
“Don't fuck up the culture” – A letter to the Airbnb team - LukeB_UK
https://medium.com/p/597cde9ee9d4
======
scelerat
After a handful of times of getting burned, I've come to interpret any
official executive statement on values or culture as a sign that things are
seriously screwed or about to become that way, and that it's time to bail out.

To me, culture is something that happens organically and not via directive.
Leaders can shape company culture but only through their own personal
demonstration of it and not by decree. Once I hear someone saying "this is how
it shall be henceforth," I'm gone. They're either hopelessly naive or trying
to construct a happy edifice while behaving badly.

~~~
mrev19
Reminds me of the Twilight Zone movie back in the 80's, the kid who can wish
anything he wants and it comes true, and he wishes all these strangers to be
his "family" and traps them in the house with them.

I'd love to hear about one of these emails reading "Hi employee, person who is
totally dependent on my whim and fancy for sustinence and shelter, I've been
thinking a lot about what me and my 2 friends stand for, and even though I'm
not totally sure, and can't necessarily articulate it, its extremely important
to me, and from now on its pretty damn important that you start standing for
it too. You are an extension of me. That's why your office looks like my old
apartment. Your identity has been subsumed, and to prove it I'd like to point
out that your livelihood is now in a great part dependent on your allegiance
to my completely undefined and arbitrary value system. So we're in this
together. I am writing you to tell you everything will be fine, as long you
don't. fuck. this. up. Thanks! I'll be back in touch with more specifics, or
not, in the meantime just act natural."

~~~
jusben1369
I feel like you missed the context. My understanding was "We're about to spend
time discussing our culture (Core Values) at our next all hands/meeting. Let
me just give you some brief background on why we as a company are doing this
exercise." I don't think the goal of this note was to go into detail. That
would be overkill and steal thunder from the upcoming event. It was just to
contextualize why they're going to cover it a) Number 1 reason investors put
huge gobs on money into AirBNB b) It's what we'll be most remembered for etc.

~~~
mrev19
No.

------
robert_tweed
In my experience, this is the first sign that a company culture is about to be
fucked up.

The reason is that a company culture is organic and highly dependent on the
people that make it. When a company is very small, it's easy to have only the
best people who also happen to fit in to the same culture, because those
people naturally gravitate together. In the beginning, the company is small
enough that they are not hiring for very specialised and disparate skills so
much as "a bunch of smart people that work well together".

As teams get bigger, inevitably things get more structured and by trying to
hold on to that initial culture, you inevitably kill it.

Personally I believe the best thing is to have small autonomous units within
the business that have a set remit and are allowed to have their own culture,
with the company as a whole acting to promote cross-pollination between units.
There really doesn't have to be one single "culture" guided by the "core
company values" because those are two different things that invariably do not
mesh once you get past about 30 people. So when companies hit that awkward
"teenage" size and try, they usually fail.

I also find that the claims about company culture made by most mid to large
sized company are inevitably false. There might be a particular culture within
individual teams (the IT team in the basement, for instance), but usually it
does not permeate the entire business to the extent the HR team wishes it did.

~~~
dshah
I agree that company culture's _are_ organic (changing) and highly dependent
on the people that make it.

Having said that, the _people_ that are there are determined by the culture.
If the culture of a company is well known, articulated and understood, there's
a self-selection process that happens. A given culture attracts certain kinds
of people -- so it becomes self-reenforcing.

I also disagree with the notion that a culture cannot permeate across groups.
There is certainly a sub-culture that can (and does) exist within groups (this
exists everywhere people of like mind or activity aggregate), but that doesn't
mean there can't be an overarching culture that is shared organization wide.

I've given a lot of thought and calories to this topic. My company (HubSpot)
has grown from 2 people to 800 people and like Brian (OP from AirBnB), we
think about this culture thing a lot.

