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What are your company's anti-values?

willsewell.com

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

#71

Post by ivan_gammel »

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.

Systematic KPI missers must leave in any company: it is hard to understand why it could be otherwise, if you are not living in North Korea or Cuba. People who make one honest mistake or have a bad quarter due to family issues but otherwise are great performers fit in their culture, they explicitly mention that in slides.

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

#73

Post by sharken »

cube00 wrote: post #72

No bullshit [1] [1] https://web.archive.org/web/20210311001446/https://www.aussi... Edit: Switched to an archive.org version in response to comments about a captcha being used at the source URL.

Sorry, but the CAPTCHA is probably great at filtering out bots, but in this case it also filters out potential readers.

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

#74

Post by cube00 »

qwerty456127 wrote: post #18

Punctuality-maniac policy. Take your seat at 09:01 (or 08:59!) rather than at 09:00 precisely and you're fucked. A delegate from a partner company or an employment candidate who would arrive to an appointed meeting 10 minutes later or earlier is considered a dick and treated with lowest priority.

Our old project manager mandated we must have daily stand-ups.

They were always at least five minutes late for what should have been a five minute stand up because they knew we'd have to wait for them.

I managed to get team agreement we start no later then 2 minutes past, no matter who isn't there, management included, no judgement for late comers but the meeting is starting as we have work to get on with.

Suddenly said project manager started showing up on time. Who knew?

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

#75

Post by mepiethree »

qwerty456127 wrote: post #18

Punctuality-maniac policy. Take your seat at 09:01 (or 08:59!) rather than at 09:00 precisely and you're fucked. A delegate from a partner company or an employment candidate who would arrive to an appointed meeting 10 minutes later or earlier is considered a dick and treated with lowest priority.

Why is it considered a dick move to be early as an employment candidate? As long as the candidate is unobtrusive and keeps themselves busy, all it shows me is that they value the opportunity enough to budget extra time for things like traffic, etc.

(Of course, now we do everything remote, so I wouldn’t even know if they are early)

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

#77

Post by sharken »

diegoperini wrote: post #63
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/

This is more up to date as stated in the slides: https://jobs.netflix.com/culture

In the financial sector people over process is just not realistic, too much regulation makes sure that will never happen.

Independent decision-making is also hard to do, as soon as something requires a budget, you can forget about the independent part.

And maybe you can have fewer rules, but instead they will be labelled processes and generally end up having the same effect.

I do agree that highly effective people should be kept, e.g. people who are not afraid to move out of their chosen comfort zone once in a while.

If I should state two core values, they would be critical thinking and curiosity.

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

#78

Post by mepiethree »

cube00 wrote: post #74
qwerty456127 wrote: post #18

Punctuality-maniac policy. Take your seat at 09:01 (or 08:59!) rather than at 09:00 precisely and you're fucked. A delegate from a partner company or an employment candidate who would arrive to an appointed meeting 10 minutes later or earlier is considered a dick and treated with lowest priority.

Our old project manager mandated we must have daily stand-ups. They were always at least five minutes late for what should have been a five minute stand up because they knew we'd have to wait for them. I managed to get team agreement we start no later then 2 minutes past, no matter who isn't there, management included, no judgement for late comers but the meeting is starting as we have work to get on with. Suddenly s…

I really like the “no guilt, but start on time” model, especially now that we don’t have the disruption of someone entering the room. I am often late because I am in meetings 6 hours a day which can lead to a “doctor effect” of cascading lateness. But for things like standup, just GO!

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

#79

Post by puszczyk »

ivan_gammel wrote: post #69
karatinversion wrote: post #53

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…

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.

I’d say the opposite, there needs to be a delta between values and actual behavior.

I want to be a good husband, dedicated employee, etc. Am I? I’d like to think more often than not. But we all err, and I value the transparency/courage to ack that we are not perfect on our values and still have a long way to go.

For me the a flag would be if a person/company is not willing to acknowledge they are not as good as they public values are. (Because how can they improve if they can’t even ack it).

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

#80

Post by alecbz »

karatinversion wrote: post #53

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…

IMO the only way to have aspirational values is to make them part of perf/the job ladder. Most typical "value statements" ought to be descriptive.
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