Why Culture Should Be Your Central Focus(founderdating.com) |
Why Culture Should Be Your Central Focus(founderdating.com) |
As such, this article was kind of "well, duh!" for me - One of the things I'd be most exited about if I ever do start my own organisation will be being able to invent a culture (and this is the motivation I've mentioned to several people in describing the kinds of start ups I have ideas for.)
However, at the software company I worked for, the attitude was "we love this company because they buy us beer!". This was cool in that they paid for theme park visits and big, free-beer parties as "morale" activities, some of which I enjoyed and some not so much, but I also felt a bit empty working there. I felt that this was because they were a services company - i.e. they were very very skeptical about "product" ideas, and where they did have a go at them they tended to dramatically underfund them (there was one notable exception to this, but the continuing revenue from the product was mostly in services-style support contracts, since it was a B2B product.) I would have preferred that they spent some of the beer money giving some of their more exciting ideas a better shot of working. (they also took on some services work that I didn't think was particularly ethical, although it was all legal.)
so, things I would delete:
- "beer is the best way to have fun" attitude.
- "9-to-5"-ism.
things I would add: - motivation about company mission (also, dependently, hiring
people who do care about the mission.)
This is perhaps why my ideas for start ups tend to be either social enterprises, or fighting some political mission (like PRISM-evasion) - because I want there to be a mission to care about. I hope that the two things I want to avoid would follow, at least in part, from the thing I would add (although my 2nd-hand experience of the charitable sector says that 9-to-5ism may be difficult to escape anywhere.)2) Let me estimate my own work. Make it somewhat flexible (within reason). Don't tie me to point systems or other work estimation methodologies; they are all worse than an intelligent human knowing what you're up to and many kinds of "work" are not accounted for in such systems (assisting coworkers, mentoring, researching etc.)
3) Don't block Internet sites. Trust me to use what is available to me to DO my job instead of DODGE my job.
4) 12-2pm is lunch AND outdoors/physical exercise time. No exceptions. Work hours are 9am-noon and 2pm-5pm. Get your things done and focus and then get the heck out and enjoy your life. If you finish early, leave early. Just be here more or less on time at 9am.
But the article also links a blog on culture [1] that actually makes a decent attempt at explaining it, and it not just through a single manifesto type statement, but over a long series of blog posts. Good read.
I don't mind the presence of "beer culture" so much as long as it's in addition to ridiculously high compensation, and not a sleight of hand to distract people and then underpay them relative to norms ("Look! We're a STARTUP! We have video games! And BEER!")
My attitude is: show me the money ... then we can talk culture. ;)
With respect to money, I think I'd have to be very well paid to get me to work for a company without a cool mission now (and, conversely, I'd happily get paid less to be doing something I believed in - hence taking a big pay cut to do a PhD..)
The thing I don't like is when people are misled about the bargain - hearing "we're not about money, we're changing the world, you need to work 18h a day" from someone who will benefit exponentially more from a successful outcome than the slave he's whipping.