High Fives at LinkedIn in the Wall Street Journal Blog | Hacker News Reader

High Fives at LinkedIn in the Wall Street Journal Blog

blogs.wsj.com

13 pointsrjurney22 comments

> Anyone who walks through the square, which is nearly impossible to avoid, must give a high five to others nearby, the sign declares.

i wonder what the function of this is. to me it's just incredibly oppressive and motivates passive aggressiveness. but maybe the idea is precisely to exclude people like me.

Would you care to clarify how shenanigans can be oppressive?

The signs are extremely formal, listing many regulations to the High Five Incentive Program. The zone is huge and unavoidable. The universal reaction is laughter.

rjurney, just imagine if you were in an environment that was a little fun every now and then. Wouldn't that be absolutely terrible? I mean all the high-fives and smiles--that would be downright awful!

it really would be awful. look up compulsory positive thinking in communist societies.

This is taking an argument to the extreme. Placing a red box on the floor does not suddenly turn the whole place into North Korea.

Of course it does not turn it into North Korea. For one thing, leaving North Korea is difficult, changing jobs is not. And nobody is starving.

But this "have fun! have fun!" attitude is not healthy at all. As others mentioned, it triggers unhealthy psychological mechanisms. (Or, said simply: raises the bullshit meter.)

When people see the zone for the first time, they laugh. People like funny things. People at LinkedIn like to laugh. Laughing is not compulsory, just incredibly common - and I have to say it sure feels healthy.

What makes me laugh is the stuff that people post on their LinkedIn pages. I've never seen so much peacock strutting anywhere.

It's a suggestion. I'm fairly confident they would not get away with firing someone who did not give a high-five after walking through the box. That would never hold up in court. Some people overreact to rather benign issues.

I truly feel sorry for people who have this little sense of humor, and am glad that we haven't had much of that reaction (e.g. taking at all, even mildly seriously) to the signs and The Zone.

Taking the High Five Zone seriously is like taking seriously a sign in the mens bathroom proclaiming "Please follow the International Choice of Urinal Protocol" (c.f. http://blog.xkcd.com/2009/09/02/urinal-protocol-vulnerabilit... ).

Forcing your sense of humor on your subordinates creates an unhealthy atmosphere. (My reaction would have been different if he had not been a top manager in the company.)

He didn't force anything. I did this. He asked for a zone, I put it up the day of that interview. The writer took artistic license, which I'm fine with - I liked the article.

So your reaction can become different now.

That's how North Korea was founded. The Communists put this big red box symbol just north of the 38th parallel, and said, "You must high-five here or die, capitalist pig dogs!"

The South refused to high-five.

It is oppressive just like Hawaiian shirt days are oppressive. Pasted-up fake smiles demotivates.

These smiles aren't fake. People are excited every day at LinkedIn, or the high five program would suck.

Plenty of people have disregarded the sign (some having no clue it's even there), it's in no way compulsory. It's an attempt at humour, mocking rules and signs in general.

On the other hand, I've seen far more odious use of company ski trips, "team building activities" and the like.

I have to say, I was amazed at how nice an atmosphere there was when I visited LinkedIn a couple of months back. I was expecting something a bit stuffy, considering their market and somewhat conservative approach to innovation, but the people in the hallways and lunch room seemed genuinely relaxed and happy. It especially struck me after visiting Facebook a few hours earlier and finding it somewhat grim. All very subjective of course, but it makes me think this is a bit of real fun, not a horrific corporate attempt at 'flair'.

The high-five thing started completely from the bottom up, by Russell Jurney (rjurney here and on Twitter). Jeff was over in analytics area (on an unrelated matter, iirc) and happened to step into an impromptu-created high-five zone and has adopted it.

The atmosphere surprised me as well (given the fact LinkedIn's a professional network) when I first interviewed and later joined. Another fun thing I noticed, check out the company guid for LinkedIn:

http://www.linkedin.com/companies/1337

Ugh. This sounds like something that would be done at Yahoo than LinkedIn. Like that ad campaign they ran: It's Y!ou or something of that sort.

Wow. If LinkedIn was public, I would SO short them after reading that.

I'm sure many have done so with Google stock after reading about free lunches, bean bag chairs and noticing the April Fool's pranks.

Oh wow...

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