Oxide and Friends

Building a strong, virtuous engineering culture is hard. No silver bullets in this Twitter Space, but plenty of pitfalls to avoid.

Show Notes

Oxide and Friends Twitter Space: February 21st, 2022

Engineering Culture
We’ve been holding a Twitter Space weekly on Mondays at 5p for about an hour. Even though it’s not (yet?) a feature of Twitter Spaces, we have been recording them all; here is the recording for our Twitter Space for February 21st, 2022.
In addition to Bryan Cantrill and Adam Leventhal, speakers on February 21st included Tom Lyon, Tom Killalea, Ian, Antranig Vartanian, Matt Campbell, Simeon Miteff, Matt Ranney and Aaron Hartwig. (Did we miss your name and/or get it wrong? Drop a PR!)
Some of the topics we hit on, in the order that we hit them:
  • Alex Heath’s tweet on FB meeting about updated values: “meta, metamates, me”
  • [@4:44](https://youtu.be/w9MQJbC26h4?t=284) Can an established company “change its values” in any sense?
  • [@8:43](https://youtu.be/w9MQJbC26h4?t=523) Draw the owl > Twilio CEO: Yes, it was a meme, but it’s a great representation of our job. > There is no instruction book and no one is going to tell us how to do our work. > It’s now woven into our culture and used as a cheeky, but encouraging reply to > those who email colleagues at Twilio asking how to do something.
  • [@12:42](https://youtu.be/w9MQJbC26h4?t=762) How do you establish engineering culture? 
    • Copy-paste values?
  • [@20:44](https://youtu.be/w9MQJbC26h4?t=1244) When are values set down in a company’s history? 
    • Amazon’s brand image, expanding beyond books
    • Assessing values when hiring
  • [@27:51](https://youtu.be/w9MQJbC26h4?t=1671) Principles vs values 
    • Principles are absolutes, cannot be taken too far
    • Values are about relative importance, in balance with other values
    • ACM Code of Ethics
    • Relative importance of values. Can some values be learned, while others cannot?
  • [@45:11](https://youtu.be/w9MQJbC26h4?t=2711) “Turn-around CEOs”, trying to change an established company culture
  • [@47:39](https://youtu.be/w9MQJbC26h4?t=2859) Sun culture, early days
  • [@54:32](https://youtu.be/w9MQJbC26h4?t=3272) Connection between values and business model 
    • Urgency in context, requires nuance
  • [@1:03:37](https://youtu.be/w9MQJbC26h4?t=3817) Values on the wall. When are values simply ignored? 
    • Jack Handey wiki, Deep Thoughts recurring SNL short sketches, eg Thanksgiving ~30secs
    • “Sharpen fast”
  • [@1:13:49](https://youtu.be/w9MQJbC26h4?t=4429) What are the important things to get set early? 
    • Bryan and Adam on Joyent and Delphix
  • [@1:22:05](https://youtu.be/w9MQJbC26h4?t=4925) Matt Ranney on his time at Uber 
    • Trying to shape an established culture
    • Leadership’s values vs engineers
    • Business ethics
  • [@1:35:47](https://youtu.be/w9MQJbC26h4?t=5747) GE
  • Thomas Gryta and Ted Mann (2020) Lights Out: Pride, Delusion, and the Fall of General Electric book
  • [@1:37:03](https://youtu.be/w9MQJbC26h4?t=5823) Conclusions 
    • Adam: Get it right first, but it’s not a lost cause if you don’t.
    • Bryan: Look for value alignment in organizations you might want to join, it’s tough to change course after the fact.
    • Matt: generous compensation has an effect on how closely one cares to scrutinize their organization’s values ¯_(ツ)_/¯
If we got something wrong or missed something, please file a PR! Our next Twitter space will likely be on Monday at 5p Pacific Time; stay tuned to our Twitter feeds for details. We’d love to have you join us, as we always love to hear from new speakers!

Creators & Guests

Host
Adam Leventhal
Host
Bryan Cantrill

What is Oxide and Friends?

Oxide hosts a weekly Discord show where we discuss a wide range of topics: computer history, startups, Oxide hardware bringup, and other topics du jour. These are the recordings in podcast form.
Join us live (usually Mondays at 5pm PT) https://discord.gg/gcQxNHAKCB
Subscribe to our calendar: https://sesh.fyi/api/calendar/v2/iMdFbuFRupMwuTiwvXswNU.ics

Speaker 1:

Okay. I am back. Alright, Brian. And I I I did, rightfully assume infer that the the flickering dialog box was not a good sign because it was showing me, like, 8 people in the space when there were actually, like, 50. So anyway.

Speaker 2:

Yeah. There we go.

Speaker 1:

Okay. Perfect. Okay. So, the this we we got started down I mean, are we gonna call them meta, by the way, for this whole conversation? Are we gonna pretend that we honor this name change?

Speaker 2:

I guess we have to. Right?

Speaker 1:

Do we have to? I don't I Do we have to? I'm not sure we have to.

Speaker 3:

How about

Speaker 2:

how about this? I mean, we obviously don't call them alphabetters or alphabet. But, I think that in this case, they deserve it. Like, they shouldn't be

Speaker 1:

called that out. It's like we're we we are sentencing for your crimes against democracy. We sentence you to be called only by the name by which you wish to be called. The terrible day by which you were named yourselves. Okay.

Speaker 1:

Fine. Yeah. So we'll call them better. Fine. The this came about because of apparently an all hands where they rolled out their change in values, which was it was bad.

Speaker 1:

And, Adam, you had a very funny tweet. Someone was asking so what the Internet latched onto is this kind of additional it's not really a value. It's like not even the the slogan. It's not even that, which is, meta metamates me. And people are like, what the hell is that?

Speaker 1:

And, apparently, that is a play off of the old Navy expression of ship shipmates self, which we'll take that apart in a second. Someone was kind of asking was was observing that, is it is it Metabates or is it Metapades? And then you had I thought it was a very funny tweet about

Speaker 2:

Well, I was I I have been pronouncing it as misamitivities, the Greek philosopher.

Speaker 1:

Right. Is it is that to be Koshor that, like, killed himself that before he ate his children or something? Yeah. But I I I I thought that was very funny. Well, thank you.

Speaker 1:

So the slogan itself first, I I was kind of amazed at how many people didn't take apart the actual, like, meaning of the slogan, which is your primary allegiance is to meta, and your secondary allegiance is to your team, and your tertiary allegiance is to yourself, which is actually kind of a a very strange thing for a company to say, honestly.

Speaker 2:

Yeah. Pretty pretty pretty that was kind of lunacy. Yeah. Once what if if anyone in that in that conference room that had came come up with it had taken apart just for a little bit, seems like maybe lunch had

Speaker 1:

just arrived. So It would I just think that also, I mean, as with a lot of these things, if if folks that are going and we're gonna talk a lot about entering culture here. But when you are trying to establish culture and values, do not use memes, cliches, idioms. Like, just use words.

Speaker 2:

You know, like Yeah. Like like words that are not cute and and and to your point, like, values are meant to endure and memes almost certainly are not. So, if you're lucky, people will remember it with an eye roll. And if you're unlucky, it'll just be with,

Speaker 1:

what Right. And I think that, like and I also actually have the question, like, what are you after here? Are you after selflessness, for example? Is that what you're after with this thing? Are you after the the the collective commitment?

Speaker 1:

Are you after teamwork? Are you after responsibility? Like, can we use a word to describe what you're after instead of this of and it's pretty like Doug Hofstetter gave him this. Did you see that?

Speaker 4:

No. I didn't.

Speaker 2:

But I do like this idea of, like, maybe if you take it apart, you say, well, your first your first commitment is to the mission of destroying tomorrow. Right. Right. But first, that is the most important. Right.

Speaker 2:

Then to your teammates who also have that same commitment.

Speaker 1:

Who are feuding with another organization about who destroys this part of democracy first.

Speaker 2:

That's right. And finally, a conceit to yourself, to your private motivation of democracy destruction.

Speaker 1:

You would think that, like, man, read the room. You because you if you're gonna roll out a change in values, you would think this is an opportunity to really emphasize societal responsibility. Do you think you've got some opportunity for some kind of freebies? Don't you think this is kind of a lay up to to emphasize that we, meta, yes, we hear you, world, and we understand that we have a a role to play in society that's larger than merely a capitalist actor. You think that they they could actually, like, express that.

Speaker 1:

But

Speaker 2:

Yeah. I mean, it seems like sir certainly a a kind of open net snapshot kind of situation. But even even the expression that you just used when you roll out

Speaker 1:

Oh, god. I'm sorry. Yeah. Right.

Speaker 2:

Like, is is is is already like, it it's it that one's already tough. Right? That's a that's a tough build.

Speaker 1:

Okay. So here's my assertion. You cannot actually, at the corporate level, and even maybe at an individual level, it is very hard to change your values, certainly at that level. You can observe a value that has always been broadly held that people haven't articulated, But I think that's the most you can do. I don't think that you can meaningfully change your values when you are at that level.

Speaker 2:

Well, I have perhaps a slightly more generous and maybe too generous take on it, which is any any, like, enumeration of values is necessarily aspirational or like that the, the, the opportunity there is to aspire to something that is necessarily different, slightly different or grossly different than what you are. Some of it, as you say, maybe an acknowledgement of of the existing state of the world. But but to your point, like, or and and then if you're a company like Meta, there's an opportunity there to communicate some mea culpa such as you feel it to the rest of the world.

Speaker 1:

Okay. So you say that this is an opportunity that values always reflect to a certain degree the better angels of our nature. This is an opportunity to really have a stretch goal with respect to those angels.

Speaker 2:

That that's what it seems like.

Speaker 1:

Right? That is extremely generous. That is that is extremely generous. Maybe too generous. But I I think it's very hard when you are, try when those values are so aspirational as to be obviously contradictory, that's when you get, I think, in it's like, no.

Speaker 1:

What we do, this doesn't actually make sense. This is not this does not reflect our past decisions, and I don't know how this is gonna how is this going to be folded into our our future decisions? I think you've gotta have

Speaker 2:

the answer to that. Absolutely. It can't be, like, such a stretch that the that it feels unnavigable that, like, from where we are to whatever this word salad means, you know, is unreachable. Because then, obviously, they they just get ignored. I mean, in so far as they don't get ignored.

Speaker 1:

I I believe you called this a word for Tata.

Speaker 2:

That's right. I forgot that that was in this thread.

Speaker 1:

Yes. And I was wondering how long you've been sitting on word for Tata.

Speaker 2:

No. No. No. No. That that was just as as I mentioned in that thread, I think word for for Tata and word salads and other kinds of word jambalaya Like, you know, throw away.

Speaker 2:

In this in this, like so, you know, in this in this day and age of, like, all my communication with humans is, like, through a screen and and, like, everyone's muted. Often videos are off and it's, like, hard to know if any of this is landing and I start listening to myself and that these the terms that occur to me. Wait. And and, I often have this, like, you know, there's a, a meeting I presented at in, like, 2002 where I spoke for, like, half an hour into a conference room phone until realizing that the green light had been off and I, like, kicked out the phone, like, you know, 5 minutes into the into the half.

Speaker 1:

Oh, that's funny.

