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The HubSpot Culture Code [slides]
- sbachman 6y agoDharmesh, many in this thread have criticized HubSpot's culture because of your company's handling of Dan Lyons and his book. I obtained the FBI's redacted report following its investigation into your company. The full PDF is available here: https://www.samueljscott.com/2018/12/19/hubspot-fbi-report/ https://www.samueljscott.com/2018/12/19/hubspot-fbi-report/ HubSpot has always stated that the company believes in transparency. But HubSpot has never directly and specifically addressed the serious, material allegations in Lyons' book and has never disclosed exactly what the mentioned executives — among others — may have done regarding his book. So, I ask you: Will HubSpot grant me, for my column for The Drum, a one-hour interview with you, Brian Halligan, and the chair of your board of directors? Completely recorded and on the record and with nothing off-limits.
- dshah 6y agoThe product I'm most proud of having worked on. Hundreds of hours invested for over a decade. Yes, it's a slide deck -- but think of it as a template. Shared with the community with love.
- randrews543 6y agoThank you for sharing this! Love the focus on culture and community that HubSpot has built
- chachachoney 6y agoCalling this love, especially given the documented history of your company, is gaslighting, please stop.
- ciarannolan 6y agoThanks for saying this. There's the idealized culture that companies put in cute little slide decks and share online. There's also the actual culture inside these companies where, for example, the FBI opens an investigation into company executives for "multiple failed attempts to manipulate and extort people” to prevent them from reporting on its culture. [1] I'd be more interested in a deck on the latter, frankly, or some insight from HubSpot leadership as to what's changed culturally since then. [1] [PDF] https://www.samueljscott.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/12/hubspot-FBI-report.pdf https://www.samueljscott.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/12/hubs...
- noir_lord 6y agoI guess I'm not the target, after about 15 slides my brain was ringing the "Nothing interesting in any of this" bell. Also do you still have the same management who went in for extortion to cover up a book that told the truth...
- seneca 6y agoSoftware companies that claim they "Work to make a Difference" strike me as cultish and are an immediate turn off. I work for a living, I volunteer and work in my community to make a difference.
- saurik 6y agoAll other things being equal, isn't it better to work for a company that does something you think helps the world as opposed to one that you think is harmful or even merely neutral?
- ironmagma 6y agoYes, but the companies most vocal about how they are good for the world are so often doing so out of need to compensate for reality.
- huhtenberg 6y agoThings won't be equal though. Evil corps' pay and benefits are usually way better, simply because that's how they attract otherwise hesitant people in the first place.
- ignoramous 6y agoYou won't be the only to raise eyebrows at such messaging coming from HubSpot, see "My year in startup hell": https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11369632 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11369632
- lwigo 6y agoBut did you try "harmonizing work and life" like the deck says?
- kvorshk 6y agoNo such thing. Just a catch phrase man.
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- l0rn 6y agoI worked at several companies claiming to be about change and mission and all that. To me new coating to the same corporate shit. Same injustices, same corporate frustration, but with different lingo. I recognized a lot of the things dan lyon wrote about hubspot in "Disrupted"
- ChrisMarshallNY 6y agoThat's nice. Thanks for sharing it. Expect loads of cynicism. I've found that talking about having Principles and Integrity in business and professional endeavors, usually results in being accused of "virtue signaling," which is ridiculous, as we are only talking about simple, basic, realistic human values; not some kind of Mother Theresa code. That said, it is extremely easy to let a focus on "culture" turn into a toxic monoculture. It's always easier to exclude those that deviate from the norm, than it is to adapt to them.
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- dshah 6y agoThanks for the warning. I hear you. My direct experience is that there will be some that will be cynical -- that's OK. A big lesson for me personally is that working on culture as a "product" is very useful. Collect customer feedback. Identify bugs. Categorize some things as "works as designed". Be transparent with your customers. And, of course, iterate, iterate, iterate.
- wilt 6y agoI always give the same feedback for this type of bs. Actions speak louder than words. If you have to tell people how great a company's culture is it clearly isn't.
- martin_a 6y ago> Collect customer feedback. Identify bugs. Categorize some things as "works as designed". Be transparent with your customers. Sounds like "doing business" to me. I have a professional relationship with the company I'm working for and that's it. Don't need to add some "feel good" fluff which is just hidden marketing after all.
