Corporate culture: How are employees of western (and not only) IT companies living?

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In 1cloud, we are developing an IaaS provider and, in our experience, we are confronted with most of the issues that we are trying to share in our blog on Habré.
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For example, we recently discussed the need for basic programming skills among IT managers, and also gave “bad” advice to developers .

Today we would like to discuss in more detail the issues of corporate culture in IT and to discern the characteristic features of how the largest companies in the Internet industry deal with all this.

How to describe the corporate culture of IT-companies in one sentence? An “open” office, a free style of clothing, work mixed with an Xbox game ... Thanks to Google, Facebook, LinkedIn and other innovators, this atmosphere has become stereotyped for IT companies. However, it is impossible to put all firms in one row.

The corporate culture of each of them is unique, and it is revealed not only in the arrangement of the office, the adopted style of clothing and the balance between work and leisure of employees. It is not necessary to idealize large companies. In some of them, instead of corporate travel and the friendly atmosphere of the employee, total control, constant denunciations of colleagues and criticism from the management are waiting for the employee.

Someone openly talks about the features of their corporate culture, while others do not advertise this information, forcing employees to sign non-disclosure agreements. For example, Netflix belongs to the first category and even released a presentation where it revealed the company's main principles and innovative approaches to HR.

Cause time, fun hour

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Startup managers in the West love bonuses for employees very much. One company provides all employees with an annual subscription to the gym, the other provides a separate room for squash. It would seem that labor productivity should increase, and the morale of the team to grow, but often this does not happen , because management makes entertainment an end in itself, forgetting about work.

It is strongly not recommended in the first paragraph of the business plan to paint the bonus system and plan the costs of weekly corporate parties. Former Netflix Human Resources Director Patty McCord says that you can endlessly organize parties and give employees t-shirts, but if the company does not matter, then at parties people will be quietly outraged and t-shirts used to wash their cars.

It is worth noting that sometimes the bonuses provided do not correspond to the core values of the company. In the office of one of the startups in San Francisco there were billiards tables, table football and a kitchen where the chef was preparing a free lunch. According to the head, the main value in the company was efficiency, but at the same time, workers could be late for the meeting for a completely “valid” reason - they played the game of billiards. It is unlikely that this style of behavior can be called effective. Entertainment and bonuses are good, but we must not forget that you are at work.

Trying to adapt Facebook’s corporate culture model, young companies forget that their financial situation, to put it mildly, is worse than that of Zuckerberg’s brainchild, and the staff is smaller. Often, the management opens a free corporate canteen, but there is no money left for the main activity.

"Adult" behavior

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Many people think that in large corporations, employees act like robots, clearly following company policies. In fact, there are many situations where it is better to rely on logic and common sense, therefore, even in large companies, they sometimes prefer to act informally.

Netflix, for example, encourages staff to act "grown-up" - to abandon formal behavior and adherence to politics when it can benefit the company. The main thing is that the interests of the company remain in the first place.

Representatives of the company say: “If you hire people who will act in the interests of the company, then 97% of them will do their job efficiently. Formal rules help solve the problems of the remaining 3%. ”

In Netflix, paid vacation and sick leave are not standardized and are not officially taken into account - the employee simply tells the manager how many days he will not be in the workplace. Staff just need to follow simple rules: accountants and financiers can not leave at the beginning and end of quarters, and the absence of more than 30 days is coordinated with the personnel department.

“Adult behavior” is also welcome when employees use corporate finance. For example, to refuse meals in expensive restaurants at a corporate expense. The refusal of a strict travel policy also gives its advantages - employees can buy tickets on their own, and not through travel agencies, as the policy prescribes. This allows the company to save a decent amount.

Netflix also refused to conduct formal staff appraisals, as they are often used as a reason to dismiss an unwanted employee. It is better to directly tell the person that he can no longer remain part of the team and pay him generous leave, than to torment him with inadequate trials with a knowingly known outcome.

As for the "inappropriate" workers, mature IT companies are trying to get rid of them as soon as possible (of course, in humane ways). If this is not done, the costs in the future, caused by unproductive activities of the employee, may be much more than the amount of dismissals.

For example, a job interview at the online store Zappos for 50% consists of questions that determine the "compatibility" of the candidate and the corporate culture of the company. If the newcomer has not taken root after a week of training, he is paid $ 2,000 layoffs. A large amount reduces the risk of an organization getting a claim from a former team member.

