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Ryan Burgess
Welcome to a new episode of Front End Happy Hour podcast. In today's episode, we will be discussing unhealthy company culture and how to deal with it. Let's go around the table and give brief introduction of today's panelists. Augustus you want to start it off? Yeah, sure.

Augustus Yuan
My name is Augustus and I'm a front end engineer at Evernote, Stacy London, a

Stacy London
front end engineer at Atlassian.

Mars Jullian
I'm Mark Julian. I'm a software engineer at Netflix,

Jem Young
Jem Young software engineer at Netflix.

Ryan Burgess
And I'm Ryan Burgess. I'm a software engineering manager at Netflix. In each episode of the front end, Happy Hour podcast, we like to choose a keyword that if it's mentioned at all, in the podcast, we will all take a drink. What did we decide today's keyword is toxic, toxic, and it's not the Britney Spears song, we're just gonna say talk. Alright, well, let's jump right in what constitutes a healthy culture to you,

Augustus Yuan
at least for me, like a company that really values like supporting my like, growth and career and really like just focusing on letting me learn, like, I know, like, it's pretty easy to get caught up in like deadlines and stuff, but they're just some things and work that like really take time to understand and learn how to do so do

Ryan Burgess
you think like a company needs to have something like a defined process for that? Because some companies have like a growth trajectory and things to follow, or can be ambiguous, what do you think makes it better for your culture of growth?

Augustus Yuan
I think like depends on the team. But at least for our team, I've definitely seen it, like has been awesome making it part of the process. Like we'll like come across, like, like a feature that we want to work on. And we'll want to try something new that we haven't tried before. And so we'll ask for, like time to like work on it and stuff. And depending on like how we like, like, we like to do like preliminary investigations and stuff. And we like really talk with a pm and like, try to like kind of set the expectation that that is something that we really need to do. Awesome.

Ryan Burgess
Yeah. So you get to try new things. Yeah, exactly.

Mars Jullian
I think that kind of ties into like, what something I want to say to you is a company that to me, they have the holders are companies that recognize the soft skills. And I think this is really important, especially for software engineering. Because you can be, you know, a great developer and have a company that doesn't recognize any of those skills whatsoever, in terms of like interpersonal, like being able to manage interpersonal relationships, being able to speak, which is where kind of the cultivation and encouragement of that really comes in and being able to communicate and kind of all those things that can very easily be swept under the rug. For engineers, I think it's not really highlighted all the time.

Ryan Burgess
But it's just focus, focus on like, how do you become better technically? And it's like, Well, wait, how do you speak? Or how do you sell your ideas, right, or becoming better

Mars Jullian
technically, also can be, you know, becoming better at asking the right types of product questions, and not always knowing exactly which framework to use and what types of designs you should be looking at and who to go to and that type of thing.

Stacy London
I think in that same line of communication of like, what constitutes a healthy culture would be a culture where everyone will get up and just talk to each other as opposed to like, headphones on all the time throwing things over walls, like only emailing each other, or whatever, like the kind of culture where people you can see you walk around that office, and you can see like, that designer sitting next to the front end engineer, and they're working together on something instead of, you know, passing something that back and forth. I think that's like, for me a sign of a really healthy culture that people are just willing to work together and not be told to have to either like, they just want to do that. Because collaboration means a lot to them.

Ryan Burgess
I think another note, just good work life balance, I'll say it is, I think a lot in startups in any companies. I've, I've had it agencies, oftentimes you get sucked into like you're having to work all the time, and you do burn out like that is not healthy. And it actually is not a good thing. You know, sometimes Yeah, you might put in some extra time, but at the same point you want somewhere that respects your actual life as well.

Mars Jullian
Yeah, and I want to add to that, too, because I had that as a point. And I think it's some every company does work life balance in a different way. And the companies that I've really appreciated, do it in, I would say a not superficial way in terms of oh, we have a good work life balance. We go out to happy hours all the time. We have ping pong tables, we take all sorts of breaks during the day. And to me, it really means being able to be an adult and be a professional but also not take yourself too seriously. So in the middle of the day, you could you know, still be professional and adult but you make a mistake and you can kind of laugh, laugh it off or laugh at yourself or just be able to find the humor in some of the day to day interactions and in but also maintain your professionalism.

Ryan Burgess
I like those almost like feeling comfortable to make a mistake, because I think that that can really help too. You should be feel comfortable in your company that yeah, it's okay to make mistakes. You don't want to replicate making the same mistake over and over again. But we're all going to make mistakes. Nobody's perfect. And I think sometimes there's the culture of fear if you don't want to really go outside of your comfort zone ever, because you're always worried about fear. Making the mistake an example

Stacy London
of that place prior to where I am now, not not where I am now. It was like a sort of a shame culture like you broke the build. And they there's some borough first of all, this was super racist. Second of all, they're like, if you break the build, you need to wear this barrel all day. And I was like, there's so many things wrong with us. Like, not like not okay, not cool. Like it made you feel bad, like extremely bad that you are, you know, being called out for doing something that everyone does. Oh, yeah, it's,

Ryan Burgess
it's a word. It's like a given that you're gonna break the bill. To me, that's just a rite of passage. When you're working on a team is like, you'll break it. Yeah.

Stacy London
But to like, quote, celebrate it if they thought it was like the celebration, funny thing, and I was like, no shame culture, not cool. Pretty toxic, toxic.

Jem Young
Marzen Ronnie, You guys nailed it. A culture where you're it's okay to fail, is always a solid culture. And where it's not okay to fail is usually like, a very negative culture. It, it's very black and white. For me. It's, it shows a lot. It's like, okay, I guess you failed at something? Well, what do we learn from that? And instead of like shaming you, or making you fix it, things like that. It's like, what do we learn, let's try to fix the process if you have it, but also to speak to everybody's points about work life balance. It's a work life balance that works for everyone, not just people under 30, who don't have kids, which, unfortunately, Silicon Valley, that tends to be what their idea of work life balance is, like, we have drinks after work, and we hang out. That's cool. But like, I don't want to do that. I just want to do my job and go home, because that's where I'm most comfortable and like occasional go out. But I see a lot of cultures, like impose that on people. It's like, well, actually, the deals are being done or, you know, promotions be handed out when you go out for drinks. And that's not the way people who are more mature X anymore.

