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What are your company's anti-values?

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Re: What are your company's anti-values?

#111

Post by cestith »

ravenstine wrote: post #51
ignoramous wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I fear "We're not a family" at this point is an oft copied mantra (I recall seeing this in GitLab's S1), same as Amazon's "missionaries over mercenaries" that's now prevalent (Coinbase, the most recent example), as well.

Ironically, "we're not a family" may end up being nearly identical to "we're a family". People distrust "we're a family" because it's an illusion, not because of the potential for an actual sort of "family" or friendship. But they may also come to distrust "we're not a family" once it becomes as cliche and they realize that every company they work for that makes such a claim will inevitably devolve into making the em…

Some of my strongest lifetime friendships have been made in small startups where everyone treated everyone like family. I don't mean the Cleavers, either, but a real family with internal spats, sibling rivalry, and embarrassing stories brought out at parties. We broke bread together, suffered loss together, celebrated victories together, and protected ourselves collectively from outside threats. We were welcome in one another's homes. One of my coworkers (at three different firms) and I married sisters. I met my ex wife at his wedding. It was a wonderful life experience, but not something that I think can scale beyond a couple dozen people. Anyone who's telling you their 200-person company or 5,000-person company is like a family is lying to you to attempt to buy loyalty or is deluding themselves.

Re: What are your company's anti-values?

#112

Post by svilen_dobrev »

btw the agile manifesto (and similars) has such "we value X over Y" phrases.

Another thing; as this one says, the values are the rules (well, should be). Breaking (intentionaly) them is a compromise needed sometimes. While not following, is different matter.. https://8thlight.com/blog/stephen-prater/2020/09/15/values-r...

Re: What are your company's anti-values?

#113

Post by bluedino »

papito wrote: post #29
dusted wrote: post #11

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).

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".

Some families get together to have an intervention for their alcoholic brother and cut him off.

Re: What are your company's anti-values?

#115

Post by codeptualize »

hsn915 wrote: post #62
codeptualize wrote: post #59

The only values that are real are the ones that contribute to making money. Values go out of the window real quick whenever they negatively impact revenue, whatever they are. I like the idea of anti values, certainly much better, but even there you might as well not have them imo.

This is a common sentiment but it is wrong. Making money is just one of the operational constraints that a company has to take into account. Companies exist to fulfil a purpose. That purpose is not just "make money". Steve Jobs founded Apple not to just "make money". I think this does not need further elaboration. The same applies to Tesla and SpaceX, founded by Elon Musk. Companies that only exist to make money are…

That's not the point I'm trying to make. I agree that it's not the only purpose, and even if it was I don't think that's bad per se. You could also see it as fulfilling a purpose to make money, they often go together, it's probably the ideal situation.

My point is; As long as making money and their values align it's all good, but if decisions need to be made that present a choice between values and profit/growth it becomes very hard to choose for values. Especially once a company goes public, gets acquired, or needs significant investment, it might not even have the option to live by its values.

That's why I think values are only real/true if they align with profit/growth. Similar to what the article describes; what do they really mean? How much impact do they really have? How much of it is PR?

What it comes down to imo is; Is there willingness to sacrifice growth and revenue for values? I'd say in most cases the answer to that is no, and I would much prefer it if companies are just clear and honest about that.

If you do count other forms of companies, like not-for-profits, then it's a totally different story of course.

Re: What are your company's anti-values?

#116

Post by lostcolony »

sharken wrote: post #77
diegoperini wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is more up to date as stated in the slides: https://jobs.netflix.com/culture

In the financial sector people over process is just not realistic, too much regulation makes sure that will never happen. Independent decision-making is also hard to do, as soon as something requires a budget, you can forget about the independent part. And maybe you can have fewer rules, but instead they will be labelled processes and generally end up having the same effect. I do agree that highly effective people sh…

>> people over process is just not realistic

Invest in people understanding the reasons for something, and allow them to ensure it's upheld. A relevant domain-less software analogy is testing; you can mandate some level of testing, and it will be a burden, a morale killer, and constantly fail to be upheld, or you can work to ensure everyone understands the benefits of testing, create space for people to write tests and automate their execution, and then rely on culture to ensure testing happens. I've been in places that tried to mindlessly mandate corporate policies to ensure compliance; it resulted in delays and low morale, and extremely patchwork adherence (I left that place still not knowing if we were compliant or not). I've also been at a place that implemented SOX compliance; they didn't mandate anything, just "we're becoming part of a publicly traded company. Here is what the goal is. Here is some training to help understand what sorts of things we now need to be mindful of. Here is a person who you can talk to to help understand what that means for you. This is our highest priority right now". Morale stayed high, the results were good, and completion was -early-.

>> as soon as something requires a budget

Everything requires a budget. Headcount is a budget. The point is give people problems to solve, the relevant constraints, and let them work, rather than micromanage the solution. Maybe that's an industry failure, but don't confuse it for a unique constraint on that industry, rather than just a universal problem in that industry.

>> And maybe you can have fewer rules, but instead they will be labelled processes

Process exceptions exist. Rule breaking exists. And failure to break process/rules when you should have happens too. The point isn't to not have a sensible default, but to instead arm people with knowledge so that they pick the default when it makes sense to, and deviate when it makes sense to. It's the same distinction around "best practices"; they're not, they're just reasonable defaults. And by not dictating a process, you allow evolution in the de facto process the teams follow, to improve the process. I've seen companies attempt to revamp their internal processes from a top-down model: universally not pretty. I've also seen teams and departments retro and iterate, and see constant improvements.

Re: What are your company's anti-values?

#117

Post by makapuf »

bigDinosaur wrote: post #21
straffs wrote: post #2

There is a cultural aspect to this. American often try to be pro-stuff. French are always anti-stuff (pro life in the US, anti abortion in France, etc)

Does that actually result in any meaningful differences between these countries in the debate?

On this specific topic, things are absolutely not similar otherwise, so it's difficult to compare. More generally, French people can tell you immediately that's not possible because... which sounds fatalistic but it s not, we're just saying here are the roadblocks I see, please convince me they can be alleviated and I'm totally in.

Re: What are your company's anti-values?

#118

Post by TimesOldRoman »

nonrandomstring wrote: post #10

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…

Toyota's "Respect for People" was a sort of joke to me when I worked there, then I worked at Amazon and saw the opposite.

Toyota is a great company to work for, albeit super boring.

Re: What are your company's anti-values?

#119

Post by euroderf »

pydry wrote: post #47
nonrandomstring wrote: post #10

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…

"Don't be evil" was a good value. Google just didn't want to be bound by it.

"Google: We Are Beyond Good-versus-Evil" (TM)

Re: What are your company's anti-values?

#120

Post by ARandomerDude »

marcosdumay wrote: post #89
puszczyk wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’d say the opposite, there needs to be a delta between values and actual behavior. I want to be a good husband, dedicated employee, etc. Am I? I’d like to think more often than not. But we all err, and I value the transparency/courage to ack that we are not perfect on our values and still have a long way to go. For me the a flag would be if a person/company is not willing to acknowledge they are not as good as they…

You mean that you should not hide of the difference between values and behavior? Because there's nothing on that comment that actually supports the difference. And if you are being honest, descriptive values should describe your behavior very closely.

The thing you're struggling with is the parent's humility.

Value: be great at everything all the time

Parent: I try very hard but often fail

You: then you must be dishonest about your values

Humility is a virtue not a vice.

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