> FBI documents accessed by journalists via a freedom of information request revealed that HubSpot attempted "multiple failed attempts to manipulate and extort people” with the intention of stopping the book's publication.

> HubSpot executives considered the book "a financial threat to HubSpot, its share price, and the company’s future potential."

I'm including this because this book was published in 2016. While I'm sure that HubSpot, its employees, and management may have learned some things about integrity and transparency since then, it's probably not enough to be writing this soap-boxy slide deck that announces that software built around their culture is going to solve their problems.

On the other hand, I do believe software can shape and guide a culture but only if the culture is also at the pilot seat behind that software. That's to say, as long as the implementors of said software are not interested in developing a certain culture. Your employees will inevitably decide what software gets used and what software gets circumvented, the byproduct of which becomes what people colloquially refer to as culture.

Culture comes from everywhere. When you recruit gay people, some of the values of gay people trickle into your company. When you recruit Black people, values of Black folks trickle in. When you recruit from universities those values trickle in. Each of those will shape your culture and those people are not monoliths either, they're mixes of many vibrant and dark experiences. The last part is key, recruiting is one aspect, but your company culture will continue to evolve and I see projects like this as software trying to drive culture (what the C-suite wants) instead of culture driving software that it maintains itself.

[1] https://www.nytimes.com/2016/04/10/books/review/disrupted-by...

[2] https://www.samueljscott.com/2018/12/19/hubspot-fbi-report

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Work to make a living | Work to make a difference | Nope [1]

Follow explicit instructions | Chart the course | Depends on the role [2]

Juggle work and life | Harmonize work and life | Sounds like: never stop working

Commute into work | Connect to work from anywhere | Sounds like: never stop working

Value amazing perks | Value amazing people | I like people, even unamazing ones

I think only someone who has lost their sense of distinction between their work and their life can write these out as ideals. I.e. A startup founder.

[1] I am not knocking making a difference, but that isn't the organizational imperative of any business. And it is a dangerous delusion to say it is.

[2] I learnt a lot following orders at different times

Edits: not sure I'm going to figure this tabulation out

Here's the main problem with having a culture code:

It's often created and agreed upon by a clique of employees who've been working there for years - newcomers get a say inversely proportional to the number of employees they encountered on their first day.

The best culture I participated in was in a project where we were all contractors in a freshly formed team - working remotely at that, with no code of conduct aside from maybe "don't be an asshole" - enforced by our leader, who was by the way great at her job.

I'm still in touch with these people even though we were disbanded after six months and that was there years ago.

Yes, it's a slide deck -- but think of it as a template.

Shared with the community with love.

I am from New York and spend most of my time in Colombia. My English speaking New York personality and Spanish speaking Colombian personality have diverged quite significantly.

I am a lot more indirect in Spanish. I'll rarely say "no" in Spanish for example. I'll always try to rephrase it as "yes, but we could also..." or "maybe we could...".

The "we seek the truth and face facts" mentality works well for some cultures and not as great for others.

I question the idea that a company should have a single culture. Might be better to aim to be a place where folks from a variety of cultures can collaborate.

Its actually nothing i want anymore; There are many reasons why people earn a certain amount of money but being involved in that process in a company wide group setting was horrible annoying and didn't make me feel any better.

And on my salary discussion, it was mentioned what extra perks i got from the company and that amounted to a certain amount which suddenly meant "Look we give you less money because we think it increases the social factor if we force you to be in our company on a day with everyone else to eat together etc. in a forced social setting, which was nice don't get me wrong, by you paying indirectly.

And thats the issue, either the company is paying for it, or you don't do it.

At the end of the day, you can easily find nice people you wana hang around with while you work in plenty of normal companies. Just make sure you find a good Team.

And yes all those things they do it for 2 reasons: 1. keeping employees 2. getting new employees. Being a little bit of edgy might just be cheaper than paying head hunters and if you can take unlimited good people but you just don't get them, every person going through your door because of all this hipness, is one person more earning money for you.