Speaker 2:

And and and so anyway, this is these are the things that swirl around for me in, the age of video.

Speaker 1:

So I think word jambalaya is even better than word for Tata. I I you're gonna need to give me a second on that one. First of all, it it feels like something that the cafeteria, like, surf on Wednesday, when they're basically taking everything from Monday Tuesday, and, like, usually, oh, god. We're jambalaya again. Oh, god.

Speaker 1:

Is that is that something? That's, like, oh, god. Okay. But, the so I I definitely but I do think that that the the language here actually really, really does matter. I mean, obviously, language is important to both of us, but I think language has gotta be very, very crisp.

Speaker 1:

And it's amazing how many companies, when they're trying to establish culture and values, resort to these I can't do, like, memes. Have you seen I I hate to pick on them. Well, I hate to pick on them. Do you see what Twilio has done in this regard? Do you know what so Twilio's values include draw the owl.

Speaker 1:

This is where is Adam there?

Speaker 2:

Sorry. I'm I'm, like, nodding in agreement as I'm muted. Okay.

Speaker 1:

I I was worried that I was having, like, you were trying to show me what it was like to present to a conference room. But I feel like

Speaker 2:

Yeah. There you go. Giving you giving you the the real experience. No. No.

Speaker 2:

I've I've I I, I remember your screen about them. I was wondering if they had changed it, but I'm glad that they've they've stayed true

Speaker 1:

to They stayed true to draw the owl as as about you, which is a reference to I mean, I don't even know how I would love to know how broadly people get that. I assume people probably get that. I don't know. No. You don't think so.

Speaker 2:

I mean, so I'm not I'm well, I am, like, not I'm I'm sort of, like, in the lower quartile of, like, getting memes, and maybe even that's generous. But, like, I had to Google it, like, 3 like, every time that comes up, I have to Google it to remember what this is about. But, yeah, I mean, I can't imagine that this is resonating for, like, their new college grads or whatever.

Speaker 1:

I when it's and especially what resonates for the new college grads, like, 5 years from now or 10 years from now. This is like having, like, a threes company reference in your corporate values. I mean, at some point, this is just gonna feel feel very, very dated.

Speaker 2:

Yeah. Like, why not just say, like, you value autonomy or you value creativity or whatever it is to fuck you're talking about?

Speaker 1:

Yes. And on draw the owl okay. So what do you think it is with draw the owl? I think with draw yeah.

Speaker 2:

So Go ahead. Yeah. I I think it it is like a, you know, feel free to show holistic ownership. Right? That that this is our you know, you understand the charter and the North Star, and, like, we leave it to you to go, to go do what needs to be done for us to get there.

Speaker 1:

Okay. That's interesting because my because how do you Well, I so so this is how I draw the owl. So the it's a reference to an Internet joke of here's how you draw an owl. And step 1, it's got a bunch of ovals. Step 2, draw the owl.

Speaker 1:

And I think it's kind of like a way of saying that we are expected to be self self reliant, and we are we are are venturing into the unknown. We're solving new problems, and we can't wait for someone to give us so much structure as to show us how to solve the problem.

Speaker 5:

So that sounds like autonomy.

Speaker 2:

Yeah. I I don't think I don't think you're saying something, or at least I don't mean something different than what you're saying, certainly.

Speaker 1:

Yeah.

Speaker 3:

I I've interpreted Draw the Owl as, you know, make progress in the absence of a map. Right. You know, don't freeze, but but push forward. And it actually, I actually liked it the first time I heard it because it echoed a piece of advice that that I got on my very, very first day of working in this industry, which was whatever you do, do something.

Speaker 1:

Which I think is great. No. Actually, I that's the thing, Tom. Like, I I don't actually disagree with the sentiment. And I my inference is closer to yours than Adam's and Matt's, where it is closer to resilience and forward progress in the absence of navigable terrain than it is around autonomy per se.

Speaker 1:

But I don't know. So I I think what is

Speaker 5:

Well, even that even that could be bad if the something that you do ends well, ends up, in the case of meta, disrupt disrupting democracy. Sure.

Speaker 1:

I mean, all these things can obviously be but but I I don't think that that that particular ethos is necessarily wrong. I'm saying it's mislabeled. And I think it's like you wanna be really clear about labeling these things and especially when you are laying them down. And I think you've got to lay them down early. I mean, I think that this is where we kinda wanted to at least get to.

Speaker 1:

Again, Adam, I don't spend all the time on Meta. But, the because I the the kind of the question was, when do you lay down your how do you establish an entering culture? And I think it may be worth defining terms a little bit, around culture versus values versus principles because I think these things all get a bit conflated. Is that

Speaker 2:

one question, but I so I'd love to I I think that'd be a great kind of lexicon to layout. But I also wonder you keep talking about engineering culture. And I was wondering if that is an intentional distinction from company culture or or just in a kind of a

Speaker 1:

a metonymy there? It's a okay. So truthfully, I meant it a little bit as a double entendre. I I, now the That's

Speaker 6:

really clever.

Speaker 1:

You are is it the culture of engineering, or are we actually the culture?

Speaker 2:

Are are we culture engineers?

Speaker 1:

Are we all culture engineers? So I'm I did need a little as a little bit of a double entendre. I think that, in in tech, engineering culture affects company culture so much that and I feel that's that's the culture that I really know know best. But so, yeah, I don't know. That's a that's a non answer, I guess, to the question.

Speaker 2:

Yeah. That's fair enough.

Speaker 4:

Yeah.

Speaker 1:

And, Trenton, did you wanna get in here with it, before we define terms?

Speaker 7:

Yes. Yes. So I, can you guys

Speaker 1:

hear me? Yep. We can hear you.

Speaker 7:

Yeah. Okay. Perfect. So, I have this question. So, sometimes the values of some companies are so good that the next generation might, let's say, quote, unquote copy.

Speaker 7:

For example, on the website, you would see values that come from Sun Microsystems. Like, do you think that's a good thing? Like, for example, let's say if I copied the oxide values, which is, like, copied from the Sun, but not because we are there, but we are planning to go there. Is that, like, a good influence for younger companies to learn from the companies that they are inspired by?

Speaker 1:

Yes. I mean, that's my, my kinda one word answer to that is there are the the important thing about values is that they are true, not that they are unique or novel. And, in fact, I think, actually, the drive to novelty is what kinda gets you to draw the owl when it's like you actually values are we're talking about about the the oldest elements of getting along as people and doing things together. Like, this stuff has been around for a long, long time. And you should always, I think, look for history for those good ideas that you can pull forward.

Speaker 1:

So I yes. I think so. Adam, what do you think?

Speaker 2:

Well, so my my two word answer is yes, maybe. And it gets to what you had just said, Brian, which is it's it's fine to, like, crib someone else's values as long as they really are your values. Right? Like, so, you know, I like Oxide's values. I think it'd be fine to take those and steal them, but are those really reflective of your values and, you know, or to what degree are they aspirational?

Speaker 2:

And maybe that's fine too. But, you know, are those are the values of another company, also your values directly and those of your but, you know, are those are the values of another company also your values directly and those of your your colleagues and your cofounders and and whomever. And it's fine to sort of start from a collection of values that you think are right and then, you know, order them and rank them and consider other ones that maybe aren't reflected, and and how, you know, how those might apply or not.

Speaker 7:

So so my team will be very happy listening to the recording of this because they're like, well, we we we we've always been inspired, but why but, by what these guys do, but is it okay if we copy them and change them a bit on our language? I'm like, well well, good thing I can ask them.

Speaker 1:

You've turned out a trick.

Speaker 7:

And hopefully and hopefully, they would say yes, and, we will try our best to reflect to those values also, in reality, not only on the website.

Speaker 1:

Yeah. I think absolutely. I and I I mean, please, honestly, I think that it is, it's great to hear that that, those values resonate to the degree that and, you know, just what Adam said, people should take them in as a template and modify them a bit. I mean, certainly, we've done that. I mean, the oxide's values come from lots of different sources, including, actually, Amazon.

Speaker 1:

You know, I give Amazon grief for the the the the 14 leadership principles, but there's some really good ones in there. And honestly, like, our thriftiness is I I I admire Amazon. I got great admiration for Amazon's frugality. The and, Tom, I don't know. You probably have a I do have a complicated relationship with Amazon Frugality.

Speaker 1:

I know that most folks at Amazon are

Speaker 2:

like No. I mean,

Speaker 3:

you know, first of all, you know, I was kind of the enforcer for a long time of the frugality when I got the technology footprint. So, you know, it's, kind of very fundamental very much from the beginning. And, it was really was about survival.

Speaker 1:

Yeah. Interesting.

Speaker 3:

In the early days. And, you know, secondly, I'm I'm all for the reuse of other values because frankly, you know, companies spend a lot of time thinking about and debating these. So if you're starting out Anthony, with you know, I think it's worth sort of looking at what, you know, Oxide and Twilio and Amazon and Stripe and so on have done with respect to trying to document their culture and values and seeing what you might be able to reuse because a lot of of thought has gone into that.

Speaker 1:

So I I

Speaker 8:

I was gonna Yeah.

Speaker 1:

Talk about it.

Speaker 8:

Some someday after things go horribly wrong, your lawyers will be issuing DMCA takes them on the values.

Speaker 1:

We should

Speaker 2:

we should put those in a in a open source repo because, like, we certainly are have a big commitment to

Speaker 8:

What source? What's your value license?

Speaker 1:

That's right. Well well okay. So I've got Tom, I'm glad you asked. So we're moving to a common core model. So,

Speaker 2:

for your GPL values?

Speaker 1:

Exactly. This this, this does not affect most companies that are using our values. Just so I want you to know.

Speaker 2:

Oh, you want support

Speaker 1:

for those values?

Speaker 2:

Then you gotta buy the the proprietary license.

Speaker 1:

Exactly. No. I I

Speaker 7:

I'm I'm in country countries work that way too. Right? I mean, when a new country is born, they take their constitution as a copy from another country that they're they they have a history with or inspired by, and they continue doing continue building their constitution, for example, based on that. I I think it not only comes to companies, but also countries.

Speaker 1:

It absolutely does. And the the certainly, the in in America, the the the kind of the foundation principles in both the constitution, but especially the declaration, come from other were borrowed from other countries and then and kinda pulled together in, I think, a novel way, but certainly have inspired other countries as well. And this is all like, this is good stuff. Right? Like, we want to share humans should share the good stuff, and this is definitely good stuff.

Speaker 1:

It you know, I wanna get your question. More thing, Brian. Go ahead. Yep.

Speaker 3:

You know, another consideration with respects to, you know, putting down and capturing, you know, your values, your culture, and your brand is that you really need to think about them as quick drying cement. And, you have a limited time to, like, propagate across the the company even in your early days that this is what they are. Yes. And if you don't do that, you maybe will end up being stuck with the wrong ones or stuck with none.

Speaker 1:

Yes. And so, Tom, I wanted that's kinda what I wanted to ask you about is because I know for us, we set the values, and, clearly, there had been, like, a lifetime of lived experience leading up to it, but it was basically 45 minutes. And I think if you are debating values, whatever you're debating is not a shared value because you are the the it's already too late for whatever that value is. And not everyone needs to share all values, but that may not be a a shared value. So, Tom, I'm very curious about that because I don't know the history of the of the leadership principles.

