"However, I would appreciate if startups just cut the crap about socially concerned goals."
While I like to maintain that there are start-ups with genuine society-improving aspirations (in addition to the goals of surviving and making profit), perhaps we could use a term "mission washing" to accompany Morozov's concept of "solutionism".
What if I have a mission and I like it and it’s totally authentic? My customers like it too. Are you calling me full of it for achieving that difficult goal?
I think you’re right about a lot of inauthentic mission statements, but I think crass swearing is the real “needless bullshit”.
I should have worded the title better. I have covered what you've said later in the article:
> I must clarify that my complaint isn’t against having mission statements because some of them do make sense and describe the company’s culture and the products they ship.
>> Honest Tea: To create and promote great-tasting, healthy, organic beverages.
>> Patagonia: Build the best product, Cause no unnecessary harm, Use business to protect nature, Not bound by convention.
>> IKEA: To offer a wide range of well-designed, functional home furnishing products at prices so low that as many people as possible will be able to afford them
Wouldn't most effective way to do this be preventing people from ever entering nature. In style of Chernobyl exclusion zone. And best way is to make so horrible gear that it forces people to stay home?
The malignant proliferation of inauthenticity and corpo doublespeak deserves to be called out in any way possible. And if crass swearing or histrionic ranting is your jam, that's okay in my book. Rude honesty over bland inauthentic fakers any time.
After you've read "On Bullshit" by Harry Frankfurt, you'll stop hearing
that as just potty-mouth.
Frankfurt's philosophy and human psychology in that essay was a much
needed tonic, to name a really quite specific /indifference to truth
and consequences/.
It's frustrating that he chose to overload "bullshit" as it makes it
hard to talk in a sophisticated and nuanced way with sensitive people.
We surely don't need another neologism for what everybody already
knows.
Actually when I say " /total indifference to truth/ " it hits a lot
harder. Only one rather stuffy junior once pulled me up on "bullshit"
and claimed offence. But when I say total indifference to truth, I've
had far more senior figures say "isn't that a bit strong?" Well
chosen words have power.
But it's still frustrating when you want to convey they precise nuance
of Frankfurt's observations without saying BS.
I have the same discomfort with Doctorow's "enshitification". Once the
novelty of throwing it into a conversation wears off, it becomes a
struggle to find the perfect word for the precise process of cynical
organisational exploitation that it describes.
Doctorow's "enshittification" is close to what management-consultants learn as "brand harvesting" -- the classic example being Schlitz beer, a once-beloved brand (I am told), where MBAs substituted cheap ingredients in order to trade on the name until the name was destroyed. The brand is no longer used.
Possibly there is a difference though, in that "enshittification" implies less intentionality or understanding of the second-order consequences (brand destruction), whereas "brand harvesting" leans into it in the most cynical way possible, implying that the value of a brand is something that one could rationally choose to liquidate.
It seems that it's basically the same thing as the debasement of a currency (like a brand, also a symbolic thing), or the Cantillon Effect, which (like brand harvesting) exploits the fact that information takes time to propagate and people take time to learn and react. There's a window where your adulterated beer still has the respected label, where your newly-printed dollars are not yet in general circulation, or where ad revenue is up and your customers haven't yet bothered to cancel their Netflix subscriptions.
> The whole concept is pretty stupid, rooted in a silly assumption; that a grand, noble mission is essential to motivate employees.
I am motivated by an important mission, in fact, but I am more motivated by having ongoing impact on that mission (making a difference). I work in defence, so you'd think there's a lot of opportunity to keep people safe, help leaders make better decisions, etc. So far from my perspective, these companies are not very motivated or successful at solving the missions they boldly claim. As a result, I am motivated to leave these places, that lie or are incompetent at solving these missions.
For example, a defence company says they want to "serve our democracies", but they hardly have any users. Another defence company has been building product for 4 years, yet has 0 users over that time. Then there are other, defence companies with unicorn valuation with also very cool marketing, but very little impact in ongoing crisis. All the mentioned companies have very good publicity, it's not until you work for them you realise they have 0 impact. There is no reason to change their ways, because they can continue to sign more contracts with gov (tens of millions, hundreds of millions).
