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What are your company's anti-values?
61–70 of 274 posts
Re: What are your company's anti-values?
#62The 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.
This is a common sentiment but it is wrong.
Making money is just one of the operational constraints that a company has to take into account.
Companies exist to fulfil a purpose. That purpose is not just "make money".
Steve Jobs founded Apple not to just "make money". I think this does not need further elaboration.
The same applies to Tesla and SpaceX, founded by Elon Musk.
Companies that only exist to make money are probably terrible by any measure you choose.
Re: What are your company's anti-values?
#63This 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/
This is more up to date as stated in the slides:
Re: What are your company's anti-values?
#64Earlier 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,…
>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…
What I've seen happen at other companies that state they value impact over effort, openly discouraging overtime, is that eventually certain individuals will attain higher impact by not recording their overtime, who then pressure others to do the same. No, no one is directly rewarded for overtime, but effectively, yes, undocumented overtime becomes the expectation from your peers. That is toxic.
Re: What are your company's anti-values?
#65"Human Resources" Department I think that says enough about how company and it bosses think.
"Human Resources" departments are a relict of a dark and long gone past.
It's called "people and culture" now.
Re: What are your company's anti-values?
#66Allowing "Welcome to the insane asylum" to be the standard greeting new hires receive. It is a great way to instantly demoralize people and instill fear on their first day.
- Can I get promoted?
- You can't even get paroled.
Re: What are your company's anti-values?
#67Earlier 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.
Q: Is wanting to succeed considered a bad thing?
Re: What are your company's anti-values?
#68The 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.
This is a common sentiment but it is wrong. Making money is just one of the operational constraints that a company has to take into account. Companies exist to fulfil a purpose. That purpose is not just "make money". Steve Jobs founded Apple not to just "make money". I think this does not need further elaboration. The same applies to Tesla and SpaceX, founded by Elon Musk. Companies that only exist to make money are…
While just "making money" may sound a bit short-sighted, it IS the reason for the company's existence.
Hopefully, however, profit is correlated with/caused by providing value to humanity, which in turn encourages "good behavior" from companies. If a company is seen as "bad", it starts to lose clients.
Re: What are your company's anti-values?
#69A 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…
This actual vs described values mismatch is a red flag and it could be an easy way to discover toxic culture. When applying for a job, you usually have multiple interviews - HR, team, direct manager. It makes sense to ask all of them about their values and compare the answers.
Re: What are your company's anti-values?
#70One thing people seem to forget regarding tradeoffs is that it's possible to do objectively bad ones: It's possible to have neither a bias for action nor curiosity. Mentioning both values is a reminder to be on the efficient frontier.
Further, you probably dont want to pick an extreme tradeoff. Getting a drop more action at the cost of huge learnings is a mistake as is getting very irrelevant knowledge at a huge cost of action.