Speaker 1:

And just so I I I'd I'd think I've said this to you before. My big problem with leadership principles is not the principles for Saks. I think they're, by and large, like, pretty good. It's what they inspired in other companies, which is no fault of Amazon's. But when did those when were those written down inside of Amazon?

Speaker 1:

Was that pretty early?

Speaker 3:

It was about it wasn't that early actually. It was about, maybe I'd say 2,000 or 2,001 by Robin Andrzej Levich, who was leading HR at the time. And a lot of them were written down and and and talked about, but they weren't captured in one place, until then. And, she spent a bunch of time with a number of leaders within the company to really try and get to what did this mean for you, plus, like, what are some examples of that? Like, what does frugality really mean?

Speaker 3:

What does customer obsession actually mean? What are some examples of people going that kind of extra mile and and so on? So it was it was kind of a journey. So at that point, obviously, the company was, like, 6 years old. And I think that's leaving it very, very late.

Speaker 1:

That's very, very late. Yeah. And that is yeah. It's like

Speaker 3:

The you know, quick drying cement with respect to certain dimensions of company foundation being, like, values, culture, and brand. The brand one was the one that, certainly, Jeff was most worried about with respect to what the company might get pigeonholed as. And so, you know, we were doing a pretty lousy job, to be quite honest, of, just selling books, in June of 1998 when we launched music and a couple of months later, video. But, there was a very strong sense of urgency to not get pigeonholed just as a,

Speaker 2:

you know,

Speaker 3:

an online bookseller. And so, we pushed into other categories in order to, sort of capture a window of opportunity with respect to what's what the brand would mean to people and how people perceive, the domain name and the brand, so that, you know, too much time didn't go by, with it just being about books. The Okay. Yeah.

Speaker 1:

Wait. It's why I'm saying that the the the name itself reflects that that aspiration. Right? I mean, because at the time, the other online booksellers all had book in their name somewhere, and Amazon, like, very clearly did not.

Speaker 3:

Yeah. And that's one of the reasons the name didn't have books in there. But but even so, you know, we almost left it too late to get into other categories. And in doing, you know, user testing, you know, years later in the 2000, 2001, 2002, you know, you would would watch people like navigating through and getting things they want and gravitating back to books. And, you know, we had a cross selling program where, like, if you had never bought anything but books, when you landed, you know, on on the domain at first, you would see no book.

Speaker 3:

You would see, like, Ipods and, you know, headphones and all sorts of stuff.

Speaker 1:

They just explained some of my Amazon traffic experiences. Really? Yeah. But it it

Speaker 3:

you know, and so people were like, why is this this isn't relevant to me. I never buy headphones here. And that was the whole point. We're showing you that because you'd never bought anything but books. And and and we actually asked sat down with, like, real life in the flesh users and said, so, would you think about buying headphones, or would you think about buying, you know, whatever, you know, an MP 3 player on this website.

Speaker 3:

And I was like they were like, no. I mean, Amazon doesn't sell MP 3 players. This is they only sell books. And this is someone who was, like, in front of a screen with a selection of MP 3 players showing.

Speaker 1:

Well, it just yeah. The the it's that quick dry cement as you as you describe. Yeah. So so when they went that's I did not realize that the that the principles were in place so relatively late. And it I mean, it sounds like it was a a pretty deliberate process to figure out what how what are the values that were actually living as opposed to it sounds like it sounds like they were they were as much, description as they were aspirational.

Speaker 1:

And the truth of the process, like, finding concrete examples. Is that it? It is am I over inferring there?

Speaker 3:

Yeah. Well, they they were descriptional because, you know, even before they were in, you know, of of 14 or whatever the initial number. I think, you know, at that time, it was 12 and it's it grew a little bit and it just grew in recent years again. But, they were written down to the degree that as you, like, wrote your performance self evaluation and, you know, or or interviewed candidates, people to be able to perform, and competencies around each of them was assigned to each of the interviewers on an interview loop, for example.

Speaker 1:

Interesting. Yeah. So well, I do think that that, something that Amazon did do that I certainly, we do at Oxide. I mean, values are absolutely a lens for everything we do. I don't think we've we have not weaponized them into performance reviews, but we definitely view them as a lens certainly for hiring.

Speaker 1:

And I think that part of the reason that you know, Tom talked about quick drawing cement. Part of the reason you've gotta get them established early is because it will it will affect who you hire and who's attracted to the company, who you are attracted to as a company. And then those values become, like, massive force multipliers when you are now because, I mean I mean, Adam, I would I mean, you and I obviously look through a ton of materials, for folks interested in working at oxide. I mean, I would say 70% are attracted to oxide because of the values. I mean, it's a it's a it's a big, big number.

Speaker 2:

Yeah. Absolutely. And to your point oh, you know, Brian, I I kicked you off the the rail the train of defining these terms. So maybe, maybe we should get back to that and, and then we get to Ian who's had his hand up for a while.

Speaker 1:

Exactly. To to whose blood is training from his virtual hand up there. Yeah. We'll get to you in a sec. The, so, yeah, just in terms of terms here, I do differentiate.

Speaker 1:

And when I say I, I think I mean we as speakers in English. Sure. Can you oh

Speaker 2:

oh oh, got it. Yeah.

Speaker 1:

We'll we'll let you know. Exactly. Between, principles and values. And principles being, I I do feel these get conflated a lot, but principles are absolutes. So, principles are the you know?

Speaker 1:

And at Oxide, it's honesty, integrity, decency. Like, these are the absolutes. No matter no matter what, these are the things that we are always gonna abide by. And to me, it's important to have those absolutes in part because you're sending the message to everybody, to the future company. If you are at this company and you see something that violates these principles, that is that's against the company.

Speaker 1:

That's not what we want, and you should be you should say something. And that is how you prevent some of these kind of institutional problems that we've seen in so many different companies. So the principles, I think, are important, but they are different from the values in that they are absolutes or should be absolutes. And if you treat them as absolutes and you keep that number you gotta keep that number small because they're gonna be absolutes versus values are relative importance. And I do think that one of the things and, Adam, I don't know what what your take is on this.

Speaker 1:

I actually really like the fact that we have explicitly talked about things being intention, that that that they the the values are not absolutes. And you can take every value can be taken to an extreme. Principles cannot be taken to an extreme. You can't take integrity to an extreme. You can't take honesty to an extreme.

Speaker 1:

You can take as I'm sure maybe I know Tom sounds like you were on the enforcement end of it, but you can take thriftiness or frugality to an extreme. Right? You can take rigor to an extreme. You can take urgency to an extreme.

Speaker 2:

Yeah. And in particular, the the enumeration of the values that we have create a great shorthand for being able to discuss, topics as these values come into conflict. Saying, you know, this, you know, an obvious one is obviously, you know, rigor and urgency. And you can talk about that tension and, and then figure out how we, you know, how it all sorts out and you know, whether urgency or rigor wins in a particular instance. Without that language, you're kind of grasping without that vocabulary to articulate why something would be prioritized or or precisely how these are intention.

Speaker 1:

Or or why you are upset with someone that you broadly agree with. Like, why why are you and I at loggerheads even though I think we agree on lots of things? It's like, oh, because you and I both agree that these these values are important. But you the relative importance of these 2 right now is different from the 2 of us.

Speaker 5:

And I think that, the fact that these values can be intention, that that that's a potential danger with just copying another company's values. Because the values that are important for, say, a a a company like Oxide that's trying to solve solve a, you know, hard problem of of that integrated hardware and software might I mean, rigor, for instance, might not be as important for a company that's that's trying to, well, you know, develop a web applicate a web application that, I mean, the obviously, whatever kind of software you're developing, it it it should be robust. But but in some cases, depending on the problem that you're trying to solve, urgency might be, more important.

Speaker 1:

Sure. Yeah. I would just echo what we're trying to capture. Ian, you've had your hand up forever, so I wanna get to you there. Sorry.

Speaker 4:

Yeah. No worries, mate. Yeah. Going going back earlier, someone mentioned the constitution. And I think that it's kinda interesting that, there is some parallels to the engineering world where, like, not everything can be captured in a company culture.

Speaker 4:

And with the company values, there's something that lives above that, which is like engineering ethics, where there are, like, you know, the IEEE and other organizations have a published guide for ethics that, you know, all engineers should be abiding by regardless of what industry or company or whatever they're in. You know, there is some some documentation out there of how people should comport themselves in in the world as a as a professional.

Speaker 1:

That's a that's a great point, and I would actually put in a quick plug for, the ACM recently redid its its code of ethics. Tom, I don't know. Have you looked at the ACMs, the the redone ethics?

Speaker 3:

Yes. Yeah.

Speaker 1:

I think I thought they were quite good. Yeah. A vast improvement. And I think that I can't speak for IEEE, but ACMs historical code of ethics Didn't really understand what the word ethics means, I don't think. And we told you, like, one of the things is like, you know, it is the software engineer's responsibility to, you know, always have complete design documentation.

Speaker 1:

You're like, that's not a it's a is that ethical trans ethical? Ethical? It's like, Jesus Christ. I've been like, I've been crooked my entire career. I've been the but the the the they they so they redid this completely.

Speaker 1:

What was it, Tom? Maybe 2 years ago or something like that?

Speaker 3:

Yeah. They're bad, I think. Yep. Yeah.

Speaker 1:

And I love the way they redid it in terms of, like, really kind of recasting it as, I mean, thinking about responsibility to society, about about abiding by laws, and then asking questions, I think. I think the the I mean, it's a it's an extremely important point that there are there should be absolutes that trump any company. And if you feel that you are being asked asked to do something that is unethical, you should act on that. Like, you and, you know, there are gonna be the the exact kind of course of action is gonna depend on the situation. But we have seen people who I feel haven't acted on that, and and it's been it's been really problematic as a result.

Speaker 1:

So you think that's a very good point. And I sorry. You know, I think you're trying to get another point in there. Before I jump in, let me Yeah.

Speaker 4:

Yeah. No worries. Yeah. I mean, I think this is always good to able to look at how other, organizations are evolving those ethics over time. I think that I triple a has changed in the early nineties in response to a, a member who wrote about, needing to participate in bribery in order to, to, continue their company's survival in in some kind of I think it was a DC or or similar sort of environment where they were like, well, it's unethical to to, bribe officials, but also I kind of need the bribe officials in order to survive.

Speaker 4:

So is this unethical? And they had to, like, come out with these guidelines as

Speaker 1:

I thought of that. Yeah. Interesting.

Speaker 4:

The other thing that I know is, from a culture versus values perspective, the founder of, one of the of the last name, Buchanan Brooks, stated that culture is what happens when the boss isn't around.

Speaker 1:

Yes.

Speaker 4:

Yeah. Which is is kind of a, an observation of the fact that it is, like, how people behave when they don't think they're being, evaluated or watched, which I think is, an interesting insight. And the other the other piece there is, like, for for your point on honesty, I have, you know, a licensing has a set of values and I have seen some of those taken to extreme. And one of them, is kind of similar to honesty. And I think there is a bit of a line between, you know, honesty, brutal honesty, and being a bit of a dick.