All you see publicly is cool tens/hundreds of million investment or contracts, cool movie like drone shots, "AI", cool drones, explosions, jets and good music. You don't get to see the 0 impact. Or worryingly, negative impact when these things don't work.
I've been working in defence-tech startups for more than 2 years.
Pardon me if I misunderstand, but this seems to hed exactly what TFA is talking about: the need to believe you're doing a grand mission to make the world a better place when in fact you're just getting rich off selling death drones to the highest bidder...
Can you really have a noble mission as a defence company or are you effectively a soldier of sorts, paid to execute the aims of the governments you sell to. You are as moral or possible immoral, as those bosses and same for effectiveness. If your customer does something ineffective with your plane or whatever then it ain’t your mission. Your mission is really to provide great equipment to soldiers. Not to protect America. See the sister ship building comment. It is more like that than protecting democracy.
Yes we have to make users happy. But my mission is to build stuff so that bad stuff doesn't happen: Russia doesn't invade Ukraine or China doesn't invade Taiwan.
It depends on the use case. Some of these startups and unicorns ship (and aim to ship) stuff to Ukraine. That's one conflict most people in the west can align with. Imagine building drones or software for Ukraine. Other use cases involve purely intelligence or decision making.
Sure they're building stuff for Ukraine soldiers, but the underlying mission is freedom for Ukraine.
There are other conflicts (building drones, missiles, tools used in Gaza/Middle East) that are a lot more complex.
Or building drones for police pursuits or for searching buildings (like the IDF).
"A computer on every desk, running Microsoft software" - early Microsoft mission statement. Mission accomplished.
A good one from the 19th century: "We will build good ships. At a profit if we can, at a loss if we must. But always good ships." - Newport News Shipbuilding and Dry Dock Company. That's on a big plaque at the front gate. It was removed for some years when Tenneco, an auto parts conglomerate, owned the place. It's back now.
Those are really great missions! Not like the bullshit startup ones in the blog post.
Missions are what makes employees understand what they are here for. If it is bullshit, employees are gonna be bullshitting. If it is about something that they can feel, it will make their journey in the company better.
I believe that this nation should commit itself to achieving the goal, before this decade is out, of landing a man on the Moon and returning him safely to the Earth.
Newport News Shipbuilding still has the plaque on display, but the location is less prominent.[1][2] It's on what looks like a gravestone in a little grass circle in a parking lot, instead of at the main gate. The company itself does not mention it. A bad sign.
When I got to a position where I started leading teams something I quickly realized is that I can't generalize about people. Everyone is different. We're all motivated by different things, and you have to account for that as a manager. Some people are motivated by lofty goals and values statements that companies write. Linking their work to a value statement the company has written definitely works. Other people just laugh if you try it.
The lesson is that universal statements like this are wrong. The mission just doesn't motivate everyone.
That said, I'm fairly sure the Asana one is trolling.
Or are those people just playing you? Some people are really good at playing along. I do it pretty convincingly. You make way more friends than being the grumpy git who moans about annoying HR stuff all the time.
I pretend to like my boss’ jokes, some of his interests etc. Makes for a way better relationship. I’m not the only one who does it. I’d say the majority does!
> I pretend to like my boss’ jokes, some of his interests etc. Makes for a way better relationship. I’m not the only one who does it. I’d say the majority does!
Second, i think it really depends on how your employees need job security. I don't (most IT people in my country do not), so probably not playing games like that. I'll still be polite, and i'm really a good target for jokes, its rare i don't find one funny, but if you fire me, i'll just go my way and find another job. I interview well, and i do not need money.
[edit] I also have to add that some people on the spectrum (who were called "Asperger" a few years ago in my country) have troubles pretending and lying, so target those if you're afraid you're being lied too. They aren't easy to work with if you don't understand them (you really have to make them trust you and their environment, else they won't communicate as much as they should to be able to work in a team), but it can really be worth it.
Nah, it is demonstrably true that some people are motivated by (others woud say fall for) slogans.
