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What defines a great company culture?

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Re: What defines a great company culture?

#131

Post by SkyMarshal »

Sometimes I think there's too much obsession over culture, to point its become too naval-gazing and even cargo-culting.

Culture is the result of doing other things right, like hiring smart, relentlessly resourceful people who get things done and who are deeply interested in their work.

Beyond that, maintain a standard of excellence and integrity throughout the organization, and you're pretty much done. From that point, success is up to hard work and some luck (timing, right place at the right time, etc).

Re: What defines a great company culture?

#132

Post by hrktb »

daniellarusso wrote: post #82
hrktb wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think consistency is overrated, and a cause of countless undue issues. We seem to mostly agree that diversity is important, and having employees from different background help bring different ideas and solutions to the table, react with more agility on unforeseen situations. On a fundamental level, applying the same vision and forcing the same values and rituals on everyone looks to me at odds with what diversity i…

Personally, I believe consistency is an indicator of defined process. Consistency can still produce negative results, but, because it is a defined process, it is much easier to ‘pull the levers’, and wrangle the process into an outcome you want. Serendipity is great, but it really does take a special group of people for that synergy to work, absent a process. I think of it like a good band.

Yes, I think at an individual level there needs to be clear rules and expectations, and the sense of belonging to a coherent group sharing the same values.

It's more at an organization level where I see the need to have niches accomodating groups that have different dynamics, perhaps goals and working patterns.

Another instance of that could be customer support centers, who work hand in hand with the product and dev centers, while having wildly different composition, processes and targets from the rest of the company.

Re: What defines a great company culture?

#134

Post by benlivengood »

I tend to agree with the commentors saying that culture is secondary to business reality.

Most startups and even a lot of established companies have a nebulous and weak business model; success or growth is not assured. Culture moves the deck chairs into different patterns but the odds are still that the ship goes down.

People who want culture to drive growth are misguided.

Re: What defines a great company culture?

#135

Post by closeparen »

This really doesn't match my experience about what the interesting parts of "culture" are.

How much do we value doing the work vs. talking about it? Are the highest-status people the most skilled practitioners, or something else? Are policies and processes designed with empathy for practitioner workflows, do they make any intuitive sense to practitioners, or are they decrees from clueless faraway box-tickers?

Are people on top of their shit and constantly improving it, or do they not even realize what's wrong with it until you tell them? When you file bug reports and feature requests are they responded to promptly and taken seriously?

How much do we value consistency, reliability, stability - both in our work product and in our interactions with each other? Are APIs stable? How are migrations handled? Do platform teams provide nice off-ramps? Do they continue providing adequate support for the old thing until you're actually off, or just shrug and say you should have been using the shiny new? When you get a "monthly newsletter" - was there an issue last month? Will there be next month? If you come across a 2-year-old "approved" design doc in unfamiliar territory, what are the chances it was actually executed?

I have seen all these things vary quite a bit between teams and over time.

Re: What defines a great company culture?

#136

Post by slumdev »

mrits wrote: post #56
strathmeyer wrote: post #47

As an advanced programmer it always seemed I was getting rejected for jobs because of 'culture' because I wouldn't put up with their abusive environments.

Maybe it's because you refer to yourself as an advanced programmer?

The GP might be a prima donna, or he might just be stating the facts.

We have to be able to distinguish apprentices from people who have all of the breadth, depth, and color that comes with experience. In sane professions, they don't call someone "senior" after 3-5 years.

Re: What defines a great company culture?

#137

Post by [deleted] »

plank_time wrote: post #129
teachrdan wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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, did…

[deleted]

Re: What defines a great company culture?

#138

Post by [deleted] »

selestify wrote: post #102
qznc wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A company culture is great if it fits the company strategy. In other words, the company should value internally what the customers like about the company. It might high quality or agility or efficiency or whatever. If a company changes its strategy, the culture can be too strong. You can see that a lot where established hardware companies struggle to adopt more of a software culture. A culture can be too weak to supp…

What are the differences between hardware and software culture?

[deleted]

Re: What defines a great company culture?

#139

Post by wunderflix »

hrktb wrote: post #64
wunderflix wrote: post #12

> They key to a strong culture is consistency from the top. The CEO's job is to make sure everyone on the management team is on the same page. If a senior leader wants to create their own unique culture for their part of the org, they can't be allowed to stay. I love this entire thread and it resonates a lot with me. I, too, believe that there is not THE right company culture that will solve everybody’s problems. Man…

I think consistency is overrated, and a cause of countless undue issues. We seem to mostly agree that diversity is important, and having employees from different background help bring different ideas and solutions to the table, react with more agility on unforeseen situations. On a fundamental level, applying the same vision and forcing the same values and rituals on everyone looks to me at odds with what diversity i…

I guess it depends on how hard it is enforced. In the end, consistency is something gray and not black and white.

Re: What defines a great company culture?

#140

Post by themolecularman »

CountDrewku wrote: post #71

How about none at all? I'm not joining a cult. I go to work to get paid and that's it. I don't need some weird culture shoved down my throat and I certainly don't need to be thinking about work 24/7.

Agreed. I'm not sure what this "culture" talk is. I've been in the bay area for a decade now and have worked at a small YC startup with a modest exit, a big-ish company that got acquired, and a bigger company that's gone public.

In all cases each company talks up it's "culture" - to me it's just a phrase that elicits an eye-roll.

Another commenter suggested you look for a "typical 9-to-5", but even there I'm sure they'd talk up their amazing culture.

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