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by kbenson 1133 days ago
No, culture is different. Enjoying the people you work around is not culture, it's having good coworkers. You can have coworkers you don't like but a good culture, and coworkers you do like and a bad culture. Culture is distinct from enjoying who you deal with on a day to day basis. People mistake that all the time though.

Culture does matter for this as well though, as enjoying your coworkers but not the culture may still make the job somewhere you don't want to stick around.

I think physical surroundings may help with the culture some, but they'll always be a much lesser influence than the people and policies in place. What's worse, sometimes companies will think the physical surroundings are much more important than they are, and focus on those instead of fixing the policies destroying their actual work culture. I think most people past their early twenties would much rather have a better set of work policies than a really good view out of an office window. Sometimes that's doubly true because those policies might allow you to spend less time in the office and more time at home, around your real family.

1 comments

Early 20s engineer here. It’s nice to have a cool view out your window. I can and will trade it for better culture in a heartbeat. I can generally get better views than my employer can provide myself anyways.
Yes, I wasn't trying to say that someone at your age and position can't appreciate it, but that people learn more about themselves and what they actually value as they age and gain experience, so on average younger people will know themselves less than older people, so younger people are more likely (in my opinion) to think some things matter more to them than they actually do.