Welcome to the podcast as always! Huge shoutout to everyone who is liking, subbing, and sharing the show! We are still seeing some awesome growth, and I am looking forward to seeing even more!
Today we are delving into culture just a wee bit, and are going to talk about why it is important and we are going to talk about the complete meltdown of a corporation that I have been a customer of since the 90s. That company is Blizzard Entertainment, and that is going to be a rough one to go over for me because for years I have had a ton of respect for them, regardless of a few issues. BUT! That is later in the show, and I will warn you now that the show notes for today's show will be substantially less than normal just because we are diving into the blizzard stuff pretty hard. First, however, we need to talk about CULTURE!!
Culture is the dynamic that a company has internally, the corporation's relationship with its employees, and the employees with the corporation, and the employees with each other. There are a ton of variations, and there are good cultures, and obviously, there are bad cultures.
I have personally always like the mindset of working in companies that promote a family-like culture where if you fit in and do good work you could basically be safe and sound and never really have to worry about issues. Now, I want to say very clearly here: Companies exist to make money. Period. Full Stop. It is rare to sacrifice a bottom line for an employee or group of employees, and employees should not burn themselves out slaving 90 hours a week for a corporation regardless of a great culture. This really needs to be the starting point that people build from. Sure there will be times that you have to put in more hours, but there should be a balance of this. That is why the work-life balance has been such an impactful thing for so many companies, and people in general. Working 90 hours a week over a prolonged period of time is not healthy. Balance is key.
I have worked in a number of industries and I have for the majority of my professional life worked somewhere between 50 and 90 hours a week depending on the job, my role, and the needs of the company. I started working at 12 during the summers and really started working hard at age 15 when it was legal to work without a huge number of limitations. It is what I do. Even now while not officially employed I put in at least 40 hours a week between this podcast, medium articles, production, learning software at Lambda, and various other things. I also still occasionally consult my previous employer on things such as educational materials, websites, and SEO and social media marketing. It's just kind of the way I was built. The upside to my current position is that I sit in an air-conditioned office with 68 inches of monitor space, and an office build-out that I built to suit my wants and needs. I have to say I feel for the folks that are out in the elements working manual labor during the summer. It's been a brutal one out in Oregon, and man it's been rough to even walk outside some days.
I digress.
Culture is driven from the top down. It is the leadership that really sets the tone for a cultural feel in a business. If you have leaders that work as hard or harder than the front line employees you will see more of those front line employees working harder to try and match that dedication and drive. By contrast, if you have a manager who works half as hard as the front-line workers you will see a drastically different picture. This situation honestly is one that would tend to breed animosity and cause a class-like rift inside of companies. Now the work is likely vastly different but upper management steers the boat, and if they are not willing to put in an effort for their team, or their company lower-tier workers are going to feel like they can and should slack off because the management does.
If upper management puts policies and benefits into place that promote a better work-life balance and does things to ensure that their entire team is taken care of in the best ways that they can you will see a happier, healthier, and more productive team. However, the opposite is true if that effort is not put into place. You will have a much more toxic, and hostile work environment, and instead of focusing on working as a team on various tasks your team will be undercutting each other to try and get ahead, and your company will essentially eat itself from the inside out. This is a bad look.
I am going to say this one time, and I want to be completely clear. Discrimination of any sort should not ever be tolerated. While software engineering is more of a male-dominated industry there needs to be (and this is slowly starting to happen) a drive to get more women into the industry. having people of various backgrounds, and from different walks of life expands the viewpoints or the lens from which people can draw inspiration and creativity. For example, someone from rural America has a vastly different life experience from someone in a heavily urban area. One has less social interaction while the other is forced to have substantially more just by virtue of the total population in the area that they live. There are also substantial cultural differences. It is vastly more common than someone in a heavily rural area would never wear a suit and tie to work because there is more focus on manufacturing, agriculture, and more rural type activities such as hunting, fishing, mobbing through muddy fields in a pickup truck, horseback riding, etc. Whereas in more urban settings you would see things such as ice skating, going to attractions, concerts and events and so on. Now I have to be honest here, my description of big city living is greatly lacking. I spent a number of years in Dallas, Texas, and two years in the Long Beach, California area but I have from around 9 or so been in more rural or small city settings in Oregon & Washington state. I am vastly more experienced in the rural stuff than the bigger city stuff. I hope you can forgive that.
But this is a hugely important topic for both employees and employers alike. You can literally love a person to the max but if they engage in inappropriate behavior there needs to be an immediate termination of that person. You cannot play around with things such as this.