Ryan Burgess
No, I've seen the negative on that side. We're actually a company in Silicon Valley, I'm not going to mention which company it's not somewhere I've worked. I remember, the female engineer got told she was leaving too early. And she needed to stay later, or else she'll never get promoted. And it was bad for her perception that she's leaving early. And guess when she was leaving, she was leaving at 536 o'clock, which to me is not leaving early. And she has two kids at home. So how's that fair at all? And I mean, she wasn't coming in late, she was probably one of the ones coming in early. And I mean, I think you should have the flexibility some engineers I work with will come in at 1011 o'clock. And they stay a little bit later. Like that's fine that works for their life. But it doesn't work for everyone's life. And we shouldn't shame someone for leaving, quote unquote, early that that doesn't make sense either. So good point. Yeah,

Jem Young
I think we're we don't want to dip into the unhealthy part. I

Ryan Burgess
know, I kind of got ahead of myself. That's the

Jem Young
part we all have something to say Yeah, more healthy things. I look for a diverse team. That means you have not just we're talking about like, the racist on I mean, like their socio economic background. Are they varied in their thought? Because diversity of thought is important in like building a healthy company. So it's like, yeah, we, we've got a healthy culture. But it's all a bunch of like, white dudes from, like Harvard, who all went to the same class together. Like, you may all be like, the coolest, most chill people in the world. But like, you can't tell me that's a healthy culture, because it's a monoculture. And that's, that's not the strongest thing. So a good diverse team, I think, is the foundation of a good culture. Yeah. And

Ryan Burgess
I think it builds a better product, too, right? Because if it's just saw the same people here designing for that one type of person, and I mean that if that's the product, and that's the goal of it, sure. But like typically, a lot of the products we're working on are made for a lot of different people. And so if you come from all different walks of life, that really helps build a diverse product.

Stacy London
I think a healthy culture too, is also one in which it's not only an engineering culture, meaning shipping something is something that everybody's proud of the design team, the product team, the QA, whatever the all the representative groups are proud of what's being shipped and not like, Oh, we're always being left out, or shipping is more important than quality or having something that feels more balanced that way, like where everybody's proud of what's being being given to customers, I think is important. I think also

Mars Jullian
in the end that will drive for a better product or a better experience. Because if that's really the case, I mean, everyone's gonna be invested in it too, from the very getgo so everyone's gonna they're proud of putting their name on it. They're invested it from the start and just has more mines in it. It has more eyes on it, you know, probably higher quality more thought behind it.

Jem Young
Well, so I didn't even think of that. But well said. Companies that value everybody equally, no matter what Your role is a sign of a healthy culture. There are plenty of companies it's like the the sales team, the bizdev, team, email blast every time they close a big deal. That's cool. But what about the back end engineer who made it just a little bit faster? What about their contribution? They're not going to feel welcome in loves, or it's easy for us to be like, oh, yeah, we do big things. We work on product teams. So we build things that go to clients, but a lot of people don't. What about those teams? Do they get as much respect and admiration as everybody else? That's the sign of a good

Ryan Burgess
coach? Yeah, those are the tools that we use in order to get that product out to their facing customers is like, what about those tools that not everyone sees? That's a good point, right?

Mars Jullian
Our work is kind of built on the shoulder of giants of like, over and over and over again. So you know, a company that will recognize all of that work that goes into it. That's a good company to work for.

Ryan Burgess
So that being said, how do we know how do you like identify an unhealthy culture? I think of this a lot when you're interviewing, and when you're even talking to someone who works at a company. And maybe you're just even doing like an informational interview? What are some things like how do you start identify an unhealthy culture? Maybe you're already there? How do you start identify it, I'm interested to hear some of the things that you should be looking for red flags that stand out, I

Mars Jullian
think one of the obvious things to look for is probably in the interview process. I mean, there's other things you can find in having individual conversations with your panelists. But I think sometimes the interview process will really speak to the culture of that company to begin with, either it's the panelists that they put in front of you, or it's, you know, sort of the like, after in formal events that happen after you've gone in for an on site. And I can't imagine, like, I can't tell you how many times I've heard if people going to interviews, like Oh, come on for drinks, you know, that's kind of like where the real stuff happens. Like, this really probably isn't going to be a good sign for working for this company. And also, if you have a panelist that's very monoculture, either the company didn't think to put together a diverse panel, or they don't have the diversity to put together that panel. That to me can also be another red flag. And I mean, there's more that you can you can get from the interview in terms of having conversations with people, but those are the things to me that are pretty glaring, and stand out very, very quickly.

Augustus Yuan
You're speaking to like the interviewer, actually, for people who go on sites, usually there's like technical interviews, but then there's like a lunch, which usually just kind of culture fit. I actually learned a lot about the company's culture from that lunch, because like talking to that person, even though you're just eating with them, like I can ask, like some questions and stuff. I one time head and on site, and the guy was so stressed with his work that he didn't even like, kind of want to talk to me. And I got like, really huge red flags of the kind of the work culture. You know, he, I actually even started talking to him about what oh, what's the problem we're working on? He's like, Oh, yeah, you know, we got to do this stuff. And I was like, Oh, that's interesting. And like, we kind of bounce ideas, but I already kind of, I could tell how stressed he was. And yeah, it was just like a huge red flag for me.

Ryan Burgess
I love that you brought up the lunch, because I do feel like you can tell a lot about a company just by hanging out and saying, oh, yeah, we'll grab lunch. And you know, and you're not, you're not really being interviewed. I mean, when you're on an on site interview, you're interviewed the whole time, like, the minute you walk to the front desk and say, like, here, I'm here to meet so and so you're technically being interviewed. But they may not be asking interview questions, but it is a really good way for you to like, look at those types of things. Speaking of the front desk, you know, how does that person treat you when you walk in? If they're like, Yeah, you're here to interview, like, go sit there and wait. And kind of, you know that that's kind of a bit of a red flag, like, they should treat you with utmost respect, as much as you should treat them with respect. It goes both ways. Yeah.

