A Critique of “Don’t Fuck Up The Culture”

It makes me also think about how uncomfortable I felt during high school rallies. I mean, I didn't even particularly choose to be in that place, why should I have "pride" to be part of that institution? And why do I need to express that "pride" by yelling in a mob? I always found it somewhat creepy how easily people went along with all of that. I guess it's better than being lonely.

In California tech, something like half of the employees will not even have much stateside family, being immigrants, while another large portion come from broken families, are un-churched (but perhaps yoga-classed), and are often unmarried also. There is no 'society' there for such employees beyond the company, no rival sources of meaning. Perhaps after 'success' there is room for 'philanthropy.'

It is actually the whole culture because the alternate cultural institutions have become so weak that the corporation just fills the gaps, as the only remaining institution in the life of the individual with any confidence or capacity for initiative. Otherwise, a good article.

It's funny that a guy who has contributed to HBR, which has done so much to obliterate or subvert all competing institutions to the corporation, seems to have a little trepidation about going all the way.

With minor exceptions whenever a company goes on and on about its culture, it is time to leave.

Culture has become a by-word for: 1) Rejecting older applicants while hiring "He is not a Cultural fit"

2) Making females uncomfortable in an all-male Bro-culture by cracking "anatomy" jokes

3) Getting people with families to put in insane hours and justifying it by pointing to the younger crowd and its culture

4) Fig leaf to cover up blatant exploitation

Rarely has company culture ever meant anything positive

Can an employee say NO to a decision from a superior on the grounds it violates a core value? Try to imagine it. Would a cultural value from your corporate handbook ever be used in making an actual decision about actual work? If the answer is no, then the values are platitudes, or were written so generically that they’re easily overlooked or easily manipulated to justify just about anything (depending on your opinion, Google’s don’t be evil is either a good example or a bad one).

^^^

Outstanding insight. That litmus test is usually enough to destroy most the of the paper-thin proclamations of culture trotted out by corporations (especially start-ups).

<swoon> I've been trying to argue this for years. To call a business environment "culture" is to grossly misunderstand the nature and importance of culture and to over-aggrandize the business environment itself.

I asked my boss ('ask' is a euphemism, as I remember it) what was up with this list (given that the statements were almost entirely false in the moment), and he told me that there are two ways to guide people when an organization hits a certain size: with detailed and explicit rules like the military, or with concepts to guide smart people to make decisions roughly in line with the direction chosen by management.

With experience, I have found that there are more than two options (that was my first 'real' job after working at a gas station as a teenager). The "N points" were deprecated after a few years, and amazingly (to me, anyway), the company still exists.

As many people have said, culture usually comes from the leaders' actions, not from their wishes. Or their lists.

Don't let cynicism over the company culture of free t-shirts and late nights cloud out the goal of building a culture that lasts longer than you will. Just like parenting, it's what you do, not what you (or your posters) say that matters.

This is the single most important statement in the article. Being conscious of the power structures is critical in understanding an organization and how it functions. Most power structures are not legitimate and we unfortunately placate to them as though they are.

Unfortunately most people spend their day in a totalitarian type organizational structure where they have orders barked to them. Even in the tech world. We need to start asking ourselves if we prefer to live most of our lives in totalitarian organizations getting orders barked at us.

Now what? Take Berkun's definition of culture, and don't fuck up that. Culture could be the thing that stops future innovation? Make it part of the culture not to try to stop future innovation.

Culture sure is kinda intangible, but it's still good advice to founders to pay close attention to it. Whatever it is.

When "culture fit" is used to justify not hiring a capable, 43-year-old woman out of the fear that she'll justify the money-making machine that exists when 25-year-old, male, clueless commodity programmers are stapled together into an underpaid, overworked team, the word culture isn't being misused. That's exactly what culture is.

Most companies that have a strong cultural identity have a negative one. It's also not necessary that a company have one. Banks don't trumpet "our culture" but (excluding analyst programs, which are hellish) are decent places to work in spite of the weak cultural identity.

A corporate "culture" eventually realizes that it must defend itself against perceived enemies. And it inevitably ends up being the worst kinds of people-- passive-aggressive, malevolent sorts-- who acquire the position to decide who those enemies are going to be.

Culture also tends toward arrogance, injustice, and hubris as it develops exceptionalism, which is what it will fight hardest to defend. I still have people from Google, three years after I left, going out of their way to fuck up my life because they perceive things I've said as being threats to their culture's exceptionalism. (Never mind that I've been gone for 3 years and have absolutely no power over anything that happens at Google.)

A commercial enterprise like a business will never have a balanced, full-fledged culture. Culture is immersive, not something people participate in for 8 hours per day in order to make money. I would say that, as much as possible, you don't want a strong culture (or, more dangerously, a strong cultural identity) at your place of work. You want people to get in, do good work, be paid well, and be happy. But once you have people start talking about "culture fit" as if it were a real thing, you've hired too many passive-aggressive assholes, and you need to cool it with the "culture" nonsense.