Speaker 1:

And, like,

Speaker 4:

sometimes you can you can definitely walk that line and I think some people need to get reined in where it's like, look, I understand we told you to be honest, but also there is a human on the other end of the screen. And, like, you you need to consider, you know, exactly how you, you know, communicate the the honest, feedback that you

Speaker 1:

Totally. Totally. And so one of the things that we ask for people who are coming to Oxide, we ask them to, to really talk about their their career in terms of the Oxide values. When have they been exhibited in their career? When have they been violated in their career?

Speaker 1:

Have you dealt with it? And then the question that we throw on there at the last possible second, which is, take 2 of oxide's values and, describe how they came intention for you and how you resolved it. And it's been really interesting to look at this matrix. And, Ian, just to your point, the the the rig rigor versus urgency is the classic, and we get a lot of those. And by the way, if you're contemplating applying the oxide, don't there you don't feel you need to be original.

Speaker 1:

The if it rigor and urgency is a classic trade off, and there's a lot that that to be said about it. The one that it, candor and empathy. When people talk about candor and empathy being intention, you're like, go on. Because we have we we have had people who apply the yeah. Candor and empathy were were intentions.

Speaker 1:

I was working with this guy. He was, like, a total totally incompetent fool. And I told them that, and, you know, they didn't wanna hear it.

Speaker 2:

All of a sudden,

Speaker 1:

I was hurting their feelings. It's like, okay. Just Good

Speaker 3:

to know. Right.

Speaker 1:

Good to know. And I do think, Adam, there are no points for originality, but I don't think you got the memo on that one. Because as I recall, you were really gunning for originality in in your oxide materials.

Speaker 2:

Well, how about this? I I I I realized I did kinda land on my own unique square there as I, I I contrasted thriftiness and courage, but I I, you know and and I was kind of gunning for originally, but I would also say that it I think it's very good, actually. Yeah. It's an interesting question. And, thinking and and I think the you know, as I mentioned, you know, rigor and urgency, and you, you mentioned come, come into attention frequently.

Speaker 2:

So I was trying to think of things because I found it to be such a curious introspective point of introspection to find, you know, ways in which these unexpected or these values might unexpectedly, come into

Speaker 1:

30th story. So I'm teasing you about it, but I actually thought your

Speaker 2:

example was Yeah. So, so

Speaker 1:

And it comes up a lot.

Speaker 2:

So before I joined Oxide, I I founded a company, and we had been, you know, I am, I really embrace thriftiness in, like, lunatic ways. Just, you know, like, for example, I take out a bunch of books from the library on my Kindle and then put them in airplane mode and then, like, leave my Kindle in airplane mode for a year after those books have been returned rather than, like, paying $10 to a poor author to, like, buy their work, for example. Not all.

Speaker 5:

Might that might not might that not be intention with the principle of of, integrity? That's right. Listen.

Speaker 2:

Can you can you mute yourself now? Exactly.

Speaker 1:

You're a character.

Speaker 2:

Now you're a listener. So so, I'm I'm a, I'm a, to a fault, I'm thrifty. And, you know, there was a time in the company when we really needed to, you know, ramp up, not just like one person marketing, but really a marketing team. And, there was a moment where I just needed to bite the bullet and embrace, you know, and and show some courage and not, you know, dip a toe in the water, but actually, make a significant enough investment where the experiment could be meaningful. So it was it was a real, you know, these these values are really intentioned and I was really wrestling over this and we we got the marketing team and, and and it was all, you know, a happy story in the end, shall we say.

Speaker 1:

That's right. But but I think that that the this is something that we and and, Tom, you must have seen this a lot at Amazon where you got I mean, you presumably are trying to counterbalance frugality with ultimately I mean, you're you're not trying to be so frugal that that you're ineffective. That must have been a constant tension you were navigating as the frugality force.

Speaker 3:

And, you know, the all values are not created equal, and the same applies to leadership principles there. And so, you know, customer obsession stands way ahead and shoulders above, you know, all the others, frankly, and ownership is really high as well. And frugality, falls to the people who control, you know, cost centers. But quite often, the vast majority of employees are like, yeah. Right.

Speaker 3:

That sounds great. You know? But I need my I need my servers or whatever it is.

Speaker 1:

Okay. So that's actually really interesting. The The because well, certainly, that has been my inference that all of those leadership principles are not created equal. And my inference has been, which sounds like it's accurate, that customer obsession if Amazon has to choose between frugality and customer obsession, they will choose customer obsession. If they need to choose between really any of those values, I mean, it's part of the reason.

Speaker 1:

Is that a is that a fair read?

Speaker 3:

Totally. Yeah. And another thing to think about, for value setting people in this space is that, you know, while you may make an effort to hire, such that people, have coverage with respect to alignment with your values, and you try to anticipate and head off, certainly, you know, outright conflict with them, there are lots of people who are potential candidates to work for you who haven't had an opportunity to live in a world where they could exercise alignment with those values. And so, we ended up putting substantial effort into figuring out which of the values are more learnable and which are significantly less learnable. Because if something, you know, for example, you know, you take Amazon, you know, a natural place to go fishing for employees would be Microsoft.

Speaker 3:

Right? And you just don't you don't expect frugality from someone who works at a software company where there are 70% operating margins. But they can but it turns out that frugality is eminently learnable once people see examples of it in action. And so, in learning that, you know, after after a while people get frugality and they understand it and can deal with the guardrails around it, then you don't need to actually pay a lot of attention to that. On the other hand, there are other things that are really difficult for people to learn.

Speaker 3:

And so if you see some red flags on a on a loop with respect to them, you pay attention to them because you're, you you know, you're gonna get stuck. And ownership would be a key one where, if people don't take ownership, particularly for their mistakes or for the issues that their their team has and, and results and, you know, getting into closure on things, yeah, that actually tends to be behavior that is is not readily fixable.

Speaker 1:

That is really interesting. And so one thing that we certainly, really lean on that's been so far so good for us, but, you know, stay tuned when we're issuing DMCA takedowns for our values and Tom's dystopian future. But one thing that is working well for us so far is having folks write down, their the the way they resonate with the values. I don't think Amazon, the technology doesn't do that. But how do you assess some of these values in a conversation with a perspective hire?

Speaker 1:

Like, how do you assess? Presumably Amazon developed it knowing Amazon developed a rubric for it.

Speaker 3:

Well, you spend all your time interviewing people, assessing people against the values. So you have to get them to present situations and talk through experiences through the lens of whichever, you know, couple or 3, leadership principles you happen to have assigned to you for that interview.

Speaker 1:

Oh, interesting. So you get some number of principles assigned so that they kinda dole out on a on a per interview basis. In this interview, you, Tom, are going to be assessing frugality. Interesting. Okay.

Speaker 2:

Yeah. And Brian, I don't know if you've noticed this, but we have some colleagues who, when we interview candidates express their feedback in terms of values. And I find that to be another great use of values as that shorthand in that language. Rather than saying, you know, I liked them or I didn't like them or I wasn't sure they'd work out here or whatever. It gives you something much more concrete to also then compare notes with other colleagues.

Speaker 1:

It does. And I've been kind of I've been resisting the temptation to, I think formalize any kind of scoring because I really wanna refrain from kinda weaponizing values. But I also, definitely, in my own head, do when I'm looking at someone, I am looking at at at their different values. And, Tom, I think we said in true about, like, all values not being created equal. Because even when all values are important, different values will resonate with different people to to different degrees.

Speaker 1:

And I think and I I do think because I don't really think we've thought about, like, which are these are more learnable than others. And because I do feel that I mean, for example, to kind of phrase the ownership in oxide values, teamwork and responsibility are both are both, like, existential for me. Like, if I had someone who had great values elsewhere but did not exhibit teamwork and responsibility, I personally would have a hard time. I don't know. So it's you you definitely get me it got me thinking a lot about that.

Speaker 1:

Sydney, you've had your hand up for a while. Sorry about that.

Speaker 9:

Yeah. One of the, sort of early influences on my thinking about culture in a in a bad way, unfortunately, was, observing a process over multiple years where a company was, a company or a board of a company recruited a turnaround CEO. And and, I mean, I guess, you hire a turnaround CEO for different reasons, maybe financial or or something like that. But, then observing that a pretty significant change in the behavior of individuals in in that company and, perhaps, consequently, you know, their performance as a company and without necessarily a very large turnover of individuals within that company. And then, and then that's turnaround CEO Li Bing.

Speaker 1:

Oh. That's brutal.

Speaker 9:

And and, you know, it's it's like right. So so so you know what I'm talking about. I'm talking about reversion to the mean of behaviors. Yeah. So in other words, there was an established culture.

Speaker 9:

You tried to change it. Then you left. People went back to the way they used to be. And I think that has given me a mental model of, you know, it's it's like folks have spoken about this idea of, like, quick set, you know, quick drying concrete. It's it's I my idea is or my my conception of company culture is there is a rapidly declining degree to which you can control the the culture within a company.

Speaker 9:

Initially, you know, you get to hire all the people. Maybe later on, you sit in on a bunch of interviews. You know, you have people you trust to hire, you know, people with with the right values. And then later on, there might be some kind of, you know, you fit in or you leave kind of culture, which which may act as a filter or, you know, that kind of thing. And eventually, companies, you know, probably get whoever.

Speaker 9:

So yeah. I guess I'm feeling very jaded about the idea that company culture can be changed. I think it can only be established.

Speaker 1:

It can only I I think you're right. I think it broadly I think you're broadly right. It can only be established.

Speaker 5:

And So I I joined sorry.

Speaker 1:

Hold yeah. Hold on. Matt, on that note, actually, before we before we go to you, I actually wanna get because on that note, Simeon, because, obviously, I grew up at Sun, And the Sun's culture was not really verbalized until it was eulogized, which is always very strange to me. That McNeely actually eulogized Sun's culture very concisely. I kick butt, have fun, didn't cheat, loved our customers, changed computing forever, which I loved, and which I can now say without tearing up.

Speaker 1:

Did you ever tear up at that, Adam? I was like, I actually there were there were years when I was, like, really gonna break down

Speaker 2:

when I No. You're you're much more emotional than I am. I'm I'm I'm more of a true xer.

Speaker 1:

There you go. There you go. Oh, god. Oh, yeah. I thought you got the you're going true xer on me.

Speaker 1:

But, Tom, I would love to know from your perspective the because, you know, you're there, obviously, incredibly early. The you know, it is it's the 4 of them plus, I guess, 3 people I'm unaware of that you. But, like, the you are really, really early in the culture. How much were you reflecting that versus how much were you shaping that? Because, honestly, like, the more I've gotten to know you in in the last couple of years, I view Sun's culture as a very much a reflection of your ethos as well, and I've gotta believe that as someone who was early, that you you really helped shape it.

Speaker 1:

I mean, can you talk to Sun's kinda early days from a culture perspective?

Speaker 8:

Probably not really because I'm

Speaker 4:

I'm I'm enough on

Speaker 8:

the spectrum to not be really aware of a lot of interpersonal culture things. But

Speaker 1:

So so, well, let me ask you something.

Speaker 2:

And I

Speaker 1:

have a question.

Speaker 8:

Yeah. It's hard to hard to, name particular values, but certainly, you know, being being honest and open was a good thing.

Speaker 1:

Well, so yeah. Let me ask you about that in particular because Sun was open at a time when systems broadly weren't. And it must have felt like somewhat out of step with the rest of the industry.

