[for companies with idk 100 or less headcount] Good culture boils down to:

1. Predictability. Flavors of it: deliver features on time, roadmap stays mostly stable, on demand requests are known about ahead of time, business struggling or doing well transparent, tech debt / upkeep are first class citizens of planned work. All of this is project management and communication.

2. Org pays market rate and has good benefits. Employment is an exchange and esp for those who work hard, they deserve the recognition.

3. “People” (aka HR) is taken seriously. The team is expected to be checked in. Those who aren’t get fired. Ideally, there’s enough in place for individuals to come to their own conclusion that they should be fired. See #1. When a req is open it’s a top priority of whoever is in charge.

You can be PM-nonexistent or PM-heavy with lots of meetings and JIRA. Maybe you can accomplish all 3 above in both worlds. My experience is that process when done right moves the needle. No process leads to nonsense and process for the sake of process grinds it to a halt. It all gets better when the leaders are bought in or self aware enough to get out of the way.

If you push for change long enough, and aren’t an asshole about it, just genuinely interested and motivated, there’s a chance you’ll see your vision for better culture materialize.

> If you push for change long enough, and aren’t an asshole about it, just genuinely interested and motivated, there’s a chance you’ll see your vision for better culture materialize.

Throughout my career, I’ve described this as “polite persistence is how you effect change.”

>Org pays market rate and has good benefits.

This is so important. One of the things that kills company culture before the company even takes off is getting a sense from the founders that they're just trying to fool desperate/clueless people into working for them for less than what they're worth.

The startups that actually succeed have the philosophy "find the best people and pay them a lot". All the successful unicorns and decacorns over the last 15 years have a reputation of paying people well. There is literally not one startup I can think of that succeeded but has a reputation of underpaying.

And if you're unable to pay employees well then you're simply not well-capitalized enough and should drop the project.

I agree with most of this. However in my time I've never seen a company that was a., successful and b., prioritizing tech debt/upkeep at the same time. I presume AI will fix this however maybe not since it's so tempting to defer strategic decisions to it.

I have seen tech companies flourish which had tech, or tech-adjacent leadership. I've never seen a really good tech company that was lead by an MBA, a "vibe bro", or someone looking to get rich quick. It almost always comes from a genuine passion to solve problems in a certain domain.

One key point is also hires, hiring slowly and not keeping bad hires around. Bad hires really pull everyone down and it's really difficult to work around bad coworkers.

I personally actively filter out companies who don't use Slack. The way communication is done in a company reflects practically every company decision. (Conway's Law)

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