I know people that are only motivated by salary, others are motivated by being part of a team, where they would call their teammates friends, others just want to e.g. code and do it well.
It is however correct that a boss is usually not in the position to judge what people think.
You're getting downvoted but I often suspect the same thing. I find myself thinking "is this person I'm talking to really writing financial APIs that let you connect Coinbase to your Wells Fargo account because they're 'passionate about empowering financial freedom'?" Somehow I just don't have it in me to believe that. Folks who talk like this are generally in the minority so maybe that's really how they feel, but I always read it as a way to sell yourself.
That’s exactly it. Why are bosses – who must understand marketing on some level – confused or even depressed by employees engaging in marketing! It doesn’t stop after we are done with the interviewing
Exactly in this case it is very likely more true that: "Guys, we found something for which people pay us money, lets try to give them the impression we are passionate about it".
Don't get me wrong, they might be passionate about creating a good product, but they would probably be equally passionate if it was about geodata instead.
I'm a person that is very much motivated by missions and lofty bullshit. This mean that I would have a hard time writing api integration glue code in the financial sector regardless of compensation. Is this good that I feel this way? Maybe not because it limits my career opportunities but it is what it is.
Best gig I've had in this aspect were one where there weren't any mission but I created it for myself and that let me find meaning in my work. The problem with that approach were that the rest of the organization didn't share my mission so there were lot of little conflicts due to this and I wasn't aware enough back then to trace it back to this incompatibility/non alignment.
On my end, I view finding meaning in modern tech work completely misguided. I work because I have to. I'm nice and fun at work because it makes the time pass gently, not because I like being there. I'm an American and there's a million more personally rewarding and productive things I'd rapidly occupy my time with if healthcare was detached from full-time employment.
Over the past decade I've managed a decent number of people across a few jobs. I think I'm a pretty good judge or when people aren't being honest about what they tell me. I guess I could have been wrong every time.
One question this raises though: if someone only pretends to like the company values but they do better work when I've assigned them value based projects, aren't they lying to themselves?
Maybe they reasonably expect to be rewarded more over time (money, promotions, etc.) for aligning their work with the stated company values. It doesn’t mean they share those values, but I guess it does mean they are motivated by them. Perhaps I’m splitting hairs.
Definitely not everyone. For example I do treat mission or company values seriously, especially when I see that they are not just corporate poetry, but something actually engrained in the culture. And was lucky enough to always find such an environment
Do you think there might be more functions to a mission other than to motivate employees with some grand narrative? Perhaps it could serve as a basis for alignment, potentially helping to write strategies, set goals and sometimes even take day-to-day decisions on all levels? I have certainly seen mission statements that are useful in this sense, not just on a company level, but on a level of platforms and individual teams. Personally, I find it much easier to work towards explicitly stated common goals.
My reading of the text is as a foreigner's critique of the American trope of asserting an ideal purpose to everything.
An example from my own experience: an org leader proclaiming the need for "laser sharp focus". Amigo, you're running an organizational metrics p-value hacking campaign, which is by definition not a "focused" play. Could have said something useful like "let's be effective about our experimentation", but no, you must go through the motions of blabbering as if you're an action movie hero.
A clear mission statement can help to guide decision-making and keep the company focused on its goals. It can provide a framework for evaluating new initiatives and ensuring that they are aligned with the company's overall vision. Also a compelling mission statement can attract top talent who are aligned with the company's values and goals. This can be a significant advantage for startups competing for a limited pool of skilled workers.
This was clearly true for Google with its mission. There are so many other successful examples.
Looks like author is burned by bad startups with inauthentic mission statements.
> This was clearly true for Google with its mission.
Sorry if I missed your sarcasm, but wasn't Google's mission "Don't be
evil"? [0]
They so totally failed at that the motto became an embarrassment, so
they fired two leaders of ethics, Margaret Mitchell and Timnit Gebru,
for being too ethical, and then re-branded as Alphabet with a new
mission of "Do the right thing" (ie. make lots of money).
