
Show HN: Key Values – Find engineering teams that share your values - lynnetye
https://www.keyvalues.io/
======
Jemaclus
I would second the option to negate some of these "values." There are about
eight that I don't consider to be "values", but just to pick one of them at
random, I don't consider "has good beer" to be a value I look for in a
company. In fact, I consider a focus on alcohol in the workplace to be a red
flag and would like the ability to filter out a place like that. In my
experience, workplaces with alcohol in them tend to focus their work-related
happy hours around drinking. As someone who does not drink, I often feel left
out of those social activities, and am often actively shamed for not
participating.

Some of the "values" are kind of ambiguous. How do you quantify "bonded by
love of product"? What does that even mean? Doesn't everyone consider
themselves "Creative + Innovative" and "Customer Comes First"? Would anyone
advertise a company that doesn't have a "High Quality Codebase"?

I do like the overall idea of the site and the filtering mechanisms. I'm glad
you're considering adding more "values" to the system, and hope you can add
some more nuanced selection of those values (i.e., negation). You're
approaching this from a tough but clever angle, and it'll be a lot of work to
tweak it and get it right. Keep it up.

Also, site looks beautiful. Love the logo.

~~~
saghm
> In my experience, workplaces with alcohol in them tend to focus their work-
> related happy hours around drinking. As someone who does not drink, I often
> feel left out of those social activities, and am often actively shamed for
> not participating.

I also don't drink, and in my (relatively short) experience in the tech
industry, the term "social event" almost exclusively refers to events where
the primary focus is alcohol. Is this a tech-industry specific thing, or just
a thing with "industry" in general?

~~~
LoSboccacc
It's an issue with mandatory fun time. I can totally see myself enjoying my
time at a pub with some colleagues, but throw in the whole team plus
managers/leaders and it's just four more hours of unwanted social interaction
and work talk for which to survive the only focus become getting drunk as fast
as possible to cut the losses.

------
lynnetye
Hello! Lynne here, the creator of Key Values.

I’m an indie hacker, and I've spent the last few months putting this together.
I interviewed dozens of engineers to come up with a list of values: things we
care about most when evaluating new opportunities. I then worked with
engineering teams (which you see listed on Key Values) to identify the 8
values that best describe their engineering team and culture.

I’m working to add more teams to the site and would love to hear from you!

~~~
alexryan
This is a really great idea. Please consider adding value ranking. For
example, many people might value both meritocracy and diversity but valuing
one more highly than another creates a completely different culture. P.S.
Please consider adding "meritocracy" as a value.

~~~
slavapestov
You can't really have one without the other. It's not really meritocracy if
you're excluding a large portion of your candidate pool due to bias.

~~~
aqme28
I really don't understand this meme. I've never seen a company where I felt
like straight white males (myself being one of them) were excluded due to
diversity initiatives. We're still pretty well-represented at even the most
staunchly pro-diversity companies.

~~~
alexryan
Personally, I would prefer to work exclusively with those who value
meritocracy more because diversity proponents are very often believers in the
ideology of perpetual victimhood. As such they are always in conflict with
everyone and generally suck the joy out of life. I find them intolerable and
want to keep them as far away from me as possible.

~~~
slavapestov
> Personally, I would prefer to work exclusively with those who value
> meritocracy more because diversity proponents are very often believers in
> the ideology of perpetual victimhood.

I think you're projecting. The only displays of victimhood I've seen in this
context is from white males who (incorrectly) believe that an increased focus
on diversity means they are somehow being discriminated against.

If you create value for your employer and can demonstrate a minimum level of
competence when it comes to technical and people skills you really have
nothing to fear from diversity. It is ridiculous that this even needs to be
pointed out.

------
arjie
Practically all the advice here is rubbish in my opinion. As a user, allow me
to request the following:

* Please do not attempt to make it an objective rating of values

* Please do not make it so I must rank values

* Please do not auto-disallow values based on your interpretation of them (like this 8 PM going-home being incompatible with work/life)

* Please do not list which frameworks they use and whatnot

I like this site because it's simple. When I select a set of values, I get a
few matches. I'm not left wondering if I missed out on companies because
somewhere in the list of 1024 values there was one I didn't select. And I like
that you let teams choose what they think is most important and had a maximum
number of values they could select.

Great work.

~~~
lynnetye
Duly noted ;) Thanks arjie!

------
shimon
What are you trying to accomplish here?

It looks like a nicely structured rigorous filtering tool based on values. But
when you view the details for any company, it's not really rigorous. It's a
narrative from the company with a clearly positive bias.

