I think that's okay actually. I see profiles to be like an interview with say, an engineering manager or current team members. We ask questions, they answer, and we decide how strong or convincing that answer is.
1,824 karma · joined December 30, 2014
I’m an indie hacker, and I've spent the last few months putting this together. I interviewed dozens of engineers to come up with a list of values: things we care about most when evaluating new opportunities. I then worked with engineering teams (which you see listed on Key Values) to identify the 8 values that best describe their engineering team and culture.
I’m working to add more teams to the site and would love to hear from you!
I can vouch that Algolia has an incredibly collaborative and feedback-oriented culture :)
My name is Lynne and I built Key Values. I wasn't the one who posted my website to HN but I do love discussing it! :D
I don't think you're being overly negative at all. Here are my thoughts:
1. Missing values? The values list will certainly evolve over time. I started working on Key Values in May and this is the curated list of value tags that I put together after interviewing dozens of engineers and drawing from my own personal values. "Promotes Software Freedom" is an incredibly interesting one and who knows, you might see it on there some day ;) I am sure that I've missed several important values (and that I'll need to remove some of the ones I currently have on there).
2. Who assessed these things? I worked with CEOs, CTOs, engineering managers, engineers, and in some cases, technical recruiters to put together their engineering team's profile. They have 100% control over the content of their profile. The issue of accuracy was one that troubled me a lot in the beginning, but at the end of the day, who can trust anything on the internet? And really, when I'm in an interview and ask my interviewer these exact questions (ie. "how do you practice inclusion here?"), who's to say that s/he is telling the truth?
I can't force teams to write anything in their profile but my hope is that limiting teams to 8 values forces them to (a) be thoughtful in describing their culture and (b) implicitly say what they are not. After choosing and ranking their 8 values, teams then have to prove it. If they can't talk at length about why they chose a particular value, they end up re-evaluating and choosing another. Finally, I care about the quality of their profiles (they're on my website!) so I work really hard to get thoughtful, detailed explanations from teams before publishing their profile. If you read some of them, I hope you'll agree that I've done a pretty good job (they list examples, link to individual team members, and provide details about their paid family leave policies, deployment processes, and/or regularly scheduled meetings).
3. Complex problem? Yeah, but so is dating. There are hundreds of dating apps out there (maybe more?!) and finding a job really just like dating, yet there is nothing similar for job-seekers and employers. Just like dating, you don't have time to meet every available employer out there. Just like dating, you can learn a lot about a team based on how they rank their top 8 values from a list of ~40. Just like dating, reading explanations to somewhat tricky questions can illuminate things that resonate (or repel) you.
Anyway, sorry this was a novel! Thanks for your thoughts on the matter and let me know if you have other questions/comments/feedback!
Hi, my name is Lynne. I am an MIT graduate and a front-end web developer looking for opportunities using Ember.js. I have experience building web apps using JavaScript (including ES6), HTML, CSS/SASS, and Rails. More information in my LinkedIn or feel free to shoot me an email.
LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/pub/lynne-tye/81/223/266 GitHub: https://github.com/lynnetye Email: lynnetye at gmail