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Culture matters

danluu.com · 4,774 words · saved by 1 readers

Three major tools that companies have to influence behavior are incentives, process, and culture. People often mean different things when talking about these, so I'll provide an example of each so we're on the same page (if you think that I should be using a different word for the concept, feel free to mentally substitute that word). Getting people to show up to meetings on time Getting people to build complex systems Avoiding manufacturing defects If you read "old school" thought leaders, many of them advocate for a culture-only approach, e.g., Ken Thompson saying, to reduce bug rate, that tools (which, for the purposes of this post, we'll call process) aren't the answer, having people care to and therefore decide to avoid writing bugs is the answer or Bob Martin saying "The solution to the software apocalypse is not more tools. The solution is better programming discipline." The emotional reaction those kinds of over-the-top statements evoke combined with the ease of rebutting them h

Culture matters Three major tools that companies have to influence behavior are incentives, process, and culture. People often mean different things when talking about these, so I'll provide an example of each so we're on the same page (if you think that I should be using a different word for the concept, feel free to mentally substitute that word). Getting people to show up to meetings on time Incentive: dock pay for people who are late Process: don't allow anyone who's late into the meeting Culture: people feel strongly about showing up on time Getting people to build complex systems Incenti

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