Speaker 8:

Yeah. But everyone was coming from UNIX and coming from slapping together microprocessors with multibus, and those those were open things relatively. So we kind of fell into it.

Speaker 5:

Well, didn't Sun do some propriety some more some proprietary things, though, as well even fairly early on? And I I'm I'm a total outsider here, so so correct me if I'm wrong. But, like, the the the the windowing system, I mean, x was basically the everybody against Sun Consortium. Right?

Speaker 8:

Well, it was a little bit lighter, but, the x and news were kinda happening at the same time. And then, you know, prior to that, Sun had their own thing. But But so there certainly was not an open source culture, back then from a from any kind recognized from any kind of business point of view. There was a little bit of, you know, shuffling code back and forth between us and Berkeley, but that was

Speaker 1:

Yeah. And I don't mean in terms of open stores. Because this is long before open but I mean, for open systems, like taking NFS and making sure that NFS worked with rival systems, for example.

Speaker 8:

Right. And that that that was not so much a value thing, but a recognition of the inherent value of of networking. You know, the more, you know, kinda Metcalfe's law, the more things you connect, the better off everyone knows.

Speaker 1:

Yeah. I do. I think that I hear what you're saying. I think you've been kinda self effacing, honestly. I mean, I'd like I I agree with you, but I also and, again, maybe this is just it just maybe it all just happened by accident.

Speaker 1:

But the, you know, McNealy had the line at the end that in 30 years, he never had to hide the newspaper in shame from his children. And that was actually not true of many companies at the time. I mean, Sun didn't really get caught up in major scandal.

Speaker 8:

Right. On the other hand, we we had the luxury of being profitable at at age 3 months.

Speaker 1:

That's a good point. Interesting. Yeah.

Speaker 8:

There wasn't the need to do anything shady.

Speaker 1:

Right. So You you kind of avoid yeah. Well, this is this is what I tried in my with with the 3 kids in my own house. Trying to make sure that scarcity is is the the root cause of much domestic strife. So you can Right.

Speaker 1:

You can assure that you don't have so that that's that's a very, interesting point that there's a sort of luxury.

Speaker 8:

Yeah. The rocket was launched. We were just trying to steer the rocket.

Speaker 1:

Yeah. Interesting.

Speaker 8:

But, yeah. I I mean, I think I certainly influenced the engineering culture, but, you know, how to quantify the new and that, you know, I don't I don't know how.

Speaker 1:

Am I over my skis to say that that there is a I mean, Sun obviously thought of itself as, very important with respect to Unix. Is it are Sun's values UNIX values? Is that is is that an overreach?

Speaker 8:

Boy, I don't know. And then there, you know, the problem with that. Have I ever really been outside of the UNIX culture to to draw a comparison? You know? I don't know.

Speaker 8:

But there there is a lot of standard stuff that Sun did where we assumed it was proprietary and would give us proprietary advantage. So it wasn't all

Speaker 1:

Oh, for sure.

Speaker 8:

It That's, you know

Speaker 1:

It just was never dirty. Right. The the the and and there was actually a really interesting moment. And, Adam, I'm not sure if you were next to me or not when this happened when, I was talking to a senior vice president, who's gonna be in the hallway, and someone had mentioned something that basically had mounted to kind of an industry rumor that they'd heard, but it was more specific than that. They'd heard something about, basically, an upcoming quarter from Arrival.

Speaker 1:

And there it was this really interesting moment where he just turned on him and said really pretty sharply, you shouldn't know that, and you definitely shouldn't be telling anyone else that, and I don't wanna hear anything else like that. And it it kind of, like, took everyone kind of was was kind of took me aback at least. And it and I yeah. I'm not sure exactly where it was it was I mean, it it definitely sent a message in terms of, like, the company, again, did not find itself in scandal, in part because it didn't really tolerate folks that were cheating. Or so it felt, anyway.

Speaker 1:

Intranek, you could, get your hand up.

Speaker 7:

Yeah. So, back to the original tweet when all of this discussion started happening. Can we say that a company's business model reflects to its values? Like, I know that Meta had, an all hands that they are changing their values, but without changing their business model, can values be changed? Because, like, if if you change the words, but you're still doing the same thing as a company, that's what I'm trying to understand.

Speaker 7:

Like, your business model and your values are, are connected to each other?

Speaker 1:

That's an interesting question. And I think I mean, because certainly your business model is also gonna reflect those values. And I think that the the dilemma that Meta finds itself in is its business model is, not necessarily oriented to its customer's best interests, which I think is the this is the the thing that the Amazon has always done so well at is acting as in that customer obsession in its own customer's best interests. And I think that this is a big challenge for Facebook and for Meta. And, yeah.

Speaker 1:

I don't know how you I think it means a good point. I don't know, Adam. What did what's your what's your take?

Speaker 2:

Well, you know, the what what

Speaker 3:

this got me thinking is

Speaker 2:

that, you know, while we have a list of 15 values, there are probably other things that we value. And, and I, I have a hard time coming up with them because the list is so exhaustive, but one can imagine if you had a more modest list of values, there would be additional unenumerated values. Well, actually, I'll give you an example, Brian. I think one of the things that we value that is not on the list that is on other people's list is creativity. And maybe you could squint and find it between the lines of some of the other ones, but I'd say it's sort of not on there just, and if maybe you'll permit me for this, but I could imagine in the future that some of these unstated, but lived values kind of rise in significance where they start getting written down and it's not a change of values.

Speaker 2:

It may be a change of emphasis and a change of articulation. And to some degree, also a change of aspiration saying that we want to be more of this thing that we aren't. And you may have also deemphasized values, although, you know, they're, they're ones that I feel like you would, you would feel pretty shitty about checking off the list to make space for something else, but I don't know that you're, you'd be changing values necessarily, but rather changing the articulation and the priority and the emphasis of your values.

Speaker 1:

Yeah. That's interesting. I mean, I I I think that we would and I do think that you this is kinda what I was saying earlier that you can have previously shared but unarticulated values. And you can if you want to expand your values to include this thing that should have been there all along, that's something that you can conceivably do. But I think it's still super tricky.

Speaker 1:

And, like, creativity as a as a kind of a concrete example, like, there would be that would be I mean, there's a reason to me anyway that that's not necessarily an oxide value. That would that that could very well be a great value added of a company. Yeah. Even though I think we're very creative engineers. I don't think that

Speaker 2:

Absolutely. And to be clear, I'm not, like, I'm not, like, saying we we missed by not having it on there. I'm just saying it's one that one could

Speaker 3:

imagine on there. Totally. Totally. The ingredients of that Adam flow from curiosity and courage, which are, you know, is very central oxide values, I think. So, it's very it's very hard to pursue anything in a truly creative way without having, substantial curiosity and courage.

Speaker 3:

One thing I did wanna ask Brian while I've got the floor for a minute is, urgency is an outside values. It it it feels like there's a little bit of backpedaling in how it's described. You know, the little description ends with urgency should not be conflated with pace. It is important to move deliberately rather than hastily. And it's like, wait a minute.

Speaker 3:

How committed is this company to urgency? I'd love to hear a little bit about that. Yeah.

Speaker 1:

And, no, that that is very deliberate. And it is urgency is it it is very deliberately designed to stay intention because we could ship a faster thing by making a bunch of different decisions that would be the wrong decisions for the the long term future. So, I mean, we could ship I mean, we we could rebadge a a Dell box. Be a lot faster. Be a lot less work on the board.

Speaker 1:

But it would that would be urgency trumping everything else. And we and to the point where it we forgot every reason to believe that that would not be a successful product because we will have trumped all our urgency. We'll have triumphed over everything. And, indeed, I think part of the problem and part of the reason that we do the kind of I don't think it's I don't view it as backpedaling. I view it as more kind of as as qualifying that urgency.

Speaker 1:

Part of the the the pickle that the industry is in is it is as prior at every step, it is prioritized urgency over rigor. And now we have these systems that have accreted so much, and we're trying to deliberately blow through that. And I think that we also I mean, I think a difference between us and a company that would I mean, we also don't don't talk about velocity. As I said, velocity is for projectiles. I'm not huge a huge fan of velocity as a as a a description of software engineers.

Speaker 1:

I know other people are. I think that we make a mistake as a domain when we don't keep that intention with these other attributes. And I think that's what that's trying to express is that this is not meant to be an absolute, and this does not mean that if something takes longer than something else, that the thing that takes longer is necessarily wrong. It's like, need more detail. Like, what are we talking about?

Speaker 1:

What is it how's that for a non answer, Tom?

Speaker 3:

It it it helps. It certainly helps. I mean, when, sometimes you see, you know, a label or a a value, and you if it isn't clear what it says, you'll fill us with what you think it it should mean, and, that can, unfortunately, lead people down engineering culture. A lot of it is about, trying to trying to have an absence of gatekeeping and also a commitment to not engage in overanalysis and overthinking, and having a willingness to make decisions even if you have, like, 70% of the information. And if you waited, like, another 6 or 12 months, you'd get a 100%, but it'd be too late.

Speaker 3:

You know? Yes. It really comes down to being decisive, in including in ambiguous circumstances because frankly, you know, we're always making decisions with a moderate amount of ambiguity. Yeah. And this is

Speaker 1:

actually something I I love in the Amazon principles is that the I can't remember which principle it's talked under, but that most decisions are reversible. And, I mean, I don't I don't know if because we didn't call that out explicitly, but I certainly it certainly has occurred to me many times over the you know, as we've been building this thing about is this reversible, what we're talking about? And if it is, let's enshrine getting a prototype here and let's not succumb to analysis paralysis.

Speaker 3:

Yeah. And that's in bias for action. The and there's

Speaker 1:

Bias for action. That's bias for action.

Speaker 3:

Do a door, do

Speaker 1:

a door concept. Yes. And bias for action, I like. I I trust that from Amazon. That's one of these that is a bit of a dangerous one because I feel like bias for action was a gateway drug to Uber's let builders build, which is where I feel like Uber took what I think is actually somewhat nuanced value position from Amazon, ethos.

Speaker 1:

And they they obliterated the the nuance. And when I saw let builders build the the thing that makes me nervous about that is where you've disembodied analysis, where analysis has now been, been subverted or subordinated. That gets me super, super nervous because the biggest mistakes I've seen in my life have been when people were refusing to do analysis that they should have done. And that's where I get, like, the it's like so I, actually, I like the bias for action as a as a way of expressing it. It's just that it's a bias for action.

Speaker 1:

It is not action over analysis for in all situations. Actually, I'd love to get I I don't know if, I'm gonna get Matt up here, see if Matt is gonna and and Matt's like, are you gonna make me defend Uber's values? I'm not on that, but the, I think I I think I actually I asked Matt Randy who was who was was at Uber. I remember asking him one more point about, like, how did you like, these values, like, terrible. It's like, yeah.

Speaker 1:

It's pretty much ignored them. They were pretty bad. Because Uber had 14 values mimicking it the Amazon's 14 values, 14 leadership principles, and they're just very, very crunchy.

Speaker 2:

But that's what that's what happens to most values, right? That they they mostly get ignored. I mean, either they get talked talked about and nurtured and they actually are the language that you use for your culture and for for communication, or they fall by the wayside.