I mean, just this random tidbit:
" 2021, 3 former Google employees filed a lawsuit alleging that
Google's motto "Don't be evil" amounts to a contractual obligation
that the tech giant violated, that Google broke their own moral code
by firing them as retaliation for their efforts against 'evil'... "
[0]
terrible take. Just say some of those missions don't speak to you a be done with it. Why immediately say they are bullshit.
It reminds me of this terrible book theorising that people have bullshit jobs, among others:
- personal assistants,
- door greeters,
- executive assistants
But in reality just the other day here on hacker news someone was essentially asking for a personal assistant. [1]
How do you define "door greeter" as?
Does that include doormen/porters or just the people at WalMart for instance
who will tell you "Hello" as you enter the store?
So it is a pointless job since the vast majority of hotels, residential buildings and office buildings have eliminated that role, and they all remain in business. Not filling the role has had minor or no negative impact.
I have never picked hotels or office space based on the criteria
of having doorman. Nor if they had bellhops.
I do think it is nice when there is a doorman and somewhat nice when there
is a porter. The endless tipping I dont like.
When it comes to an assistant that number of people employed in that role has
also severely declined over the years, and most business continue to function
without secretaries. (and save money).
There are of course many types of personal assistants, and some more common
than others.
I would love to have one. Seriously.
I cant afford one, and if I had enough money left over to hire one I doubt
I would. So many tasks that a PA could handle for me are now easy to do
via the net myself, plus if it comes to something specific, I need handled
it is easy to "rent one" that will handle it.
I love that someone said this. And so articulately. It has bothered me / mild lol at “missions” of these corporates.
I also think you don’t need to be the Valve one either. Not everyone is going to be number 1. Be an OpenAI or a Valve. Plenty of money to be made as an Ikea or even
the even more budget than Ikea furniture company.
reading the comments here, it strikes me that somethings written down look like 'missions' i.e. a statement of the reason the company exists, and others describe a 'vision' i.e. a description of a future state. I wonder if one or the other is more important in your opinions, are both required at all?
To be honest as product manager a tool I have to promote my product before I have engineers build the thing, is a strong vivid vision statement. "in the future our customers will be able to do x [for the first time/faster/cheaper/easier/better]"
Business and Management practices rarely evolve to optimise anything other than the rate of output. Vision/Mission/Values can potentially improve the sanity of those involved and at least it stands as a shared ambition and social contract to possibly give employees and public a valid route for criticism (other than share price). I'll celebrate and encourage practical optimisations for people over money alone.
Setting aside the nonsense missions, I find it surprisingly useful from a self-determination perspective when working with a strongly motivated team:
- On one hand we say '100Xing investigations'. This is customer centric, focusing on the process they go through.
- Our team & history are deep tech - GPUs, program synthesis & language technology, graph AI, and large-scale visualization. This is not customer centric, but does give us differentiating ingredients for achieving that.
Why this matters is we try to have loose management with declarative assignments. It's one thing for folks to be senior on their craft and know the multiple paths to achieve something... and another for them to know how to make tricky trade-offs that align with the company. The technology investments show where spending a bit of extra time helps under-the-hood, and the customer problem focus is even better for that. Likewise, when someone veers off, it's a lot easier for a peer to gut check. Our early days were too tech-centric in mission, and that led some things astray.
There are other reasons too, such as helping team cultural assignment. Overall, having something good here does simplify a lot. If startups are a team of people navigating their way to a scalable business, getting the mission right is a natural aspect of figuring out what value you are bringing to what customers.
> I don’t know why startups have the urge to write statements like this, to connect themselves to a noble goal.
They sell it to inveators for to get some free money. That's it, no magic.
In general, people do seemingly strange things mainly for two cases: power and money (it just gives power). So only one, but that's usually more complex to understand.
Companies need a mission statement telling why the company needs to exist. Unfortunately, as highlighted by the author, too often these mission statements are bullshit, which is making them pretty useless, even counterproductive.
> What actually drives employees is the inner workings of a company: the degree of autonomy employees have, the quality of products being shipped, and having impressive people as seniors and leaders, who have good product vision.
