'The Purpose of a Business is to Create a Customer'
Drucker - 'The Practice of Management' is full of common sense 'anti-values'
What are your company's anti-values?
151–160 of 274 posts
Re: What are your company's anti-values?
#152Earlier quoted context omitted.
I do agree that the honesty is refreshing. That said, I personally feel like the mentality of "We will fire you if you aren't doing an _exceptional_ job" reads as a serious red flag. The implication here is that you should expect to work overtime and prioritize your job over all else. Even then, we might still fire you. Of course I'd rather have a company being open and upfront about their unsustainable expectations,…
I interpret that as a positive sign. Every manager and company I've worked for has been too slow to fire under-performers.
If you've never done it, it's very hard, emotionally, to fire an under-performer. You see someone struggling and you know it's best for your team/company but now you're going to put that person out of a job.
I'm not excusing it, but I can see people putting off firing under-performers just to avoid feeling like shit.
Re: What are your company's anti-values?
#153Earlier quoted context omitted.
As a shareholder, I think that not making as much money as possible is the real evil here. I always interpreted "don't be evil" as "don't waste money building an aquarium for sharks with lasers on their heads". I never in my darkest nightmares thought it meant "shut down profitable centers of corporate growth just because some bleeding hearts say that it's bad to pollute developing countries with planned obsolescent…
Poe's law right here. I really had no idea if this was genuine or satire the first 3 times I read it. I'm pretty sure it's satire.
Yeah, the ambiguity was intentional, and you're right.
Re: What are your company's anti-values?
#154We work hard to rapidly capture our market space! (But as a result, sales is allowed to bully engineering, and our technical debt is growing faster than the Internal Revenue Code)
Re: What are your company's anti-values?
#155Earlier quoted context omitted.
Q: Is wanting to succeed considered a bad thing?
If we are talking NHL level exceptations at my dayjob, ye, it is a bad thing. Especially as there are no way of rating programmers as fairly as sportsmen.
> Especially as there are no way of rating programmers as fairly as sportsmen.
Oh boy, I guess you don’t follow sports too closely. There is endless debate about rankings and player value and statistics.
But I am digressing.
Re: What are your company's anti-values?
#156The 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, 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.
"Don't be evil [at all costs]"
A truly uncompromising value, if that was the intent of Google's motto, sits at the pinnacle of the hierarchy and the tradeoff is literally everything else.
Re: What are your company's anti-values?
#157Earlier quoted context omitted.
I do agree that the honesty is refreshing. That said, I personally feel like the mentality of "We will fire you if you aren't doing an _exceptional_ job" reads as a serious red flag. The implication here is that you should expect to work overtime and prioritize your job over all else. Even then, we might still fire you. Of course I'd rather have a company being open and upfront about their unsustainable expectations,…
You do realize they offer top of market compensation (250k fresh grad, >500k senior SWE, etc) for what they are looking for?
So your argument would be, as long as the pay is right, toxic culture is allright?
I mean, as long as this is a individual decision, that would be allright with me - but pay does not negate toxic. It only makes it bearable.
But like stated above, I do not say that Netflix culture is toxic, as they are clear about what they expect: top performance above everything else. That this can lead to toxic situations, as we all are not only having good times - should be clear to anyone applying. But I suppose even at netflix they are aware of this and hopefully have plans to deal with temporary burn outs, other than instantly firing those underperformers.
Re: What are your company's anti-values?
#158Re: What are your company's anti-values?
#159In my social media profile image I use a Saint Augustine maxim for friendship: Ubi amicita est, ibi idem velle et idem nolle. "True friendship is in, same likes and same dislikes." [1] Is the best radar (sonar?) I've found to predict and sense how shallow or deep a friendship with any person you'll have. Now you can use it as a generator of the types of relations with individuals that you company has/wants to have: f…
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Re: What are your company's anti-values?
#160No post body was provided.