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Comment by TenOhms | Hacker News Reader

My company's culture (large multi-national) demotivates me and their PR-speak vision and mission statements mean less than nothing to me. Am I weird?

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Nope. I couldn't care less about our "vision" or whatever management is calling it now. I am at my employer under a "business" relationship. In exchange for my experience, time, and expertise, I will accept a salary. Don't try to rope me into "loyalty" or say we are a "family". We aren't - end of story.

Do you ever wish to work on something that hits more personally for you? Would that motivate you more than just the pay?

I have. If I truly believe in the "product" and am treated like I am an owner and not a minion than it is different.

edit

by owner, I don't mean of the company; rather the product. I find developers spend most of their time in the app and know when something works or doesn't. They can have a "hunch" when a feature is off, or the experience is wrong. being empowered to make decisions and tweaks without someone else getting upset is invaluable

I would whole heartily agree with this. I see a lack of company delegation and trust to give Ownership over to its people when those people are full well, if not more than the company, able to make the important decisions. Ownership and Owning it, whatever it may be (project, product, architecture, etc) is important to driving self improvement for people and advancing their careers. I think it is great that you acknowledge this and feel this way. I hope that your company realizes it and values your drive, opinions, and decisions.

Personally, it's about ownership.

I'm an independent contributor, a dev. I don't own my employer's business beyond some token stocks. They give me value in the form of money because I give them more value through my work.

It's ultimately prostitution, and that's OK. They pay me well and respect my time/skills, I give them 100% for 8h day. But I won't go "above and beyond" for someone else's business...

Exactly this, I always know in the back of my mind that even if I drank the company kool-aid, they would drop me in a heartbeat if it benefited them.

As someone also employed in a large multinational, I always enjoy the mass emails that detail the cool conventions that are being held in Vegas or <other nice locale> that thousands of my non-technical coworkers get to attend.

Attending events and networking is a great way for people to get out and change up the pace of work life and learn something new. I think that this is not done nearly as often as I would like it to happen. Especially in the tech world where things are changing at such a fast rate.

The one thing I dislike is that sales departments are treated like gold in some instances ie: sales rallies, bonuses, contests, free vacations, cars.

Where as IT/Tech departments miss out on a lot of those.

Do you think it would behoove a company to reward its other teams like it does its sales teams?

I suppose - I just find it strange that most of the IT initiatives directly support the success of a business, and when the company sends the top 10 producing sales team members to a free Caribbean trip, and buy luxury cars for others for a year I'm sure they could shell out something for other teams rather than buying a pizza or lunch every so often.

This is just an observation as well, so I could be completely incorrect in my thinking.

Its a great observation and one that I think has struck many people. I would be interested in hearing a sales person and development person put their views on the table about the subject so we could see both sides and compare motivators between the two roles.

I would agree! While I'm not looking for handouts or anything like that the email blasts (company wide) really do sort-of shove it in everyone else's faces unintentionally.

I might take action on this and ask our customers individually what they would like and compare across roles. If I sort this data I will definitely post my findings.

I think that would be very interesting - I hope you do sort it and share!

Nope, I'm here just for the pay. The PR is all bullshit.

I've also worked at small places. It's the same thing, I'm there for the pay, nothing else.

If I'm going to spend 40+ hours somewhere for a meaningful amount of time (1 year+), the happier I can make myself there the better. I like my co workers, my workplace treats me with respect, they're flexible, we work on interesting projects, nice office locations, a comfortable environment.

Personally I would love to travel and work remotely (building up towards that) and the flexibility and comfort for me means being able to accomplish other things in my life that I want to do while working. Like travel across the world and see new places. If there is enough trust and flexibility I could see myself doing that for the rest of my life.

No you're human.

Nope.

I'm at a small company (100+ employees) and the Powers That Be talk a good talk but don't walk the walk.

Vision and mission have any significance if they reflect how the company owner wants to live. If a company grows large enough to get the middle management caste, vision and mission become meaningless.

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