Just because you hit the "awkward teen" size doesn't mean you are
predetermined to fail at trying to have a functional , shared culture.

~~~
robert_tweed
>If the culture of a company is well known, articulated and understood,
there's a self-selection process that happens. A given culture attracts
certain kinds of people -- so it becomes self-reenforcing.

That's essentially my point about gravitation, except my assertion that it
doesn't scale. After a certain point, it becomes more important to hire the
people the company needs, not just the people that want to work there. Below a
certain size it is _much_ easier for those to be overlapping sets.

> that doesn't mean there can't be an overarching culture that is shared
> organisation wide

I think inopinatus is on the right track in terms of breaking "culture" down
into different things. There can certainly be certain values and principles of
"how things are done" that span the whole company (note: I'm not saying
processes either - perhaps 'ethics' is the right word). But that's not enough
to make a culture, and trying to force one out of those relatively small
commonalities is where things generally fall down.

Again I think the most important thing when it comes to scaling out is having
representation in place at various levels and listening to what people at the
lower levels actually want, rather than trying to dictate things in a top-down
manner. It is very likely that as teams become more specialised, they will
have much more individual needs that might not fit with certain aspects of the
original culture. There's no reason that the shared culture can't evolve and
stay beneficial to everyone - just expect the size of that shared part to
shrink if you are doing it right.

The sad fact is that it's much easier to get company culture wrong than it is
to get it right. I'm not going to say I have some magical solution to this
because I don't, but I do wish you the best of luck with HubSpot - and the
same to AirBnB of course. Just because something is an ominous sign doesn't
mean anything is predestined.

One thing that I do think is quite important is that the company culture in a
small business tends to be the way it is because the management structure is
pretty flat, everyone has a set of shared goals and cooperation is easy.
That's another thing that doesn't scale. It's very easy to break a company
culture with things like poor management structure, skewed employee
incentives, etc., which tend to foster a dog-eat-dog culture and company
politics that very often do not exist in smaller companies. Personally, were I
currently scaling a business to around 800 staff I'd be worrying most about
the management structure and trying to create an environment where cultures
can grow organically, while ensuring what remains consistent are the shared
values, goals and company vision.

I think by focusing too much on the company culture at the top level, it's
easy to lose sight of the forest for the trees. In macromanagement there's
only so much you can directly control and culture isn't one of those things.
That means getting the outcome you want by indirect means, even if it doesn't
look exactly how you might have pictured it.

------
inopinatus
It's a fine sentiment but blunders over the meaning in a rush to confirm the
wisdom of the original epigram.

I don't know if this because the author of this memo doesn't understand
culture analytically or felt that explaining what was meant didn't have a
place in this memo, but dismissing process was a mistake. A more nuanced
perspective breaks culture into multiple domains:

    
    
      # Values
      # Norms
      # Routines
    

Notice I didn't say _processes_. That's because processes are a subset of
routines. They are the routines written down. The author seems to be terribly
proud that AirBnB's routines aren't written down. I was left cold by this. It
doesn't matter that much.

Values are the fundamental beliefs that people cherish. The thing about values
is that they are, as a result, near impossible to change quickly. Five to
seven years and you'll have to change the CEO and the hiring policy to achieve
it.

Norms are the units of behavioral control. Norms are group-level social
pressures such as bringing a plate for morning tea or writing good commit
messages. These are the real interesting pieces because they shift readily in
response to incentives. (If you're ever looking for easy goals in an
organisational change effort, fiddle with the norms)

Norms generally help keep routines-that-aren't-written-down (some might say
"the unwritten processes") steady and reify new ones in response to
externalities.

So when Thiel was saying "don't fuck up the culture" I take away two things:

    
    
      * Don't bother wittering about values. You're stuck with them anyway.
      * Don't fuck with the incentive structure
    

But contrary to a major point in the article, you can write down the routines
as processes if you like, just remember to capture the why as well as the
what.

~~~
janto
I enjoyed reading your breakdown of culture and its malleability. Any good
books or links that discuss these ideas?

------
impendia
> Ever notice how families or tribes don’t require much process?

Interesting, I've observed the opposite. As someone single, I've been
surprised at how much _process_ there is among many married or cohabiting
couples. Lots of discussion and planning around everyday routine chores, such
as going to the grocery store.

These couples have assured me with confidence that this is very important to
the health of their relationships.

~~~
nostromo
My personal experience is the opposite. I feel like dysfunctional couples need
a lot more talking and planning and negotiating than more functional couples.

"Hey, do you mind helping me clean the kitchen?" "Sure."

Also, my favorite working environments have been similar to a family of peers.

"Hey, do you mind pushing your changes this morning?" "Sure."

~~~
yukichan
I feel like many men sometimes aren't aware of how little they help around the
house with chores and taking care of the children, so I am proactive and plan
stuff with my wife. I don't wait for her to ask me. That isn't dysfunctional.

There's also a lot of process in families. Some you can automate now, like
paying the bills. Some processes are routines. Getting up, getting our child
dressed, walking her to school, picking her up, taking her to her after school
activities. Doing her homework with her.

There's also process with checking things around the house. Checking the fire
alarms regularly, scheduling dentist appointments, making plans for seeing
family. These are all processes.

The whole original article came off as ignorance and out of touch. As someone
with an academic background in Anthropology and Sociology the author doesn't
seem to understand what culture is or how hierarchy and unbalanced power
relationships in the office place work. It's not a very sophisticated
treatment of the topic in any regard. And in that vein, my opinion is that as
long as the times are good and you're not hiring a bunch of dickhead managers
your culture will be fine. If you take your culture to mean don't hire old
people because they don't play the video games your 20 somethings do then your
shit is fucked. In the end, when things go bad in the business, culture will
sour.

~~~
rpdillon
There's a difference between process and discipline. A lot of what you're
describing is discipline: you have an internal compass that keeps you oriented
on the stuff that matters: helping your wife with the house and kids, doing
home maintenance, and taking care of periodic tasks. Basically, you make a to-
do list and execute on it.

Process, at least in the corporate context, is about a bunch of stuff you do
regularly to check on whether on not the stuff that matters is being attended
to. Getting your kid dressed is not a good analog to the 'process' that is
being referred to in this sense. Process is a tax on hiring people that don't
have that internal compass, or on operating in an environment that stifles
that internal compass. If the to-do list isn't there, isn't being followed, or
doesn't work in some other way, process exists to find out that there's a
problem so everyone can sit down and talk about what to do to fix it.

Put simply: you're defining a culture in your household that is healthy. It's
exactly what the author hopes for in a company, and that's not process, it's
discipline.