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- ciarannolan 6y ago
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- JarlUlvi 6y agoJudging from their website, they view you as the product, and are serving up all your info to Google. Lots of talk, but just that. Talk.
- Kharvok 6y agoThere's literally an entire book on how this is all bullshit
- k__ 6y agoWhat's it called?
- rozab 6y agohttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disrupted:_My_Misadventure_in_the_Start_Up_Bubble https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disrupted:_My_Misadventure_in_...
- midrus 6y agoOne of my favourite books. So fun. I read it at the same time than a few other coworkers and, sadly, we found ourselves in a very similar environment. From that point on we were just laughing around at every situation that resembled situations from this book. Then we all left for our own health's sake.
- danjac 6y ago> FBI documents accessed by journalists via a freedom of information request revealed that HubSpot attempted "multiple failed attempts to manipulate and extort people” with the intention of stopping the book's publication. Ouch.
- SN76477 6y agoIm HubSpot certified. They state that culture exists in all companies, but not all companies make a record of it. Of course no one can stick to it all of the time, but it sets a baseline expectation. I believe it is important in the age of Slack and Email at the dinner table with family that expectations of team members are set upfront.
- gk1 6y agoWorth noting the book is from 2016. Some times it takes a punch in the gut to make a change, but that change is possible. See: Uber after they replaced their CEO. I have no idea how things look at HS now, but I can't imagine it's exactly as bad as it was four years ago.
- nomadrat 6y agoLove the product, but this deck... jeez. It's like all this companies that claim that you're in the family and then this family ask you to leave. I've seen too much places with "culture" when in reality it's a toxic as hell.
- kanox 6y agoIt's not a family, it's a workplace. If the company pretends otherwise it's better not to work there.
- dshah 6y agoI agree with you on that front. In earlier versions of the deck, we actually explicitly called out that we are NOT a family. We are a team with a common goal. You don't get to choose your family, but you do get to choose your team. h/t to Netflix for that original "team not a family".
- hitekker 6y agoWhy did you remove that call-out?
- dshah 6y agoCandidly, this year, because of the pandemic, we've come closer together as a group. Not quite a family -- but closer. Also, I needed to make room in the deck to articulate our position on diversity and inclusion.
- freewilly1040 6y ago> we've come closer together as a group Why are you confident that this feeling is shared by your employees?
- layoutIfNeeded 6y ago>articulate our position on diversity and inclusion I wonder what that position could be! Must be some revolutionarily fresh take on diversity™ and inclusion™ that no other tech company had espoused before. This is satire, right?
- kvorshk 6y agoI want to work at a company. I have a family. Let me work the job you want, pay me, and then let me go home. Im not your family. And most these places with "culture" are letting you know they are just bigots.
- offbynull 6y agoWho is this for? Are they using it to attract interns / new grads?
- dshah 6y agoFirst and foremost, it's for the ~4,000 people that work at HubSpot and who actually create the culture and live it day-to-day. Second, it's for those that want to better understand HubSpot and how we work. It may be because they're considering joining the company. Or becoming a customer. Or becoming a partner. Third, it's for the community of entrepreneurs that are building businesses. My hope is that it can be a useful example of how one company (that has done reasonably well) thought about culture -- and articulated it.
- chachachoney 6y agoIf your unarticulated fourth goal was to increase sales of this book: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disrupted:_My_Misadventure_in_the_Start_Up_Bubble https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disrupted:_My_Misadventure_i... You've achieved it.
- layoutIfNeeded 6y agoMake a difference! Save the world! Do work that matters! Yay! Oh wait... it’s just some shitty CRM SaaS. I almost took it seriously. I pity those non-manager and non-engineer HubSpot employees who had to suffer through this presentation, because at least managers and engineers tend to be compensated generously.
- trynewideas 6y agoHaving worked there in an entry-level customer-facing position, it is very much a company that looks great from the top half because you're standing on the backs of the bottom half. Also it paid so far under the market on salaries for that role that even cashing out on options _years_ later didn't make up the difference.
