The larger the company the more inconsistent the experience is because nobody is really truly held accountable to culture when they can (pretend) to produce business results. Even places that theoretically want to care usually just put it lower on the priority list and end up not caring by default.
I was promoted 7 times at Google to VP for basically doing what you write in the first sentence (at scale). Then I meet people who were laid off and felt they operated the same way.
The main difference seems to be I worked in areas that literally couldn’t afford to have the kind of managers and leaders that would ding people (vs support people) for doing this, so they didn’t.
The other folks worked in areas that made enough money that the culture could afford to be shitty, and it would take a long time to matter. So it was.
my experience is that eventually the company circumstances change which requires different cultures to operate differently to still be successful. Either they do or the company dies.
PG mostly seems to be suggesting that we should try hard to avoid the shitty cultures in the first place rather than accept it as an artifact of scale. I’m not sure I believe that’s possible past a certain size but I do think it’s interesting to try. But for now, I mostly come down on the side of build smaller companies that are worth more.
I was promoted 7 times at Google to VP for basically doing what you write in the first sentence (at scale). Then I meet people who were laid off and felt they operated the same way.
The main difference seems to be I worked in areas that literally couldn’t afford to have the kind of managers and leaders that would ding people (vs support people) for doing this, so they didn’t. The other folks worked in areas that made enough money that the culture could afford to be shitty, and it would take a long time to matter. So it was.
my experience is that eventually the company circumstances change which requires different cultures to operate differently to still be successful. Either they do or the company dies.
PG mostly seems to be suggesting that we should try hard to avoid the shitty cultures in the first place rather than accept it as an artifact of scale. I’m not sure I believe that’s possible past a certain size but I do think it’s interesting to try. But for now, I mostly come down on the side of build smaller companies that are worth more.