I think the author was actually being generous by describing employees this way, because there's no mention of pay. Scratch the surface of the mission at a lot of companies, especially startups, and it becomes clear it's a recruiting tactic and no-cost psychological reward. Which is fine if the employer and employee are aligned and the tradeoff understood. But the criticisms of low pay in the "helping professions" could be applied here.
Personally I think most company missions are insincere and I would not accept lower pay to work for a mission-driven company.
"At company Foo our mission is to create software that people use, love and pay for, and along the way to find fulfillment through challenging work that makes us learn, allows us all to be paid well, lead a happy life and make scads of moolah for our investors."
Maybe apart from "love". Isn't that something that should be taken. That is any company should make product that sells and is used. And in general work should be fulfilling and paid. While generating profit for owners.
You can say of Musk what you want, but "Going to Mars" is a big and clear mission statement that can (and does?) inspire the whole of humanity. A former boss of mine always talked about the 'tempting perspective', I like that take.
Going to Mars is a dumb idea. So, only inspiring to some. (If you think it’s truly and inspiring then think about it for 10 minutes, please. What exactly would happen to people who go to Mars? And what happens after that?)
Prevent the destruction of humanity on Earth is more to the point for me.
A Berlin startup that dealt in being an Uber for house cleaners, even forced the poor souls to write what was their “mission in cleaning” - true story.
typical "I don't understand it so it's bullshit" rant. pinning it on "motivation" is very naive and highlight lack of self reflection or understanding on the topic.
the mission has a very real objective, which is align everyone own goals to the overal goals. it's a protection against micromanagement. it enables manager in the org to self check if their goals are aligned to where the company wants to be instead of bubbling up to leadership every single decision
in turn, if the management goals are all aligned, cross development collaboration is much more likely, because both team share similar goals and kpi and will have concrete benefit in collaborating reaching these
in turn each developer has a set target, and doesn't need to bubble up to management every decision. it is enabled to decide autonomously which course of action aligns the daily task with the yearly goal, benefitting indirectly from a clear mission in term of needing less micromanagement.
now that's the optimum and not always the case, typical failure scenario include bad mission, unaligned goals or unrelated kpi, there are more than a few companies where the whole chain breaks here or there, but that doesn't mean the underlying principle is sound: substituting direct guidance with guidelines removes micromanagement and enable roles autonomy.
it's quite common for developer "not seeing it" because they don't really engage in thinking why and what would be the alternative, or because they have been in suboptimal working places, but before calling any universal truth maybe the writer should have done some cursory research on the topic at the very least and merged his anectdotes with the underlying theory to contrast where things went wrong.
beside the bit around valve is also a bit miopyc. even if they don't call it mission, they have a clear vision and they say as much: "Our platform connects players with the world's greatest entertainment. " and the product goals derive from that.
and in the end, the true colors of the poster finally shows:
This is something I would have agreed on when I was younger, but after being in the drivers seat I can really see that I was missing the forest for the trees. It's very easy to say "all these billion dollar companies are wrong" when you haven't tried herding cats yourself.
"Our mission is to make cool stuff, learn some shit, and make money in the process" would apply everywhere. But business has the veneer of being super serious and you can't say things like that. It's an oddity of how society just has some taboos and acceptable behavior from companies.
It's also why the inverse (leadership at a company being straightforward) is seen as rare.
Mission statements are important for real companies, not so-called "tech" companies. He cites Patagonia, Honest Tea and IKEA as examples of real companies. None of them engage in data collection, surveillance and advertising services via positioning themselves as intermediaries (middlemen) and then call this a "business model". None of them are just giant websites that derive their profit from other peoples' work, so-called "user-generated content". As one might expect, the mission statements of real companies are not bullshit.
68 comments
[ 3.5 ms ] story [ 163 ms ] threadWhile I like to maintain that there are start-ups with genuine society-improving aspirations (in addition to the goals of surviving and making profit), perhaps we could use a term "mission washing" to accompany Morozov's concept of "solutionism".
What if I have a mission and I like it and it’s totally authentic? My customers like it too. Are you calling me full of it for achieving that difficult goal?
