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What defines a great company culture?

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Re: What defines a great company culture?

#141

> Zuckerberg's response: "I'm building a company that I would want to work for if I hadn't started FB. And I would want to work at a place that shares openly." Still sharing everything 15 years later

We know Zuckerburg is a secret privacy fanatic. The signal app on his phone, buying up all property that can see into his enclave, the tape over his webcam. When he launched he thought people who shared everything with him were “dumbfucks.” In other words, he wouldn’t have shared the type of information that others were giving away for free - as a college student.

I think it's important to separate a desire for privacy outside of work with the transparency/openness in running Facebook, I don't see these things as being closely related to one another.

As for the "dumbfucks" thing - somebody young said something stupid, news at 11. Any time somebody brings this up like some big gotcha I just sort of roll my eyes.

Re: What defines a great company culture?

#142

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…

Here's the result of 30 seconds of googling:

USA Today:

"The Uber executives who viewed her files, which included CEO Travis Kalanick and senior vice president Emil Michael, had started to believe the incident had somehow been orchestrated by Indian ride-hailing company Ola, according to reports"

The Guardian:

"Last week, however, it was reported that Uber took a different view of the assault internally. Alexander, then the president of business for Uber Asia Pacific, reportedly traveled to India in the days after the attack and obtained the victim’s medical records. He then allegedly shared those records with Kalanick and Michael, the senior vice-president for business, and the group theorized that the victim was part of a conspiracy by rival Indian firm Ola to damage Uber’s reputation."

BBC:

"Several media reports cited in the lawsuit said that senior staff at the ride-hailing company, including Travis Kalanick, the former Uber chief executive who was ousted in June this year, and former executives Emil Michael and Eric Alexander, had questioned the victim's account of her ordeal."

The suit settled out of court, so we'll never see all the evidence, but this behavior by Kalanick and other upper management would be in line with his their hiding Uber's actions from regulators via "Greyball" and spying on Lyft's drivers. (Google "Uber Greyball" or "Uber Hell" to learn more about those programs. Contrary to your claims, neither of them were ended before Fowler's open letter.)

It is certainly true that their competitors also behaved badly. But your original post was about how amazing Uber's engineering culture was before Susan Fowler publicized the ongoing, systemic discrimination against women there, at which point all the goodness went away and your good times were spoiled. That honestly makes you look like a clueless, sexist jerk, which I would like to think that you are not.

https://www.usatoday.com/story/tech/news/2017/06/15/uber-sue...

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/jun/15/uber-indi...

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/jun/15/uber-indi...

Re: What defines a great company culture?

#143

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.

Agree. Professionalism is what I look for in a company, not culture.

Re: What defines a great company culture?

#144
My take is to ask: for who?

"Who" is this great company culture for?

Is it for the company to be more competitive in the market and make more profits? Well, Amazon seems to be doing not too bad.

But as an individual, would I want to work there? Not from all reports...

Re: What defines a great company culture?

#145
post #123

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?

Came here to say the same thing. Neither company represents cultures or values that enrich the communities they are a part of.

Re: What defines a great company culture?

#146
post #98
post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You should try to get past that to post-scarcity thinking, possibly interstellar.

There doesn't seem to be any hope of me living that long. Interesting to think about in a science fiction world, but for now there are a lot of toys that I can't afford. I don't think we will ever get there. The energy required for interstellar is too high, and global warming is a concern with anyone using too much energy. (Dyson spheres sound good, but mathematically they are tricky because they imply some form of g…

too late to explore the world, to early to explore the universe.

btw I was alluding to this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Culture

Re: What defines a great company culture?

#147

I find this thread kind of confusing, it basically seems to say the culture itself doesn't matter. What matters is that it is strongly held. Which means top down, ritualized and vigorously defended against any attempts at change.

> I find this thread kind of confusing

Having it split into tweets doesn’t help. I struggle to think of a worse format - perhaps a series of short videos would be worse?

Re: What defines a great company culture?

#148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Here's the result of 30 seconds of googling: USA Today: "The Uber executives who viewed her files, which included CEO Travis Kalanick and senior vice president Emil Michael, had started to believe the incident had somehow been orchestrated by Indian ride-hailing company Ola, according to reports" The Guardian: "Last week, however, it was reported that Uber took a different view of the assault internally. Alexander, t…

Everything you wrote above disproves everything you wrote in your first comment and reinforces everything I said in my comment. TK didn’t order for the medical records to be gotten. A subordinate got them on his own and then shared them with TK. TK shouldn’t have looked at it, but he probably didn’t understand the long term consequences of the optics of doing that.

Also, TK and Uber never publicly accused the victim of anything according to all of your links. Did they have closed door meetings where they questioned whether or not the victim was faked by Ola? Maybe. But publicly they didn’t even hint of that. If you are accusing TK of a thought crime, for going through the exercise of figuring out if there was a motive, then you are engaging in totalitarian beliefs at this point. How many horrible things have you thought or said in your life behind closed doors but were never brought to light because the media isn’t gunning after you?

After everything Uber had been through, was it so crazy to think they Ola would bribe someone to fake a sexual assault to hurt Uber? Of course not. Was it right to obtain a victim’s medical records? Of course not. And Eric Alexander was fired for it. Did Uber ever even hint publicly that maybe the sexual assault was fake? No, and all your links say the same thing. Publicly, in every single link you provided, Uber and TK decried the assault and paid a settlement to the victim.

I know people that worked on Greyball. It was a tool created because competitors in areas like France, were calling Ubers to locations and then physically attacking them. Greyball was used to protect these drivers. Subsequently, police officers would also call Ubers and then try to ticket them. Whether or not you agree with the legality of that is your own right, but it was a way of protecting drivers from getting huge tickets or fines. To qualify that as a mechanism to subvert regulators, well I guess I disagree with you. And in the end Uber ended up being right.

I have plenty of female friends and coworkers that would vouch for Uber as a safe, progressive and supportive environment for women. If any company like Facebook, Google, Amazon, etc went through as thorough a review as Uber did, I would wager much worse things would come up. I’m glad Uber went through it, to rid our ranks of people who sexually harassed women or worse, but only 20 out of 15,000 people were fired. I don’t think that qualifies as “system discrimination against women.” I think that Uber is/was largely a great place to work.

And I know you have an agenda against Uber, so everything you want to believe is going to reflect that agenda. I frankly don’t care what you think of me, and my words speak clearly for themself.

Re: What defines a great company culture?

#149
When people talk about company culture, I always have to think about a new CEO that started in a company I worked for.

He was there for a few months and always talked about how things we do (and did for years, since the company existed) weren part of the company culture. Like he could simply walk in and say what the culture of the company is.

I understand that he wanted to turn the company around, but he talked like some kind of history revisionist.

No man, this is the culture here, it grew over decades, try to make new policies and hope it changes. But simply saying it's not like it is won't achieve anything.

Re: What defines a great company culture?

#150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Built to Last: Successful Habits of Visionary Companies" is a very good book on what makes companies great, and a lot of the points echo this twitter thread, especially "cult-like culture". It's also very interesting because quite a few of the "visionary companies" have failed in the 30 years since it was written.

Same with Good to Great (I think that was also written by the same guy). Some of those companies applauded are still doing well and others are embroiled in scandals of various sorts.

If I remember correctly, 'The Halo effect' by Rosenzweig has a pretty critical retrospective on these two books.
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