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What are your company's anti-values?

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

#201

Post by projectazorian »

lupire wrote: post #143
Edman274 wrote: post #141

Earlier 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…

Your problem is that you are "as a shareholder" where the values are the business proposition to the customers. Also your problem is that you favor evil ways of making money, but don't call it evil, instead of owning the evil.

In American capitalism the investors are the real customers, not the consumers.

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

#202

Post by p1esk »

phist_mcgee wrote: post #192
p1esk wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Why? They are getting double the average janitor salary. Why would they want to leave?

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

#203

Post by twoxproblematic »

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…

Not answering your question, but among my gamedev circle, "fun" is seen as a useless word because there are so many different possible meanings (challenging, soothing, exploratory, nice graphical effect feedback, nice music, social, etc) and often are contradictory with each other. We've seen countless times people setting merely "fun" as their goal, and then getting horribly depressed when the nebulous "fun" is never struck upon, with no clue how to make any ground in that direction.

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

#204

Post by dkersten »

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…

Fun isn't a well defined, well understood thing. There's no quick and easy way to know if something will make the game more fun or not, you often have to guess and just try it out in a prototype. Fun is also subjective, so fun for who?

In the example given, adding something to multiplayer isn't more fun for people who don't play multiplayer, but it may well be for those that do and since they're the focus, the feature gets added. So "prioritize multiplayer" is a useful razor because you can act on it: does it add to multiplayer? yes, it gets kept, no it gets cut. Its actionable. Is it fun? Who knows, you gotta test it out first.

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

#205

Post by mfringel »

I've found you can determine a company's values based on who gets more resources: e.g. raises, promotions, etc.

Similarly, a company's anti-values could be discovered by who gets less; e.g. passed over for promotion, given a 'window seat', laid off, etc.

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

#206

Post by BirAdam »

bluedino wrote: post #113
papito wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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".

Some families get together to have an intervention for their alcoholic brother and cut him off.

Eh. That doesn’t really work though. An alcoholic (any addict) has to _want_ to change. The individual must make the choice. Nothing else will work long term. Often enough, addicts die due to some effect of the addiction, or commit suicide when they cannot live with some effect. I find that people often make poor judgement when confronting addicts. Every addict is an individual first, and while the route of their addiction may look similar to others it is never identical. Some addicts respond well to interventions. The intervention can convince some of the need to change. For other addicts, this only further entrenches the addiction due to some emotional response. This is especially true, in my experience, when the family was the source of the abuse that caused the depression that ultimately drove the addict to some substance for relief. The “cut off” rather than the intervention would (in some cases) be truly more humane. Some families operate on different philosophies and they would argue that to be of service to family no matter the cost is first. While laudable, I would disagree.

Source: I come from a family with many addicts: two uncles, sister, brother, father, mother, grandfather, grandmother, cousin, great uncle, great aunt, three aunts, myself.

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

#207

Post by nonameiguess »

rightbyte wrote: post #50
papito wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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".

It is a platitude, not toxic. Being a "pro sportsteam" on the other hand could be considered toxic. I know of no more cut throat legal business than sports. They are aggressivly signaling that they push KPI missers out.

This isn't exactly true. Other than NFL, American pro sports have pretty strong unions, and even if you get cut, you still get paid. You might even get paid more, even though you're not working. Netflix doesn't give out guaranteed contracts that continue to pay you even after you get fired.

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

#208

Post by logifail »

dusted wrote: post #197
arrow7000 wrote: post #180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> I like to do more than is expected, but if what is expected is by definition more than what is needed [..]

Do (m)any companies attempt to drive sales by describing a product as "adequate"?

If your child sits a school test and the teacher describes the result as "adequate" would you be content?

In the workplace why wouldn't one want to always aim to do "good" work (which is very definitely one step above "adequate"). That doesn't mean amazing, outstanding or exceptional. It also doesn't imply pressure.

Why would anyone approach a keyboard if they weren't attempt to do something good?

Put another way, who gets out of bed aiming to be adequate? It's not like it even sounds like an aim, it sounds like it happens when you're not paying attention.

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

#209

Post by dkersten »

karaterobot wrote: post #186
xiaq wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

I always felt it was meant to imply something more like: "show the world that not being evil is a better business strategy".

I guess it didn't work for them so they just abandoned it.

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

#210

Post by phist_mcgee »

p1esk wrote: post #202
phist_mcgee wrote: post #192

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Why? They are getting double the average janitor salary. Why would they want to leave?

Because then you break the rule of 'everyone must be excellent'. In a room full of geniuses, do many people choose to mop the floor?
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