I think you’re right about a lot of inauthentic mission statements, but I think crass swearing is the real “needless bullshit”.
> I must clarify that my complaint isn’t against having mission statements because some of them do make sense and describe the company’s culture and the products they ship.
>> Honest Tea: To create and promote great-tasting, healthy, organic beverages.
>> Patagonia: Build the best product, Cause no unnecessary harm, Use business to protect nature, Not bound by convention.
>> IKEA: To offer a wide range of well-designed, functional home furnishing products at prices so low that as many people as possible will be able to afford them
Wouldn't most effective way to do this be preventing people from ever entering nature. In style of Chernobyl exclusion zone. And best way is to make so horrible gear that it forces people to stay home?
Some people have missions - great. Some don’t need them - great.
Frankfurt's philosophy and human psychology in that essay was a much needed tonic, to name a really quite specific /indifference to truth and consequences/.
It's frustrating that he chose to overload "bullshit" as it makes it hard to talk in a sophisticated and nuanced way with sensitive people. We surely don't need another neologism for what everybody already knows.
Actually when I say " /total indifference to truth/ " it hits a lot harder. Only one rather stuffy junior once pulled me up on "bullshit" and claimed offence. But when I say total indifference to truth, I've had far more senior figures say "isn't that a bit strong?" Well chosen words have power.
But it's still frustrating when you want to convey they precise nuance of Frankfurt's observations without saying BS.
I have the same discomfort with Doctorow's "enshitification". Once the novelty of throwing it into a conversation wears off, it becomes a struggle to find the perfect word for the precise process of cynical organisational exploitation that it describes.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/On_Bullshit
Possibly there is a difference though, in that "enshittification" implies less intentionality or understanding of the second-order consequences (brand destruction), whereas "brand harvesting" leans into it in the most cynical way possible, implying that the value of a brand is something that one could rationally choose to liquidate.
It seems that it's basically the same thing as the debasement of a currency (like a brand, also a symbolic thing), or the Cantillon Effect, which (like brand harvesting) exploits the fact that information takes time to propagate and people take time to learn and react. There's a window where your adulterated beer still has the respected label, where your newly-printed dollars are not yet in general circulation, or where ad revenue is up and your customers haven't yet bothered to cancel their Netflix subscriptions.
I am motivated by an important mission, in fact, but I am more motivated by having ongoing impact on that mission (making a difference). I work in defence, so you'd think there's a lot of opportunity to keep people safe, help leaders make better decisions, etc. So far from my perspective, these companies are not very motivated or successful at solving the missions they boldly claim. As a result, I am motivated to leave these places, that lie or are incompetent at solving these missions.
For example, a defence company says they want to "serve our democracies", but they hardly have any users. Another defence company has been building product for 4 years, yet has 0 users over that time. Then there are other, defence companies with unicorn valuation with also very cool marketing, but very little impact in ongoing crisis. All the mentioned companies have very good publicity, it's not until you work for them you realise they have 0 impact. There is no reason to change their ways, because they can continue to sign more contracts with gov (tens of millions, hundreds of millions).
All you see publicly is cool tens/hundreds of million investment or contracts, cool movie like drone shots, "AI", cool drones, explosions, jets and good music. You don't get to see the 0 impact. Or worryingly, negative impact when these things don't work.
I've been working in defence-tech startups for more than 2 years.
It depends on the use case. Some of these startups and unicorns ship (and aim to ship) stuff to Ukraine. That's one conflict most people in the west can align with. Imagine building drones or software for Ukraine. Other use cases involve purely intelligence or decision making.
Sure they're building stuff for Ukraine soldiers, but the underlying mission is freedom for Ukraine.
There are other conflicts (building drones, missiles, tools used in Gaza/Middle East) that are a lot more complex.
Or building drones for police pursuits or for searching buildings (like the IDF).
A good one from the 19th century: "We will build good ships. At a profit if we can, at a loss if we must. But always good ships." - Newport News Shipbuilding and Dry Dock Company. That's on a big plaque at the front gate. It was removed for some years when Tenneco, an auto parts conglomerate, owned the place. It's back now.
