Talks
Your Company is "Awesome" (But is "Company Culture" a lie?)
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Your Company is "Awesome" (But is "Company Culture" a lie?)

by Pamela Vickers

In 'Your Company is "Awesome" (But is "Company Culture" a lie?)', Pamela Vickers discusses the concept of company culture, a term often overused and poorly defined within the tech industry. She critiques how culture is frequently reduced to a list of perks that don't reflect the true values or operational dynamics of a company.

Key Points:
- Definition of Company Culture: Vickers illustrates that company culture should encompass the values and personality of the organization rather than merely listing benefits like 'beer Fridays.'
- Overuse in Job Listings: She notes that the term 'culture' appears in virtually all job postings, yet few provide any concrete descriptions of what it actually means for the organization.
- Example of Ambiguous Culture Description: Vickers shares an example from a job listing for 'Acme Co.' which suggests a fun work environment while failing to clarify how it translates to day-to-day collaboration among different team roles.
- Cultural Misrepresentation: The speaker emphasizes that many companies present an idealized version of their culture, which can often be misleading, and may only serve as corporate propaganda lacking genuine commitment.
- Maintaining Real Culture: Vickers raises crucial questions about protecting company culture from negative influences such as bad clients or detrimental project dynamics.

In conclusion, she stresses the importance of owning and clearly defining company culture to ensure that it reflects true workplace values. This talk serves as a call to action for developers, team leaders, and mentors to build and safeguard a positive workplace culture that genuinely promotes employee happiness and collaboration.

00:00:28.480 Okay, well, I'm Pamela Vickers, and I'm going to be talking to you about company culture today. Company culture has become a ubiquitous phrase in our industry, and it can be used to reference anything.
00:00:35.440 What is essentially a description of the values and personality of the company is now being listed under perks and benefits. It's become a commodity that's handed to a new hire: 'Here's our company culture; it's great, enjoy!' But what does it mean?
00:00:47.360 When we rave about our awesome company culture, is it that the beer Fridays have great attendance, or that we work hard but play hard? Or is it because we have supportive co-workers and a well-defined system for mitigating co-worker squabbles?
00:01:10.240 When I search for the keyword 'culture' on job listings for Stack Overflow and GitHub, I might as well have searched for 'job' since almost every listing uses the word 'culture.' However, very few actually define what it means for that particular company. Most left the definition as an exercise for the reader.
00:01:38.640 For example, one listing stated: 'To succeed, you must be passionate about Acme Co., keep up with our daily release cycles, and maintain our useful, funny, cool culture during times of immense growth.' It also mentioned that it doesn't hurt to impress us with your technical chops. That was the last mention of the word 'culture' in the listing.
00:02:10.560 However, the listing described a highly integrated model where traders, quantitative analysts, equity analysts, and technologists worked closely together to capitalize on pricing opportunities in the options, commodities, and futures market. The blurb ended with, 'Please check out our culture and process dev blogs to get a feeling for the Acme Co. experience, but don't trust us when we say we have the best culture in town.'"},{
00:02:34.160 So, I went to their blog post; it said: 'Wow, the day has flown by! You've finished two stories, your pull requests were peer-reviewed and merged, now it's time to kick back, pull up a stool next to our keg, and pour yourself a craft brew, or grab a seat in front of one of our huge TVs for some intense Call of Duty. Tomorrow we'll wrap up the current sprint and hold a science fair to demonstrate the new hotness we've built. We hope you've enjoyed your first day; it only gets better from here.'
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