[dvt]

I want to also counter-balance the negativity towards Hsieh with my own experience. From 2015-2017, I worked at Edmunds.com which was (to put it lightly) a bit obsessed with "Delivering Happiness" and Zappos' culture. So much so, that the leadership team visited Vegas to get a tour of the Zappos HQ (this was before I joined). But Edmunds based their entire cultural approach, including hiring, interviewing, and onboarding on Zappos.

The Edmunds onboarding experience has been by far the best out of any company I worked at. Sure, it was silly games and scavenger hunts that didn't really have anything to do with "work," but I look back at the entire experience with a lot of nostalgia. I loved the onboarding so much, I've been contemplating doing a startup that literally just focuses on improving cultural onborading at companies. It made my first few months at Edmunds not only incredibly productive, but also intellectually and socially stimulating.

And they were doing something right. Over there, I had the honor of working with one of the best managers I ever had (he's now at Amazon), and with one of the best software architects I've ever worked with (he's now at Facebook). My team was made up of motivated, smart, folks from all walks of life (recent grads to data science PhD's in their 50s). I still keep in touch with my old team even though we're spread all over these days: doing our own startups, at Facebook, Uber, Amazon, and beyond.

I have the utmost respect for the cultural revolution that entrepreneurs like Tony Hsieh brought to the fore. People that call it a "cult" are missing the point. It's no more a cult than cheering for your school mascot or being in a club. We seem to forget that people are inherently social and need a sense of belonging.

[hn_throwaway_99]

> We seem to forget that people are inherently social and need a sense of belonging.

As someone who used to work at a company that also was fairly well known for its 'cultish' culture, while I agree with your statement above, I also strongly believe that the modern corporate workplace is fundamentally incompatible with the sense of social belonging that humans need. Worse, many smart people take advantage of this need for a sense of belonging with the sole goal of making more money for rich people.

Early human social groups, namely the family, village, and tribe, were strongly cohesive. You were only "kicked out" if you had made some severe transgression against the group (or you had "come of age", and needed to start your own group, which is something else entirely). You were not kicked out the second the group's profits took a dip or it was determined you were dead weight and the group you could do better without you. But these days "fiduciary duty" actually demands the group leaders take a simple utilitarian viewpoint of whether they keep you in the group.

This isn't meant to be totally pessimistic. Some of my favorite times and best friends were at companies that had a great corporate culture with a corporate mission I believed in. But these actually tended to be more mature organizations that were honest about what they were doing: being a successful business that made money, was an enjoyable place to work, and created value for customers. It's actually the 'cultish' places I find that people get extremely bitter when they leave because they were sold a bill of goods that was never true to begin with.

[shadowprofile77]

Second this and i'm glad you described it so well. No matter how hard most companies try to create an atmosphere of "family" for their employees, it fundamentally rings hollow almost all of the time, and by definition it has to for exactly the reasons you stated. These are organizations that exist to make money for themselves and their owners/investors, not to support their staff through thick and thin, bad or good (as a family or tribe is almost morally obligated to).

Any employee who isn't a total fool should know this and the executives certainly do because they have to to keep their efficiency numbers and bottom line looking decent. So any claims to the contrary just sound forced, false and absurd because that's all the are, the employee equivalent of some corp also expressing loving platitudes to its customers

Example: during the pandemic I've seen several major banks and other corporations send out emails and publicity material with phrases like "we're all in this together" scattered around it..... Yeah. as if my own experience as some random individual customer or employee with limited resources and all sorts of personal struggles in any way relates to their main concerns as a multibillion dollar corporation.

So yes, comparing almost any company except a literal extended family business or a small startup staffed by a group of close associates and friends working together to a tribe or family group is empty nonsense 99% of the time.

[dvt]

> As someone who used to work at a company that also was fairly well known for its 'cultish' culture, while I agree with your statement above, I also strongly believe that the modern corporate workplace is fundamentally incompatible with the sense of social belonging that humans need. Worse, many smart people take advantage of this need for a sense of belonging with the sole goal of making more money for rich people.

Totally agree with this and you should always draw a line between "work stuff" and "personal stuff." There's definitely a dark side here. However, I do think there's value in making your employees feel welcome and wanted.

[layoutIfNeeded]

>there's value in making your employees feel welcome and wanted

More like there's more value in making your employees feel welcome and wanted by feeding them Kool-Aid, rather than paying them well.

[dvt]

For what it's worth, I got paid on par with FAANG.

[idoh]

This is a really great comment. In your opinion was Edmunds.com able to translate this culture into business success?

[dvt]

It's hard to tell because I didn't have much insight (I was "just" an engineer); but I people loved working there and the folks on my team in particular were smart, interesting, and engaged.