Expect loads of cynicism. I've found that talking about having Principles and Integrity in business and professional endeavors, usually results in being accused of "virtue signaling," which is ridiculous, as we are only talking about simple, basic, realistic human values; not some kind of Mother Theresa code.

That said, it is extremely easy to let a focus on "culture" turn into a toxic monoculture. It's always easier to exclude those that deviate from the norm, than it is to adapt to them.

[1]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9gn5kwQaMFQ

why not have "unlimited salaries" too -- one just writes themselves a check to what one thinks he deserves

I obtained the FBI's redacted report following its investigation into your company. The full PDF is available here: https://www.samueljscott.com/2018/12/19/hubspot-fbi-report/

HubSpot has always stated that the company believes in transparency. But HubSpot has never directly and specifically addressed the serious, material allegations in Lyons' book and has never disclosed exactly what the mentioned executives — among others — may have done regarding his book.

So, I ask you:

Will HubSpot grant me, for my column for The Drum, a one-hour interview with you, Brian Halligan, and the chair of your board of directors? Completely recorded and on the record and with nothing off-limits.

I get it if you're telegraphing that you just don't think they'll fit with you team, but having seen a lot of culture interviews in practice, they seem to be more socially acceptable code for "they're not gender conforming in profession, preference or practice", "they're not white", or what have you.

I can vouch for what the deck mentions. They conduct the business with love and care for the people in the company as well as the customers.

The company puts a lot of care and dedication to make the people grow. They conduct themselves with care and appreciation for each other.

I feel a bit jealous of how much this company values employees, I wish all companies were like this one. For what I see, this deck is not thin air. I see how it is fulfilled everyday in my wife, and I am personally grateful for this.

I work for a living, I volunteer and work in my community to make a difference.

1. The deck is a good recruiting tool. Once you're past the start-up phase and are a scale-up this matters a lot.

2. Cynicism of such decks is understandable because it is just words and culture often reflects the founders' values. As such we were lucky that Dharmesh and Brian are among the highest integrity folks I've worked with who solve for the company always and never for themselves.

The value of the deck for other companies may be encouraging a thoughtful discussion about what kind of culture they want and providing an opportunity to critically evaluate leadership who tacitly set the day-to-day culture.

Funny story also when someone told me to turn off my monitor because it's bad for the environment and we are a green company, then we take money and support as a client a company that literally cuts down rainforests, but hey...

Well deserved, too. When somebody makes a point of saying something that doesn't need to be said - and makes a point of saying it over and over again as if it were profound - anybody who's been around for a little while gets really skeptical really fast. There's a famous Reed Hastings (of Netflix) quote along the lines of "do not tolerate brilliant jerks". Naive people love to share that quote - and it's undoubted that they have somebody in mind who they'd prefer not to tolerate when they share it - but there's literally not one single human being who's ever lived who has said the opposite. Why does it need to be said, then? Because he (and the repeaters of the quote) needs justification for not tolerating people who's face he doesn't like, no matter what performance numbers they can produce in their defense. This slide deck includes a good quote from Grace Hopper: one measurement is worth a thousand expert opinions - but anybody who puts together 100 slides about "culture" bases everything on "gut feel" and ignores actual data.

The problem I've found in having these conversations is that, for some people, the moment you disagree with their "simple, basic, realistic human values", things turn toxic. Ie. it's not really a discussion, it's "these are my values and you either agree with them or you're a terrible person".

For example, I saw a comment thread on this board about Black Lives Matter. It had devolved to the point where one commenter said something like, "BLM means that you either believe that black lives literally matter or you do not.", which, obviously, is not true.

In my current company, all those culture things are also communicated, they are just not a blog post on the internet and they do not feel like a cult :)

My direct experience is that there will be some that will be cynical -- that's OK.

A big lesson for me personally is that working on culture as a "product" is very useful. Collect customer feedback. Identify bugs. Categorize some things as "works as designed". Be transparent with your customers. And, of course, iterate, iterate, iterate.

> “The louder he talked of his honor, the faster we counted our spoons.”