Why Culture is Key
eng.wealthfront.com
Ten core values of Wealthfront, our engineering manifesto and why culture is so strategic to our company.
eng.wealthfront.com
in my experience typical high-tech R&D department workplace culture is one of nerds who are technically extremely competent, but communication issues are very common and people tend to be passive-aggressive. one-upsmanship abounds. the culture expects long hours for no overtime, the "i'm here for a paycheck" attitude is frowned upon, and the work is not anywhere as cool as corporate propaganda makes it out to be.
i may be jaded but i don't see how some higher-up preaching about "aligning interests" and "being passionate" is actually affecting any real day-to-day issues.
a more honest article might be about hiring people who are similar to existing employees, in terms of personality and priorities. maybe you only want to hire people who like to work 24/7, or maybe people who want to "change the world" through gluing together webservice APIs, or maybe you just want warm bodies to fill chairs.* but i guess there's no patting yourself on the back there and it doesn't sound as cool as screening for "culture-fit".
* not a comment on wealthfront. I don't know what they do or how they operate. just a general observation.
I have no trouble believing it is common and maybe even typical of BIG companies, even if you're not in the R&D department.
I have worked for large high tech corporations and while there were death-marches at least there wasn't a crippling lack of communication and passive aggression. Sadly I am currently experiencing both of the latter at another Big Co's R&D department.
But I have found startups and small businesses to be refreshingly full of passion and free of BS.
This is why my thoughts revolve around working either for myself or at least partly for myself as a share holder in a startup.
I understand this might just come off as another guy at Wealthfront drinking the kool-aid but I mean it sincerely. The people here are as adept at teamwork and communication as they are software. That's why I upvoted the post, not to tow the company line but because I think Pascal's article is relevant and legitimately devoid of bullshit. Of course, YMMV!
I just want to say that some of the best people I have worked with would fail this test.
Moreover, every time I hear one of those statements, I can't help thinking (fairly or unfairly - you are entitled to your opinion): what white business a few decades ago would have hired a black person with guidance like that? A woman? A gay man?
Hire for ability. Hire for work ethic. Hire for ingenuity. Hire for passion. Hire for cold analytical minds. Don't hire for someone to drink beer with. Please.
As a startup founder that wasn't funded by top tier venture capitalists (just customers) I have an extremely difficult time swallowing this narrative that anything I do has any direct mapping to Zappo's, Netflix, Netscape, Google, or (lol) Disney.
My day to day is concerned about finding customers, getting paid, managing expenditures, creating value (also known as doing real work), not worrying about how to define some sort of 'culture'. My culture is finding customers and getting paid. It's a culture of hustling for sales and doing professionally acceptable levels of work under enormous time and resource constraints with clients that don't really care that I'm trying to develop product.
Wealthfront raised $10.5M from investors including Marc Andreessen.
Both models are valid, and both models require different approaches. Steve Blank will be talking about this soon at Wealthfront and you should feel free to join.
As for the self-serving recruiting post... we're not recruiting anyone this year!
I'm not really sure what you mean by 'independent', though, because all companies depend on their customers.... (QED?)
Here are some large, independent companies in our space:
RAX, TMRK (well, not anymore I guess), peer1.com, he.net, IBM
From what I can tell your competitors are the large mutual funds, ETFs, and retail wealth management, so I'm sure you will achieve success, as it's a large and proven market.
And as far as not recruiting this year - web content doesn't disappear after a year.
The biggest reason why you see posts from well-funded companies on culture, aside from recruiting, is because they are the ones that are hiring quickly and have a large group of people that must make decisions on a company's behalf in that company's best interest. It doesn't strike me as necessary for a very small company to even have those concerns.
"[F]inding customers, getting paid, managing expenditures, creating value" sounds exactly right for how you describe your company.