Jem Young
Interviewers, so recruiters that don't make phone calls on time, or things like that don't respond in a timely manner is kind of a red flag for me. Because, one, it's literally their job to do these things that if they're not organized enough to do that, then that tells me something about their organizational structure. But to a good culture, interviewing in hiring is the most important thing you can do like literally the most, because like, you're these are the people that are gonna build your product. And companies that don't tell you that which happens a lot. They value the product more than the people. You see it just like everybody said, they put the wrong people in the panel, that people are late, they're disorganized, they don't know who you are just little things like that kind of add up to me like, Okay, I'm not important. And when I work here, I won't be important either.

Ryan Burgess
Yet, to be honest, at that point, I think of an interview is like, that is so important. So it's like if you're not even getting treated with that importance as being someone who's interviewing with that company, if the engineers or whoever's interviewing, you aren't treating you good, that's even worse. Like, it's like they should be on their best behavior at that time. So that's a really big red flag.

Jem Young
I always say trust your gut. I know everybody has. Trust your gut when you walk into a place and it doesn't feel right. Like something's off. That's almost always the case. Like it's not a one off event that you're like, okay, it was just me. In all my experience, it's always been the case like if something feels off, it's gonna be off. It's gonna go even more when you start. One of my favorites I've worked with a few Ford some good companies that weren't so bad when Siebel One of them was my first day, I get up to leave at 6pm which a little later than most, but like, whatever, it's my first day, I get up to leave and someone tells me like, hey, know that the CEO, you know, he's kind of Stickley, like see people in the seat till like 730. And right there my first day I should have known like, that's a bad sign if they equate butts in seats with productivity, like red flag. That is a toxic culture. Cheers. Cheers. Needless to say, it only got worse. I'm very sorry that that company, but that was day one red flag. And I should have known then that

Ryan Burgess
what do you do in that case? You just like said fuck it, I'm out.

Jem Young
So this particular company had several people get hired, like people that are more senior had more experience that worked for week quit, because they knew it then. And they said, We're not going to bother. And that's also a red flag of people that know better. Or like, yeah, thanks for no thanks. I'm out. Like, listen to those people. They've been around the block a few times

Augustus Yuan
actually. Does Do you guys have advice for questions to ask during interviews to uncover the secret? unhealthy?

Stacy London
Yeah,

Augustus Yuan
toxic, didn't want to talk? Okay, I guess we're drinking.

Mars Jullian
I don't know if there's like a specific set of questions. And oftentimes, the things I look for in an unhealthy culture or when I'm interviewing, often relate, like pretty much one to one, like specific experiences that I've had. And that's where kind of trust your gut comes in. But when I was interviewing, most recently, to me, like the culture of feedback was very, very important in terms of, are you open to feedback? Are you willing to give it like all of those things? Are you kind of the type of company that's constantly challenging your employees and employees are constantly challenging themselves? And so for me, it was like, What is your culture of feedback? And some companies I interviewed with, say, we do a six month review cycle. And I was like, Well, what about in between those six months? Do people go up to them? Like what happens when there's, you know, what, what is your conflict resolution process look like? It's like, well, you go to your manager, the manager goes to their manager trickles back down, like no one's actually talking to each other at that point. And that, to me, just feels very, very political. And sometimes asking the question about how they deal with feedback, or how they deal with conflict can show you the political processes that are going on. I mean, they'll be different from company to company, but you kind of get those relationships from a question like that.

Ryan Burgess
I think you just touched on another thing, not so much to the interview questions, but political environments, I feel like that is so toxic. Cheers.

Stacy London
See ya culture. Cya. Cover your ass. Like, I sent you that email. And, you know, just like send emails to document what you said, even though you should just be able to have conversation,

Ryan Burgess
you should be able to have a candid conversation and you know, say something direct to someone and trust it, hey, I'm just telling you this directly. I'm not saying this shit behind your back. I'm literally telling you, like face to face. That's how it's gonna be. But I feel like a lot of times I've been in it where it's like, get playing these like backdoor games, or you're like talking to someone to get them and shit. And it's just like, there's so much work and energy that goes into that. I don't want to part of it. It's so bad at that point.

Jem Young
But questions asked in the interview. This has come up before. But ask the person How long have they worked there? And why are they still there? That's like one of my solace. Yeah, that's my favorite. If they can't come up with a good answer, then why? Hey, why did that person even get in the room like send the person who's enthusiastic about working, they're not just some random person you pick from a hat. But to you should have a reason. Like be be deliberate in all your actions. And if you can't come up with a reason why you sell the company then like, why are you still there? That's, that's not a good time.

Stacy London
A good question, I think for, like you're saying like a culture of learning. Ask them how they define mentorship. And so it's like, instead of being like, Oh, do you have you know, do do work good with junior engineers or whatever? And they'll be like, yeah, instead of asking that, like, yes or no answer, ask a question that requires them to define, define and have them explain what that looks like. They're their company.

Ryan Burgess
It's a great way to work. I mean, you can ask about work life balance, but I kind of feel like that one. When you ask it. There. Everyone's kind of trained to be like, oh, yeah, we have good work life balance, and you don't really get to the root of it. I think sometimes you can ask, like, as an engineer, you might ask, like, when pushes go out? You know, is there on call, like, how does that work? And almost just like ask as interest not so much that you're digging into like work life balance, but you can kind of piece some of those types of things together to understand what the hours are like.

Stacy London
This is a good question. I think that's like, a sub question that gets at that is like, how do you decide what not to do in a given quarter? Or a month? Or

Ryan Burgess
organization? Yeah, like when we question

Stacy London
When was the last time you took something off the priorities and why? And it gives you insight into saying like, they're just like, No, we never do ship ship.

