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

Slides presented at Rocky Mountain Ruby 2014 http://rockymtnruby.com

*IMPORTANT* album of animated gifs found here http://imgur.com/a/NoYVE

Transcript

1. Your Company Culture is “Awesome” (But is company culture a lie?) Rocky Mountain Ruby 2014 Pamela O. Vickers, @pwnela
2. “Company Culture”
3. “Company Culture”
5. Acme Co. #1 “useful, funny, cool”
6. Acme Co. #2 “unique”
8. Acme Co. #3 “best culture in town”
9. Acme Co. #3 (cont.) “Call of Duty”
10. The “best culture in town” sounds a lot like...
11. Acme Co. #4 “ping pong”
12. Which reminds me...
14. Acme Co. #5 “wtf”
16. Acme Co. #6 “extended hours, as needed”
17. Acme Co. #7 “code quality, testing, peer reviews, collaboration"
19. Acme Co. #8 “happy developers”
21. “great"
22. “awesome"
23. “best in town"
24. “The Most Important Optimization: Happiness” by Ernie Miller
25. PERMA Martin Seligman
26. P positive emotion
27. E engagement
28. R relationships
29. M meaning
30. A achievement
32. P positive emotion
40. “How Perks Can Divide Us” by Melissa Santos & Rafe Colburn
53. “You never change things by fighting the existing reality. To change something, build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete.” R. Buckminster Fuller
54. P == ERMA
58. E engagement
59. M meaning
60. A achievement
61. E engagement
68. M meaning
70. A achievement
72. “but”
73. bad communication kills engagement
74. bad/unavailable tools kills engagement
75. impossible deadlines kills engagement, prevents achievement
76. boring domain no meaning, kills engagement
77. ambiguous ethical domain no (good) meaning,
78. “no one is going to use this” no meaning, no engagement, no achievement
81. “The life of a programmer is mostly a never-ending struggle.”
82. “learning new things…”
83. “…battling against our own ignorance.”
84. “If you write code, you will struggle.”
85. “…without getting (too) frustrated.” Aaron Hillegass
95. Engagement Meaning Achievement challenging challenging interesting “Has a degree of complexity” “Is autonomous” inspirational innovative innovative practical community-building beneficial epic important finite finite short successful “clear relationship between work and reward”
96. E + M == A == (more) P
97. (more letter math)
98. A - (E + M)== ❌ == "
99. (E + M) > ☕
100. “but"
103. Does the product owner respond to questions and/or requests in a reasonable time frame?
104. Does the product owner respect the developing team members?
105. Does the product owner appreciate and value the work done by the developing team?
106. Does the product owner follow (within reason) the process outlined by the developing team?
107. Is the product owner pleasant to work with in general?
108. And do we, as the developers, have the resources needed to move the project forward?
109. And do we, as the developers, have the resources needed to move the project forward?
112. R relationships
114. Things That Suck™
117. (via http://notquittingmydayjob.com)
118. “fine”
119. “but”
126. culture.pluralsight.com
127. “…people are still going to hesitate to talk about the tough stuff.”” Keith Sparkjoy
128. The Five Whys
130. “The car won’t start.”
131. “The car won’t start.” “Why?”
132. “The battery is dead.”
133. “The battery is dead.” “Why?”
134. “The alternator isn’t working.”
135. “The alternator isn’t working.” “Why?”
136. “The alternator belt wasn’t replaced.”
137. “The alternator belt wasn’t replaced.” “Why?”
138. “The car isn’t being maintained well.”
139. “The car isn’t being maintained well.” “Oh.”
140. culture.pluralsight.com
142. “but”
144. Acme Co. #7 “code quality, testing, peer reviews, collaboration"
145. Acme Co. #7 “We look for people who are really smart, really nice and who want to solve big problems…”
149. $boom$
151. $boom$
153. You get the idea.
154. %%%
155. &deliberate culture&
156. 'passive culture'
159. “awesome”
160. Thank you.
161. Pamela O. Vickers @pwnela