Sorry Uber, That's Not How Culture Works
I heard about Uber's new cultural norms [https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/ubers-new-cultural-norms-dara-khosrowshahi/] from a series of Sarah Lacy [https://twitter.com/sarahcuda] tweets. > "We’re also calling these cultural norms, rather than values, because we fully expect them to evolve as Uber continues to grow&
Decision Making Without Meetings
Last weekend, my girlfriend told me about a meeting at her company. The meeting was called to decide on which part to use when their original choice was unavailable. The meeting was an hour long and included 10 people. That's 10 person hours to make a single decision.
Work is a Thing You Do, Not a Place You Go
Remote companies don't give out Perfect Attendance Awards beacuse they don't matter. You don't get anything just for showing up. Even better, there's no where to show up to. When working remotely, you are free to skip the commute, work where you
Overcoming the Fast Fashion Story
Liz Pape, the founder of Elizabeth Suzann [https://elizabethsuzann.com/], wrote an excellent post addressing pricing in the fashion industry [https://elizabethsuzann.com/blogs/stories/money-talk] earlier this year. Her clothing line is made in the USA of premium fabrics and priced accordingly. In the post, she discusses consumers evaluating
How to Hire Customer Service Reps
I was nervous to hire Tortuga's first customer service (CS) person. Hiring a good rep would be a challenge, but the scariest part was that we weren't just hiring our first CS employee, we were hiring our first employee. > What if we hire the wrong
Amazon Copies, Walmart Acquires
> "Amazon will knock off a lot of DNVBs (digitally native vertical brands). Walmart will acquire them." -Web Smith [https://twitter.com/web] on Well Made, Episode 28 [http://blog.lumi.com/wellmade/28-web-smith] Whoa. That short quote has a lot of info to process. Web summarized the
Remote Companies Hire for Impact, Not for Potential
> Credit is due to Rodolphe [https://twitter.com/rdutel] from Remotive [https://remotive.io/] for the title of this post. I immediately wrote this line down when he said it in his workshop at DNX Global [https://www.dnxglobal.com/] in Lisbon last month. In this post, I'
Psychological Safety
When Google studied their internal teams [https://www.nytimes.com/2016/02/28/magazine/what-google-learned-from-its-quest-to-build-the-perfect-team.html?_r=0] to learn why some succeeded and some failed, they found 5 key norms for successful teams. > 1. Teams to need believe that their work is important. 2. Teams need to feel
There Is No "Best" Company Culture
> There is no perfect company to work for. Many 24 year old graduates of high powered competitive universities seek demanding workplaces. I did when I was that age. I did not want work/life balance. And I did not want to work with people who didn’t share my
The Intersection of "Helpful to Others" and "Interesting to You"
Solving for the Wrong Problem When responding to tweets about my post, If Your Business is a Secret, It's Probably Bullshit [https://www.fredperrotta.com/bullshit-businesses/], I realized a core problem of these businesses: founders start them to solve their own problems. Problems like hating their jobs or