Now, getting more narrative content about companies is great (most companies
don't do much of this) but the value you're creating here is a better "what's
it like to work here" page that a company might want to share with prospective
employees. It's not going to really help people find meaningful values-based
matches, because the "pick your top N" ranking methodology is lousy and too
subjective. As other have pointed out, there should be some max-hours rule if
you want to claim to value work-life balance. The degree to which a culture is
Eng/product/design/data-driven is really important to gauge fit, but this rank
methodology will not give you credible answers to that. It would be better to
look at the backlog of work and count who wrote the tickets - that would be
eye-opening, and also help you identify negative attributes ("driven by
highly-paid persons' opinions"). Other important things you've identified,
like "high employee retention", would be far better off as quantitative data
points instead of self-ranking.

On the other hand, maybe this is a feature, not a bug. You're trying to get
engineers to voice preferences on values, and if that gets them to pay
attention to your site as a source of jobs, and you continue to feature
awesome companies that are great places to work, you will place some of those
engineers in those companies. In this case, your product should probably do a
better job of helping an engineer understand her own values. Again this would
be better served with tradeoffs (Would you work 60-hour weeks in order to work
with world-famous engineers? If most of the company participates in a push-up
competition, would you find that exciting or off-putting?) than pick-8.

Still, it's great to see someone starting from the premise that personal value
should align with organizational ones. Best wishes!

~~~
lynnetye
You make a lot of great points!

Finding a job is a lot like dating. People typically don't share their worst
qualities upfront, and I decided early on that I didn't want to force them to.
Instead, I've become more of a coach/cheerleader for both companies and job-
seekers.

When I work with teams to write their profiles, it's my job to say, "prove it"
when we discuss each value, and suggest that they choose another when they
can't. I encourage teams to use strong language, talk about disqualifiers,
include concrete examples, incorporate quantitative data, and/or provide links
to contact current team members wherever possible. But, for now, I won't make
anyone to do or say anything that they aren't comfortable with.

I hope job-seekers are critical when comparing different teams. Some profiles
deserve an A+ while others are perhaps a B- (though I won't say which). If you
interview 20 different teams, it'd probably be similar. Those that speak your
language would resonate with you and those that fail to answer authentically
to you would lose you. That's okay.

Ultimately, I'm providing structure for teams to talk about what is inherently
subjective and messy. There is no black or white when it comes to culture or
compatibility (maybe you've tried setting up two great individuals who just
didn't hit it off?) but at least we now have _some_ information to guide our
decision making.

------
daxorid
Seems like this list of "values" takes one side exclusively, without offering
a counter-option. I would like to see an IQ > EQ option, for example.

~~~
Lxr
This is relevant because otherwise companies can just claim they have all of
the above.

~~~
mayneack
about 26 do [https://i.imgur.com/QQqVyQX.png](https://i.imgur.com/QQqVyQX.png)

~~~
shimon
As noted elsewhere in this thread, the filters are ORs not ANDs. There are 26
total companies on the site right now.

------
alrehn
Not sure how much you can consider Work/Life balance a key value when you
expect people to work 50 hour weeks
([https://www.keyvalues.io/kite](https://www.keyvalues.io/kite)). Not to say
that 50 hours is awful, there's certainly a lot worse out there, but I'd say
it's enough to disqualify that as a 'key value'.

~~~
jxcl
I agree that any company that asks for more than 40 hours should not be
allowed to have the work/life balance key value. The profile says that the
company eats dinner together and people go home at 8pm. That sounds pretty
work centric and not much time for life left after that.

~~~
alrehn
Also they accompany it with a picture of a fun work outing. Those can be
great, but should go with some other key value. When I think of work/life
balance I think of having time to myself, to relax, see friends/family and
work on other things/hobbies. Company events are nice and I think a good idea
in terms of teambuilding but they are still on the side of work, not life.

------
drdaeman
Uh. I'm sorry about the tone, but about a half of that looks like they were
taken straight out of some buzzword bingo. Things like "thoughtful office
layout", "ideal for parents" or "has good beer" are almost meaningless, as
they're really a matter of personal tastes and ideals. Take large enough
number of people, and while there probably will be some general direction, I'm
sure they'll inevitably come with very different ideas what it could mean.

Even stuff like "uses agile methodologies" is not really meaningful. Too many
different approaches and implementations out there. Some can't imagine work
without every single tiniest thing being filed as a separate ticket (because
otherwise they feel like losing track of things), some believe that's insane
micromanagement, borderline OCD. Both could say they're doing it "agile, just
in the sane way". ;)

Also, I think many values really lack their opposites. I think it would be
useful to be able to search for e.g. places that value age-proven tech over
latest fads. Or places that specifically don't market themselves as "creative
and innovative" but just doing what they believe is good, needed and
profitable. Or places where engineers aren't expected to do stuff outside of
their scope (as opposed to wearing many hats). That all may sound as bad
things to some, but I'm certain there are persons who have different mindsets
and treat that as positive values.

