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

Slides presented at All Things Open 2014 http://allthingsopen.org

*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?) All Things Open 2014 Pamela O. Vickers, @pwnela
2. “Company Culture”
4. Acme Co. #1 “useful, funny, cool”
5. Acme Co. #2 “unique”
7. Acme Co. #3 “best culture in town”
8. Acme Co. #3 (cont.) “Call of Duty”
9. The “best culture in town” sounds a lot like...
10. Acme Co. #4 “ping pong”
11. Which reminds me...
13. Acme Co. #5 “wtf”
15. Acme Co. #6 “extended hours, as needed”
16. Acme Co. #7 “code quality, testing, peer reviews, collaboration"
18. Acme Co. #8 “happy developers”
20. “great"
21. “awesome"
22. “best in town"
23. “The Most Important Optimization: Happiness” by Ernie Miller
24. PERMA Martin Seligman
25. P positive emotion
26. E engagement
27. R relationships
28. M meaning
29. A achievement
31. P positive emotion
39. “How Perks Can Divide Us” by Melissa Santos & Rafe Colburn
52. “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
53. P == ERMA
57. E engagement
58. M meaning
59. A achievement
60. E engagement
67. M meaning
69. A achievement
70. “but”
71. bad communication kills engagement
72. bad/unavailable tools kills engagement
73. impossible deadlines kills engagement, prevents achievement
74. boring domain no meaning, kills engagement
75. ambiguous ethical domain no (good) meaning,
76. “no one is going to use this” no meaning, no engagement, no achievement
79. “The life of a programmer is mostly a never-ending struggle.”
80. “learning new things…”
81. “…battling against our own ignorance.”
82. “If you write code, you will struggle.”
83. “…without getting (too) frustrated.” Aaron Hillegass
93. 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”
94. E + M == A == (more) P
95. (more letter math)
96. A - (E + M)== ❌ ==
97. (E + M) > ☕
98. “but"
101. Does the product owner respond to questions and/or requests in a reasonable time frame?
102. Does the product owner respect the developing team members?
103. Does the product owner appreciate and value the work done by the developing team?
104. Does the product owner follow (within reason) the process outlined by the developing team?
105. Is the product owner pleasant to work with in general?
106. And do we, as the developers, have the resources needed to to move the project forward?
109. R relationships
111. Things That Suck™
114. (via http://notquittingmydayjob.com)
115. “fine”
122. culture.pluralsight.com
123. “…people are still going to hesitate to talk about the tough stuff.”” Keith Sparkjoy
124. The Five Whys
126. “The car won’t start.”
127. “The car won’t start.” “Why?”
128. “The battery is dead.”
129. “The battery is dead.” “Why?”
130. “The alternator isn’t working.”
131. “The alternator isn’t working.” “Why?”
132. “The alternator belt wasn’t replaced.”
133. “The alternator belt wasn’t replaced.” “Why?”
134. “The car isn’t being maintained well.”
135. “The car isn’t being maintained well.” “Oh.”
136. culture.pluralsight.com
138. “but”
140. Acme Co. #7 “code quality, testing, peer reviews, collaboration"
141. Acme Co. #7 “We look for people who are really smart, really nice and who want to solve big problems…”
145. boom
147. boom
149. You get the idea.
151. deliberate culture
152. passive culture
155. “awesome”
156. Thank you.
157. Pamela O. Vickers @pwnela