"Golden handcuffs"

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According to experts, smart people often change jobs. Moving to another organization is a way to increase pay. Constant communication with recruiters and receiving offers from competitors is not only a way to find a better position, but also a weighty trump card in the sleeve of an employee that he can use when negotiating with his current employer.

The turnover rate in IT is high. The average working time of a programmer in large IT companies is 2 years. Someone is not trying to deal with this: the management of Netflix encourages staff to communicate with recruiters and asks to report on the proposals received. Based on these data, they study the labor market and find out the average market wage level. Amazon also does not mind the turnover. His management considers employees to be cogs of a large system, which are easily replaced by similar ones.

However, many industry giants are not at all pleased with this state of affairs. They are trying to "get out" with the help of unspoken agreements prohibiting the poaching of workers from each other. This approach also allows artificially lower salaries. Adobe, Apple, Google, Intel, Intuit, Lucasfilm, eBay and Pixar were found to be involved in such activities, and in 2010 they were forced to abandon illegal practices.

But there are other ways to keep shots. Informally, they are called "golden handcuffs." These include bonuses to be returned in case of leaving the company, corporate housing and cars, as well as equity tools.

All cultures are unique.

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Adobe tries to avoid micromanagement, fully trusting the work to specialists, who have an opening for creativity. Experts say that micromanagement reduces the efficiency and creativity of work, and people need "space for maneuver."

Adobe managers are more like trainers and mentors than bosses, and they do not use ratings when evaluating staff, since, according to Adobe, this kills creativity. Employees speak positively about Adobe, noting that the firm is eager to be “closer to the people.” Despite all this, Adobe is an honorary member of the list of IT organizations with the highest turnover rates.

In LinkedIn, decision-making processes are factual and involve all groups of employees: engineers, designers, salespeople, and managers. None of them has an advantage in voting - everyone is equal. And LinkedIn has its own band.

And Twitter is famous for its transparency. Almost each of the 3.5 thousand employees has access to insider information, if after that it can be called that.

Each company is trying to stand out in its own way, because a developed corporate culture is a wonderful marketing tool.

"Uncultured" companies

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In August 2015, The New York Times published a review of Amazon’s corporate culture, based on insider information. It turned out that working there is not easy at all. Amazon veterans do not hide the fact that they have become “amabot”.

Employees point out the positive aspects of the company: low level of bureaucracy and innovation, but otherwise - they are upset. What is the cruelty of Amazon culture? The company tries by all means to stimulate competition among the staff, so anonymous denunciations of colleagues are allowed there.

People need to work super-heartily, despite life circumstances: there were cases when the company did not show any condescension to employees who suffered from cancer or had a miscarriage — they simply did not have time to recover, and could not provide the previous level of productivity.

Communication with the authorities is based solely on criticism - an employee can be reprimanded for an hour, and after that they can be promoted (while the person thought that they want to dismiss him). The staff admits that there is not a single Amazon employee who would not cry in the workplace.

In response to the publication of the New York edition, Bezos said that everything written was nonsense. He added that he himself would have quit from the company described by journalists.

The Japanese company, the developer of computer games Konami, according to the assurances of the Nikkei edition, also tortures its staff. In some divisions of Konami, the Internet is not connected, employees are monitored by cameras, and developers who are not promising are not fired, but transferred to cleaners and security guards.

According to the Indian edition of TheHinduBusinessLine, a typical problem of the corporate culture of medium-sized IT companies is their unwillingness to listen to employees' complaints. All attempts to organize meetings at which employees may express dissatisfaction are stopped, and there are no special commissions for working with staff.

Summary

It will not be possible to find two companies with the same corporate culture, but the general trends can be traced. Successful companies provide bonuses to employees only when they have financial resources to do so. In addition, bonus systems are introduced only to create an optimal balance of work and rest.

If a company spends half of the amount collected on Kickstarter for “cool buns”, and it does all the working time, it is doomed to failure. Corporate culture must change in accordance with the size and needs of the company.

Many of the IT-companies are already taking steps towards getting rid of bureaucracy. The rest should learn from them. However, formal procedures can be avoided only under the condition that company employees are adequate and “adults” (in every sense of the word) people.

PS Other materials on the topic of creating a corporate culture:

PPS Interesting materials from our blog on Habré:

Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/306286/

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