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What are your company's anti-values?

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

#191

Post by econnors »

munificent wrote: post #189

Back when I worked at EA there were obviously many horrible aspects to its culture. But one thing I always thought was cool was that they had a notion of a "razor". This was a principle or guideline that was worded specifically enough to clearly slice up a set of options into whether they fit it or not. When designing a game, "The game is fun," is a shitty razor because it doesn't tell you how to prioritize or make t…

> When designing a game, "The game is fun," is a shitty razor because it doesn't tell you how to prioritize or make trade-offs

coming from countless hours of playing games and near zero hours making them, I'm curious why "this game is fun" doesn't help you make tradeoffs. I feel like concentrating on the game being fun would help avoid repetitive mechanics that would be tiresome or tedious (inventory management), frequent non-skippable dialogue, etc. Why is that not the case?

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

#192

Post by phist_mcgee »

p1esk wrote: post #147
lupire wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The real problem is Netflix rally refuse to hire merely competent staff for boring work? Do they really need 10,000 major innovations every year? Even pro sports teams have paid support staff working with the "players".

The point is that even for boring work (e.g. a janitor) it’s better to hire one really good worker than two average ones.

And good luck retaining your highly paid janitor. Someone has to be the coaster in a workplace.

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

#193

Post by exnot »

Assume positive intent -> Anti-value: Forgoing the ability of accurately assessing the other party's intent.

Even the original value itself was problematic since rarely was the intent positive and assuming it was based your actions on a wrong assumption. Depends on the people you work with naturally, but in this particular organisation there was an abundance of people looking out for themselves mainly; e.g. avoiding work, shedding responsibilities, lying, twisting facts, etc, and especially so in management.

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

#194

Post by logifail »

arrow7000 wrote: post #180
logifail wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I'm finding that Netflix slide incredibly toxic I don't find anything in that deck even remotely toxic. I find it almost jaw-droppingly honest !

Honestly and toxicity are orthogonal. They're not opposite sides of the same spectrum. Seems to me that they are both honest and toxic.

> [Honesty] and toxicity are orthogonal

Q: What's our working definition for "toxicity", specifically in the workplace?

I'm not sure they're nearly as orthogonal as one might think. My experiences of toxic workplaces involved a great deal of dishonest behaviour and I'm struggling to recall much if any honesty.

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

#195

Post by dusted »

afarrell wrote: post #32
dusted wrote: 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).

This is a signal that they have phrased their values well. A good values statement should polarize. It should disgust people whose ability to work effectively would be poisoned by the culture that leadership strives to maintain. A recruiting process which discriminates against people who do not share their values will create a more secure sense of belonging among people who do -- even among underprivileged groups who…

I totally agree, they save both themselves and me the trouble of finding out if I have anything to contribute with at their place.

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

#196

Post by aynsof »

nonrandomstring wrote: post #10

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…

I'd suggest the best example of anti-values is in the Agile Manifesto.

They state that they value (as an example) individuals and interactions over processes and tools. But they make it clear that while there's value in the things on the right, they value the things on the left more.

In the way the author describes, I always found this framing to be super helpful for decision-making.

It's also something that frustrated me about the (otherwise fantastic) Amazon Leadership Principles. When should I dive deep and when should I have bias for action? I realise now that I should have bias for action when it's a reversible decision and dive deep when it's a one way door. But it's not clear from the principles themselves in the way it's clear in the Agile Manifesto.

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

#197

Post by dusted »

arrow7000 wrote: post #180
logifail wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I'm finding that Netflix slide incredibly toxic I don't find anything in that deck even remotely toxic. I find it almost jaw-droppingly honest !

Honestly and toxicity are orthogonal. They're not opposite sides of the same spectrum. Seems to me that they are both honest and toxic.

Agreed, it's much better to be upfront about it, to avoid wasting time and money on employees that don't fit in (and, as a side effect, avoid hurting those people).

The reason I believe they're showing a work environment that would be toxic to me, is that the line "> adequate performance gets a generous severance package" does not stand alone, it's only part of it, they're giving me the general vibe that I should be constantly scared of being the next one to go, that my best will only be good enough until they find someone better..

I don't mind competition, there's always competition, but for me personally, I don't want fierce competition and high pressure to be part of my daily life, not outside recreational activities where the stakes are "get fired for doing an adequate job". I like to do more than is expected, but if what is expected is by definition more than what is needed, well, then I would have to do more than more than what is needed, I don't even know what that is, and I'd not want to constantly think about it and wear myself down from trying to achieve it.

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

#198

Post by wongarsu »

econnors wrote: post #191
munificent wrote: post #189

Back when I worked at EA there were obviously many horrible aspects to its culture. But one thing I always thought was cool was that they had a notion of a "razor". This was a principle or guideline that was worded specifically enough to clearly slice up a set of options into whether they fit it or not. When designing a game, "The game is fun," is a shitty razor because it doesn't tell you how to prioritize or make t…

> When designing a game, "The game is fun," is a shitty razor because it doesn't tell you how to prioritize or make trade-offs coming from countless hours of playing games and near zero hours making them, I'm curious why "this game is fun" doesn't help you make tradeoffs. I feel like concentrating on the game being fun would help avoid repetitive mechanics that would be tiresome or tedious (inventory management), fre…

If I understand GP correctly they use "razors" analogous to philosophical razors [1], as a quickly evaluated rule of thumb to shave away options. "This game is fun" doesn't work for that, because often "does X make the game more fun" requires prototyping X and having some people playtest it. You can definitely make great games that way, but you are not really applying a rule of thumb anymore.

Compare that to "is this usable in multiplayer", "does it serve a narrative purpose", "can we show it in a trailer". All of those are quick to answer (but not all of them make for good games).

1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philosophical_razor

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

#199

Post by elcritch »

nonrandomstring wrote: post #10

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…

I’ve come to wonder if Google’s “don’t be evil” secretly always meant “don’t be truly evil, just skirt the edge of being evil”. It’s much more profitable being in the grey zone.

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

#200

Post by bjohnson225 »

d--b wrote: post #15
nonrandomstring wrote: post #10

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…

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” is a slightly edgier version of the typical corporate value of “Do the right thing” which I’ve seen in many companies. Sounds good, but vague enough to be meaningless.
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