Speaker 1:

Yeah. I think that you're right. I think that they either become they they either become, like, everything or they become nothing.

Speaker 2:

Is that a fair well, yeah. I mean, so I mean, I have in a very unextra moment, to to contrast with with my earlier statement. I was doing a lot of, like, real estate tours for office space a bunch of years ago. And I came to one office and they had their values written on the wall. And my inner cynic was like, well, you know, that's dumb.

Speaker 2:

But then thinking of it a more it's like, well, maybe it's not so dumb. Like maybe there's, there is a, an excessively earnest piece that I can never live up to myself. But the reason you write the values on the wall is so that people see them. Like, it's so that people read them.

Speaker 1:

Or because you need ISO compliance. Right. There are two reasons. So the I worked at at qNX, as you know, got the office company in Canada. Well, they were doing some ISO certification and making the mistake of certifying the entire company as opposed to, like, merely its manufacturing or what have you.

Speaker 1:

So they're trying to get ISO certification for for software development, which is like, ugh. This is not good. So they all all of a sudden, one day, all these placards show up. And the the placard above my cube was, do what you say, say what you do, prove that it works, which actually is, like, as these things go, it's, like, not that cringey. That's, like,

Speaker 2:

the So that's why you have that tattoo. Finally, I understand.

Speaker 1:

Exactly. So I feel like that that's not that encouraging. But then the the cofounder of the company walks by myCUBE, and this is I this is like I I'm kind of, like, losing some of my innocence here as I'm realizing that you can be the cofounder of a company and have actually no idea what's going on in your own company. So I have assumed that, like, oh, you're obviously you're the CEO. Like, these things are up because you have ordered them up.

Speaker 1:

But he's looking at the placard. He's a surprise Zionist, and he's recently like, do what do what you say, say what you do, prove that it works. Whatever happened to do what you want, say what you feel like, and blame someone else? And I'm like, wait a minute. Are those are those the kunix I use that you just said?

Speaker 1:

Are

Speaker 2:

you drunk right now?

Speaker 1:

Yeah. Are you I love Dan it's Dan Dodge. I I I love Dan. Dan Dodge, Corp. That was the founders of Unix.

Speaker 1:

They were they were terrific. They're great engineers.

Speaker 2:

At a company I was at, we we went through a big process of inferring values. This is a company I joined where they had a bunch of, like almost Jack Handy isms written on printed, laminated posters that I that I just sort of chose to ignore just because that was the only reasonable approach.

Speaker 1:

Do we have a millennial with whom we could do a Jack Handy is a check? Is are you allowed to make that reference?

Speaker 2:

Oh, I don't know. That's a good question.

Speaker 1:

I don't think so. I think that

Speaker 2:

I don't see any emotions.

Speaker 1:

There was an uneven exactly. No. No pulse. Exactly. Jack Handy, it was a there's a there's a bit on Saturday Night Live for what felt to us like our entire childhood, but I'm sure retrospect was, like, 3 months in 1985 of deep thoughts by Jack Handy.

Speaker 1:

So they would have and, Adam, you must have a before you get into the the Jack Handy isms that you had at at at your employer, you must have some favorite deep thoughts.

Speaker 2:

I I don't actually. I I don't poke me on the spot.

Speaker 1:

Oh my god. Okay. Well, then can I give you my favorite deep thought? Is deep.

Speaker 2:

Do you have any deep thoughts that I hear from you?

Speaker 1:

Oh my god. These so and they would always do this before going to commercial, and they were always you know, Saturday Night Live is, is obviously hit and miss, but it's always it's best when it's not laughing at its own jokes, which it did not. And so they had, you know deep thoughts by Jack Handy. If if trees could scream, would we still cut them down? I bet we would if they screamed all the time and for no good reason.

Speaker 1:

Which to my 14 year old brain was just, like, absolutely hilarious.

Speaker 2:

So So the the Jackie and hiss around the office were a little more on point than that, but, like, only a little bit so you ignored them. And then we went through some navel gazing exercise about values. And then, true to form, the CEO kind of took that draft and deleted it and came up with the values of and printed on major posters, unveiled at an all hands candor, creativity, and sharp and fast. And so Twitch Twitch, our

Speaker 1:

our our our

Speaker 2:

CMO was like, are you saying sharp and fast? And he said, no. No. No. Sharpen, e n, fast.

Speaker 1:

Sharpen fast. Like, I have this knife, and I need it to get Sharpen right now.

Speaker 2:

And and I think the CMO just, like, sort of, like, Lucille Balluth, like, was, like, like, I don't understand what you're saying and I choose not to ask any follow-up.

Speaker 1:

Oh. You would you you don't given that we only have 3 of these in the spirit of candor, may I offer you in the spirit of of this new value of candor, may I offer you my thoughts on Sharpen

Speaker 2:

Path? Candor really only went in one direction, just to be really clear. But, but but then we did what what people do with the things written on the wall like that, which is

Speaker 1:

we mostly ignored them. Ignore them. Yeah.

Speaker 2:

I mean, what else are you gonna do?

Speaker 1:

That I won't make fun of them. I mean, you could you could Oh, yeah. We when we

Speaker 2:

I mean, in terms of our day to day, we ignore them. In terms of, like, lunchtime and happy hour, absolutely.

Speaker 1:

I I also just like Sharpen Fast. I kinda like the idea that it's like Toys R Us and, like, sharp n apostrophe fast.

Speaker 2:

Yeah. This is where, where where where I I was the CTO. My my my our our former colleague was the VP of engineering. And we sort of went back and figured out how we were going to explain to the engineering team that they could ignore this. Because the Sharpen Fast in particular was intended to be like, sort of, like, figure it out or get the fuck out was was sort of the notion of Sharpen Fast.

Speaker 2:

And and to commemorate the occasion, just to add to it, we we got everyone in the spirit of thriftness, also a value unstated. We got everyone in the company, these, like $5 knife sharpeners that were actually pretty, pretty good. But everyone in the company got them with a little sticker that said sharp and fast on it.

Speaker 6:

Oh, please.

Speaker 2:

This really happened. I don't. I don't. It did not survive the moves. Oh, it how?

Speaker 2:

What is Because because I had some complicated feelings about my former employer and didn't, like, keep every little piece of trash that they gave me. Yes.

Speaker 1:

Can you give I will take that trash? Do you know I'll take that trash?

Speaker 2:

Oh, oh, okay. Well, I know that there are 500 of them out there, so sure we can find one for you.

Speaker 1:

And the the I I

Speaker 8:

I wouldn't wanna be that CEO with 500 engineers with sharp knives.

Speaker 2:

No. No. No. No. No.

Speaker 2:

No. No. Well well, we later on no. I mean, this is this is, like, also no joke. For my 5 year anniversary of the company, they did give me a knife.

Speaker 2:

But because there because there was a plan to oust me, they didn't actually give it they didn't actually give it to me. I I a colleague smuggled it out after I left the company.

Speaker 1:

You're Travis,

Speaker 4:

is that you?

Speaker 1:

Yeah. Exactly.

Speaker 2:

This is also true.

Speaker 1:

I just I mean, I when you're giving out corporate tchotchkes around your values, it

Speaker 5:

it just appeals to me

Speaker 1:

like there's there's some cognitive dissonance there that I'm having a hard time.

Speaker 2:

I got I got you know what? I couldn't get off this, but I the other tchotchke I have, no joke, is a baseball bat with my name on it. Like, the there's sort of a a a mob affect to to these gifts, I realize.

Speaker 1:

A baseball bat with your name? I'd love like like untouchable style? Like, Al Capote?

Speaker 2:

Yeah. Yeah. Everyone loves baseball. Right?

Speaker 1:

Everyone loves baseball. Team. Team. Team. Team.

Speaker 1:

Yeah. Also a reference to that we can make.

Speaker 2:

I have some weird Yeah.

Speaker 8:

But the brass knuckles are more portable.

Speaker 2:

Yeah. Exactly. That was for the 10 year of service. I didn't make it there.

Speaker 1:

Yeah. That's, that's very strange. That that is so, you know, it so, Adam, you're describing being in an org and as an engineering leader when you've got these values being rolled out. You're effectively telling your org, like, look. Just get back to work.

Speaker 1:

Just try to, like Yeah. Yeah. Just try to stop thinking about these.

Speaker 2:

And we had, like, our own collection of articulated values that were much more pedestrian, like, sort of, like, aspects of engineering kinds of values that were written down that were things that we interviewed for and were things we discussed. But we, you know, we tried to maintain a more sane or sensible engineering subculture.

Speaker 1:

Yeah. Well, and I but it not written down,

Speaker 6:

I would assume.

Speaker 2:

I mean, written down not as subversive, but written down of, like, yes, and.

Speaker 1:

Right. Interesting. I mean, I certainly feel like before I mean, at sign, again, I feel like it was a UHG as opposed to when when it really should have been much more guiding than that. And, definitely, at joint, we did not. We did not necessarily have we didn't have values written down, and it showed when fractures appeared.

Speaker 1:

And you guys, like, oh, wait a minute. I thought we were and and there's no there there we had nothing at the kind of broader organizational level that we could appeal to to even have a discussion about it. I mean, at least with sharp and fast.

Speaker 2:

It's a 2 for 1 value.

Speaker 1:

It is a 2 for 1 value. Oh my god. Yeah. I just cannot get fast, sharp and fast. And then the and then, like, someone's like and then we give out knife sharpeners.

Speaker 1:

And someone is like, no. No. No. Like, that's a terrible idea. Stop doing that.

Speaker 2:

That's a

Speaker 1:

so one that I would just give on just the ensuring values a little bit before we wrap up here. I how do you shift and and we've talked a lot about kind of, like, values to the organizational level. It Windows kinda, like, at the more mundane level of, like, how engineering is actually done. I mean, the the culture, in a an organization is gonna is going to hopefully reflect those values. But how do you kind of affect change at at that level?

Speaker 1:

And I think going back to Adam, kind of the first question that we got here, like, what are the important things to get set early? What's your what's your answer to that?

Speaker 3:

You know, at the same company, I did I

Speaker 2:

had the experience of walking to an engineering culture that was very different than what I knew and what we knew at Sun and the colonel group and Fishworks. And it was kind of a shock to me, like in a naive way that everyone wasn't that didn't operate in the same way. This is like in the days before Twitter. And so like, we weren't chattering about this kind of thing externally.

Speaker 4:

Yeah. So it was, it

Speaker 1:

was me too. Yeah. I didn't have this awareness.

Speaker 2:

I was like, oh, we don't everyone like, at this company, like, everyone just ate lunch at their desks by themselves, for example. And and that was very strange to me, and it still is very strange to me. But, you know, I and there were there were a bunch of weird things that happened, like, people checking in code as root without code review and being unable to run tests and things like that. And and it seems like, you know, it's, I mean, for, in my experience, it was like a lot of really hard, uncomfortable conversations to start that discussion about, you know, what we are and what we could be and, and everyone's view on. On how we want to get there.

Speaker 2:

And in, in my experience, there was this dissensus on values and, as things changed and, you know, things had ossified in a particular way where some people were happy, some people weren't. And as you changed, a bunch of people left because even the unstated values had shifted in ways that were unfamiliar to them. What what was your experience in this? Because I'm sure you went through a bit

Speaker 1:

of this. I I went through a lot of it. Same thing. I did Similar kind of thing. I thought everybody did it this way.

