

Core Values - stefan_kendall
http://www.stefankendall.com/2012/10/core-values.html

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freyrs3
> We will not celebrate. Every day will be awesome, or we stop what we’re
> doing and make it awesome. Cake is for gazelles, and we are lions.

What does this even mean?

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mparlane
That Zoos can feed their Gazelles left over cake?

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freyrs3
So we live in a zoo and eat gazelles. Ok, that makes sense now.

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shock3naw
To be honest, this seems like a set of 'nice company policies,' rather than
core values. A lot of these could be summarized with a single value that they
are idealizing. This list looks like a good way to implement those core
values.

Edit: Here are the core values of Google, Apple, Facebook, Zynga, Salesforce,
Amazon, Microsoft, IBM, Netflix, HP, Zappos, Twitter, LinkedIn, SAS, and
Cisco.

[http://bestengagingcommunities.com/2012/07/31/a-sample-of-
th...](http://bestengagingcommunities.com/2012/07/31/a-sample-of-the-values-
and-culture-of-leading-technology-companies/)

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alexshye
Great link. Thanks for sharing!

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miker64
"You are an adult. You will manage your own machine and tools." seems to be
almost directly in opposition to "You will not dig ditches here, and we will
not ask you to do so."

I'm not sure that's inherently a bad thing though. It quietly pushes towards a
follow the standard (hopefully automated) system setup, but feel free to drift
from that where it doesn't work for you.

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greenyoda
That might be possible if the company is still 100% developers. But once your
company grows big enough to hire less-technical people - designers, sales and
customer support staff, product managers, etc. - it's probably more cost-
effective to have some degree of specialization. I can't imagine that it would
be possible for all Google or Facebook employees to manage their own machines
and tools.

~~~
Evbn
Even in Eng org we appreciate the tools teams that dig ditches for us.

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cpt1138
I'm curious about the 2nd item. I'm ambivalent about it. On the one hand I
bicycle into work (20 miles each way) and do most of my problem solving and
thinking on the way in. But what is the value of having an employee live 50
miles away and driving for 1.5 hours each way (I used to do that too)?

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stefan_kendall
There's no value, and I think that's the point. If it doesn't make sense to
commute, you figure out how to work remotely (if it works for the business).

Burning an hour on driving every day (or biking) doesn't help anyone, but an
hour of yoga might. Or time with your kids. Or climbing mountains.

Anything but commuting.

~~~
snogglethorpe
> _There's no value ... Anything but commuting._

I disagree... I think this sort of "regular enforced idleness" can have real
positives.

I used to have a ~45min commute (by train), and I loved it. Going in the
morning was a daily time of peace that I could spend idly reading or vegging
out and watching the world stream past in the morning sunshine.

The commute back in the evening helped me unwind, and collect my thoughts.

[I now live about 5 minutes walk from work. That has obvious advantages, but I
still sort of miss my commute...]

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Evbn
Riding a train is more relaxing than driving....

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snogglethorpe
Indeed; people who drive are probably more likely to consider their commute
"useless downtime."

But still, the original article made no mention of mode, and notion that
commuting _generally_ is dead-time seems wrong to me.

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peteforde
I recommend that you read "Delivering Happiness" by Tony Hsieh, if you hadn't
already done so.

In my experience, company values are not declared so much that they emerge in
practice. You can write down anything you want, distribute it during
orientation, and enforce it with penalties. None of this will create a values
document that resonates with the people who actually work in a company.

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zdw
"You will manage your own machine and tools."

And when nobody can run/compile anyone else's code because everyone has some
weird combination of mismatched versions of stuff that happen to work for them
but nobody else, this will swiftly end...

This list is very much "we will not have any organization", when the right
solution is "we will have as little organization as required".

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arthurschreiber
I'm confused, is this not what generally is done (and works) in open source
development?

