"We are a family" is bullshit. You need to be a pretty egregious repeat offender to be ostracized from a real family. A company can fire you on a whim, simply because someone with a business degree sorted a spreadsheet with salaries in descending order, and you were in the top 20.
The more correct analogy is a sports team. Everyone works well together to win the medal, but it's much more pragmatic in that sense.
Perhaps back in the age of B&W TV, when people could spend their entire life with a company, it was sort of more true. You had that one job, you had your pension. It was really like a second family, an getting let go was like death.
I am beginning to see that nowadays, even full time jobs are becoming essentially contract gigs with better benefits. You should treat it as such anyway. Be professional, be good at what you do, but also be detached and non-emotional about it. It can end at any second.
What you take from a job is not that you were "like a family". What you take from it is the experience, what you have learned from your own mistakes, and most importantly - friendships. The rest is ephemeral like a docker container. Be ready for it to go POOF.
I recently read Netflix's culture doc, and they outright said they treat employees like a sports team - welcome to the team, perform at your best, you may get benched, you may get cut. There's no shame in getting cut, and you should be proud that you had the talent to perform at our level for the time you did.
My main takeaway was: fair enough, and when can I get into that interview pipeline.
I want to be on a meat-eating, high performing team with comp to match, and I don't want much more. I think most in the industry are the same.
That is actually a pretty reasonable take in my opinion. And refreshing.
Having been on [edit: sports] teams before, it can be a toxic situation or it can be absolutely amazing and life-affirming. It might sound cold in the language, but it can be so rewarding, so bonding. It's definitely a better analogy than family. Family is family. You can define it as you like, but nothing equates.
For sure! I've spent time in orgs that do this approach inherently, and it's tremendously fulfilling, more than ping pong tables and after-work beers ever could be.
Shared hardship and superior performance that is greater than the sum of a team's individual talents are tremendous motivators and a dominant source of personal fulfillment.
There's a bit of a challenge to get people to seek this environment out, but setting the tone from the top, as Netflix does, is a Step 0 to achieving it.
yeah I'd say the track record of ex-Netflix'ers, the comp they say they pay (top of market for your individual skillset), and supporting evidence seems to indicate they walk the talk.
There's something unsustainable about a "team" analogy... just as there is in a family one. Netflix may be the rare example where an elite sports team analogy applies, but... That can't be more than a rare exception.
Ultimately, sports is different just like family is different and the way those things work relate to those differences. Sports is objective. Work isn't. Managers, players & spectators all know if they're playing in the A-league or the local league. In workplace culture, implying that you're not in the A-league is taboo. Remember that "elite" means very rare, and usually short lived.
People seek out, form, or join teams basically wherever they go, in whatever they do. While every team has an introvert, every team has a lead that works to pull the introvert into the fold. This is largely the "leaders/managers self identify themselves." Or, the introvert that strikes on on their own to do their own thing? Well if they're good..... they end up forming a team to support it.
It's not about knowing you're on the A-league or not, or implying it or not. That issue, while you're correct about the taboo nature of implying one's team is anything less-than, is very besides the point.
It's about how individuals time after time find fulfillment from performing at your (company, in this case) local optimum, with a hearty dose of feelings and actuality of personal autonomy, lack of micromanagement, clear standards that are just far enough of a stretch to be able to be met, etc. The nerdiest of nerds on a CTF team or hackathon will give each other a high five. In turn, to your point, the best players will seek out better teams.
It's a primordial behavior, we all do it. There's a wealth of organizational/leadership science out there. It's a fun read that unlike many social sciences, actually has a pretty well proven lemmas behind it, which control for personality types across the spectrum. The military is a one great source of this, flat orgs are another, and everything in between still displays the same behavior (for orgs that do "well"). The behavior and incentives of A->Z people in high performing, high satisfaction environments tend to be very similar, just the implementation is a little different depending on specific org charts.
I'm not sure we disagree all that significantly. ;)
I didn't mean to imply that we don't work in, join or even thrive in "teams." I meant the elite sports team analogy is a bad idea, usually. That's the analogy I netflix is going for, I believe. They meant it in that context, as you said:
There's no shame in getting cut, and you should be proud that you had the talent to perform at our level for the time you did.
All this has to be thought of as a management philosophy, because that's what it is. A Theory Of How We Do Things Here." Most os the time, work isn't sports-like. Objectivity is one fundamental difference, and actually running things like a sports team requires it. Hackathons are done to create sports-like scenarios on occasion. Trying to go past that, objectivity ends up biting you. ... you'll end up with productivity measures or some other low-autonomy management style.
This was my point about taboo. It's an example of reality leaking into the metaphor, making it unsustainable. Companies mostly don't operate in objective scenarios. Contribution is very difficult to ascertain, especially for the kind of work that requires elite performance.
Ultimately, a sports team is the way it is because of what it is. A team of artists shouldn't try to organise like a team of rowers or a software team like a sales team.
Incidentally, many sales teams run exactly like netflix aspires to... and without much effort. Their reality is objective. A 10X salesman can actually earn 10X, like an elite athlete does. There are elite teams and it is prestigious to have a stint there, even though most don't last.
Well don’t stop there with the analogy. Give me life changing income, public exposure to entice lucrative side hustles, a union with 49% of revenue to employees, and an off-season.
