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Comment by bobbygoodlatte | Hacker News Reader

I think this post misses the point.

Company values are only meaningful when they differentiate that company from others. Everyone wants to "Move Fast and Not Break Things".

"Move Fast and Break Things" was a value judgement. For Facebook, moving quickly was worth the penalty of sometimes breaking things.

This is why most companies have lame values like "Do your best work" or "Be honest". Great values, but nobody disagrees with them—so they're meaningless.

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I totally agree with this but would add a bit of nuance. I'd love to see all companies do a "X and the cost of Y" value system, but there is another part of stating you have values like "Integrity" which is the same as the Google "Don't be evil" thing. It's a claim that you can be called publicly on, and that's important as well. You'd be surprised how many companies out there aren't willing to make a claim for something like integrity. But yeah, who wouldn't say they value integrity, for instance, when asked?

That being said, I'd also add that most values have those implicitly baked in. For instance, if you do say you value integrity, you're saying you're devaluing growth/money for the value/benefit of integrity.

Yep, I agree with your nuance.

FWIW I think integrity is a pretty okay company value. Depending on your industry, valuing integrity may be a trade-off that other companies are unwilling to make

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