- ainiriand 6y agoDisclaimer: my wife is a HubSpot employee. I can vouch for what the deck mentions. They conduct the business with love and care for the people in the company as well as the customers. The company puts a lot of care and dedication to make the people grow. They conduct themselves with care and appreciation for each other. I feel a bit jealous of how much this company values employees, I wish all companies were like this one. For what I see, this deck is not thin air. I see how it is fulfilled everyday in my wife, and I am personally grateful for this.
- _pmf_ 6y agoCreepy corporate newspeak.
- SavageBeast 6y agoCouldn't have said it better - your worlds are exactly what I was thinking.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- awsation 6y agoDan Lyons roasted them in his LinuxCon 2017 talk [1]. [1]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9gn5kwQaMFQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9gn5kwQaMFQ
- Androider 6y agoHubSpot? The company described as Office Space meets Scientology? The company that is famous for churning through new grads, the one with the fucked up culture an entire book was written about (Disrupted [1])? The one that FBI investigated because they manipulated and extorted people [2]? That HubSpot? Okay. [1] https://www.nytimes.com/2016/04/10/books/review/disrupted-by-dan-lyons.html https://www.nytimes.com/2016/04/10/books/review/disrupted-by... [2] https://www.samueljscott.com/2018/12/19/hubspot-fbi-report https://www.samueljscott.com/2018/12/19/hubspot-fbi-report
- scandox 6y agoOld World--------------------| New World--------------------| Me------------------------------- -----------------------------|-------------------------------|---------------------------------- Work to make a living | Work to make a difference | Nope [1] Follow explicit instructions | Chart the course | Depends on the role [2] Juggle work and life | Harmonize work and life | Sounds like: never stop working Commute into work | Connect to work from anywhere | Sounds like: never stop working Value amazing perks | Value amazing people | I like people, even unamazing ones I think only someone who has lost their sense of distinction between their work and their life can write these out as ideals. I.e. A startup founder. [1] I am not knocking making a difference, but that isn't the organizational imperative of any business. And it is a dangerous delusion to say it is. [2] I learnt a lot following orders at different times Edits: not sure I'm going to figure this tabulation out
- bigdict 6y agoDon't worry about tabulation, you got the content right. The slide deck is a PR piece aimed at tricking people into giving more of their lives to corporate interests.
- lqet 6y agoThere you go: Old World | New World | Me -----------------------------|-------------------------------|---------------------------------- Work to make a living | Work to make a difference | Nope [1] Follow explicit instructions | Chart the course | Depends on the role [2] Juggle work and life | Harmonize work and life | Sounds like: never stop working Commute into work | Connect to work from anywhere | Sounds like: never stop working Value amazing perks | Value amazing people | I like people, even unamazing ones [1] I am not knocking making a difference, but that isn't the organizational imperative of any business. And it is a dangerous delusion to say it is. [2] I learnt a lot following orders at different times
- cercatrova 6y ago
- MrPowers 6y agoThere are lots of different cultures and culture codes tend to emphasize the notion of "having a single culture". I am from New York and spend most of my time in Colombia. My English speaking New York personality and Spanish speaking Colombian personality have diverged quite significantly. I am a lot more indirect in Spanish. I'll rarely say "no" in Spanish for example. I'll always try to rephrase it as "yes, but we could also..." or "maybe we could...". The "we seek the truth and face facts" mentality works well for some cultures and not as great for others. I question the idea that a company should have a single culture. Might be better to aim to be a place where folks from a variety of cultures can collaborate.
- switch007 6y agoIMO "culture" when used by companies in this sense synthetic, fake. It's an invention. It's not meant to incorporate the cultures of employees: it's designed to help hire people who match their set of rules. They definitely want a single "culture".
- thinkr42 6y agoCompany "culture" always makes me a little skeptical, particularly when they're used for hiring decisions. I can't help but think it is just another way to discriminate against folks - I mean if you're saying some one isn't a culture fit what are you really saying about them? I get it if you're telegraphing that you just don't think they'll fit with you team, but having seen a lot of culture interviews in practice, they seem to be more socially acceptable code for "they're not gender conforming in profession, preference or practice", "they're not white", or what have you.