That said, maybe at least some values are better as some sort of gauges rather
than statements? In particular, "risk-taking vs stability" and "cutting-edge
technologies" looks like good candidates for the e.g. "1: we're writing
software for a nuclear plant" <-> "10: we develop live on the production
servers" scale.

------
LyndsySimon
I was originally going to point out what I would like to see changed/added to
the site - but after considering it and reading the other comments here, I
don't think I'd add much constructive.

Instead I offer my congratulations - you've shipped a product, on your own,
that is both useful and interesting to a wide audience. That's something that
I've tried to do in the past and repeatedly failed to achieve.

Keep up the good work :)

------
Lxr
Cool idea! I would love to see some more opinionated product-oriented values,
eg large js frameworks vs minimal client side code, tracking vs privacy, etc.

~~~
hendler
I second this. Additionally, would be interesting to also see these vectors on
public policy issues. While DACA might have little variation, differentiation
may come from issues affecting work forces and tech policy (subsidies, public
programs, etc.)

see this recent article Aligns with this recent article.
[https://www.fastcompany.com/40420834/the-non-paradox-of-
high...](https://www.fastcompany.com/40420834/the-non-paradox-of-highly-
successful-profit-from-purpose-businesses)

------
ctraynor
These are interesting but fairly generic and easy for a company to claim many
to look good.

When defining culture I think it's best to avoid generalisations and have
specifics:

\- If something breaks, what is more important: Preserving state for
debuggability or getting online fast

\- Developers can always say they are not ready to push and continue testing

\- There are defined SLI's and error budgets

\- Design docs are required for new functionality

\- Senior developers are expected to {mentor junior developers, be proactive
in creating tooling, understand the full technology stack, refactor}

\- Sliding scale of time spent on feature development vs keeping on top of
technical debt

\- How much time is spent on automation

\- Are there well defined leadership tracks for technical and management (a
yes/no isn't really enough here)

\- Onboarding/mentoring, paired with a senior developer or a hire that joined
~6 months ago

There are a lot more engineering culture questions based on ownership,
communication, personal development and specific engineering tradeoffs.

------
calebm
I must say, I like the logo and name.

------
wott
I see "uses agile methodologies" but I was expecting "doesn't use agile
methodologies"...

------
mgkimsal
what also might be useful is to have reviews from former employees, and see
how well they line up with what the team said.

I've worked on a few teams that claimed these "values" (or practices) but when
the rubber hit the road, what they said and what they did didn't match up.

------
innocentoldguy
Maybe I missed it, but I consider companies that DON'T embrace an open
workspace as my top value. I also don't consider pair programming a value. I
don't mind doing it on occasion, but I don't want it foisted upon me as a part
of my daily work-life.

------
mrguyorama
I'm quite sad that I can't seem to find "Puts ethical considerations first" as
one of the values. Possibly "Puts customers first", but that seems more like
"drives value" or some other money oriented buzzword.

~~~
lynnetye
That's an interesting value and I will definitely consider adding it! In some
ways, this describes companies that are B-Corps/PBC but I agree, it's not
perfect.

~~~
mrguyorama
It's going to be difficult because there's no real ethical "Standard" in the
space that I know of.

~~~
lynnetye
I think that's okay actually. I see profiles to be like an interview with say,
an engineering manager or current team members. We ask questions, they answer,
and we decide how strong or convincing that answer is.

------
darioush
One thing I'd love to filter on is "Gives developers private/shared offices"
as opposed to open-floor.

Also would be nice to filter on workflow/tools like git vs. perforce, or
outlook vs. Google calendar, or TFS vs JIRA.

------
john_moscow
How about "an actual workplace where people act as professionals, not another
social club where everyone's desperately trying to look like a cute teddy
bear"?

------
ACow_Adonis
I don't know if I got it from Hacker News, but I've adopted the position that
workplace "values" don't mean anything unless they're:

a) verifiable

and/or

b) someone could reasonably disagree with it/would actively select its
negation or opposite.

Take the work/life balance, which a number of people are, justifiably in my
opinion, taking issue with.

Under the verifiable condition, we need to be able to see that someone
actually lives up to that value, otherwise its just a marketing term to try to
fool candidates (and becomes more of a trap, rather than helpful). So do team
members work 40 hours or less per week? Do you provide sick/personal leave? Do
you provide 4+ weeks of paid vacation (and people actually take it)? Can you
take community/charity days? Ok, then you get to list yourself under work/life
balance. If those things seem antithetical to you, or they don't happen in
practice, I'm sorry, but you should be excluded, no matter what you say you
value.