Speaker 1:

Oh, wait a minute. Okay. Not everyone does it this way. And, probably and I didn't. You know, obviously, wish I had, but I'm I'm older and wiser now, and it definitely reflects kind of how we've done things with Oxide.

Speaker 1:

I wish I had taken a moment and written down what what I felt our values needed to be so I could use them as a rubric to get people to actually self select out a little bit more. I think people I I kept people around. And then not that, like, I don't think I would have terminated anyone over a values disagreement, but I think people might have. There are some people for whom there was a clear values clash where I represented a very different way of doing things from an engineering perspective, from a from a code perspective, from a testing perspective, and from a rigor perspective, honestly. And if I'd been more explicit about that, I think that more people would have self selected out a little bit faster.

Speaker 1:

We ended up effectively affecting a cultural change in the company with how we hired. And, I mean, a bunch of our and I think you guys you guys did the same thing at Delphix where you're kind of like you and I were kind of the first people respectively of our kind of engineering culture, but then we both hired a bunch of our former colleagues at at Delphix and at Joint respectively. And I think we changed those engineering cultures.

Speaker 2:

That's right. One one thing I would just mention to to folks listening that Brian went to join as VP of engineering at Delphi side later was CTO, but I was, I was hired as an individual contributor. So I don't, Yeah. Like I regret not writing down values, but I would have never shared them because that's like from, from your, or, or, or rather publish them, because like from your vantage point at VP of Edge, it was totally within your purview to say, Hey, these are our values. Like this is the engineering culture that I'm building.

Speaker 2:

Whereas if I had done that, it would have been even harder and it would have looked even more out of step with the team that I was trying to both build rapport with as, like, the first new person who had joined in a year, but also trying to affect this change.

Speaker 1:

Totally. I'm not sure that honestly, that mean, it's true that I, you know, I had a a title, but they have empowered me a little bit. I don't know that it would have been successful, supportive people that I worked for because I what I didn't realize until I kind of came to the company, like, oh, wait a minute. Like, I I don't agree with the founders here on a lot of very kind of fundamental things. And the and, you know, it would be years fast forward before we would, you know, get both both founders would ultimately leave the company and where we would ultimately shape the values much more, much more strongly but still implicitly, I think, was part of the problem.

Speaker 1:

We were just not explicit about it. And this was honestly I really saw this when we I left it up to individual kind of teams to figure out how they wanted to do code review. And what I began to realize is that, like, actually, not there were folks that were not doing code review that that desperately needed to be doing code review. And I had not been sufficiently, I mean, autocratic, for lack of a better word. I'd not been sufficiently structured.

Speaker 1:

I'd not been I I had left too much up to people's own judgment. And we were you know, when you have a production problem and you're looking at code that induced a production problem, and you're realizing nobody has looked at this literally, nobody has looked at this. Like, this would not pass the most basic form of code review, because just the act of putting this code in front of someone else would cause it to be not have this particular I mean, bugs that are that glaring. And you realize, we have got to shift the culture here. And with super mixed results you know?

Speaker 1:

I mean, I I do think that your greatest tool when you're shifting the culture are the people you haven't yet hired. And you've got an opportunity if you're in a growing organization. Let's go back to Tom's point about, you know, a luxury at Sun was that Sun was growing. When you are in a growing organization this was hit home to me when I with the you know, Adam, you and I are both in this this CTO group in San Francisco, which is really interesting, interesting group of folks. And someone who's in a very fast growing company there said, if you're gonna double your engineering team in the next year, half your engineering team is not here yet.

Speaker 1:

So you get to decide what that half of the engineering team believes. And that was a point that really hit home for me and kinda changed the way I I think I was kind of in the back seat with respect to hiring. Even though I view hiring as important, I didn't view hiring as sculpting the future as much as I definitely do now.

Speaker 2:

Yeah. I mean, for for what it's worth at at at Delphix, they saw that. I think that there was, buy in from there was a feeling even though it was abstract from the VP of engine from the CEO that there was something about the engineering culture that was insufficient and they wanted to so there was abstract buy in, to to make changes.

Speaker 1:

Well and I think so this gets to another point of, like, when moments values can change are moments of crisis. Right? Where you have, like when you've got total buy in that the way we're doing it is not working. And, you know, I don't think, Tom, I don't think Amazon ever had to hit I mean, you know, Amazon had, although I know those early years were a real struggle, I don't know that that Amazon ever kinda hit a moment where it's like, okay. We need to totally change tack because this current direction as a company is just not working.

Speaker 1:

But, Adam, you were definitely at that spot. I think I was at that spot a little bit at Joanne as well, where, you know, there's nothing like reporting to the chair. I talked the last week about HBO's Silicon Valley reporting to the chair. I think, like, reporting to the chair to to, give you the message that actually the the company's future is definitely up to the people working at it. Matt, did you Matt, you were at at, at Uber at a at a time when, well, there's a lot of things that are now findings of fact at your time at Uber.

Speaker 1:

What what was your take on the role of values there?

Speaker 6:

So, yeah, it's really interesting. I I I mean, I was definitely there when the company flew us all to Las Vegas, and we sat in a big theater. And Travis put on a lab coat, and he said and he had this this really fancy, like, presentation, and he was like, hey. Here are all the values. And it was like, there was video.

Speaker 6:

There was, you know, production values. It was like a whole thing. And it just kind of it was so weird because it just seemed like out of nowhere. You know? It just seemed like, hey.

Speaker 6:

We're we hereby declare

Speaker 1:

that these are all the values.

Speaker 6:

And the I think the today is that the folks that I worked with, like, the the sphere of people that I interacted with, like, we had a set of values, conflicts. Like, regardless of, like, how the, you know, the taxonomy. Right? Like, 14 values or whatever. Like, I I they just it it it's so many values that just it could mean anything.

Speaker 6:

But, like, you know when your values that, like, your peers hold versus the leadership holds are different. And, you know, we were pressuring Travis pretty regularly. Like, hey. This doesn't make sense. This doesn't make sense.

Speaker 6:

And, so, anyway, I I think it's it's interesting that you can sort of propose some values from a, you know, top down way and say, these are our corporate values, but, you know, you already hired a few thousand people. Yeah. Like, may maybe they don't have those values. Maybe those weren't the conditions under which they were hired. Right?

Speaker 1:

Maybe you, Matt, were not hired with meritocracy and toe stepping in mind. Sorry to pick on what what it'd be. No. Oh my god. I can only imagine.

Speaker 1:

And I know I'm sorry. I'm sure this is traumatic for you as an adult that was in that room. But, god, you must have just had your head in your hands like, what is this? What is the math?

Speaker 6:

Agreed. Yeah. So so definitely, like, I mean, I was a very mixed mind because, like, the the folks that that that Uber attracted were, you know, they were definitely, like, very creative, ambitious people. And, like, those are the people that I like to work with. And I mean, there's a lot of tremendously good people, and I feel like the values that we had kind of at the lower levels were were just simply different than the the values that, like, kind of leadership was espousing or, you know, trying to kind of formalize with the 14 principles or whatever.

Speaker 6:

So I don't

Speaker 1:

know. Reminds me very much of Enron. Right? And, Adam, you and I dealing very closely with the IT folks at Enron who had a very I mean, they were shocked when Enron delaminated because it's like these values are not our values. Like, what the hell is this?

Speaker 1:

And as I mean, it must be it it's it's just gotta be very frustrating as as someone who who is, like, look. This does not reflect who I am. Doesn't reflect who I wanna be, and yet I'm being kinda tarnished with this very with this coarse brush.

Speaker 6:

Like, I I have to say, like, the the the Twitter perception of, like, oh, if you've ever worked for Uber, you've got a black, you know, mark on your resume or whatever. That that is a a Twitter meme. It's complete nonsense. Totally. Like, the amount of LinkedIn action you get from having worked at Uber is, pretty intense.

Speaker 6:

Like, I mean, people are very, very happy to, you know, pick up ex Uber engineers. It's, you know, it's to the point where, you know, you know how, like, in in, you'll you'll see these headlines where they say, this was done by an ex Google engineer. And you're like, oh, boy. How revered. But, you know, of course, if you know, like, what's happened to Google's culture these days, you're like, I

Speaker 1:

don't know. Yeah. It's like, yeah. That could be tell me more. What were those person's OKRs?

Speaker 1:

Are are they are they l 6 or how many bodies they leave their wake getting to l 6?

Speaker 6:

It could it could mean literally anything. Like, they they could just be, like, just showing up, resting, investing, etcetera. Or they could actually be, like, super smart. Like, I mean, just anyway. But I that is yeah.

Speaker 6:

So so, like, the the the, you know, kind of lasting reputation, I think, in the industry of having worked at Uber is, you know, the it's most it's more positive than negative. We did a ton of good stuff. I mean, we like, technology wise, like, if you look at kind of the open source stuff that we built, I mean, it it made a lasting impact on on stuff people use, even, like, regardless of, I mean, ride sharing business or whatever. But, like, we wrote a ton of software and, you know, we released a lot of it. I think that's pretty cool.

Speaker 1:

I I would like to say, Jaeger is speaking of cool software that I I think Jaeger is is pretty deep. I've done from the the the folks at Uber. And, yeah, no. I'm but by touching the brush, I I didn't mean in any sort of, like, scarlet letter sense because I I agree. And I I mean, I don't think that, I I mean, the only company that's

Speaker 2:

Brian, did we lose you?

Speaker 3:

Uh-oh. Sounds like we lost him.

Speaker 8:

Oh,

Speaker 6:

dear. We may. We may have. But The only company. Let let let me just let me just say, I we can imagine what company Brian probably meant, but, lots and lots of people did say, oh, if you if you worked at Uber, we are never hiring you again, you know, in their kind of, you know, Twitter based sort of righteous indignation.

Speaker 6:

But it's, you know, it's a, like, a really weird situation where, you know, like, in large organizations, depending on how large it is, like, you might disagree with some kind something that the leadership does, but, like, it doesn't mean that there aren't good things or reasons why you're sort of participating in that, such as, for example, every American under the last president.

Speaker 1:

Exactly.

Speaker 6:

You you might say, like, oh, why don't you just, like, renounce your citizenship?

Speaker 2:

Or or even folks working for the federal government in that Yeah. In in in that administration. Absolutely.

Speaker 6:

Yeah. Exactly. Well, just, like, hang on a second. Like, I I think this is actually kind of bigger and more important, this one person. And, you know, we may disagree with this person, but, like, I don't know.

Speaker 6:

Like, we're this is kind of a big deal.

Speaker 2:

No. That's right. And and I think you can I mean, in my experience, even, you know, this, you can be in cultures where or companies where, say, one part of the company, like in my experience, like, I was at a company where the sales organization was, you know, kind of only mildly ethical? Like, your sales folks would tell me stories of kickbacks. Is it?

Speaker 2:

Yeah. Yeah. Like, I mean, like That's a

Speaker 6:

fun way to describe it.

Speaker 2:

Yeah. Like, I was out with this a sales guy who would tell me about how they made some deal and needed to buy a watch for the customer. I'm like, is that I don't that doesn't sound right.

