Tech Corporate Culture Anti-patterns

After nearly 30 years working as a software engineer at over a dozen different corporations ranging from Fortune 500 companies to tiny startups, I’ve observed several anti-patterns. Here are a few of the most common ones I’ve run into.

Disclaimer

I have never tried to start a tech company, nor has anyone put me in charge of one. I’m sure it’s super hard. I have neither formal training in business nor experience running a tech company. But I do have decades of experience as an employee at many companies, and this has provided me with some valuable perspective.

This is just a rant. A way of letting off steam. I love working in tech. It has provided me with financial security and a flexible work schedule. But after spending most of my adult life working at places where these anti-patterns were clear as day, yet seemingly tolerated and even encouraged has left me a bit jaded.

Misery loves company. If you’re a lowly code monkey like me, I hope you’ll find this piece at least entertaining, and perhaps even a bit enlightening. Maybe it will be helpful when it comes to evaluate your next opportunity. And if you’re in a position to do something to improve things at your company, I hope you’ll find it inspiring.

Secret Cabal

A small group of insiders really calls the shots. This group usually formed well before the company existed. Maybe they all came on board from another company, all went to the same code bootcamp, or they were frat brothers (and yes, they’re almost always brothers — a.k.a. “good old boys”). These cabals meet privately in “smoke filled rooms” (or private Slack channels — the modern-day equivalent), where they make key decisions affecting the entire organization. The nominal leaders of the company (CEO, Directors, etc.) never dare to question the cabal’s actions. The Cabal rarely divulges their plans or solicits external input, but whatever they do, they are always given full support of the company leadership, who act as if they were in on the plan all along, even though it’s clear that they were just as in the dark as the rest of us grunts.

Signs you may have a Secret Cabal in your organization:

• A certain set of your co-workers consistently rubber-stamp each other’s pull requests.
• Major changes to the product architecture repeatedly happen out of the blue.
• There is no published technical roadmap, yet some folks always seem to know what’s coming next.

Reign of Terror

This anti-pattern is characterized by the following:

• frequent “all hands” meetings where the CTO yells at everyone about how stupid and lazy they all are
• random unexplained staff purges
• one-on-one meetings consist of fault-finding and blame assignment
• being told that asking for help is a sign of weakness

The clear message from management to employees is “you are all worthless, expendable peons.” This works wonders for morale!

The Chosen One

Sometimes, an employee comes along who seems incredibly talented — an apparent Jedi master of some Shiny New Tech that the CTO has been wanting to learn but was too busy keeping the lights on and putting out fires. Management is so impressed with this person that they appoint them chief architect, mistakenly assuming that their experience with the Shiny New Tech makes them an expert in everything. Chaos typically ensues, as the new magpie developer-in-chief starts introducing one brand new sexy-but-unproven library or tool after another.

The Man Behind the Curtain

As a result of poorly-managed (or un-managed) growth and refusal to pay down technical debt, the codebase behind many if not most young software products becomes brittle and unstable. Adding new features takes forever, and each bug fix or new feature creates more bugs.

To mask this problem, many tech companies have a “man behind the curtain”. Like the charlatan in the Wizard of Oz, a single developer (usually “The Chosen One”) works frantically behind the scenes, checking in untracked patches and bug fixes to keep the system working. Since management has no visibility of these changes, they assume all is well… until the Chosen One leaves for their next startup, leaving a massive pile of spaghetti code in their wake.

Elephants in the Room

Over time, teams usually encounter some difficult or embarrasing topics. A team member might be struggling for weeks or months with very basic tasks. A key, well-respected employee leaves suddenly, without explanation. Deadlines slip, repeatedly.

It’s management’s job to handle these situations, or at least openly acknowledge them. But in many companies, these elephants in the room are not discussed. After all, no one wants to talk about the elephant in the room.

The HR Firewall

Tech companies are always complaining about how hard it is to find talent. And yet: at most companies, there’s this thing my industry colleagues refer to as the “HR Firewall”. You have a friend who wants to come work for your company? Good luck getting through the HR firewall, especially if they don’t have Cartel connections.

Knowledge Hoarding

Knowledge is power. So naturally, in most corporations, knowledge isn’t shared. Why share it when you can use it to your advantage in your death race with your coworkers to the top of the corporate ladder? Ah yes, there’s the company wiki. But who has time to write documentation, much less keep it up to date? Especially when there’s a negative incentive for doing so — time spent writing documentation leaves less time for the “real” work.

Keeping key secrets in the hands of a chosen few also helps to protect the supremacy of the Secret Cabal (see above).

Startup Hubris

Some smart, ambitious people get a bunch of money from venture capitalists looking for a tax break that might pay off some day. They hire a bunch of people (typically on the basis of social connections rather than experience). Hubris follows. Rather than staying focussed on doing one thing well, building the company organically, step by step, they decide to cram every feature they can think of into the product, and wind up doing everything poorly. Resumé-driven-development causes people to champion tech that they want on their resumés. No wheel is left un-reinvented. Inevitably, these companies burn through cash like a California wildfire. But sometimes, thanks to the hard work of the employees, the founders are rewarded with a successful “exit” and make out like bandits, selling their demo-ware to an unsuspecting buyer who is impressed by the eye candy of the user interface, not bothering to find out if the product can scale or how many bugs are lurking just beneath the surface.

Conclusion

As the saying goes, “a fish rots from the head down”. The prevalence of these anti-patterns in modern tech companies is the fault of their leaders. I hope this article helps some readers to identify and eliminate these anti-patterns in their organization, or to avoid places where they are allowed to proliferate.