~~~
nostrademons
Process isn't about stifling the internal compass, it's about making sure that
everyone's compass aligns. I've known many engineering teams where
_individually_ everybody is incredibly smart, hard-working, dedicated, and
focused on what matters, but what matters is different to every person. As a
result, the team got nowhere. Process is essentially shared discipline: it's
getting everybody aligned so that when they focus and work hard, they get
somewhere as a group instead of undoing each others' work.

------
bronbron
> Ever notice how families or tribes don’t require much process? That is
> because there is such a strong trust and culture that it supersedes any
> process. In organizations (or even in a society) where culture is weak, you
> need an abundance of heavy, precise rules and processes.

I think it's disingenuous to say tribes and families don't "require much
process." The processes are just more implicit than explicit. When you ask
your parents for a new toy and they evaluate whether to say 'yes', that's a
process - just an informal one. The only reason that's really possible is
because the relationships are much more intimate and fewer.

When you start to scale into numbers where it's just infeasible for "everyone
to know everyone" then formal processes have to take the place of those
informal ones. I can't evaluate Jim's request for 10 additional storage disks
informally because I don't know the first thing about Jim.

Coordinating lots of people is really hard. I would guess Airbnb is getting
about the size where keeping the culture intact will require a sizable time
commitment from the top level. Airbnb keeping that same culture at 20,000
employees would probably be a sociological feat all on its own.

~~~
marcusf
I like the Henrik Kniberg definition of culture, 'culture is the stuff people
do without thinking about it'. E.g. you could codify most things as processes
(which is basically the entire point of things like value stream maps), but a
company culture is infuses the kind of things you don't need to make explicit,
because they become self-evident.

Think Netflix travel policy ("be responsible") vs more traditional companies
with rules and travel agents for implicit vs explicit, or cultural vs process
driven.

~~~
bronbron
You actually brought up an interesting point that I was going to address:
Netflix also has a legendary policy of expedient, rapid termination (see: The
presentation that circulates around every so often).

The caveat to my statement was that you can keep that kind of culture at scale
if you're brutal about either ensuring people are good cultural fits, whether
that's by stringent hiring processes or swift termination.

Not that I think Netflix necessarily has the wrong approach here - it's a
tradeoff to avoid having these explicit processes. But it's food for thought,
nonetheless.

------
n72
"Our next team meeting is dedicated to Core Values, which are essential to
building our culture."

Having meetings about culture and "core values" is a sure sign your culture's
fucked. The fact that he thinks having a meeting about culture might in some
way help fix some culture issue indicates to me he's really not the person to
impart pearls of wisdom when it comes to company culture.

tl;dr that's mba-speak, bro.

~~~
wpietri
I think it's a sign, but not a sure sign.

One company I consulted at, maybe 200 people, went through a substantial
internal process to make their values explicit. I wasn't there for it, but I
understand everybody participated, and there was a lot of discussion about
what they really wanted in a mission statement and a set of values.

When I was there, it amazed me to see employees at all levels actually pulling
out the list of values when hard decisions were happening. They used it to
remind themselves of what really mattered to them.

Admittedly, I've only seen it once, but it really appeared to work. It's
definitely something I'm keeping in my pocket the next time I'm at something
that crosses Dunbar's Number.

~~~
arghbleargh
That sounds amazing to me too. What you described is really the only way that
making lists of "core values" could possibly achieve something useful. I just
never thought it could happen. Usually people just remember the core values as
a list of things that sound good, and they're too abstract to offer any real
guidance for a concrete situation.

------
harryh
To me the most interesting thing about this blog post is that Brian doesn't
actually say what defines AirBnB's culture. Perhaps he did so in some other
internal document or meeting, but it doesn't make sense to say that you
shouldn't fuck something up when you haven't clearly defined what that thing
is. I much prefer Ben Horowitz's post on this topic:

[http://www.bhorowitz.com/programming_your_culture](http://www.bhorowitz.com/programming_your_culture)

I like the fact that he makes it clear that there are many different ways to
define a company culture and that, if possible, leaders should make a
conscious choice to choose among them.

    
    
      * Move fast and break things.
      * Take pride in the work we do.
      * The customer is always right.
    

