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Comment by RcouF1uZ4gsC | Hacker News Reader

A good rule of thumb is that the more a corporation talks about "culture", the more the employees should be wary that they are getting fleeced.

A lot of companies have realized that they get employees to work harder for less if they are able to get the employees to develop some sort of emotional attachment to the company. If you as an employee are getting a lot of push about "company culture" and the company is trying to push various experiences to make you feel good about the company, you should make sure you take the time to seriously look at your compensation and what the market compensation is, and see if they are trying to underpay you relative to your value.

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You're on the right track, but I think you're taking a more cynical view of it (just to be frank).

Whether you're a business, volunteer organization, sports team or anything else you want the people working with you to be motivated. No matter what. Motivation is the goal.

If you get into motivational psychology, especially for people in the software field, studies consistently show that motivation for us boils down to 3 things: Autonomy, Mastery and Purpose.

In many cases, feeling good about the place that you work will feed into that purpose motive. Having "esprit de corps" with your team feeds it because you want to both help your team to succeed and you don't want to let them down.

That's also why a bad manager, leader, owner, coach, etc will torpedo it fast because you're going to be a lot less motivated for somebody like that.

I know HN isn't big on YouTube links, but this is one of the better short talks on motivational psychology out there (about 10 minutes long).

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u6XAPnuFjJc

> Motivation is the goal.

I cannot speak for everyone but nothing motivates me more than a well defined task/problem, a reasonable amount of time to solve it, and a follow up letting me know how much my solution helped.

No amount of gimmicks is gonna win with that.

What you're talking about largely falls under autonomy (reasonable amount of time to implement your solution) and mastery (feedback on your solution to the problem).

And that's totally normal.

Some companies can better fit the Purpose mold better than others. Many can't at all.

I would consider the normalization (or lack) of what you mentioned as part of company culture.

> feeling good about the place that you work will feed into that purpose motive.

Of course, but that's not the problem with what GW is doing. The problem with what GW is doing is that trying to make people feel good about the place they work with by putting them through artificial "team building" exercises doesn't work. The way you make people feel good about the place they work with is to make it a good place to work. That means letting people do their jobs, giving them the tools they need to do their jobs, and removing obstacles that are in the way of them doing their jobs. Forcing people to stop work and go to these events fails at all three.

Culture should be apparent. Repetitious reinforcement of the "culture" is propaganda.

Don't mean to nit, just curious about meaning: Did you mean "culture should be emergent"?

Culture has this really interesting property. It's really the cumulative effect of all the decisions and actions taken by every member of the culture. However -- here's the fun part -- the history of those decisions and actions informs future decisions and actions. It becomes somewhat cyclic and self-reinforcing. And because of this it's very difficult to change once it settles in.

So yes, sometimes upon high will attempt to effect cultural change by repetitious reinforcement. And yes, this looks like propaganda because it is. But that does not necessarily mean it is negative or ill-willed. Sometimes a culture really does need to change -- I'm sure Uber saw a lot of "propaganda" when they started getting flak over their sexist workplace...

I think that too but I suspect that apparent was meant in a show don't tell or speaks for itself sense. It shouldn't need any self-promotion if it exists and is real instead of a facade.

For a trivial example imagine a three piece suit environment which insists it is a casual working environment while having twelve pages of dress code vs one where they can tell who is there to interview because they are wearing business casual instead of teeshirts and jeans.

It comes across as you've given this some thought, so what are the best ways for adjusting an organizational culture?

Make expectations clear and start issuing consequences for not following them. Sounds much easier than it is...

The key is to turn that feedback cycle to your purpose. Once consequences start flowing, word will start to get out that "this one has teeth". You want people to get dirty looks and comments about bad behaviour. That negative response will then feed forward into future decisions.

Or to put it slightly differently: culture derives from what you do, not why you say you do it.

That's a choice though.

If you care enough to put in some extra time ... you've chosen to care.

There's no "fleecing" with that.

not exactly. I think. The point of flagging caution here is to provide a 1) persons consciousness a reminder to observe these corporate behaviors and use that consciousness to inform your 2) desires/choices > actions.

It's common (i think) to just start work, play along, make friends and skip many valuable versions of item 1. I skip it often... but i know people who pay a lot of attention. Like lawyer level attention to the mechanics of a relationship, what's being said and what is being exchange, and how are people being influenced.

Some places feel like company is out harvesting black hat social engineers to work against their employees. Excuse the language, i don't mean this in any alarmist tone. But anecdotally i've felt this and mostly (sadly) ignored the feeling out of laziness or lack of awareness or cause.

Care isn't a high priority in today's environment, both political and economic. It's about whether the equation all checks out.

Ironically, as someone who's always been the type of personality to make sure that the equation checks out, I've come to see that it doesn't make the world a better place.

C'est la vie.

> A good rule of thumb is that the more a corporation talks about "culture", the more the employees should be wary that they are getting fleeced.