Ryan Burgess
Ever, like everything needs to get done. I love that question. cuz I think yeah, depending on how you prioritize and make sure that I mean, as an engineer, I want to work on the utmost highest priority work. I don't want to be working on something that's really useless to the business. And so I feel like you need to learn how to prioritize and cut things. And if a company can't do that, that's worrisome. And how do they get all the work done? Yeah. They overworked? Yeah, exactly.

Jem Young
On that one. The bad sign is if the CEO is like, as a salesman, that the quarter it's the head of the business, if they're pushing things, and engineers have to scramble to keep up because they're selling a feature that they don't have yet. And then the engineers have to say, See, he's nodding vigorously, to like make up for that. That shortfall that they didn't have before, like unexpected feature sets, things like that. That's a negative culture, because it means like, the CEO, or the sea levels don't respect the engineering work. They don't respect product. They're just like sales, sales, sales, sales. That never turns

Ryan Burgess
out well, all right. I think that also even speaks to any of the leadership or managers anything estimating for you think that always really bothers me. And even though, I'm an engineer, and I can have a rough idea of the estimates, I find it really difficult for me to say, Hey, Jem Marrs I think this will take a week, you understand that more than I do? Because you're close to the code more. And so I don't want to volunteer and estimate for you. And I, I've been on the other end of it, where my engineering manager would just like, be like, yeah, that's easy. We'll do that in a couple weeks. And it's really like, off base. And anytime you hear someone say, that's easy, you should question. Quick and Dirty.

Augustus Yuan
No, I 100%. Agree, it kind of shows like a really lack of trust in the people who are helping build the product. And that's kind of frightening and sad. So I've also

Ryan Burgess
been asked, this is actually questions that I've been asked when I'm interviewing people, is how do we refactor? Or how do we prioritize cleaning up code? And how do we value scalable code? I think that's a really good question. I really do is like, what's the philosophy on that? How do you plan for that and make sure that there is time for that? Because you, you know, we're constantly trying to ship and you want to ship quickly. But at the same time, we know that if you're constantly just shipping, you know, half assed code that's going to bite us in the ass in the long run. And I think that you can learn a lot from a company on that, too,

Jem Young
is a hard one. This isn't for everybody. But if you have an executive, so C level, I've once asked a few times, what do you do if you have a moral conflict with a product that you need to build? So like someone comes to you and says, like, we'll give you $10 million to build this product, but you find it morally questionable? Say it's like, I don't spying software, something like that? What do you do in that situation? Like, where? Where does your morals live? Where's the business? And I always find that like an enlightening question, because one, nobody expects it. It's a hard question to answer. It, like really makes you examine, like how they think about things. But if they're like, blah, blah, blah, hand wavy, blah, blah, blah, sales, you know, we'll fix it later, like what become good people in 20 years, when we're rich, that's like a negative sign to me that builders do anything to make more money, which includes like stepping on you and anybody else, they need to get to, like, keep the company going.

Ryan Burgess
Also their users, I think at the heart of this is like, I want to find a company that cares about their users. It's like people are typically in pain for whatever product that you're creating. And at the end of the day, making money is great. Like, that's good for the business. But they should also really care about the user. And I think, I don't know what the right questions are. I think there are questions that you can ask that even what you said, Jem, that will be really helpful to learn that, but I think that's really important is like thinking about, you know, will you cut a corner to make more money, but it hurts your user? How does the person perceive that? What does the company think of that?

Augustus Yuan
Yeah, actually, I was thinking kind of a question that kind of mold so soon, it's, I think a question you could ask probably would be, how would your company respond to like a feature that went out? And there was wide negative user feedback? Like, how would you what's like the, what's the process of response for that? Something?

Ryan Burgess
Are you also willing to cut the feature too, because I've worked at companies where the feature was fundamentally wrong, and the users hated it. But I've also heard the answer. Oh, we spent so much engineering efforts. Yes. And to me, that's a good question actually is like, yeah, what happens if you create a bad feature? And you've spent, you know, half a year or a year of engineering resources building it? What do you do? Do you rip that out? Or do you you know, you cut your losses and move on? Or do you try and keep that feature? Because there was so much effort put into it? Maintenance costs money.

Jem Young
If you want to sound super, super smart. You can be like, what do you do with the the sunk costs on a product that is like not doing well or it's just not gonna ship? Love that?

Ryan Burgess
Okay, we've talked to About some unhealthy things that kind of come up. What can you do to help improve an unhealthy culture from a personal standpoint, but also maybe as a team? What are some ways that you think can actually improve an unhealthy culture?

Stacy London
This one is kind of a cool one that is at Atlassian. They we have was tried our chat tool, there is someone created something called a nudge bot. And if you if when you're typing some message to somebody, and let's say use the word like, Hey, guys, what do you think about blah, blah, blah? It'll be like, Did you mean team instead of guys. So I try and help you realize that your the words that you use might be exclusionary or make people feel excluded. And some people hate this bot? There's lots of there's lots of internal debate about this bot. But in some ways, I think it's kind of cool, because people are like, Oh, I didn't realize I say that, or I use that that terminology. So having a little robot help help you create a better culture is kind of kind of cool.

Ryan Burgess
I like it, too, because you're cool. You're putting the blame on a bot? It's not something is Yeah, exactly a linter. Like, we all joke about that.

Augustus Yuan
Is that an in house thing? Or is it should be should honestly open source,

Stacy London
I will look into that

Augustus Yuan
I do not know, make it a stash plugin, and then on code reviews

Mars Jullian
are on GitHub Do you

Augustus Yuan
know, that's awesome.