Any of these (and many more) could be cornerstones of company culture, but
they're all pretty different. If you're just defining your culture as "work
hard and do a good job" then you haven't really said much. Everyone wants to
do that.

~~~
xerophtye
You have managed to articulately put what so many of us are pointing out that,
he didn't really say what it is that he wants to preserve. Yes, culture
doesn't need to be defined in a formal document, but it can be hinted at with
a few words

------
dropit_sphere
I have this pet theory that the best companies in the future will be those
that act more like cults (putting the "cult" in culture) than companies. As
the jobs that actually need doing become more and more ambiguous (how specific
is the job description of a "growth hacker" compared to the median job in the
50's?), companies will have more and more trouble hiring for specific
skills(reading anything about hiring developers will evidence this). So the
differentiating factor will be culture fit rather than specific skills.

Does this sound like it will have problems? Yeah, I think so. But does the
current system have problems? (Left as an exercise for the reader)

There's one more tidbit that comes to mind: what happens when the "core
values" indicate that it's time for the company to close up shop? I'm not sure
there's a catch-all answer, but this is a question for anyone who pays lip
service to the idea of culture to ponder.

------
msoad
According to many Glassdoor reviews their culture is fucked up I guess.

[http://www.glassdoor.com/Reviews/Airbnb-
Reviews-E391850.htm](http://www.glassdoor.com/Reviews/Airbnb-
Reviews-E391850.htm)

~~~
ilyanep
Is there a single company that has primarily positive Glassdoor reviews? I've
only ever heard of companies having lots of negative reviews, and I think it
might just be the same as apartment buildings, where nobody actually bothers
to go on Glassdoor to write a review unless they're unhappy and looking for
another job.

~~~
msoad
Let's look at Square that is very similar to Airbnb for example.

[http://www.glassdoor.com/Reviews/Square-
Reviews-E422050.htm](http://www.glassdoor.com/Reviews/Square-
Reviews-E422050.htm)

It seems that good companies really have good reviews in general.

------
Theodores
_Also unrelated_

What happens in small tourist towns when all of the available property gets
bought by outsiders wanting to 'Airbnb'?

Let's face it, 'Airbnb' isn't about letting out the spare room or the flat
whilst one is away for some pocket money (whilst helping some weary traveller
out). Airbnb is about buying places specifically for rental.

So, what happens?

The few real 'Bed and Breakfast' hotels have a hard time of it and local
people (not on big city wages or the money for a deposit) get pushed even
further down the housing ladder.

So, even if the culture is not messed up in the hip Mac-book Air stuffed
office of AirBnb, the culture could be messed up in some far off town.

~~~
guelo
That describes startup companies in general. It's about taking over a market
that is run by small companies and driving them out of business by using Wall
Street money to generate efficiencies of scale.

~~~
JumpCrisscross
So a pox on those who seek to reduce costs through scale and redundancies?

It appears there is a lack of short-stay housing supply. AirBnB facilitates
that market. Short-stay property owners should seek to spread their operating
costs across multiple properties. This will drive out mom-and-pop operations -
that is good business. The added wealth from leaner short-stay operations
should make up for the temporary displacement.

The displacement is a process our political process has to manage. But
spitting on markets for eroding the incumbent's edge is an old game for tired
societies.

~~~
vacri
_It appears there is a lack of short-stay housing supply. AirBnB facilitates
that market._

AirBnB undercuts existing hotels by sidestepping required regulations. There
isn't a lack of short-stay supply; AirBnB just works more cheaply because it
has fewer expenses.

 _The added wealth from leaner short-stay operations should make up for the
temporary displacement._

The point of the parent comment is that that wealth is not kept in the town,
but siphoned off somewhere else.

------
schrijver
EDT: To me, this post comes across as vacuous and pompous because it does not
explain at all what ‘culture’ means in this context. An IMHO great reply has
already been written before this post appeared:

‘What Your Culture Really Says’: [https://medium.com/about-
work/e8ab06c3b75f](https://medium.com/about-work/e8ab06c3b75f)

> Let’s examine popular startup trends that are being called “culture” and
> look beneath the surface to find the real culture that may be playing out
> beneath it. This is not a critique of the practices themselves, which often
> contribute value to an organization. This is to show a contrast between the
> much deeper, systemic cultural problems that are rampant in our startups and
> the materialistic trappings that can disguise them.

~~~
comrh
> The critique of startup culture that came in large part from the agile
> movement has been replaced by sanitized, pompous, dishonest slogans.

You and that article nailed it for me.

------
danielweber
One of the indications that I was going to have to quit a company (that I co-
founded) was when a new person was brought on to "maintain company culture."

~~~
colinbartlett
"VP of Culture" sounds like a dystopian business card title.

------
nirmel
"The stronger the culture, the less process a company needs."

