Your Company Culture is Awesome, But Company Culture is a Lie
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Your Company Culture is “Awesome” (But is company culture a lie?) All Things Open 2014 Pamela O. Vickers, @pwnela
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All Things Open 2014 - Day 2 Thursday, October 23rd, 2014 Pamela Vickers Software Developer with Big Nerd Ranch, Atlanta Rails Girls Business Your Company Culture is Awesome (But is Company Culture a Lie?) Find more by Pamela here: https://speakerdeck.com/pwnela
Transcript of Your Company Culture is Awesome, But Company Culture is a Lie
Your Company Culture is “Awesome”
(But is company culture a lie?)
All Things Open 2014 Pamela O. Vickers, @pwnela
“Company Culture”
Acme Co. #1“useful, funny, cool”
Acme Co. #2“unique”
Acme Co. #3“best culture in town”
Acme Co. #3 (cont.)“Call of Duty”
The “best culture in town” sounds a lot like...
Acme Co. #4“ping pong”
Which reminds me...
Acme Co. #5“wtf”
Acme Co. #6“extended hours, as needed”
Acme Co. #7“code quality, testing, peer reviews, collaboration"
Acme Co. #8“happy developers”
“great"
“awesome"
“best in town"
“The Most Important Optimization: Happiness”
by Ernie Miller
PERMAMartin Seligman
Ppositive emotion
Eengagement
Rrelationships
Mmeaning
Aachievement
Ppositive emotion
“How Perks Can Divide Us”
by Melissa Santos & Rafe Colburn
“You never change things by fighting the existing reality. To change
something, build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete.”
R. Buckminster Fuller
P == ERMA
Eengagement
Mmeaning
Aachievement
Eengagement
Mmeaning
Aachievement
“but”
bad communicationkills engagement
bad/unavailable toolskills engagement
impossible deadlineskills engagement, prevents achievement
boring domainno meaning, kills engagement
ambiguous ethical domainno (good) meaning,
“no one is going to use this”no meaning, no engagement, no achievement
“The life of a programmer is mostly a never-ending
struggle.”
“learning new things…”
“…battling against our own ignorance.”
“If you write code, you will struggle.”
“…without getting (too) frustrated.”
Aaron Hillegass
Engagement Meaning Achievement
challenging challenging interesting
“Has a degree of complexity”
“Is autonomous”
inspirational innovative innovative practical
community-building beneficial
epic important
finite finite short
successful “clear relationship between work and
reward”
E + M == A == (more)P
(more letter math)
A - (E + M)== ❌ == 😿
(E + M) > ☕
“but"
Does the product owner respond to questions and/or requests in a
reasonable time frame?
Does the product owner respect the developing
team members?
Does the product owner appreciate and value the work done by the developing team?
Does the product owner follow (within reason) the process
outlined by the developing team?
Is the product owner pleasant to work with in
general?
And do we, as the developers, have the resources needed to to move the project forward?
Rrelationships
Things That Suck™
“fine”
“…people are still going to hesitate to talk about
the tough stuff.””Keith Sparkjoy
The Five Whys
“The car won’t start.”
“The car won’t start.”“Why?”
“The battery is dead.”
“The battery is dead.”“Why?”
“The alternator isn’t working.”
“The alternator isn’t working.”
“Why?”
“The alternator belt wasn’t replaced.”
“The alternator belt wasn’t replaced.”
“Why?”
“The car isn’t being maintained well.”
“The car isn’t being maintained well.”
“Oh.”
“but”
Acme Co. #7“code quality, testing, peer reviews, collaboration"
Acme Co. #7“We look for people who are really smart, really nice and
who want to solve big problems…”
💥boom💥
💥boom💥
You get the idea.
👏👏👏
👍deliberate culture👍
👎passive culture👎
“awesome”
Thank you.
Pamela O. Vickers @pwnela