Yip, the whole "team pep" talks and the like, all reminisce of what we would call a "cult" in mentality they wish to install in the worship of the `company`.

But unless you have a vested interest in that company with shares or a good profit share package, then giving any job your life and soul is only going to end badly for yourself and you will burn out. Though the trend may seem to pull them in, burn them out and install a agist mentality upon older workers, don't make it right - however indirect that mentality is played out.

Remember, a career is a progression of job measured via what you get paid, but they are still jobs after all. If on the other hand you are more involved in the risk and rewards aspects, that is different as your being fair upon yourself with what you invest. Otherwise, it is just a job.

I feel like this is a lesson everyone in tech gets by their second or third job. If you haven’t gotten this lesson yet, hang tight, it’s coming.

Yes, don't give them your soul but often effort is rewarded and a company consists of people who can stick their neck out for you. Unfortunately they also might consists of people who will stab you in the back...

When I was working as a software developer I usually got the most fun assignments, not because I worked myself to death, but because I was at least pretty good for the type of job I had and took initiative.

Now I'm in a job role where I'm expected to take initiative and drive things myself and that can of course mean burnout for a lot of people but I still feel that the company culture is pretty supportive of preventing that. I have monthly 1:1 with my boss and the standing agenda is:

1. How do you feel your work/life balance is right now?

2. How I can support you in removing any obstacles preventing progress in your goals/projects?

3. What can you do to take action to make progress about the things we have talked about.

This is absolutely not a startup though and not in the US either.

I also do realize that if I find a more interesting job I will quite and if my company realize that they don't need my services they will try and fire or move me to another position.

That's good advice for people who prioritize maximizing salary and emotional detachment.

Some companies aren't trying to underpay employees, they are charging a fair price to their customersrather than fleecing them. Or they corporately care amount more than the fiscal bottom line.

This requires employees willing to work for a fair wage and not maximum compensation.

That’s a rather cynical view. I think of it more like: “culture” is one of the few ways to control people at scale. If you are a product team on Apple’s Live Photo’s feature and you are thinking about what telemetry to collect, if you look at it just based on your evaluated metrics, you’ll think, huh, I’ll be promoted if this feature is awesome, let me collect everything I can and see if it helps me. But if there’s a cultural commitment to privacy, then everyone will think “that’s not very Appley,” when you present your optimizations to your boss he’ll ask you “where did you get all that data? Why did you log it?” Etc.

Now as with all things it can be used in good and bad ways and it’s far easier to do bad than to do good. But it’s just a tool of control.

> A lot of companies have realized that they get employees to work harder for less if they are able to get the employees to develop some sort of emotional attachment to the company.

This is the kind of bullshit I inoculate myself against by telling myself: This is not your life. These are not your best friends. This is you farming gold out of a megacorp so you have the means to advance the story-driven missions that are your real life.

Is that what you’re doing?

While I agree with you completely there is a different side. It's better for you since you get more from the relationship.

Most businesses are small businesses.

One can tell themselves their 40 hour work week (not including commute) isn't their life. They would be lying to themselves.

A 40 hour work week is 23.8% of your week. If you get 7 hours of sleep per night, it's 33.6%. I don't want a third of my waking hours to not be my "real" life.

And yet, as the place where you spend more than half your waking hours, it is your life. If you have the option to connect with the people you are spending your hours with personally and authentically instead of holding them at arm's length with cool detachment, why not? We are all humans. And if you have the chance to drive a mission in the work that you do, then even moreso is there no reason to throw up a false barrier.

More broadly, people are lacking third place institutions like churches, fraternal service organizations, or neighborhood clubs to connect - when their coworkers throw up barriers to connecting, folks get awful lonely awfully quickly.

Those are all self-fulfilling prophecies. And the opposite maxims would also be pretty effective ones.

> to work harder for less if they are able to get the employees to develop some sort of emotional attachment to the company

You're implying as if it's inherently a fraud. Which means that you're implying that "emotional attachement to the company" is something that has no real value for employee - or at least not as much value as money would have.

Why do you think so?

I agree with most of what you say but I see it as more benign. Culture is not just a "trick". A company with good culture is bringing real value to the table, and for this reason they can get a better deal in other areas.

What is money for? After water, food, shelter, and a few more things, Maslow and I spend our my money on culture. Why work 40hrs/week in hell to get some extra money to use to buy a cultural life outside of work?

I’ve been on the other side of the table where these decisions are made. It’s rarely malicious. It’s more so trying to emulate companies they think of as successful. Many business leaders believe that market cap == goodness of management, and so they copy companies they know to be large. Culture is part of it. And culture can make a really positive difference, but not when it’s force fed as shown here. The part about only GW being able to do this stuff struck a painful chord with me.

The two big things that determine whether these things suck or rock is basically the amount of money the company invests into its own employees and the amount of growth opportunities. Both of those are (optional) second order effects of the company being wealthy and successful most of the time.

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