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What are your company's anti-values?

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

#51

Post by ravenstine »

ignoramous wrote: post #20
adflux wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And that is totally fine and 100% the intent of that slide. You and Netflix don't match in terms of expectations. Id give kudos to netflix for being up front about it.

I fear "We're not a family" at this point is an oft copied mantra (I recall seeing this in GitLab's S1), same as Amazon's "missionaries over mercenaries" that's now prevalent (Coinbase, the most recent example), as well.

Ironically, "we're not a family" may end up being nearly identical to "we're a family".

People distrust "we're a family" because it's an illusion, not because of the potential for an actual sort of "family" or friendship. But they may also come to distrust "we're not a family" once it becomes as cliche and they realize that every company they work for that makes such a claim will inevitably devolve into making the employee-employer relationship out to be more than it actually is or should be.

I disbelieve most corporate values because companies are run by humans, and humans are pretty bad at self evaluation. Well, that and I've had enough experience to tell me that explicitly stated corporate values usually mean very little in practice. Only you can unveil a company's values, though that's no easy task beyond some basic red/green flags.

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

#52

Post by tux3 »

hutzlibu wrote: post #41
tux3 wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>The implication here is that you should expect to work overtime and prioritize your job over all else. I don't think that's right. The slide says: """ Hard Work — Not Relevant We don't measure people by how many hours they work or how much they are in the office [...] Sustained B-level performance despite effort generates severance Sustained A-level performance despite minimal effort is rewarded """ The message seem…

"But I don't think they value overtime at all. " But they do value putting the company over yourself (and your real family). This can probably have very toxic effects, if you are having problems at home for example (sick kids or whatever) and all they allways care about, is your performance right now. So definitely not the place for me - as I would never put a company over my children (and it sounds like this is expe…

Oh yeah, I see what you mean. Absolutely agree on that.

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

#53

Post by karatinversion »

A company always consists of individuals that have to make trade-offs, so to the extent it has a cohesive culture at all, it will have values that are expressed in those trade-offs. But values (or anti-values) that a company publicly espouses do not need to coincide with its actual values: a value statement of being inclusive does not prevent a culture of bullying, and a value statement of putting the customer first does not prevent the actual value being to screw the customer whenever profitable.

"Descriptive" vs "aspirational" values, if you will.

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

#54

Post by rightbyte »

sakarisson wrote: post #31
krageon wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What is there to give arguments for? Either you've worked in a few companies and you have friends that have also done so (in which case it'd seem obvious), or you're part of a class that doesn't work (or you are a C-level employee yourself). In the latter cases, nothing I say will convince you. In the former case, we have enough shared environmental background that you understand what I'm saying already. Given those…

Your point states that all C-level employees are sociopaths. Logically, if I can provide you with a single example of a non-sociopath C-level employee, your point would be invalid. Of course I don't believe that you are literally saying that every single C-level employee in the entire world is a sociopath, but merely that the majority or a significant portion are. > My point would not land with more people regardless…

I think there might be a big sample bias. People on your own level or the level above but not your boss, can't "mess with you" in the way a C-level can. I.e. bad people don't stand out as well.

A clear example would be cops and cashiers at Walmart. The later can hardly mess with you at all, even if he would be a bad person.

On the other hand security guards at night clubs and cops have about the same opportunity to mess with me, and I can easily say the guards on average are worse people.

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

#55

Post by logifail »

dusted wrote: post #11
david_allison wrote: post #7

This mirrors Netflix's old culture slide deck[0] > adequate performance gets a generous severance package > We’re a team, not a family; We’re like a pro sports team, not a kid’s recreational team [0] https://www.slideshare.net/reed2001/culture-1798664/

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).

> 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!

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

#57

Post by glenngillen »

> “Learn and Be Curious” - what might that cost us? Maybe focus (because it’s ok to go down rabbit holes in order to learn something). So how about “Optimise learning over focus”? Maybe, maybe not.

A couple of the values pulled out here are from the Amazon Leadership Principles. So there's actually an answer to this question! The opposite of "Learn and Be Curious" is "Bias for Action" and "Deliver Results". The Amazon LPs are designed to have tension with each other. You can't embody all of them at the same moment. Which ones you prioritize are contextually dependent. Which is also helpful for dealing with conflict and disagreement because so many arguments are people talking past each other not realizing that they're actually misaligned on an underlying assumption and wasting energy arguing about how to execute.

"I don't think this is a good path forward, we should take our time to 'Dive Deep' and do more research"... "Ah, that's the issue. We've already agreed as a group the prioritize for 'Bias for Action' because of "... "Hrm. In that case I can understand why this path makese sense. If you're all confident that's the right priority here then let's go."

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

#59

Post by codeptualize »

The only values that are real are the ones that contribute to making money.

Values go out of the window real quick whenever they negatively impact revenue, whatever they are.

I like the idea of anti values, certainly much better, but even there you might as well not have them imo.

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

#60

Post by yatac42 »

krageon wrote: post #5
sfjailbird wrote: post #3

I like this, and I agree that it is a lot more expressive of company culture than generic positivity (would love to see this applied to politics, too). The only companies I can think of who do this are the Facebook example from OP, and some of the big investment banks, who make it pretty clear that they do not give a shit about anything except how much money they make. Unfortunately it seems only assholes and sociopa…

> it seems only assholes and sociopaths are transparent in this regard Every C-level employee is an asshole and probably a sociopath, if this was true every company would be transparent. As that isn't the case, we know that it does not necessarily have anything to do with being an asshole or a sociopath.

> if this was true every company would be transparent

"Only assholes and sociopaths are transparent" does not mean "all assholes and sociopaths are transparent".

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