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What are the implications of a company Not having a strongly defined culture?

1 points by rocskipper ↗ HN
Culture in the Silicon Valley treatment of how to build a company is considered important from an early stage. The media has reported how companies have failed to address toxic cultures from early stages and how that toxicity can remain pervasive as a company scales. Surely there are some companies that DO NOT have a well-defined culture, even from an early-stage. Does NOT having culture create implications with scaling? Does this matter from a people perspective (hiring/retaining talent) if compensation and benefits are good? Can being "mission-driven" make up for the lack of apparent culture at a company?

3 comments

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archevel
An organisation always has some kind of culture. If it is "defined" (I interpret that as something being written down) or not doesn't really matter. Whatever is defined in that sense is not really the culture of that organisation. You can define your culture in any way you want with whatever value statements you desire an organisation to embody, but most likely those will not reflect the actual culture in the org.

That's not to say that trying to be explicit with the culture you want in an organisation is bad. It is just recognising that the words are not the culture. The people, the way they interact and the atmosphere in the company and what drives it is what creates the company culture.

uberdru
It's interesting to speculate about how 'cultural fit' supplanted 'doing your job'. By its nature, a so-called strongly defined culture is exclusionary, and has more than a few Orwellian undertones. On the one hand, there are rules of HR. That's fine of course. Social guardrails for the workplace. On the other hand, there are true individuals and eccentrics. Even HBR has tolled the death knell for 'culture fit'.

https://hbr.org/2018/01/how-to-hire

kwillets
I grew up in Silicon Valley, and I realized at an early age that it has no culture.