Missions are what makes employees understand what they are here for. If it is bullshit, employees are gonna be bullshitting. If it is about something that they can feel, it will make their journey in the company better.
[1] https://pic2.zhimg.com/v2-e98cc37cfad022461087b1f49649d0a5_r...
[2] https://earth.google.com/web/@36.98742381,-76.43708574,3.519...
The lesson is that universal statements like this are wrong. The mission just doesn't motivate everyone.
That said, I'm fairly sure the Asana one is trolling.
I pretend to like my boss’ jokes, some of his interests etc. Makes for a way better relationship. I’m not the only one who does it. I’d say the majority does!
Speaking as a boss, this is deeply depressing.
Why should employees not engage in marketing, just like your company does?
Sucking up to your boss is a tale as old as time lol
Second, i think it really depends on how your employees need job security. I don't (most IT people in my country do not), so probably not playing games like that. I'll still be polite, and i'm really a good target for jokes, its rare i don't find one funny, but if you fire me, i'll just go my way and find another job. I interview well, and i do not need money.
[edit] I also have to add that some people on the spectrum (who were called "Asperger" a few years ago in my country) have troubles pretending and lying, so target those if you're afraid you're being lied too. They aren't easy to work with if you don't understand them (you really have to make them trust you and their environment, else they won't communicate as much as they should to be able to work in a team), but it can really be worth it.
I know people that are only motivated by salary, others are motivated by being part of a team, where they would call their teammates friends, others just want to e.g. code and do it well.
It is however correct that a boss is usually not in the position to judge what people think.
That’s exactly it. Why are bosses – who must understand marketing on some level – confused or even depressed by employees engaging in marketing! It doesn’t stop after we are done with the interviewing
Don't get me wrong, they might be passionate about creating a good product, but they would probably be equally passionate if it was about geodata instead.
Best gig I've had in this aspect were one where there weren't any mission but I created it for myself and that let me find meaning in my work. The problem with that approach were that the rest of the organization didn't share my mission so there were lot of little conflicts due to this and I wasn't aware enough back then to trace it back to this incompatibility/non alignment.
One question this raises though: if someone only pretends to like the company values but they do better work when I've assigned them value based projects, aren't they lying to themselves?
Definitely not everyone. For example I do treat mission or company values seriously, especially when I see that they are not just corporate poetry, but something actually engrained in the culture. And was lucky enough to always find such an environment
An example from my own experience: an org leader proclaiming the need for "laser sharp focus". Amigo, you're running an organizational metrics p-value hacking campaign, which is by definition not a "focused" play. Could have said something useful like "let's be effective about our experimentation", but no, you must go through the motions of blabbering as if you're an action movie hero.
This was clearly true for Google with its mission. There are so many other successful examples.
Looks like author is burned by bad startups with inauthentic mission statements.
Sorry if I missed your sarcasm, but wasn't Google's mission "Don't be evil"? [0]
They so totally failed at that the motto became an embarrassment, so they fired two leaders of ethics, Margaret Mitchell and Timnit Gebru, for being too ethical, and then re-branded as Alphabet with a new mission of "Do the right thing" (ie. make lots of money).
I mean, just this random tidbit:
" 2021, 3 former Google employees filed a lawsuit alleging that Google's motto "Don't be evil" amounts to a contractual obligation that the tech giant violated, that Google broke their own moral code by firing them as retaliation for their efforts against 'evil'... " [0]
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Don%27t_be_evil
But in reality just the other day here on hacker news someone was essentially asking for a personal assistant. [1]
1. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39137625
Come on! At some point let’s be normal people and say “yeah I wasn’t born yesterday”. The emperor is naked here!
So it is a pointless job since the vast majority of hotels, residential buildings and office buildings have eliminated that role, and they all remain in business. Not filling the role has had minor or no negative impact.
I have never picked hotels or office space based on the criteria of having doorman. Nor if they had bellhops.
I do think it is nice when there is a doorman and somewhat nice when there is a porter. The endless tipping I dont like.