Speaker 4:

No. That's fine.

Speaker 2:

Also a culture where, you know, that kind of thing you know, I'm not sure, you know, if I when I, you know, reported that to to my boss, they're like, well, you know, guy's making his number. How he makes it is not my responsibility. Whereas, you know, if that thing had had happened in my organization, although engineers weren't doing too many kickbacks, you know, that that wouldn't have been okay. So but but to your point, you have, you know, organizations are big places with different pockets and different subcultures and not, you know, certainly, you have some bad actors who can make things tough for everyone but is not necessarily reflective of everyone.

Speaker 7:

I I have an stupid off topic question. Since I'm not from the States. Matt, why wouldn't they hire if you were from Uber? Like, what's what's the deal there? What happened?

Speaker 6:

Okay. Just during the height during the height of the Uber controversy, which which, I'll I mean, it was really bad. Like, I'm I'm not gonna lie. Like, it was not good. And and, and, honestly, like, a lot of the criticism that you saw publicly kind of about, you know, the leadership was was echoed internally.

Speaker 6:

But, anyway, the it certainly, in in my Twitter timeline, there were a tremendous number of people saying, you know, this is so disgusting that if any you know, I will I refuse to ever hire anyone who ever worked at Uber. And, like, this was a thing a lot of people said.

Speaker 1:

Right. Which is just kind of ridiculous,

Speaker 3:

I think, that they

Speaker 2:

Yeah. I mean, how many people are those folks hiring? Just because, like, everyone has lots of work experiences and, come on, they're, like you're you're gonna write off however many thousands of engineers have worked at at at a particular company.

Speaker 6:

That's Yeah. I mean, I I think it's just really similar to saying, like, you'll never hire Americans because, like, you dispute the president. It's like, well, I don't know. Like, it's kind of bigger than one person, you know.

Speaker 1:

It is. It's also I mean, you have to have empathy for the people that were in those organizations in that

Speaker 2:

going through their own

Speaker 1:

kind of anguish. And, you know, I honestly, we had someone who was wanted to come to Oxide was at Meta and have a borderline nervous breakdown because they were so they were conflicted at the deepest possible levels about their own responsibility. Because they I mean, they're gonna be taking they were gonna leave a lot of equity on the table, for Meta to come work for Oxide. And they were having a true crisis of conscience and with, like, physical manifestation. So I I I I I don't think I think you gotta be really careful with looking at a a anything on the resume that you would treat as a scarlet letter.

Speaker 1:

I think you always have to ask the even for I mean, there probably some kind of examples to to that that I probably won't aim to when getting us some of the trouble. I don't think it's any of the large companies. I think that the

Speaker 6:

Yeah. So certain lawnmower based, personifications of leadership might

Speaker 1:

So I actually you know, I wasn't actually thinking of the lawn mower. The I actually think that I mean, I I do think that there's a degree to which that when you are at a company for a long period of time, you have to accept that you're taking some responsibility for their values. That doesn't mean that you are culpable. And I think I would not like, I definitely had people that have worked at Oracle for a long period of claim. And and later so I think it's it's it's okay, but it's it's gonna be something you'll be ready you gotta be willing to to talk about.

Speaker 1:

I think with with Uber, it was so the whole thing was so fast. I mean, Jesus. It went it was Enron. I mean, Enron, you definitely can't blame anyone for working at Enron because the thing came unglued so quickly.

Speaker 2:

Well, and it was such a small group of folks who were who were enforcing the bad behavior.

Speaker 1:

Yeah. And I think at Enron, the folks certainly, the folks that we know at Enron would tell you the problem the cultural problem at Enron is that nobody questioned results, that it was 100% financial results oriented. And if you delivered financial results, people didn't want to ask the follow-up questions of how you've done it. And that's a cultural problem. I mean, no wonder that's a very acute cultural problem.

Speaker 1:

On the other hand, that doesn't that doesn't paint everyone with the same brush. It means you're driving that group folks that are gonna have their own subcultures, within it. And, yeah, I don't know if if there are at this point, there are companies that are certainly, it will be I'm getting a text message. Oh, there we go. That might oh, I'm sorry.

Speaker 1:

My audio is getting cut off. Sorry. I thought that the sorry about that. I actually thought that that text message came from Twitter. That's that's really embarrassing that I've actually I guess we are past the past the singularity.

Speaker 1:

Well, Adam, I know we wanted it to, to be respectful of the rest of everyone's evening. I and I'm I'm sorry that my phone is rebooting for a while.

Speaker 2:

No. No problem. But, Aaron just joined us. Aaron, any last, kind of pat parting shots for us?

Speaker 10:

I was just gonna bring up the the lights out book by GE and how you know, is when you're getting results, it doesn't matter where it's coming from. And that's kind of a very Jack Welchian, thing as well that if you made your quarter and you hit your numbers, that nobody really looked, too deep. So

Speaker 1:

Yeah. And I'm actually reading Lights Out right now. Definitely recommend it. You know, we've got the blessing of of having some, a bunch of ex GE colleagues, Aaron among them, who recommended this book. Have you read Light Side, Adam?

Speaker 1:

You have no. I haven't. It's, I'm actually we're gonna have everyone in town next week, and I'm I'm actually reading it. Aaron, I'm trying to get it read, but I know you're not gonna give me a Jack Welch pop quiz, but I just wanna let you know that I'll be ready for it. It is it is very revealing, in terms of the the it is the danger of being and I just think it shows you that these things are intentional.

Speaker 1:

You can be overly results driven. Everyone being results driven is great, but you can be results driven to a fault when you take it to this extreme whereby you're not actually asking any kind of follow-up. So I think so what are our conclusions on ensuring culture out of this? Get it right

Speaker 2:

Get get it right first, but I think it's not a lost cause if you don't. I think, I or maybe that's my overly hopeful view, but but it's incremental and, word for Tatas and jambalaya won't won't, cause any any shift in culture.

Speaker 1:

Word jambalaya won't cause any shift in culture. The the right time to plant the tree was 20 years ago. The second best time is today unless you need to chop the tree down with your your sharp and fast. That's right. You can use that to sharpen your ax.

Speaker 1:

And I then I also do think that, like, when it comes to values, you know, you gotta figure out how much you are organization you're in and how much you're gonna go to a different organization, a different company that better reflects those values. And it should be said, Matt, you are no longer at Uber. And, you know, you know, the the there who knows to what degree that I mean, I don't know you to what degree the values played a role in that, but, you know, you people you should find organizations that that fit your values, that you can both that you can help shape, but that you're not having to fight all hands where you're talking about MetaMates. Matamides.

Speaker 6:

Matamides. And certainly that that did, they did play a role. But, you know, when when when Dara, came on, I I feel like that was a pretty substantial shift, in kind of everything. But, you know, it's interesting. You're talking about, like, can you can you sort of retroactively apply values?

Speaker 6:

Like, he inherited this kind of gigantic machine and was like, okay. Well, some of these values are bad. Like, we we need different ones. And, like, he had to somehow impose a new corporate value system, which is, like, hard.

Speaker 1:

It's hard and but just to your point, there is some subsection, some subset, maybe a lot a big subset in Vegas that is actually cringing at these. Those are the group who you're gonna build these new values upon. And hopefully, he has. I'm glad to see that they did chuck the values, or or that they, I think, greatly simplified and produced and and made much truer to who they wanted to be as a company. Yep.

Speaker 1:

I would love to that that that said, I would love to watch that video. I would that the the if if that video is on the Internet anywhere, I would love to watch Draught podcast.

Speaker 6:

The the have you seen the the trailer for the Showtime Uber movie?

Speaker 8:

No.

Speaker 6:

It it has it has this scene of the Vegas unveil of the values. And it they some they must have gotten people who were there because it is uncannily accurate.

Speaker 1:

Oh, god. I can't wait to watch

Speaker 6:

it. Good.

Speaker 1:

I I'm I am yeah. I I that'll be it'll be interesting to watch it. Probably,

Speaker 6:

let let me let me just throw in one, like, really, you know, sort of in fun complicating factor, which is, you know, it it is for a lot of folks, it it can be very hard to sort of, weight the values that they personally have on their lives when all of the sudden they're getting paid a lot of money.

Speaker 1:

Yeah.

Speaker 6:

And I think you see this with, like, you know, crypto and NFTs. I think, you know, people getting enriched, it makes them sort of, like, I don't know, confused or or, deprioritize things that may may have otherwise been, a higher priority for them. But, like, Travis took us to Vegas, and we had a fucking private Beyonce show. Like, we literally had a private Beyonce show. It was amazing.

Speaker 6:

Like, it was so good. Nobody knew about it. They hid it from the press. And, like, to this day, I think it's really hard to find out about the fact that, like, Beyonce did an Uber show. And, I mean, that's, like, super cool.

Speaker 6:

And, also, like, you know, a bunch of people finally were able to buy houses in the Bay Area. And this is like, you know, it's hard when you're in that environment to sort of think, I think, you know, get a get a get the full perspective of, like, well, you know, how important are these values to me? Because like, I can't afford to live here, but now I can. And isn't that great?

Speaker 1:

Yes. No. It's not easy. And certainly, you're gonna have a

Speaker 4:

lot again, you're gonna have a

Speaker 1:

lot of empathy for people that are in that position. But that said, the I there the my counter to that would be, I know it's true for me. It's true for, I think, a lot of people. My most miserable professional time also happened to correlate with my best compensation. So, don't, don't, when you are sacrificing your own happiness and certainly your own kind of moral compass, moral core for compensation, it it's important to figure out, like, what's really important to you.

Speaker 1:

And, you know

Speaker 3:

For sure.

Speaker 1:

No. I I think if

Speaker 6:

if you're if you're conscious about it, if it's an active decision, I think it's very, very different than I think what what tends to happen is, you're like, oh, this huge problem in my life is solved, and you start rationalizing away kind of all these things that you might otherwise object to. And that you're not, like, consciously thinking, like, oh, I'm fine with this. Like, your unconscious mind is like, thank God I can finally, like, you know, do this. So anyway, it's it's tough problem. I agree with you though that if you are if you're conscious about it, if you're active, like, yes, you should have morals.

Speaker 6:

You should stick to them. It's good.

Speaker 1:

Well and I just think that maybe that's a note to end on. That I just think in general, when it comes to culture, engineering culture, when comes to values, on the side of being explicit. I do think that there is a there's a lot of value to be had by being explicit, by using them as a lens for decision making, by using them as a lens for hiring. And a lot of I think people are looking for that kind of clarity. And I think especially for those who are leaders in the organization, that it's clarity that people are are are seeking.

Speaker 1:

And, we can serve them well by offering it.

Speaker 6:

Yeah. I totally agree.

Speaker 1:

Totally agree. Alright. On that note, sorry about my the phone reboot. That was not Twitter's fault. That was a 100% my fault.

Speaker 1:

Sorry about the breaking up. Hopefully, that that got resolved. But thank you very much, everyone. And, Trent, I know it's incredibly, early over there, so thank you for for joining us.

Speaker 7:

7 AM. There you go. 7 AM now. Exactly.

Speaker 1:

Thank you for the early start with us, and, happy presence, everyone. Take care.

Speaker 2:

Thanks, Yvonne.