This sentence finally made it click for me. Culture is not about making people
happy. It is the set of principles on which you convince people to base their
decisions and actions that affect the company. If those principles can be made
uniform without hierarchy and approval processes, that makes a company
unequivocally more efficient.

~~~
krapp
Culture is, to a degree, about harmony, and therefore to an extent also about
making people happy, in providing a sense of belonging to and identification
with a group and a purpose greater than oneself.

I believe there's a fundamental difference, however, between culture as an
emergent property, subject to its members' needs and changeable by its
desires, and 'culture' as a set of metaphysical properties determined by a
company's founders, to which one must either conform or find themselves
terminated. A culture which you have no influence over isn't really a culture
to which you can belong.

------
dclowd9901
I'm of two minds here.

Mind one: Cultures are stupid. They're artificial and require buy-in. This
either alienates people, or indoctrinates them, and in either case, you end up
with something artificial, stupid and derivative.

Mind two: Cultures are organic and incredible. They "become" because they are
reflective of a small (VERY small) subgroup of people and their own rarely
synchronous core values. Because of how humans only accept the idiosyncrasies
of others if they're reflective of more than one person, cultures help to
expose idiosyncratic tastes and behaviors to people who might not otherwise be
exposed to them.

Now that that's out of the way, at some point, your company will not have the
clout or draw to be able to pull in the talent you want 100% of the time.
Candidate A might be perfect on paper, but maybe doesn't like surreal humor.
Candidate B might be the best Javascript gal you've ever seen, but she's not
big on noise rock.

These sound like stupid and trivial things, but the heart of a culture is the
enthusiasm that lives alongside finding people who all march to the beat of
the same drum. Who, for whatever reason, all were fans of The Gilmore Girls or
who have a weird fascination with whale sounds or maybe like fighting with
broomsticks.

You will lose culture, so long as you're willing to bring on people who aren't
_exactly_ like you.

------
adamzerner
I found this cliche and unoriginal.

I would have liked to see more concrete examples of what they do want to do,
what they want to avoid, and how exactly they're going to "execute" at getting
culture right.

------
mbrock
Families and tribes can of course also be suffocating, difficult, dramatic,
abusive, controlling, insular, xenophobic, and so on. Process is not a bad
thing, as in e.g. the idea of "due process." It can be a way of making things
fair and transparent.

------
Beliavsky
Nowadays there is a lot of talk about "inclusion". What about "including"
people who dislike profanity? "Don't mess up the culture" would have conveyed
the same message without the bad language.

~~~
teacup50
I have no qualms with profanity, but I admit I had a negative reaction when I
saw "fuck" so prominently leveraged in a blog post about company culture.

For someone who wants to have a certain level of _professional_ decorum at
_work_ , the use of "fuck" in your CEO's blog post about your company's
culture would certainly be exclusionary.

It's also quite likely to drive away even-tempered contributors in favor of a
"bro" audience.

Perhaps that was the point: [http://www.glassdoor.com/Reviews/Airbnb-
Reviews-E391850.htm](http://www.glassdoor.com/Reviews/Airbnb-
Reviews-E391850.htm)

~~~
jusben1369
Ben Horowitz has an interesting chapter in his recent book "The Hard Thing
about Hard Things" that talks about profanity. Apparently early on at
LoudCloud (or Opsware) at a company meeting some employees raised the issue
that there was too much profanity in the office. Ben acknowledged that he was
the worst culprit so this was most likely aimed at him. He slept on it and
decided that it could be used but never in a sexist or bullying way. He
rationalized it based on the assumption that it was already an inherent part
of many tech companies and not allowing it might restrict their access to the
best talent. I thought that weird. Either way I think the end result is that
it does seem to be an important part of the culture and as a future or current
employee it should factor into your decision to work there.

~~~
newtle
That book is 80% great, but his opinions about profanity are part of the other
20%. There's no meat to it. All we learn is Ben's belief that adding the word
'fucking' to a sentence communicates intensity more effectively than any
alternative, and his belief that great employees want to work amongst torrents
of profanity.

To put it in a way that Ben might understand, it's fucking bullshit. It's not
the worst part of the book to be sure, but there's no value to it, the
reasoning is weak, and the evidence is non-existent.*

* The worst thing is when he espouses the importance of work/life balance for the CEO, and then talks proudly of a death-march that he put his employees through. A death march which he says must be good because a grand total of one employee told him it was a great experience. A death march which didn't result in the loss of all his employees not because Ben is a great leader (he ain't), but because the economy was such a catastrophe that even a shitty, abusive job working for a profane and self-congratulatory motherfucker was better than the alternative.

~~~
jusben1369
I think you pretty much nailed it. I thought it was 80% great and that section
on cussing was basically the worst rationalization in the book. "Let's see. I
love to cuss. And I'm going to continue to curse. But how can I rationalize it
in a business way?"

------
judk
AirBnB's culture is to do whatever it takes to get (er, "hack") what you want,
rules and agreements be damned, so they certainly should only make rules for
the purpose of giving people practice bending them.

~~~
prodigal_erik
Why would known spammers feel the need to put their employees through a
charade of having values? Surely they've noticed how our industry fails to
deter sociopathy.

------
joeblau
That's great advice. I've been to the AriBnB offices a few times (before their
most recent move) and I definitely noticed a distinct culture. Most of my
cultural experience from AirBnB was though their tech talks. You get speak
with engineers, other team members and you get food from their amazing
executive chef. Even though their engineering team was relatively small, they
created a great resource for engineers to meet and talk tech. It was something
that I tried to create at the company I worked for at the time, but it was a
totally different culture.

~~~
zacharycohn
Free food is not culture.

~~~
ftay
It's a cultural practice.

------
hkmurakami
Not to mention that having a toxic culture is the fastest way to lose your
very best people.

------
fjk
> Culture is not a good or bad thing. It’s a shared thing. I sometimes hear
> people say “they aren’t a culture fit” as if it’s a bad thing, or others
> feel bad pointing this out as if it’s an indictment on someone’s character.
> It’s not. I am not a culture fit at probably any other company, which is why
> I had to help start one!