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jasonshen
I made my own list like this before starting Ridejoy and I think it's a great
thing to do. Many of the the ideas got implemented, while others I came to
realize weren't good ideas, and others I still want to do but it just hasn't
worked out for one reason or another. It's great to think about these things
in advance, but remember - no plans survive first contact intact. =)

~~~
djt
exactly what i thought when i read it. Great to have a plan, but there are a
few things on that list that I think won't work in practice, but the only way
to find out is to do it!

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SatvikBeri
I would really like to see this happen. There are a lot of idealists who start
companies, and most of them fail (most of all startups fail). But we do seem
to be moving towards an era where good working conditions are simply more
profitable than they used to be-I believe Valve and Github are perfect
examples of this.

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SCdF
Love it, and I'd to see or work for a company that abides by those values.

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franchie
But, isn't Consensus meant to be good for the company?

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jey
No, it's mostly for covering your own ass.
<http://c2.com/cgi/wiki?DesignByCommittee>

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fuddle
Sounds like a fun place to work.

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kahawe
This whole list just begs to be implemented just to see it horribly, horribly
crash and burn when it hits reality. Any real company and all real projects
are far more complex than that and no matter how great these rules sound on
their own, I doubt they will survive the proverbial first contact with the
enemy.

Sorry if this all sounds too negative but I have seen so many lists like this,
nice sounding promises which never held up in reality as soon as the smallest
issues came up.

It's not so much how nice and "totally logical" a value sounds, the important
thing is realizing how you will hold up this value and deal with possible
trade-offs because every decision and value means there will be possibly
negative consequences to it just by the fact alone that you prioritize things.

> _Working longer is not working harder. Go home._

Fair enough, except then that one really great opportunity comes around, this
huge client who could boost your business to the next level... now tell me you
won't bend over backwards for him and so will your team?

> _40 hours includes the commute._

This sounds really great! But John lives around the block and is there in 5
minutes, Jane commutes from the suburbs and it takes her at least an hour by
car so there, you "lost" 10 hours of Jane-working and John wonders why he has
to work so much more than Jane. You are saying "that's childish"? Well,
welcome to working with adults.

> _Resist the urge to call a meeting_

This could quickly put a damper on communication but ok, whatever floats your
boat.

> _Consensus is bullshit. Do what’s best for the company._

And this is the first nice-sounding but completely empty word-shell in the
list. So we are supposed to JUST do what's best for the company and not care
about consensus... what if we disagree with you about what's best for the
company? Oh and somewhere else you said "customers are your business" so which
one takes precedence now? "Business" or "customers"? Because there are a lot
of situations where you might have to do something for a customer even it
hurts business.

> _We will not ship shit._

So you would rather postpone the launch time and again if it isn't perfect? I
am not sure a lot of customers would appreciate this. They EXPECT "not shit"
and they EXPECT it on time. Why do you even mention this?

> _You will do customer service for the products you create._

How is this even going to work? The more projects I have been on, the more
customer service I will be doing and suddenly I end up being a customer
service drone and how is that going to be awesome fun every day like you
promised?

> _We will work in public_

What does that even mean? You publish all the code or will you all sit in a
café?

> _People are expensive. We will strive to keep individuals working for the
> customer, and not on the business._

The most important duty of management is not to fill their own pockets but
making SURE people can keep working for the customer... so if you cut
managers, who is going to make sure things run smoothly?

> _Efficiency is everything. We will remove obstructions._

Again, a nice sounding shell... it is easy to say "no consensus and remove
obstructions" until you are in a situation where cowboy-coding just isn't
going to cut it anymore and you will implement some process, some documents,
some necessary "obstruction".

> _We will not celebrate. Every day will be awesome, or we stop_

I will be working more and more on customer service than on new, hot, sexy
projects... how is this fun? How do you even think you can make every day
awesome for all your employees? Do you realize how empty and worthless this
sentence is? It is work - if it was all fun and sunshine, I am not sure you
would get paid for it and work is NOT always fun.

> _We will enjoy our work, our products, and our lives. We will make work
> awesome._

You just repeated yourself and it is just as empty. How will you guarantee
this against all the things crashing down on you in the day-to-day of project
work and customer service?

> _We will be lean. We will NOT ignore problems, and we will swarm when issues
> arise._

What if this directly means it will cut into another customer's work because
you need all the right bees swarming on that problem? Does solving those
problems take priority over new projects or not?

> _You are an adult. You will manage your own machine and tools._

I thought I wouldn't have to do boring grunt work, how about YOU provide me
with a nice, lean, modern workstation so all I have to do is sit down and
code?

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bjourne
I think most of your objections can be countered with "don't work with
idiots." That none is hired should be managements top priority in every
workplace.

