Culture in Big Tech
“We have a great culture here.”
How many times have you heard this before? I would say I‘ve probably heard this at least over a hundred times in my two years at CBS whether it was at an interview, a speaker talk, or a coffee chat. It’s kind of a jaded phrase that everyone mentions just because. And in some cases, it may be true that whatever company or firm is being represented does actually have great “culture.” But what is “culture” exactly? I think we can agree generally that company culture is a set of shared attitudes, values, and goals of a company’s employees. For me, that means that if I encounter a group of individual employees who work for the same company, I should feel some sense of connectedness between them even as an outsider.
However, for the amount of times I’ve heard about great culture, I have encountered way too few companies that actually seem to cultivate it. Funnily, in some cases, a company actually has a culture, but it’s a toxic one. So then the question boils down to how can company culture be created and how can it be instilled into the hundreds and thousands of employees especially in big companies as they continuously grow? It’s a great question that is researched about and even explained academically using behavioral economics, organization psychology, etc. Obviously it will be harder to implement in practice than theory, but I want to talk about three big tech companies that caught my eye from this front: Amazon, Google, and Netflix.
Amazon
I’m sure most people have heard about Amazon’s leadership principles. There’s actually a lot if you ask me, but they’ve had some success with it by creating an effective, but also intense work culture. I think two practices merit discussion. The first is around their documenting culture over powerpoints. The documents are information-packed without unnecessary BS that give clarity on what needs to be discussed or worked on. The second is their “two-pizza rule,” which basically means a team must be small enough so that it can be fed with two pizzas. This one is interesting because it implements the technical “agile” methodology to regular work standards for high efficiency. Both of these practices are unique and whether they are weird or not subjectively, have definitely shaped how people work and even think at Amazon.
Google is famous for being the ultimate final destination big tech company that everyone wants to end at and it makes sense. The company has great work-life balance, competitive pay, and a flexible work culture. The one thing that still blows my mind is Google’s “20% time.” Google employees are allowed to use 20% of their working time to work on a side project. Gmail and Adsense are actually products of that amazing initiative, so it has definitely helped out Google from a business standpoint. Of course, the employees that actually use it or even have the time to use it will be few, but still, given Google’s culture, I think it’s something you could actively pursue if you made it clear with your manager/team. It’s just a very innovative initiative that sums up Google’s culture (even if it’s barely used).
Netflix
You can’t leave Netflix out when you want to talk about big tech culture! They even have an entire webpage dedicated to it and they are straight up honest about the way they operate their ship. There are many things that caught my eye so let’s dive in. The first is it’s information sharing system. Netflix uses types up memos for whatever project, meeting, etc. they need to document and these are available to every employee in the company. EVERY EMPLOYEE. That’s crazy! I’m sure there are both pros and cons to that, but this action is an extension of their candor culture — to be truly open and honest about everything. The second big thing is that they will only keep their most effective employees. In fact, they are very upfront about this by comparing themselves to a “dream team” in sports where players are constantly traded and replaced to maintain highest quality. They also say to not take it personally — it should be an expectation that you know coming right in. In exchange, they pay top of the market, which I think is great, but there’s more risk in keeping your position than other firms. Also, promotions are not really a big thing, so keep that in mind as well. You only come in to satisfy what you were hired for and getting promoted is not a natural progression.
All in all, I think these companies became great, to some extent, because of the culture that they set. While companies like Amazon and Netflix have received a lot of flak for their savage policies, I do believe that having a distinct culture is better than having none. We all need to anchor ourselves to something and it’d be great if it would be to a strongly sailing ship than a sinking one.