This (which is one of Brian's notes in the article) is one of the best ways to
think about culture that I've encountered. A company can't have "good" culture
or "bad" culture. It just has a certain shared way of doing things that may or
may not vibe with you.

On a related note, Tony Hsieh of Zappos believes what your culture is doesn't
matter as much as having a strong identity. Just figure out who you, as a
company, are and the rest will follow:

 _"...one of the really interesting things I found from the research is that
it actually doesn’t matter what your values are, what matters is that you have
them and that you align the organization around them. And the power actually
comes from the alignment not from the actual values"_[1]

[1] [https://blog.kissmetrics.com/zappos-art-of-
culture/](https://blog.kissmetrics.com/zappos-art-of-culture/)

~~~
rmrfrmrf
My main issue with the "culture fit" thing is that it's a very new-school
style of business that has been shoehorned into an antiquated process (hiring)
that hasn't adapted nearly enough to changing attitudes about workplace
priorities. I'd imagine it's difficult for someone to hear that their
personality was what failed to get them the job after 30 mins - 1 hour of
interaction where skills are still supposedly the number one priority.

------
evolve2k
Preserving the culture is about staying true to some of the core ways things
are done right now, despite the pressures to adjust how those things are done
as the organization grows.

On the surface 'culture' is just the way things are done (currently).

Deepen engagement and understanding of your values by collecting and writing
down organizational folklore.

The best way your can preserve your current culture is to, as the leader,
document your thinking and define and explain in your own words key unique and
important ways of doing things.

Disney and Sony were both good at this. Both companies later experienced drift
from their original core way of doing things. It was referring back to these
early papers written by the fonunder (often many years after they were gone)
that enabled these companies to constantly rediscover their roots when they
got lost. Write as if you were about to die and wanted to leave instructions
and guidance for the next leaders.

------
jpasmore
As a person who is not white, I look at these efforts curiously. They seem
generally like a way to hire people like "us", people who like the same music,
people who will go to the same bar after work, fundamentally people we are
comfortable with...people who will not change the culture.

Fred Wilson's blog had a related topic; The Role Of Personal Chemistry In
Investment Selection -- [http://avc.com/2013/10/the-role-of-personal-
chemistry-in-inv...](http://avc.com/2013/10/the-role-of-personal-chemistry-in-
investment-selection/)

There is a slippery slope of exclusionary behavior associated with this line
of thinking -- where some way of being that is foreign or different doesn't
get hired or potentially doesn't get funded.

------
leoc
It should be said that maintaining a corporate culture that brought success
isn't always sufficient for continued success, and sometimes isn't even
compatible with it. HP and DEC both had a strong and much-admired culture and
way of doing business and then wallop.

~~~
tim333
You could argue HP lost the culture first, at least at the top when Carly
Fiorina who was a marketer rather than an engineer put into run a company that
had always been about great engineering. Then wallop as you say.

------
lazyant
"Passion"? check. "Core Values"? check. Not a single specific of what those
core values or culture is? check.

------
EGreg
I have a simple saying: "People live lives. Companies build products." To me,
maintaining a free lifestyle is an important goal, more than money. If the
company is building something worthwhile, it will eventually get there. That's
why I am a big proponent of setting up clear autonomous systems and processes,
and placing less blame on people. As long as things get done, I don't care who
the person dates or where they live. If things aren't getting done, then we
review what the problem is. Half the time it's not the person, but the
process.

One thing this article gets right: there are tools and there are culture.
Tools determine the process, which has an effect on the culture, but the
culture develops organically depending on who's in the team. If you are super
culture heavy, you'll hire A+ superstars (like the recent article about
building a cult). But as for me, I don't want to be a cult leader. I want to
build better tools to empower people to help each other and make their own
decisions. Both in our company, and in the rest of the world.

------
krosaen
> The stronger the culture, the less corporate process a company needs

and

> Ever notice how families or tribes don’t require much process? That is
> because there is such a strong trust and culture that it supersedes any
> process.

I think both the above are more related to being small than having strong
culture.

> Culture is simply a shared way of doing something with passion.

having a shared way is natural and easy when you're small. Trying to continue
that as you grow is a good goal, but it's just hard, which is why there's so
much thought and research around how to lead, manage and how to make
organizations thrive. It's not an easy problem, and saying, "hey everyone,
just be vigilant and keep the same small company family culture even though
we're growing" likely won't cut it.

------
dasil003
After reading the article I wanted to come and comment that it sounds good but
I couldn't tell if it really meant anything. Then I read the comments and they
make a lot of good points, but they are all conflicting and it's hard to
distill any real takeaway.

At this point I'm convinced of only one thing: company culture is magic.
Everyone influences it, but there is no controlling it. When you're a tiny
little startup of course the culture will reflect your values as a founder or
early employee, when you're bigger it will change on its own. You can hire for
culture, and you can talk about it, or even wax poetic, but ultimately it's a
chaotic interaction of individuals and you're a fool if you think you can
control it.

