What are your company's anti-values?
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What are your company's anti-values?
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Re: What are your company's anti-values?
#2There is a cultural aspect to this. American often try to be pro-stuff. French are always anti-stuff (pro life in the US, anti abortion in France, etc)
Re: What are your company's anti-values?
#3I 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 sociopaths are transparent in this regard :-/
Re: What are your company's anti-values?
#4The trade-off question is interesting.
I think for us, an implied anti-value would be "Focus on the core product and say no to some customers"
As OP said, no-one would deny that focusing on the core product is bad but at what cost? We have failed in the past by taking on custom work for the cash, and it helped us bootstrap. But to scale, the custom work needs to go away and we need to give the maximum value to the broadest number of customers through the core offering.
Re: What are your company's anti-values?
#5I 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.
Re: What are your company's anti-values?
#6This is a very good test to determine priorities. If you simply ask "what should be done?", there are too many answers. A better question is "what needs to be done so badly that you would sacrifice other worthwhile things to do it?".
Re: What are your company's anti-values?
#7This 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
Re: What are your company's anti-values?
#8I 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.
This. It has less to do with personal character and more to do with the incentives baked into the company.
Re: What are your company's anti-values?
#9I 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.
> Every C-level employee is an asshole and probably a sociopath
That's a big generalization without any argument to back it up.
Re: What are your company's anti-values?
#10The 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 words, no addictive (engagement) features, no lock-in, don't create dependency, make sure the code you write enables people and gives then freedom and choice (migration/federation etc). Again, those values are almost impossible to maintain in todays climate of hyper-exploitation.