
#102"Human Resources" Department I think that says enough about how company and it bosses think.
"Human Resources" departments are a relict of a dark and long gone past. It's called "people and culture" now.
> It's called "people and culture" now.
There's something broken about the highly extroverted non-technical types that are attracted to HR roles thinking they're in charge of shaping the 'culture' of an engineering organization. Please keep them far away from that particular role.
Re: What are your company's anti-values?
#103Earlier quoted context omitted.
This actual vs described values mismatch is a red flag and it could be an easy way to discover toxic culture. When applying for a job, you usually have multiple interviews - HR, team, direct manager. It makes sense to ask all of them about their values and compare the answers.
There are some reasonable explanations though: * The actual values have changed over time but the value statement hadn't been updated in a while * Different parts of the company genuinely have different values I don't think either of those necessarily indicate a toxic culture.
Totally agree that it does not point to toxic culture per se. It's just an easy way to spot something wrong at this angle.
Though both explanations may also point to something:
* If values changed, but company did not bother to communicate them, then they are not important and not applied in daily life. This is not necessarily a bad thing at the moment of observation, but it may lay a foundation to toxic culture eventually.
* If different parts of the company have different values, then the decisions where those values would have been applied may result in a conflict between those parts. Red flag.
Re: What are your company's anti-values?
#104This idea of anti-values helps explain the brilliance of Google's "focus on the user", a value which I did indeed remember and frequently use as justification for a course of action frequently. The anti-value / tradeoff is implicit but clear enough: focus on the needs of end users over other stakeholders. This was a very useful heuristic in Web DevRel because there's often a tension between making something easy for developers versus making something easy for users. E.g. making a site accessible makes it easier for users at the expense of more work & complexity for the developers.
Re: What are your company's anti-values?
#105Allowing "Welcome to the insane asylum" to be the standard greeting new hires receive. It is a great way to instantly demoralize people and instill fear on their first day.
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Re: What are your company's anti-values?
#106Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think claiming that "we are a family" is actually the toxic one. It's incredibly dishonest to claim that. No one gets fired from a family because the family is "right-sizing".
"we're a family but if you don't do well enough gtfo"
It is like a family, just more like the family from Succession…
Re: What are your company's anti-values?
#107Earlier quoted context omitted.
It is a platitude, not toxic. Being a "pro sportsteam" on the other hand could be considered toxic. I know of no more cut throat legal business than sports. They are aggressivly signaling that they push KPI missers out.
Systematic KPI missers must leave in any company: it is hard to understand why it could be otherwise, if you are not living in North Korea or Cuba. People who make one honest mistake or have a bad quarter due to family issues but otherwise are great performers fit in their culture, they explicitly mention that in slides.
They write that "we cut smartly to have stars in every position". That is dellusional.
Probably works well in NHL when you draft each year anyway and players do the same thing, like dentists.
My belief is that continuation is way more important than stars. Especially since recruiting (and not fireing) stars is a more or less random process anyway.
I imply unreasonable KPIs. Also, "right to work" has more in common with North Korean job safety (i.e. none) than say Spannish dito.
Re: What are your company's anti-values?
#108This 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/
What is adequate and what is the frame of reference? If adequate is average by some objective metrics and the frame of reference is Netflix itself then they would need to be terminating half their work force annually to make good. This sounds like braggadocio to me.
Re: What are your company's anti-values?
#109Love the idea of anti-values. Although I feel what the author is doing is trying to upgrade values towards guiding principles, which really resonates with me.
I'm a Lego Serious Play certified facilitator and what we do with one of our workshops is helping organizations defining what we call Simple Guiding Principles (SGP). SGP's are identified by an org as a set of principles that can help guide autonomous decision making.
The example "Optimise learning over focus" is a perfect SGP as it gives the individual a practical principle to follow, for example when prioritizing his/her time.
Re: What are your company's anti-values?
#110Earlier quoted context omitted.
This is a signal that they have phrased their values well. A good values statement should polarize. It should disgust people whose ability to work effectively would be poisoned by the culture that leadership strives to maintain. A recruiting process which discriminates against people who do not share their values will create a more secure sense of belonging among people who do -- even among underprivileged groups who…
Do employees from underprivileged groups stay at Netflix longer than comparable companies?
Who cares? Even giving credit to the point I think you're trying to make, the relevant comparison would be employees from underprivileged groups stay at Netflix as long, on average, as Netflix employees not from underprivileged groups.