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What are your company's anti-values?

willsewell.com

121–130 of 274 posts

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

#121
Sometimes I think these values statements are a substitute for employees understanding why the company makes money and the factors that contribute to that.

Without that understanding, it's like there is a hierarchy of companies where the companies where everyone "gets it" on revenue are in their massive exponential growth phase like startups with small teams, then there are the ones who factor it out into KPIs, and the job is literally to move the line on that KPI at scale without any other deep understanding, but their company explosive phase is over and their growth is linear - and then the final company type is where the real revenue factors are effectively secret, and there is a solid long term cash flow the company mainly optimizes its costs over, with no significant forseeable growth other than stock volatility.

Depending on the growth phase of the organization, values and anti-values are sort of moot, as it's a question of what real growth factors your teams understand and are aligned with pushing in a confluent direction. I'd be concerned if someone were sincerely indexed on values, as it seems like a substute for, "we do this thing well that solves this problem for these customers and that makes money so that we can support our families," and anything beyond that seems kind of weird in comparison.

Sure, I've worked for pre-PMF companies that looking back I suspect they were in-effect NFTs for financial/portfolio engineering so there wasn't really a clear way to make money, and they spent a lot of time on inspirational values stories, but that effort should have been spent on finding product market fit.

To me, the only meaningful values quesiton is, when you know who the customers are, do you want to solve that problem for those people? Seems straightforward.

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

#122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 wi…

They explain in detail what does this mean in presentation.

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

#123

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.

Most well-run operations tend to be boring, because there are not enough fuck-ups to make it interesting. Kind of what you want. Agree on the Amazon thing, despite being super efficient, and operationally well-run, they could care more about people. To put it diplomatically. Amazon is very consistent between blue and white collar so. That cannot be said about a lot other companies out there.

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

#124

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.

Being ethical is often aligned with being boring. I don't want the employees at my insurance company doing anything exciting with my personal information.

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

#125
post #29
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".

If you've ever been part of a family business, you'd know the approach to handling things is quite a bit different. When family dynamics come into play, you end up having to tolerate things and compromise things in ways that would be considered unacceptable in a corporation.

You find out your brother is pocketing part of the tips that are supposed to go to the back of the house.

Your son has been accused of sexual harassment by one of the waitresses.

What do you do? You're not going to "take it to HR". Any action you take here is going to be painful and is going to be challenged by other members of the family with an equal stake.

So I immediately recoil when I hear that I'm "family". Oh, you're going to look the other way when I get caught embezzling? We'll work something out when I get caught the second time? Didn't think so.

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

#126
post #30
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).

It's funny how people have different reactions to it. I find it quite compelling and well thought out. "We're a pro sports team" is a much better and less toxic mindset than "we're a family".

It is definitely more honest.

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

#127
post #82

I thought that anti-values were the true, unstated values of an organization. Some examples from pockets of my org… “The more important you are, the less you touch code/servers/things” “Lots of meetings means you’re important.” (People will frequently humblebrag “I have 13 meetings today”) “Create a problem, present a problem, let someone else solve, celebrate the solution.” There’s also many positive values that I t…

I wonder if I’ve misunderstood, but as a developer, I like being given problems, rather than solutions. I’ve also found being able to formulate a customer or business problem well enough that others can come up with a good solution is a real skill which (IMHO) should receive recognition.

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

#128
post #22
post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Don't be evil, is not an anti-value. It's negatively-stated-yet-positive value. 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.

I think "favor not being evil over making more money" is exactly how the "don't be evil" motto is commonly interpreted.

I’d think it’s commonly interpreted as “don’t be evil” where the cost of not being evil isn’t specified.

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

#129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Is that actually the case?

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

#130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Is that actually the case?

Should it be?
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