Interesting article

[ironphoenix]

Favorite quote: "Next time you are speaking to an automated phone system, try swearing; you’ll be immediately redirected to human operators because they are the ones handling rude clients."

The article also links to Valve's employee handbook, describing how they run a managerless company, which is well worth reading.

Comments

[beable]

The Valve handbook makes me 30% convinced that it would be an awesome place to work, 40% convinced that it's a very dudebro culture' and 100% convinced that I do not want to be their sysadmin.

[dagibbs.livejournal.com]

I think more geekbro than dudebro. But, yep, lots and lots of bro.

I worry in the "stack ranking" that inherent biases will creep in to the ranking a LOT. Anyone not white-male-geeky will not get their skills and contributions appropriately valued. I also worry that extroverts will be greatly favoured over introverts... the ones that market what they've done, rather then the people who've actually done stuff.

[ironphoenix.livejournal.com]

Yes, the origins of the manual are easy to see; it's unsurprising that the manual would be written by the people most self-confident about expressing themselves authoritatively in English.

I can easily see rankings degenerating into Lord of the Flies as a worst case; non-EWMGs (extrovert white male geeks) could easily be talked over, or even have their work appropriated. It would be very interesting to look at a list of present and past employee demographics, and their tenure at the company: problems in this area would be pretty apparent.

Enlightened self-interest, on the other hand, could see the group recognizing that diversity is something to invest in, and hiring not only diverse people, but people skilled in facilitating diversity, shaping culture and interactions for inclusiveness and equity.

[ironphoenix.livejournal.com]

The thing with being their sysadmin would be that on the one hand, they aren't obligated to play nice with the sysadmin, but on the other, the sysadmin isn't obligated to be the sysadmin for people who refuse to play nice. There can be a negotiation there. The enlightened would figure out that a few restrictions are worth accepting in exchange for a good sysadmin's services.

It could be an awesome place to work, or not, depending on the people, even more than in most organizations.

On culture, see below soon!

[dagibbs.livejournal.com]

"The good news is, it won’t have anything against you personally."

Unless, of course, the data-set that was used to train the neural-network AI has a bias against you. Ok, it may not be personal, but it could still be discriminatory.

[ironphoenix.livejournal.com]

It's not personal, but the difference may seem academic to the victim.