I’ve experienced both. The best job I ever had was with a small, excited, inspiring team of people at a place that over-indexed on the culture stuff. Truly a wonderful experience. But it just can’t scale. It’s also super expensive (at least the way it was implemented in that place). But suddenly you’re 1000 people, pretending you’re all “family”, when in reality you don’t even know the names of half the people around you, the people calling you family certainly don’t know yours, and it’s too expensive to actually do anything a family would do together so it never happens.
Your point is 100% accurate though. We all deserve no bullshit. Just be honest with what we owe and will give each other. I know there’s been a couple of former SV darlings that have fallen out of favour because of leadership mandates about what is or isn’t appropriate at work, what they value, what your expectations should be to work there. I might not agree with them but that’s not the point. I love the blunt honesty. Huge signal on whether I want to spend 40hrs a week with these people or not. And so much more valuable than empty and aspirational values statements (or worse, recruitment marketing masquerading as values).
Your point is 100% accurate though. We all deserve no bullshit. Just be honest with what we owe and will give each other. I know there’s been a couple of former SV darlings that have fallen out of favour because of leadership mandates about what is or isn’t appropriate at work, what they value, what your expectations should be to work there. I might not agree with them but that’s not the point. I love the blunt honesty. Huge signal on whether I want to spend 40hrs a week with these people or not. And so much more valuable than empty and aspirational values statements (or worse, recruitment marketing masquerading as values).