------
dkarapetyan
Culture obsession is a little silly. If you hire smart individuals then the
culture will work itself out as will pretty much everything else. Plus,
whenever anyone mentions culture they either can't define it or it ends up
being the definition of the hive mind, i.e. it is all around you and within
you but you can't really know what it is until you are part of it. In other
words I have learned literally zero things from this post other than Peter
Thiel invested in Airbnb and told them to not fuck things up. Which I guess
you can do when you give someone $150 million.

~~~
sockgrant
> If you hire smart individuals then the culture will work itself out as will
> pretty much everything else

Culture is about people getting along, being motivated towards the same goals,
and working in the type of environment that they enjoy. Not all smart
individuals have the same culture desires. Google is the posterboy for culture
discussions, and they are very open and blunt about denying some extremely
smart interviewees. They very carefully prune for cultural fit, and it has a
large impact. Google's culture is a multiplying factor on the productivity.

A bad culture fit for an employee or employer is an < 1 multiplier to
productivity.

------
Trindaz
In case any first time founders out there are basing some of their own
management ideas on this letter, please remember:

"Families and tribes" (a) get by fine without explicit processes because they
are small groups, or (b) they do have the processes but they don't need to be
written down because they are taught implicitly from birth.

Arguments of the form "We don't need [insert any concept from management text
books] because we are smart, technical people" are the flags on areas of your
company that will break the worst.

------
stevedc3
It would have been much more helpful if he had actually defined Airbnb's
culture or shared some values. While I admire the note to employees and I'm
sure it spurred a discussion at the company, there was no reference to what
their culture was before or after the letter.

~~~
mikeg8
Its's an internal letter, hopefully everyone who received it already _knows_
the values and has a sense of the culture. Having to spell it out for everyone
(assumingly again) would have meant things were much worse off.

~~~
ftay
It's being published externally, so it's a fair criticism.

------
yoamro
10/10 love the point of this letter. As evident by the comments here, culture
can mean different things to everyone. More accurately, I would just say its
the belief in the product and same passion that every one should have in a
start up. Thats the "culture" IMO.

------
_pmf_
> “Don't fuck up the culture”

Bro-Investor

------
lexcorvus
Nitpick: "to Joe, Nate, and I" should be "to Joe, Nate, and me."

~~~
Myrmornis
This is starting be very widespread and it is embarassing because the primary
cause is a vague idea that it is "more educated" to say "I" than "me", which
of course backfires horribly when you reveal publicly the fact that you don't
know that "I" should only be used as the subject of the sentence.

~~~
lexcorvus
Exactly. As you may know, the general phenomenon is called [ _hypercorrection_
]([http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hypercorrection](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hypercorrection)).

~~~
Myrmornis
_...linguists Rodney Huddleston and Geoffrey K. Pullum claim that utterances
such as "They invited Sandy and I" are "heard constantly in the conversation
of people whose status as speakers of Standard English is clear"; and that
"Those who condemn it simply assume that the case of a pronoun in a
coordination must be the same as when it stands alone. Actual usage is in
conflict with this assumption."_

It may take me some time to calm down after reading that.

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hypercorrection](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hypercorrection)

------
owensmp
Are there any associated blogs which outline the core values of AirBnb
culture? What do they consider the tenants of this culture?

------
gavinh
I hope AirBnb's other communications aren't as ugly as that heap of sentence
fragments.

------
001sky
_It 's a fine sentiment but glosses over the details...

Interesting, I've observed the opposite...

I think it's disingenuous to say...

In my experience, this is the first sign that [X] about to be fucked up...

I hope [company X's] other communications aren't as ugly as that heap of
sentence fragments...._

___________

These are the first 1-5 comment's on HN. Is this the work some 4chan Meme
propogation software?

------
sgustard
If the culture is one of arbitrary profanity, sign me the fuck up!

------
pags
"fuck" is an edgy word.

------
whoismua
Nice try but "culture," "family," "our values," and all that crap goes right
out of the window when things go south or when the company decides to save a
few bucks. Seen it a lot of times to make it a trend.

------
dredmorbius
TL;DR: Dunbar's number

------
drakaal
Too late for that.

I don't live in my AirBNB's. I don't want to be friends with all of the people
who stay at my places. I am running hotels where maid service is your
responsibility, or you can pay an additional fee.

I have really nice places. They are cheaper than hotels, and you get way more
space. I would love to stay at their equivalents in other places. But I don't
want to make friends with all the people who stay at my places, or the places
I might stay.

If AirBNB is going to work, it needs to be looking at ways to be more like
TimeShares that you buy on a moment's notice, and less like a couch surfing
site.

It needs to be mainstream, not more hippy.

Yes, it needed that hippy core to get started, but to really grow it has to
transition from the hippy core to mainstream. You can't be a $10B company with
a target audience that is only people who all want to be friends. That may be
sad, but it is the truth of business.

~~~
babo
How is that related to the content of this article?

