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What defines a great company culture?

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Re: What defines a great company culture?

#121

Post by nitwit005 »

I find the idea of success through culture hard to believe for companies that are both old and large. Hiring processes are very random, so if you hire vast numbers of people, you're going to end up with typical employees eventually.

Setting an example as a CEO might have some effect, but I honestly have no clue what my CEO, or the people immediately below them, are up to.

People do seem to realize this, which is why you end up with lists of "company values", but if you look at a few of those lists, you'll notice that every company claims to have fairly similar values. People mostly just ignore it as a result.

Re: What defines a great company culture?

#123

Post by cwkoss »

Is there any reason to think Facebook or Amazon are examples of "great company culture"?

From the outside looking in, these companies seem like the two most toxic workplaces in big tech. What makes their culture great?

Re: What defines a great company culture?

#124

Post by bluGill »

bluefirebrand wrote: post #120
carmen_sandiego wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are plenty of well-paying tech jobs that don't require you to work nights and weekends. No need to 'find a different industry'. You kinda sound like you buy in to the overwork and are trying to convince others of your own decision. I would say: the company never really appreciates or rewards it, and becoming a kool-aid salesman is often a path to ruin.

Mind blowing to me how a statement like "I don't want to work half-again as much per week as my contract requires" gets a response like "go find a different industry" As if I'm the one who is wrong here. Decades of workers rights and unions trying to make work safer and better for people, to work less for the same pay, but I'm the one who is wrong for wanting that. Why do software devs love to be exploited so much.

There are lots of industries that need software developers. Switching industry doesn't mean you can't write code anymore. Banks hire a lot of great programmers, and they expect them to work 8 hour days, and many enforce a 2 week vacation every year (if you are committing fraud 2 weeks is long enough for someone to notice something that you would cover up if you had access to the office). Are control software for some valve in some industry. Or medical records need help.

Re: What defines a great company culture?

#125

Post by challengly »

tolbish wrote: post #116
challengly wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> People were no longer aligned or empowered, and the incentive system was changed to basically destroy engineering culture. Same with Google. The intentional misrepresentation and ousting of Damore was a turning point where engineering culture was run over by activist culture.

Would you argue that the outsing of Gebru and others is a turning point where engineering culture is running back over activist culture?

That's pushback, but engineers haven't reclaimed the culture and are mostly still silent and afraid.

Re: What defines a great company culture?

#126

Post by taxcoder »

rchiba wrote: post #90

I'm a big fan of this thread because it helps correct the preconceived notion that culture is on a 1 dimensional spectrum between "bad" and "great". At our 30-person company, we did an experiment where we took a culture framework that was evaluated on 2 axes, and took internal surveys between two years to determine where on the spectrum employees felt our culture was currently at, and what their ideal culture would b…

Interesting, and thanks for the framework. As someone who leans heavily toward the right side of your framework, it's good to have a reminder there are "left-sided" companies that are successful.

It seems to me managers may prefer the right side, while many employees see the left as optimal. Did your data shed any light on this?

Re: What defines a great company culture?

#127

Post by simonsaidit »

numair wrote: post #49

Before you listen to any one connected to early Facebook discussing their “company culture,” I suggest you read the link below and understand what I am saying. There are deep, dark reasons why the word “consent” has never been part of Facebook’s culture. There are a lot of lottery winners in Silicon Valley who leave out the “turned a blind eye to the sexual predator” part of their success stories, whether it involves…

Spend my evening going down the rabbit hole and trying to see what you have been up to for a few decades and seems your are pretty spot on and pretty informed on many things. But some of the things I stumble on also seems incoherent and perhaps that’s because you can fill in the blanks in your head but don’t write it or because you deliberately make it hard to decipher. If all you have said is true it’s quite impressive what you have seen over the years but I can also see that it can be hard to believe the way it’s communicated. I was wondering what happened between 2011 and now where your described this guy I think you are referring to as a great guy and I hope that if there is anything to your latest post that you would actually follow through with it and elaborate more on it.

Re: What defines a great company culture?

#128

Post by paxys »

kache_ wrote: post #44

The amount of money that gets direct deposited into my bank account, biweekly

The thing with salaries is, there is a certain number (different for everyone obviously) at which you are happy and comfortable, and each incremental dollar from there on matters less and less. That is the point where you can afford to care about things like social impact, company culture, fulfillment and more.

Re: What defines a great company culture?

#129

Post by plank_time »

teachrdan wrote: post #118
plank_time wrote: post #84

A great company culture is one where everyone is aligned to the mission of the company and everyone is aligned, empowered and incentivized in this exact same direction. I’ve worked at a couple of companies that had great culture and the best was Uber. Uber, post-shenanigans and pre-Susan Fowler memo, was hands down the best company I’ve ever been at. Everyone was aligned together which meant that everyone was working…

> TK, contrary to the popular narrative, was an extremely progressive person Travis Kalanick illegally obtained and read the private medical records of an Indian worman who was raped by her Uber driver. He publicly claimed she was lying to frivolously sue the company, despite absolutely no evidence to support those allegations. > Uber, post-shenanigans and pre-Susan Fowler memo The "shenanigans"--I think you mean sys…

By shenanigans I mean all the stuff they did in the name of competition. Lyft and Uber both did shitty things to each other but somehow Uber got the rap as the bad one. Globally, every single company Uber competed against did shitty, illegal stuff but you never hear about it. Didi sent in spies to Uber China to work there and steal data. No one talks or cares about that.

You didn’t read the article you linked to, didn’t you? It’s pretty funny. Neither TK nor Uber blamed the victim ever. And TK didn’t order getting the medical records. His subordinate, Eric Alexander, who I had the pleasure to work with once and he was an asshole, obtained them and showed TK. TK shouldn’t have looked at it, but he did. Nothing came of it except Eric Alexander was fired.

I didn’t blame Susan Fowler. I know you have an agenda against Uber, so feel free to believe what you want to believe. The reaction to her memo ruined Uber because leadership was incompetent. She was right to have written that memo, so don’t try to make it seem like I’m blaming her.

Companies the size of Uber will always have harassers and assholes. It’s unavoidable. The best you can do is create a culture that calls it out and fires them immediately. Uber hired a VP of engineering from Google but he was fired because he left Google because of sexual harassment. But Google covered it up. Same with Andy Rubin and his sex slaves. Yet how many of you still use Android?

I agree that TK should have brought Uber to IPO years sooner.

Re: What defines a great company culture?

#130

Post by plank_time »

triceratops wrote: post #96
plank_time wrote: post #84

A great company culture is one where everyone is aligned to the mission of the company and everyone is aligned, empowered and incentivized in this exact same direction. I’ve worked at a couple of companies that had great culture and the best was Uber. Uber, post-shenanigans and pre-Susan Fowler memo, was hands down the best company I’ve ever been at. Everyone was aligned together which meant that everyone was working…

> but what they ended up changing ruined what made it great Please explain more. Did they change more than just sexual and other harassment reporting and handling policies? Why did any of the changes have any effect on engineering?

The engineering culture didn’t working together to succeed. It incentivized people to keep creating new services that were a little different so that they could get promotions. It caused a lot of unnecessary work and an explosion of services. It was very stupid. Blame Thuan for that. He was a terrible CTO.
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