

Twilio's Nine Values - sunils34
http://www.twilio.com/company/nine-values

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tptacek
Twilio is a company that impresses me.

These value statement things, though, don't; in fact, I associate them with
the opposite kinds of companies as Twilio.

I'm prepared to learn that this is irrational. Has anyone here worked at a
company where the team was improved by a formal statement of values?

I always thought, if we were going to have a list of values, it'd be
constrained to values that were head-scratching tradeoffs. "Time to market >
quality", or things like that. Which of these values express competition
between ideals? What company _wouldn't_ have a "no shenanigans" value? I might
be more fascinated by one that had (and justified) a "shenanigans always!"
value.

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branola
Reminds me of Stewart Lee's standup bit on "the values of the Carphone
Warehouse" (a British mobile phone retailer):

<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GwH1fLEMDkY>

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chrismanfrank
Thanks for posting this. Seriously funny.

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dmor
Having worked at Twilio, I think these mean a lot more to people on the inside
than they do to people on the outside. They're not something the company is
trying to be, they document the way the company really is and by writing them
down its like saying: hey we made it this way on purpose, let's not forget.
For me, these have a lot of personal meaning that couldn't ever fit on the
page.

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petercooper
Anyone else remember that 37signals started out with a homepage a bit like
this back in the late 90s? Actually, just found they still keep an archive of
it: <http://37signals.com/manifesto>

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kategleason
nice find.

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mcu
I truly do not understand the value of "Corporate Core Value" statements. (OK,
#5, "No Shenanigans", those are words to live by.)

Personal, Human core values. The things that keep us in line, help us to
foster healthy relationships, and build civilizations are important.

But what are corporate "core values"?

I'm always a little unnerved when a company (spontaneously, or even worse,
with the guidance of a "guru") feels the need to embrace this particular brand
of corporate banality.

It's advertisement wrapped in altruism, and that's in vogue right now. While
I'm sure it's well-intentioned, and I don't mean this as an indictment, it
feels cynical.

Whatever happened to Mission Statements?

<http://i.imgur.com/pvEkp.jpg>

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arkitaip
Core values, mission statements, slogans - these are just different sides of
the bad dice most companies play with. Companies that create these expressions
of business communication - almost all of them? - as a result of going through
the motions of running a business without any evidence for the creation of
these expressions. Seriously, when was the last time you read a company's
mission statement? When was the last time you thought a mission statement was
anything but a bland and generic sound bite disconnected from reality?

I would love to see a company with enough integrity, honesty and confidence
that they wouldn't even bother with any of these things.