~~~
joeblau
They obviously didn't read the article, just the title.

~~~
drakaal
I read it.

Have you talked to the support people there? My phone support people have
sounded stoned, made inappropriate jokes, and been horribly unprofessional.

They are slow to respond, and worthless if anything goes wrong.

How many changes have you seen to the website over the last 100 days? How many
of those had a positive impact?

AirBNB needs to grow up, they need to think mainstream, and they need to learn
how to deal with real people at scale.

~~~
logicallee
It sounds like you need to be using Hyatt or DoubleTree's online franchised
timeshare offering. What, there is none?

Then be thankful that the culture you hate has created something you value.
You sound like the complaints that Google doesn't offer phone support, just
correct software and a knowledge base.

If you want to deal with a traditional, huge, corporate juggernaut, feel free
to check out their offerings. Let us know if you find anything.

~~~
drakaal
The difference is Google mostly works. And yes I hate that Google has lousy
support.

AirBNB's corporate culture is based on the idea that nobody will care because
the users would do it for free but it is nice to get paid.

When you raise 500M on a 10B valuation, people start to care more that your
stuff works. If you get a moldy muffin at a bake sale you say, "no big deal
that was a nice guy". If you get a moldy muffin at Starbucks you get a lawyer.

I am now a "Starbucks Franchisee" and so people expect more. I am also betting
big on AirBNB with multiple properties, so I need them to do their part.

As to the "dig" that I should be using Hyatt or Doubletree to do this... I
expect I will soon. You don't expect them to stay out of the market do you? I
expect Expedia to be in the space in the next 3 years as the legality of
running a hotel (and that's what I do) gets shaken out in NYC and SF.

~~~
logicallee
Well, you are clearly doing more than they communicate to you. I read you as
being a franchisee in a franchise program that doesn't exist. Do they actively
support buying apartments to lease out using Airbnb?

So while I understand that you are already using them, that you see that
they've raised money, and that you expect more from their franchise program
than non-existence - indeed, you've set your stake down and established
yourself in it - it strikes me as less than fair that you would show this
level of entitlement toward a non-existent program.

It's a bit like complaining to a bakery that your customers no longer wake up
to the nice fresh smell of croissants in your apartment upstairs from them,
now that the bakery get their croissants delivered from another baking
location. Well, okay. But that's not their model.

This is what your tone sounds like to me:

"Dear airbnb: I've taken it upon myself to set up as a franchisee in your non-
existent franchise program. And as an airbnb franchise owner, boy am I pissed.
Your level of support for what I'm doing is appalling. Orders of magnitude
worse than what I would get from a program that exists. As a $10B company, you
cannot afford to stop supporting what I'm doing. It's a travesty. Make no
mistake, I am upset and fully intend to abandon you and start using your
competition - just as soon as it starts existing. Your days are numbered."

I understand that you think they should go in the direction of supporting you
(which may not even be legal!) but I would seriously consider the level of
entitlement you show when making these requests. At the end of the day, you're
not entitled to be a franchisee if they don't have a franchise program.

~~~
drakaal
When you look at the "rent a castle" or many of the featured locations it is
clear I am not a minority. It was this change that made them a $10b valuation
company instead of being what ever valuation all the other couch surf websites
are.

There are other services for furnished short term rentals. Few of those let
you do 3 day rentals. I am on some of the ones that allow 1 week rentals. So
there is competition in that space, and has been pre-airbnb.

So yes, they have a "franchise" this analogy is falling down because they are
more like Amazon and I am more like one of the providers who lists on them.
Or, Ebay listing my car for me.

When Amazon, or Ebay have support issues, or performance issues, or "image"
issues it effects those "self entitled" sellers who are trying to make a
living on their platform.

And yes, just as ebay and amazon if you don't do a good job the providers of
what is sold will leave.

~~~
logicallee
Some of what you've written makes sense, but you can't appeal to their $10b
valuation for why they should support what you're doing more explicitly. They
have a certain approach they're doing, and this only supports you implicitly.
You can't take it but complain they're not doing something different, just
like Google Search users can't complain about a lack of phone support. (And
Google is a $363B company.)

I actually didn't mean "self-entitled" in a general way (like, about your
personality), or anything - rather just entitlement about something in this
particular relationship. For example, the same level of entitlement that you
show might be absolutely fine when you deal with Starbucks, for example. (If I
read correctly that you're a starbucks franchise owner). It's just that you're
showing this particular entitlement about airbnb, and there is nothing to
justify it, as they don't operate the same way or make the same sort of
promises about their relationship with you.

Anyway it wouldn't hurt to ask nicely, saying, pretty-please, wouldn't you
consider doing something different/ more explicit, better business support
than what you're doing now, for this and this reason. They might not want to
do that - then don't use their business. I wouldn't operate an eBay store for
example, because of the terrible things some eBay store operators say about
eBay and their policies. I just wouldn't use it as a business front.

I think if you don't want airbnb to just ignore you, you should consider
playing at their level, with constructive feedback about what to do and how to
do it, and if they _don 't_ want to do that - then to make a hard decision
about whether you want to do business on their terms, or make a living
somewhere else.

You can't get them to change their behavior by starting to behave as though
they already promised to do that or set the relationship up like that. They
aren't DoubleTree opening a franchise program. It's just a different sort of
organization.