I hear you bro then we can call ourselves a professional team -- don't even stop there! Let's dress as a team and wear a uniform too I mean that with no hint of sarcasm most people can't draw the line between casual and toxic but it's obvious to anyone with any real professional experience outside of the silicon valley bubble
For the average person, the amount of money Netflix pays its engineers is absolutely life changing. Even if you have to live in the hideously expensive bay area to get it.
Levels.fyi says the average compensation is...450k. But that's for the entire software engineer job ladder, so it's probably skewed upwards somewhat. Still, a median of 250-350k would still be a ton of money.
Even so, I'll point out that this elite sports teams pay more than just 2X-3X more than average ones.
For all the talk of "talent" in this industry, it doesn't work like a talent industry. Where engineers do earn major salaries, it's usually on account of the managerial element and not the engineering one.
Lawyering is a talent industry, for example. Top lawyers in top firms do earn on a scale as disparate as pro athletes. The top lawyers may manage people, but their high salaries are for lawyering. The creative industries work that way, obviously.
They pay top-of-band on an annual re-evaluation basis and offer an all cash <-> all equity choice. So pairing that down to the low end new grad scale at Big N ($150, $180k?), but getting that TC in all cash vs. the $120k base, $30k vested equity combos out there, is really life changing.
I don't think the cash vs stock thing changes the calculus much. You could just sell what stock you get anyway (I have mine at Google set to autosell at vest).
The athletes they and their victims are thinking of when spouting that shitty metaphor make a minimum of a million dollars a year, enough to carry them through the hardships of constantly fighting for their position.
I like the sports team analogy. The biggest gripe I have with some people is the "you are not my friend and will never be my friend" attitude because they have a strict work/life separation. It would be nice if more people instead thought of work like a sports team where the working together aspect could disappear overnight, but we're still friends.
I've worked with one of these people. Never attended a single off-site work event, even when it took place during work hours. And then he was shocked when he went for a promotion and it didn't happen. It was a topic of discussion among the management team and a big con on his pro/con list. Since it was a small company (25 people), it was decidedly weird he refused to take part in culture.
That said, culture shouldn't be forced. I think employees should be given multiple ways to participate to find a way that is most comfortable to them.
One of the harshest lessons I, as an introvert, have learned over the course of my career is the necessity of going in and putting up the appearance of being jovial at team and corporate social events, no matter uncomfortable and draining I find it. To do otherwise is to risk my bonuses and my employment.
An additional challenge for me is that I don't like the taste of alcohol, and having even a little makes me do/say things that I later regret.
So even when I do show up at company social events, I feel even more like an outsider. It's hard to stay engaged at a job where all of these team-building events / milestone-celebrations make me feel lonely and excluded.
It is a shame that group indulgence in alcohol is often the measure of how 'cool' someone is. More and more people are going 'straightedge'... My advice is just carry yourself with confidence -- don't shy away from your choices, own them.
100%. As a manager when we were still in a physical office, I encouraged small group lunches, coffee outings, walks to a nearby dog park, etc. Way too much company socializing still centers on alcohol.
I actually had to push back on our in-office boozy happy hours because a few team members were getting too drunk and it was making other people uncomfortable. My boss didn't think it'd seem "cool" if we put together a policy for how these happy hours should be handled. I don't work there anymore. :)
I'm also an introvert and at first found a lot of social events awkward. What helped me a lot was really internalizing that these people are just people and work didn't matter, these people are still funny to hang around with. In other words, really dissociating the fact that we worked together made it so I didn't have to put up some facade, I could actually enjoy the events and choose to go to the ones I wanted but not feel guilty bailing on some.
I still distinctly feel different whenever a VP or higher level manager joins, but when it's just my team it's a lot more comfortable and has led to a lot of friendships that extend beyond our working relationship.
I'm capable of having fun at these events, but I would still rather spend the time getting work done. I just consider these events an investment in building rapport that can help in efficient communication during the "actually getting work done" time that I prefer.
Well... "team" isn't even an analogy. It literally means a group working together. Sports teams are an instance.
OTOH... our gut-definition of teams is a pretty tight group working very cooperatively. It definitely doesn't feel right to describe Microsoft as a "team," family or whatever.
Anyway, I disagree... kinda. I agree that "We are a family" is bullshit, but I don't think "detached and non-emotional" is a viable strategy. We humans can't be detached and unemotional about such a major thing in our life. That road leads to misery.... which is where a lot of us are in our work lives.
You say that like having a business degree is almost something to be ashamed of, or a lesser degree relative to perhaps "computer engineers" and "computer scientists"
The more correct analogy is a sports team. Everyone works well together to win the medal, but it's much more pragmatic in that sense.
Perhaps back in the age of B&W TV, when people could spend their entire life with a company, it was sort of more true. You had that one job, you had your pension. It was really like a second family, an getting let go was like death.
I am beginning to see that nowadays, even full time jobs are becoming essentially contract gigs with better benefits. You should treat it as such anyway. Be professional, be good at what you do, but also be detached and non-emotional about it. It can end at any second.
What you take from a job is not that you were "like a family". What you take from it is the experience, what you have learned from your own mistakes, and most importantly - friendships. The rest is ephemeral like a docker container. Be ready for it to go POOF.