Ryan Burgess
I think fundamentally, to really change a company's culture, it has to come down from the leadership, I think, individuals, you can impact your team and help shape the culture, but it for the entire company to shift from like a really bad culture or unhealthy culture. It's going to take a lot, and it really needs come from that leadership. I think it can help. But as an individual, I think of like, How can I help encourage others? How can I give kudos to someone or even like Stacy said, avoid using terms or maybe, you know, hint at others to maybe not use terms that make people feel left out,

Augustus Yuan
I also completely agree, like, there needs to be some kind of support from the management side to kind of help with this. One thing, actually, like we had a podcast about onboarding and how Evernotes onboarding was bad, you know, but it could be improved. And actually, during my one on ones, I kind of brought up some things with like my manager about how we can improve it. And so really having him kind of support that. And then being and essentially, like, kind of helping push that on throughout the team was like, very, very helpful. So yeah, definitely having like a manager like by your side, but then also putting, like showing like you're willing to put, like some of the effort into like, helping, like, guide or set the tone of what kind of good culture it looks like, is pretty helpful is at least a start. I don't

Ryan Burgess
like that. So you're providing feedback. But you're also saying I'm willing to help. Yeah, too. It's not I'm not just throwing this out leadership. It's like, Hey, I see a problem. I'm letting you know, what can I do to help?

Jem Young
Right? That's a great, that's a great, yeah. Thanks, guys. I was here see everybody's answers because I didn't general, if you're starting a company, it's like an individual contributor, I don't know if you can change the culture. It really is. Yeah, I

Mars Jullian
just think that on an individual level, it's just so hard to change something that you are inherently part of, if that makes any sense. So without any like, buy in, or you know, investment from the higher ups, like you guys are saying you do need to get buy in from higher up and have it kind of trickle down, you are already a product of the system and you're stuck in the system. And I'm going to use the word toxic system, because it really touched me. And I was once working at a company where the system was was somewhat toxic, that there really was no cheers. There really was no way out of it as an individual. And if you already have a system that's not listening to you, or that is, you know, it is inherently unhealthy. And it's imposing these processes on you that just aren't working. I just I don't see a way out of that at all. And I don't know if there's a better it's very hard to articulate. Because until you're stuck in it, you're like, Oh, well, I'm stuck in it. There's there's just no way out. At what

Ryan Burgess
point do you realize, I need to just say cut my losses and leaf

Jem Young
so that that's the answer. And like Mars, you answer the question, that, in my opinion, that's where you can change in a healthy culture is you leave, and you give an honest exit interview like about why you're leaving, you take your talents elsewhere. So like, I'm not working here. It's not because of money. It's because of X, X and X. Yeah, you need to fix it. And that's kind of the only way just leaving for better companies is the other way. But what I've seen is a lot of the management when in unhealthy culture, when people leave, they attribute to like, oh, they wanted more money. Oh, they wanted more vacation time, oh, this and this and they just kind of keep living in their fantasy worlds rather than actually, no, this is our problem. And if enough people say something, then maybe you can change but honestly, leaving is probably the best bet. I hate to actually Don't hate the Uber is a great example that you can't tell me for 1015 years, however long it has been around, but nobody said anything. It's just people left. But they probably didn't say like, it's because of like, this type of culture and these types of things, if you have hearts left are a better company or a different company. But had there not been outside influence, Uber would not have changed. So I

Ryan Burgess
think they are public things that came out, like I think if it wasn't publicized, then they would have swept it under the rug moved on doesn't matter, that person left, they're gone. Well, yeah, we'll just count what they say.

Jem Young
I mean, everybody in this room probably knows at least one person that's worked at Uber, because we all live in San Francisco. And they're probably not there anymore. But they probably have very negative things to say. But they probably may not say anything on the way out, because why would they like you generally don't burn bridges. But that's the only way to get change affected. But

Mars Jullian
I think also even if you did, and this has happened to me before, if you leave a company, and you do give candid feedback about the culture, the culture is already set up in such a way that they're going to make excuses for why you left. So you're like, honestly, I'm leaving. Because the opportunities, the challenges here, you know, all of that stuff is no longer a fit for me, and you know, XY and Z. And then you leave, and they make these grandiose statements. someone's like, Well, why are people leaving so often? Like, well, you know, we just don't have the opportunities for them anymore. And they're going to bear companies and like, Well, okay, read between the lines here. It's, yeah, so I mean, even if people are leaving, and it's not made public, I still think that an healthy companies in terms of culture will make excuses for those people leaving and like with Uber, I think until you get outside influence on it, or even top down, you know, from the sea level, if they were to notice, it's not going to change very quickly.

Ryan Burgess
What happens if the sea level is the problem?

Augustus Yuan
Can you clarify that? Sea level CEO, CEO,

Ryan Burgess
sea level that guy See, sometimes that can be the problem? What do you do at that point?

Stacy London
You let the tide go out?

Augustus Yuan
Love it. Yeah. Totally sorry.

Mars Jullian
Too much wine for Stacy.

Ryan Burgess
I like it all wine. I mean, okay, let's say, company has problems with their C level suite, they get rid of that, and then bring in new leadership. Can the culture change,

Stacy London
I think they have to do more than just remove the C level group, they have to remove everyone that were accomplices. And that's maybe not just sea level, that's management chain, people that were involved in it so that the, the remnants of that culture are kind of removed completely. And I think that's really hard.

Ryan Burgess
That is hard, because you still it's still a business and like you still are having to ship something, you're still having to hold your stakeholders, everything like that. And if you get rid of the in half the company, that could be really difficult. Yeah,

Mars Jullian
yeah, at that point, I think it's a stomach. And I mean, I mean, Ryan hit, I think the nail on the head is that the company still wants to put out new products, not a lot of companies are going to take the time to like, okay, you know, what, we're going to stop developing things for maybe a couple months, and we're gonna fix this problem, because they all want to get new features out all the time in order to continue making money, which I don't think is wrong. No, I'm like, I think that's just the reality of like, that's what we are, you know, that's what companies do. That's how they make money.