When it comes to an assistant that number of people employed in that role has also severely declined over the years, and most business continue to function without secretaries. (and save money).
There are of course many types of personal assistants, and some more common than others.
I would love to have one. Seriously. I cant afford one, and if I had enough money left over to hire one I doubt I would. So many tasks that a PA could handle for me are now easy to do via the net myself, plus if it comes to something specific, I need handled it is easy to "rent one" that will handle it.
I also think you don’t need to be the Valve one either. Not everyone is going to be number 1. Be an OpenAI or a Valve. Plenty of money to be made as an Ikea or even the even more budget than Ikea furniture company.
To be honest as product manager a tool I have to promote my product before I have engineers build the thing, is a strong vivid vision statement. "in the future our customers will be able to do x [for the first time/faster/cheaper/easier/better]"
- On one hand we say '100Xing investigations'. This is customer centric, focusing on the process they go through.
- Our team & history are deep tech - GPUs, program synthesis & language technology, graph AI, and large-scale visualization. This is not customer centric, but does give us differentiating ingredients for achieving that.
Why this matters is we try to have loose management with declarative assignments. It's one thing for folks to be senior on their craft and know the multiple paths to achieve something... and another for them to know how to make tricky trade-offs that align with the company. The technology investments show where spending a bit of extra time helps under-the-hood, and the customer problem focus is even better for that. Likewise, when someone veers off, it's a lot easier for a peer to gut check. Our early days were too tech-centric in mission, and that led some things astray.
There are other reasons too, such as helping team cultural assignment. Overall, having something good here does simplify a lot. If startups are a team of people navigating their way to a scalable business, getting the mission right is a natural aspect of figuring out what value you are bringing to what customers.
They sell it to inveators for to get some free money. That's it, no magic.
In general, people do seemingly strange things mainly for two cases: power and money (it just gives power). So only one, but that's usually more complex to understand.
I think the author was actually being generous by describing employees this way, because there's no mention of pay. Scratch the surface of the mission at a lot of companies, especially startups, and it becomes clear it's a recruiting tactic and no-cost psychological reward. Which is fine if the employer and employee are aligned and the tradeoff understood. But the criticisms of low pay in the "helping professions" could be applied here.
Personally I think most company missions are insincere and I would not accept lower pay to work for a mission-driven company.
"At company Foo our mission is to create software that people use, love and pay for, and along the way to find fulfillment through challenging work that makes us learn, allows us all to be paid well, lead a happy life and make scads of moolah for our investors."
Like absolute barest minimum for any company.
Prevent the destruction of humanity on Earth is more to the point for me.
edit: nicer words
It’s not against missions; it’s against lies.
the mission has a very real objective, which is align everyone own goals to the overal goals. it's a protection against micromanagement. it enables manager in the org to self check if their goals are aligned to where the company wants to be instead of bubbling up to leadership every single decision
in turn, if the management goals are all aligned, cross development collaboration is much more likely, because both team share similar goals and kpi and will have concrete benefit in collaborating reaching these
in turn each developer has a set target, and doesn't need to bubble up to management every decision. it is enabled to decide autonomously which course of action aligns the daily task with the yearly goal, benefitting indirectly from a clear mission in term of needing less micromanagement.
now that's the optimum and not always the case, typical failure scenario include bad mission, unaligned goals or unrelated kpi, there are more than a few companies where the whole chain breaks here or there, but that doesn't mean the underlying principle is sound: substituting direct guidance with guidelines removes micromanagement and enable roles autonomy.
it's quite common for developer "not seeing it" because they don't really engage in thinking why and what would be the alternative, or because they have been in suboptimal working places, but before calling any universal truth maybe the writer should have done some cursory research on the topic at the very least and merged his anectdotes with the underlying theory to contrast where things went wrong.
beside the bit around valve is also a bit miopyc. even if they don't call it mission, they have a clear vision and they say as much: "Our platform connects players with the world's greatest entertainment. " and the product goals derive from that.
and in the end, the true colors of the poster finally shows:
> cut the crap about socially concerned goals
It's also why the inverse (leadership at a company being straightforward) is seen as rare.