- switch007 6y ago> I can't help but think it is just another way to discriminate against folks I've had company owners admit this to me in private.
- kodah 6y agohttps://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disrupted:_My_Misadventure_in_the_Start_Up_Bubble https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disrupted:_My_Misadventure_i... > FBI documents accessed by journalists via a freedom of information request revealed that HubSpot attempted "multiple failed attempts to manipulate and extort people” with the intention of stopping the book's publication. > HubSpot executives considered the book "a financial threat to HubSpot, its share price, and the company’s future potential." I'm including this because this book was published in 2016. While I'm sure that HubSpot, its employees, and management may have learned some things about integrity and transparency since then, it's probably not enough to be writing this soap-boxy slide deck that announces that software built around their culture is going to solve their problems. On the other hand, I do believe software can shape and guide a culture but only if the culture is also at the pilot seat behind that software. That's to say, as long as the implementors of said software are not interested in developing a certain culture. Your employees will inevitably decide what software gets used and what software gets circumvented, the byproduct of which becomes what people colloquially refer to as culture. Culture comes from everywhere. When you recruit gay people, some of the values of gay people trickle into your company. When you recruit Black people, values of Black folks trickle in. When you recruit from universities those values trickle in. Each of those will shape your culture and those people are not monoliths either, they're mixes of many vibrant and dark experiences. The last part is key, recruiting is one aspect, but your company culture will continue to evolve and I see projects like this as software trying to drive culture (what the C-suite wants) instead of culture driving software that it maintains itself.
- layoutIfNeeded 6y agoOff topic: why is "Black" capitalized but "gay" is not? What's the rule here? I'm not a native English speaker, sorry!
- jerrycruncher 6y agoIt's a very recent development in the language; one of the ripples that radiated out from the George Floyd protests. The NY Times hosted a piece that explains the reasoning behind it: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/05/insider/capitalized-black.html https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/05/insider/capitalized-black...
- Fumtumi 6y agoHave worked in a company with open books: Its actually nothing i want anymore; There are many reasons why people earn a certain amount of money but being involved in that process in a company wide group setting was horrible annoying and didn't make me feel any better. And on my salary discussion, it was mentioned what extra perks i got from the company and that amounted to a certain amount which suddenly meant "Look we give you less money because we think it increases the social factor if we force you to be in our company on a day with everyone else to eat together etc. in a forced social setting, which was nice don't get me wrong, by you paying indirectly. And thats the issue, either the company is paying for it, or you don't do it. At the end of the day, you can easily find nice people you wana hang around with while you work in plenty of normal companies. Just make sure you find a good Team. And yes all those things they do it for 2 reasons: 1. keeping employees 2. getting new employees. Being a little bit of edgy might just be cheaper than paying head hunters and if you can take unlimited good people but you just don't get them, every person going through your door because of all this hipness, is one person more earning money for you.
- Tade0 6y agoJust recently I started working at the sixth place in my 9-year career(excluding side jobs), so I am somewhat cynical. Here's the main problem with having a culture code: It's often created and agreed upon by a clique of employees who've been working there for years - newcomers get a say inversely proportional to the number of employees they encountered on their first day. The best culture I participated in was in a project where we were all contractors in a freshly formed team - working remotely at that, with no code of conduct aside from maybe "don't be an asshole" - enforced by our leader, who was by the way great at her job. I'm still in touch with these people even though we were disbanded after six months and that was there years ago.
- commandlinefan 6y ago"We're super inclusive! We ooze inclusivity! We've never been non-inclusive ever, not even once!" This whole thing reminds me of a post I saw on reddit a few days ago: My 4-year-old: "Daddy, I didn't go peepee anywhere in the house. I just want you to know that."
- skeeter2020 6y agoMy old company's entire HR "manual": Recognizing that we are all here voluntarily, please use your best judgement.
- foolinaround 6y agoI stopped at "unlimited vacations ..." why not have "unlimited salaries" too -- one just writes themselves a check to what one thinks he deserves
- zackbloom 6y agoFor the record, I started my career at HubSpot and found it to be a genuinely very well ran place. It actually spoiled me a bit, I had no idea most places have bad PMs or don’t give engineers autonomy.