Jem Young
I think I've said this before, but any company that has like, a VP of diversity, or some some title like that, to me is an unhealthy culture. Because why should you have to dictate that from top down, you should hire people that have an eye for diversity that haven't hired for like, hiring women or people of color, you should have to like, did take that from the top like, it's, I don't know, like, it doesn't make sense that the CEO has to be like, Hey, you have like nothing but white dudes on your team, you should hire somebody else. You shouldn't have to tell someone that it's just, I don't know, it's just logic to me that you don't do that. So any company like right there, that's like, Hey, I'm the VP of diversity. I'm like, Okay, what's wrong with your company, that you need this person in charge to tell people how to hire, like, diversity is important.

Augustus Yuan
I'm actually kind of curious about that. Because I feel kind of what we talked about, it's very hard to change the culture. And perhaps, let's say, if I was a CEO, and I came in, and I saw a very, very unhealthy culture, it's might be really hard for me to kind of like, change that culture, like by myself. So it might, I don't know, one of the reasonings bringing a VP of diversity is to like, kind of help change that. I know, I totally agree. Like, I think from my outside perspective, you would see that and say, Oh, why do they need this person to do that? If they didn't have this all figured out? But maybe they're trying to change that? That that's, that was just my, my Oh, no, no, I think perception of that, you know, good

Ryan Burgess
devil's advocate, there's like, that could be a way whether right or wrong, at least that companies identified, there's a problem. And I don't know if that solves it, but at least they're saying we need to do something and putting someone in charge of this. Maybe not calling it that maybe that's a problem.

Augustus Yuan
That's fair. Or maybe it should be like the head of people should be kind of leading that effort. Maybe that's

Jem Young
I'm very cynical in general. Like I believe People will probably do the wrong thing if you have an opportunity. But if you brought in VP of diversity, whatever, to fix your culture, then it's already too late at that point, the best you can do at that point, it's like fire a lot of management to fix the problem. If they're an issue. That's why not they're gonna we're actually I'll click on over. That's why I don't believe Ubers culture change, because it's like, yeah, they fired some token people. But this, there's 15,000 people work there, you're telling me it was these two people that top that made these decisions that led to this culture? No, it was a lot of people that were not accountable. And you're gonna see like, oh, we fired, we fired the intern and this sea level, problem solved for turning it around. Like, that's not the way things work. And especially large corporation, like hiring a VP of diversity. Hiring gem is like, the black. Black guy, so we're good now for diversity box. Yeah, it's not like that's, that's not the same as like actually addressing the culture problem.

Mars Jullian
Want to be devil's advocate to that, though, I do agree that hiring the diversity hire as like, Oh, you are the diversity hire is not a good thing. However, I will say that I did have a good experience with the company I previously worked out where we weren't doing the diversity hire, but we were recognizing that we had a problem and diversity. So as opposed to, oh, we're just gonna hire these three women, we're instead going to reassess our interview process to start bringing in a more diverse, interesting, the way you do that is actually Yeah, and I know that those efforts are still continuing there. And actually, they're being championed by one of my really, really close friends. And she's doing an amazing job. But I think that that's the way you do it is like you you take, you take diversity out of the equation for the sake of diversity, and you start looking at the processes that are enabling the monoculture, or the lack of diversity at your company overall. And I think that it takes it takes a somewhat open minded group of people to already recognize that not everyone has the same experience. And the same process doesn't work for everyone. And that's, you know, sometimes in tech, we all kind of prescribed the same interview process. And that's how we get, you know, same people at the tech, when we should really be rethinking and flipping interviewing on its head, in a sense to

Stacy London
like, kind of tie the two things that we just brought up together, in Atlassian, has a head of diversity inclusion, Aubrey and the founders are very outspoken about LGBT issues and being very open to say like, we all people are welcome. We are a team and build teams that, you know, include everybody. And so from that level, from a top level down, I think it's always been very much that culture set they brought in her and I think one of the things she did that was really cool. She's doing stuff with the interview processes to help make sure that they are interviewing for people that weed out people that might be exclusionary or crafting them to have an extra step in the interview process to talk about, like, address those kinds of issues. And so she's helping shift some of the things to make it more inclusive and open it up to more diverse candidates. And that's the kind of stuff I think is cool. So she might be an example where I think like, I can't speak for the whole company. Atlassian is a big company, but the culture was set top down to be pretty open and inclusive. And then they brought her into, like, make it even more of a thing.

Ryan Burgess
I think it's, it's good to have that. And I think also in companies, I think we need to be having these conversations in general, it's an uncomfortable conversation, it really is. And I feel like you should all be okay with having those uncomfortable conversations in order to really help build a great culture, and you learn from each other. And then also just being I think, when the hiring aspect or looking for looking for people to join the team is being aware of your own bias. I think that's one that is really important. Because we all you know, we tend to like look for people that are like us, and just being aware of that can really help open up the pool for other people that may not be like us, and then that's helping to hire more diversity.

Jem Young
We are not to I think we're like pinging one point specifically, but so like the National sympathy, simple symphony, like organization, they were like, Hey, why are like 90% of people in orchestras, dudes. So what they did is they they insert a blind interview where you just you rehearse or you performed before, like the panel, but there's a curtain up and they can't see what happened. They can't see who you are. And these are people that like they cared about diversity of Southworth, but they found that when they interviewed that panel, there's the blonde judge, women increase by 40% of hires, which is like, we are biased, we are 100% bias, and sometimes there's nothing to do about it. acknowledging those biases is important. And that's like the first step.

Ryan Burgess
Yeah, just just funny.

Mars Jullian
thing happened recently to the open source community didn't IT and software engineering where they kind of obfuscated the usernames of GitHub contributors to in pull requests and all of a sudden, like, maybe not the exact same number but like, you know, a surprisingly high number of Women pull requests were accepted to a lot of open source projects. And I think that's interesting. Because I'm we like to think that we're on bias. But I mean, inherently we are and we can be self aware enough to recognize it. But it's not going to change the way we make our decisions necessarily. But a lot of these tools come like the nudge bot really kind of come along and help. And it's like little things along the way that are helping to open it up. In a sense, it doesn't get rid of the bias. I don't think that's, you know, that's too aspirational. But but it does open it up. And it does introduce more diversity to the system as a whole. I mean, be it the orchestra or you know, tech itself.

