scaling
happiness
Ted Nyman
Engineer at GitHub
@tnm
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Most working
life is
inauthentic
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Hierarchy
creates
inauthentic
relationships
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Without authenticity
we become alienated
“Work is a kind of vacuum, an
emptiness, where I just switch
off everything except the scant
intelligence necessary to keep
me going.”
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Perks are weak
substitutes for
an authentic
working life
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Plato on Love
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Plato was Wrong
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I’ll never quit
because X perk
is just so good
“
”
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A better X will
appear, and
they are gone
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You can’t truly make
people happy with
bread and circuses
“How little our careers express
what lies in us, and yet how
much time they take up”
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You can’t build
culture with words
“How little our careers express
what lies in us, and yet how
much time they take up”
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Token ‘freedom
gestures’ are just not
enough
“How little our careers express
what lies in us, and yet how
much time they take up”
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The real way is
organizational
structure
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The lack of formal
managers creates
GitHub’s working
culture
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Cultural and
technological
adaptations grow
naturally from this
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Create the structure
and let the culture
form. The culture
then reinforces the
structure.