- dshah 6y agoGreat to hear from you Zack. Thanks for chiming in and sharing your positive experience. Hope all is well.
- burnthrow 6y agoCan you imagine having to sit through 128 slides of this.
- andygcook 6y agoDisclosure: I worked at HubSpot for two years and my first startup was aqcui-hired by them in 2013. Dharmesh Shah is also an investor in my current startup. tl;dr - Like any job, HubSpot was both a good and bad experience for me. Disrupted is 25% accurate, 65% embellished garbage, and 10% Dan's ego. The Culture Code is at its core aspirational marketing collateral, but it's more true than not true. So, funnily enough, I started around the same time as Dan Lyons and was also smuggled in through the back door by the founders. I read Disrupted and agree with parts of it, but also disagree with many other parts of it. My takeaway is that Dan had a huge ego and went in there knowing he'd write a negative, satirical book about his experience. Why the founders let a fox into the hen house is another discussion. Also, I haven't read this latest version of the Culture Code, but I have read previous versions and know the gist. My job at HubSpot was to actively try to "disrupt the company from within." The entire team for the first year was myself and one other person. We built a "startup" inside the company to mimic what an outside startup would do to try to kill HubSpot. We started with a Wordpress plugin called Leadin and it pretty much worked. With our plugin, Wordpress, and Mailchimp's (new at the time) marketing automation, you could replace all of HubSpot's two lowest plans for $80/month vs. $800/month. We also leveraged a touchless/freemium sales model, which was diametrically opposed to HubSpot's inside sales model at the time. That meant, we could underprice them by an order of magnitude with working unit economics (aka we didn't have to pay the CAC of a sales person.) As you can imagine when you're trying to destroy a company from the inside, you develop a healthy dose of skepticism for "the other side." I would even say that I had a near identical mindset to Dan Lyons that first year, thinking, "this is a cult" and "how does no one realizes how great all the stuff we're working on is while most of their stuff is crappy?" About a year in, I almost quit. But I really believed in what we were building and didn't want to give up on it just yet. So instead of writing every one off as stupid, I decided to get to actually know the rest of the company. And guess what? They were all genuinely good people who were just trying to do their jobs well to grow the company and help customers. Really, the problem was me and my pessimistic attitude. Once I took the time to actually build relationships, people started to want to work with our team more. We got more resources. There was an excitement about what we were working on by people who wanted to help it grow. It took some educational effort, but eventually the rest of the company started to understand product-led growth. My time there ended on both a high point where our product was launched on the stage at the company conference as HubSpot's new freemium marketing offering, but I was also severely burnt out from the internal politics I had to deal with to get there. I quit about two years to go work on my own company where I actually had real ownership. I think they've since learned how to help the "founder types" wrap up their personalities into their projects (which they don't actually own...) succeed more internally. There are choices I could have made differently that would have helped me succeed better too. But if I had to do it all over again, I would. I learned a ridiculous amount about how to actually run a company and made some good friends along the way. Like all companies, HubSpot has its flaws and makes trade-offs. But I can without a doubt say that it's genuinely a thoughtful company run by compassionate people who care about their employees and customers. Dharmesh Shah is also one of the highest-quality human beings I've had the privilege to get to know over the years. I'm positive he's reading every single comment in this thread, taking it to heart and is earnestly mulling it over.
- eplanit 6y agoWow, they sure put the "Cult" in Culture.
- zod50 6y agothis slide deck has 5,573,996 views. that seems like a lot for a posting that's only 2 months old.
- amoorthy 6y agoEx-HubSpotter here. Two observations: 1. The deck is a good recruiting tool. Once you're past the start-up phase and are a scale-up this matters a lot. 2. Cynicism of such decks is understandable because it is just words and culture often reflects the founders' values. As such we were lucky that Dharmesh and Brian are among the highest integrity folks I've worked with who solve for the company always and never for themselves. The value of the deck for other companies may be encouraging a thoughtful discussion about what kind of culture they want and providing an opportunity to critically evaluate leadership who tacitly set the day-to-day culture.
- setgree 6y ago“The medium is the message” comes to mind here. I find decks mind-numbing, especially those heavy on graphic design and visual flair. I’ll take full sentences in connected paragraphs, thank you.