Lets then look at criteria b). Would someone reasonably agree with its
negation? Well, the easiest way to test that would be to ensure you actually
list the negation of all your values and see whether anyone selects them or
whether you're willing to put anyone in those categories.

So for work/life balance, what about the teams that say "we do NOT value
work/life balance: we want long hours, give yourself to the team". We know
they're out there in practice, and some tech types might even self-select into
such, but if you or no one else is publicly willing to be listed under such a
category, then unfortunately the category and its negation becomes "fluff-
worthy". Meaningless. Analytical noise.

So for instance, take the following oppositions:

-team is diverse vs team uniformity

-work/life balance vs work priority

-bonded by love of product vs feelings for product not important

-eq > iq vs iq > eq

-thoughtful office layout vs horrible/don't care about office layout

and so forth.

If you could verify the value, and have their negation as categories, and
people actually listed under their negation, then many categories become
EXTREMELY useful.

But if the values aren't verified, and if people wouldn't reasonably list or
accept a categories negation, while I appreciate the concept/thought,
well...it basically becomes corporate fluff :/

Edit: There are a couple of categories where I admit having the category
without its negation is useful. Things like "uses agile methodologies" could
be a candidate for example. But...even there, i would love for the alternative
category "Hates scrum/agile consultants" :P

~~~
madamelic
>thoughtful office layout vs horrible/don't care about office layout

"Workers / sq. ft" would be a good measurement.

------
wbillingsley
To coin a cynical phrase, every job in the world advertises it requires
excellent communication skills, and yet somehow they all get hired...

------
peternicky
What is the process for adding a company? How are these so-called values
verified as being true for a given company?

------
jarsin
I would like to see values experience over ability to solve trick question on
whiteboard.

------
gramakri
On firefox/linux, the icons are off the grid.
[http://imgur.com/a/qakod](http://imgur.com/a/qakod) They align back when
hovered over

------
madamelic
Can you add negation, like I do not want a company with "X"?

------
mayneack
26 companies have "all" values apparently
[https://i.imgur.com/QQqVyQX.png](https://i.imgur.com/QQqVyQX.png)

------
the_arun
Interesting.. How do you get these key-values from companies?

~~~
lynnetye
Teams self-select their values! I've worked closely with each team and they
write their own profiles.

~~~
mbesto
Wouldn't every company say they just do everything? I mean, heck, I would...

~~~
bonsai80
Nah, people will just quit soon after. Then the company is faced with all the
costs involved in hiring replacements. This idea works both ways, and ideally
gets the right people into the right places for the benefit of the employees
and employers.

------
astonex
It's a nice idea but I find how a company likes to describe itself can be
vastly different to how it actually is.

~~~
lynnetye
Sure that's true, but then the only way to really know what it's like to work
at a company is to spend 4-12 weeks working there yourself. Some would argue
that that is still not enough time to form a real opinion.

My hope with Key Values is to:

1\. Look beyond what companies say about themselves and focus on the culture
and values of specific engineering teams.

2\. Let job-seekers access information about engineering teams sooner (ie.
_before_ the hassles of applying, completing coding challenges, white-
boarding, etc).

To your point, how interviewers describe their teams can be vastly different
from how it actually is. Whether you "trust" that information or not, at least
you have it sooner!

------
besh
Neat idea. Once you have enough content, I think it would be beneficial to
have location as one of the key values.

------
Adamantcheese
> Good for junior devs

> 0 matches

Guess I'll just go to the sideline and wait until something actually populates
that spot, if ever.

~~~
lynnetye
They're coming! I promise :)

------
stockkid
On mobile, when I click the number of matches on bottom right, I expect the
screen to slide to the result section.

Good work

------
heisnotanalien
I dont really get it. It seems like every company aspires to all of those
values.

------
sAbakumoff
What if my key value is money? Is there any hope for me after all?

------
rhodysurf
Its a little ironic that monetary compensation isnt on the list

~~~
prawn
Aren't there enough job sites out there focusing on exactly that? This looks
to be someone trying to differentiate.

~~~
notyourday
The reason why it is called a job and not a hobby is because those who do it
expect money. The elephant in a room is money, not a company outing or 50 hour
weeks.

~~~
prawn
A lot of people are willing to trade some of that financial expectation for a
job they enjoy more whether it's because they can escape at 5pm or stay for
regular team dinners, or for any of the other reasons on the site.

------
anotherbrownguy
When I select multiple values, I expected the result to be companies which
share all of those values, not all companies which share at least one of the
values (which is what it does now).

------
nether
Plagued with millennial self-obsessed fluff. Ugh.

[https://youtu.be/Sz0o9clVQu8](https://youtu.be/Sz0o9clVQu8)

------
nasredin
I found this website to be excellent source material for the "PR Buzzword
Bingo" (drinking) game.

