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.

150. 👏👏👏

151. 👍deliberate culture👍

152. 👎passive culture👎

155. “awesome”

156. Thank you.

157. Pamela O. Vickers
@pwnela