Stacy London
I think that's, I'll confirm this with Aviva. I think in some of the team she has removed, like the code challenges, like submissions, remove the name from them, so that they're assessed based on just like the code. And that shifted, what people's like, more more women started making it. That's amazing. Just fascinating. Unconscious bias. Yeah.

Jem Young
And that's a company like, from top down, you're all aware of being diverse and like not being biased, and people are still buying. That's yeah, that's really interesting.

Ryan Burgess
Before our picks, I wanted to get a sense that since this is like, talk about front end and coding and everything, how do we help better culture for actually like coding in general, whether it be in pull requests, things is just maybe like one or two points from everyone to like, what can you do to help foster a better culture for other engineers,

Jem Young
I would say what I said, like, lead by example, just because like the culture is like, hey, it's people's job to like, pick apart your PRs and find, like, every little thing that make you feel bad, like, don't be that way. Just be like, hey, you know, like, right, friendly pull requests or things like that, just like, hey, you know, you could fix this or things like that. I find that's a big change. But like, mostly, yeah, be the change. You want to see it cliche. But like, Yeah, seriously, like, it's one thing to complain, and like, I'm gonna leave, which we all said, it's kind of our standard way of dealing with it. But if you're like, I'm not gonna leave, I'm gonna fix this, like, be the good person. And that when you're hiring, like, hire correctly, be like this, this person is like, more qualified than this person. I don't know. Yeah, just be the better person. And hopefully, that propagates outward.

Ryan Burgess
I think also in like, going to the PR aspect of like, instead of just like, hammering on the comments, go to the person's desk and like, talk through that problem is, you know, sometimes that can actually help a lot. It's hard to really, like read someone's perception in, in text, like on Slack or email, or in a PR, and going up to that person and just saying, Hey, I think there's some ways that we can improve this code, and approaching it in that like, nice, friendly way. And saying, Hey, I have time, like, let's sit down and go through this, I think can also help, it's fine to comment on pull requests, like, I think that is really great. But if you feel that there's a lot that needs to be done, rather than bombarding with a bunch of comments, I think that's one way that I would say, just get up, go go to your desks or their your teammates desk and talk through it.

Mars Jullian
I don't know. I mean, I think I mean, that's, that's a really good point. And I also think that sometimes, at least, this is something that really helps for me is I think, it is very hard and aspirational, to be able to do that every moment of every single day. And I mean, as a software as we are our bias or our frustrations with people we work with, or people we interview with, or people, other people in the industry, whatever it is, to me sometimes you just kind of need to, like, take a step back. And I think our industry in our tech industry and everyone in it is always like oh my gosh, go go go, you know, like ship, ship ship, like and things need to be out now. Actually, no, they need to go yesterday. It's just to recognize that you know what, like, it's okay, things don't need to get out now. And in order to be continued to be open minded to everyone that we're surrounded with. And also to challenge ourselves to surround ourselves with people that challenge us, it is important to just like, slow down a little bit. And I know that sounds very zen and a little bit hand wavy, but I found that something that really, really works for me is to just like, slow down a little and just be open to new things. And, you know, continue to be humble and recognize that you don't know all the answers. And I mean, neither does everyone else. But there's still something to learn from the person who sits next to you.

Ryan Burgess
I love that. I think so. Yeah, well

Stacy London
be the change you seek. You know, like, it's not it's cliche, it's not cliche. It's it's if your kind kindness comes back and pays you back, there is a karma to that. And so there's sort of a stereotype about developers being cranky man in a basement whatever, like, like you don't you don't have to be that and I don't know why that continues to stick but I choose to not be that I don't want to be that I don't want to be cranky the person that's always complaining about something. So I try to like in pull requests be celebratory to be kind to say, Great job like that was that was like the good This was really good work, to check in on people outside of, of things just to be like, Hey, how are things going and especially with junior devs, or people that you're you're kind of trying to mentor even though it's not an official mentorship, that kind of thing. Like, that kind of stuff just changes the atmosphere of the team that you're on, and hopefully for the better. So that's something that I try and do

Ryan Burgess
you build trust? And yeah, I don't even think it necessarily needs to be with juniors, I get what you're saying. I think it is everyone is like, I expect a senior engineer to go like to another senior senior engineer and say, I was awesome pull requests or whatever. It's just like, giving some positive feedback is very useful.

Mars Jullian
Yeah, word you didn't use but I think is like, kind of encapsulates perfectly what you're saying is just empathy. Yeah. having empathy with the people that you work with. And it's kind of like, you know, be the change, you want to see or treat people the way you want to be treated all that stuff. But it really just comes down to empathy overall,

Augustus Yuan
with the cliches like actually one of my mottos is, if you assume the best in people, you get the best in people. So yeah, I actually really liked the point that Stacey made, where she's like, in positing code reviews, like adding positive comments is actually like, really, really awesome. Like, it shows like, it's very encouraging uplifting, it's really easy to overlook those kinds of things. So I totally thought it was a really great suggestion. And then I also think, like, just getting someone who is Hi, I still kind of believe from an icy roll or even like, if you're a new hire, it's really hard to kind of change, toxic culture.

Mars Jullian
We have to finish.

Augustus Yuan
Yeah, that's true. So. So it really helps to get someone who's been in the company for a long time where there's a little more senior to kind of like help you support you and like kind of back you up. And then we kind of talked about biases, like really just calling out those biases, I think is really important too. Because, like everyone has said like, like a lot of us aren't aware of our own biases. Like we say, we're not that but it's like we just unconsciously aren't aware of it. So helping call it out, like, brings more awareness to it.

Ryan Burgess
Also. Alright, as we wrap up the episode, we like to choose picks that we find interesting, we'd like to share with our listeners, let's go around the table and share what we have for this episode. Augustus. We'll start

Augustus Yuan
off yeah, sure. So I have two pigs. One is this thing called urine pixels, where you see, this guy just kind of made this cute little web app, which saves to like local storage. And every day, you can put how you're feeling for that day, you can put like, happy like, just five ranges of happy, sad. And it's like cool to see like kind of a visualization of your mood swings,

Ryan Burgess
kind of like get hubs like committee. Yeah,

Augustus Yuan
it's like a contributor. Yeah, contribution chart. And you can just get like a little mini visualization. And I think that kind of, you know, with all this talk of, like, how happy are you at like your company like, this is like a really good way to visualize. So So unfortunately, on this computer, I didn't do it on my other computer. I do like I was really sick for like, a whole weekend. I can see like this a week of like, All right, so then, yeah, it's like, Oh, my God, I feel terrible. But yeah, digital bullet journal. Mm hmm. So it's Yeah, I thought it was really cute. So. And then my second pick, is this android app called Haven. It was made by Edward Snowden actually. And it's basically you can take an Android device and make it like a surveillance camera. So what it does is you just run it, and you leave it somewhere. And like, it can be like in a drawer or like, just somewhere and then it like, has a countdown 321. And then after that, it uses your webcam to kind of detect a bunch of different things like light sound. And then once it like, detects that, it will, like record it. And it has like, play encryption to send to like a secure messaging platform. So it's basically like a little mini camera. So I thought was pretty cool. Interesting. See, what

Stacy London
do you have for us? Alright, two picks. The first one is a site called carbon.now.sh is basically just a way to create and share your source code in an image. So it's easier to share stuff, like snippets on Twitter, like here's, it's really beautifully formatted and whatever. And then I found out that it's from a small company out of Madison called Dawn labs in Wisconsin, so I have to shout out to my old home state. So that's my first pick. Second pick is a song called sunder by Nathan fake and I think I've picked one of his songs before, but this is a new one that just came out influences of like effects twin, an orbital, it was recorded in one take. So like just not caring about editing, which I always find fascinating with electronic music. So that's my music

Ryan Burgess
thing. That's very cool. Mars already have for us.

Mars Jullian
The first pick, I have the TV show, I just discovered the Grand Tour, which I find hilarious. I didn't realize how much British humor I was missing in my life. But now that I know I'm never gonna stop watching it. So for those of you who don't know what it is, it's kind of a spin off of Top Gear on amazon prime. So if you're looking for something that's kind of funny and want to learn about cars, maybe tangentially to the show, this is the show for you. My second pick is actually the noun project, which is something that's been out for a while which has a bunch of open source icon So you can use for different presentations and articles and what have you. But what I actually fell more in love with them this week about was that their pro subscription actually, you can insert now, icons directly into Google Drive Google Slides. And you can insert them in all sorts of colors and sizes and formats. And also they have different apps for like Microsoft apps and PowerPoint and also iOS or I guess Mac. So it really helps to either simplify what you're saying in your slides or to enhance what you're saying in your slides and decrease a little bit.

Jem Young
My first pick is uphill cough. It's a conference in Switzerland that will be speaking there in April. Especially a lot of fun. In for my valley silicon pick, that is the pick where I picked something outrageously expensive that only things in Silicon Valley can exist are people too much money. My pick this week is Bitcoin. Bitcoin is as of now about 6500 down. I know a lot of people especially in Silicon Valley invested in at like 19,000 morsels. Yeah, they I know people that like cashed out a lot of money getting a Bitcoin without realizing you're just gambling, you're just speculating. It is now almost back to where it started. A few months ago, so that's my pick. Don't gamble. You can't afford to lose

Augustus Yuan
and get reward to train is that was going back? Yeah. Now's your chance. Yeah.

Ryan Burgess
All right. Well, I have two picks. One, I think Mars is upset that I stole but no, it's a great show. It's a new Netflix Original called altered carbon. It's just amazing show. I'm not done it yet. I believe I'm on episode six or seven. So good. I highly recommend going and checking that out.

Mars Jullian
Can I add something to that? Really? Absolutely. If you are a fan of any kind of sci fi like dollhouse, the show dollhouse it actually has to have the act. Well, it has an actress and an actor from dollhouse. So if you love that, those types of shows like you know, Firefly esque. This is the show

Ryan Burgess
for you. And all hosts only made it to like season two. Yeah.

Mars Jullian
I thought it was a great promise.

Ryan Burgess
Yeah. All right. No, no, no, no, it was,

Mars Jullian
it was a good premise. So they are they are actually pulling actors and actresses from this genre. That's like cult, yeah, like genre. And I think that's actually, you know, kudos to them. And so

Ryan Burgess
well done. I honestly, it's like, I'm really impressed with like, everything about it, the acting, the just the scenery that's created is pretty impressive. So I highly recommend it. My next pick is a upcoming conference that's in Park City, which I mean, I LOVE Park City, Utah. It's really beautiful, and also has one of my favorite whiskies, which I think Brian Holtz has really turned us on to his high West, the upcoming conference in October is called framework Summit. We're really excited about it. I feel like we've all been to conferences where there's, you know, specific, like, Gemini just went to an angular conference, there's always like, react conference will this is all the frameworks, and then we're really going to get in depth. And I think that would be really interesting. There's a lot of great communities around each framework. And now we're going to get everyone in the same room and discussing the framework. So I'm really excited for that one. We should have a

Mars Jullian
live battle of the frameworks. Yes. Oh, no, it'd

Ryan Burgess
be amazing. Oh, that's

Mars Jullian
gonna look like

Ryan Burgess
yeah, that would be very good. That'd be a great debate.

Augustus Yuan
App JavaScript as the keyword

Ryan Burgess
like get us in trouble. Well, thank you all for listening today's episode make sure to subscribe to us on front end Happy Hour podcast, wherever you can get your podcast whether it be iTunes overcast, what does everyone use nowadays breaker breaker is a good one only available on iOS but so good one. Yeah, just you know, just follow us and follow us on Twitter at front end. Ah, any last words? Any toxic less were lost.