Right. The cynical view is that those mantras are a way to get your employees to pretend they’re doing something other than building a business. Or, worse, that by permeating the workplace with the language of purpose, you’re getting them to be on board with something unpalatable. You can convince them that whatever bad thing they’re doing is for a cause. At the end of the day, very few people in their self-accounting are comfortable with thinking of themselves as deliberately inflicting harm. So those missions might be seen as a form of rationalization, as a way for the company to engage in “cause washing.”
The more charitable view is that those phrases can actually help lead to the right outcomes. I’ve seen a lot of situations where the mission has been invoked at a critical juncture and it’s helped refocus things in the right direction.What’s an example?
Within a company, people are incentivized for their own success. They have to perform, they have goals. It’s natural. But that can mean that in a group setting, they will argue for the things that will eventually make them look good. They will focus on their own self-interest, their own targets, and their own achievements.
I’ve seen the mission work in a way that counters those dynamics. It helps reground the conversation. It helps people pull back from the individual incentives and ask, “What are we doing here?”
The whole change-the-world mentality that these mantras embody can certainly feel impractical or utopian—and we’re in an era now where we’re second-guessing it—but as a working model I’ve definitely seen it improve outcomes rather than degrade them.So missions or mantras can be useful for reorienting away from the individual to the collective—away from an employee who’s trying to maximize their opportunity to thinking at the level of the team or the firm as a whole.
Yeah. And that’s why they have to be lofty. Creating a sense of shared purpose is the whole point of these things.
You can have either a cynical or a charitable interpretation of their existence. You could ask what would be different about these companies if you subtracted their missions or mantras. And in my view, the difference is there’d be a little less sense of purpose, and without a sense of purpose, things would be harder. You’ve gotta have everybody rowing in the same direction.We’ve talked about the story the company tells about a product, and the story the company tells itself about what it’s doing. But what about the story that you personally tell about your own work, to friends, family, or others? Has telling that story become harder in recent years, as the scrutiny of these companies has grown more intense?
I’m not interested in being an apologist for corporate or industry interests. So the conversation I would have with friends or family, or even a stranger in a bar, is not too different from what we’ve talked about here.
Basically, I think the truth is important. The public conversation about tech can sometimes fall into a simplistic framework: the industry increasingly feels like it’s being put in the same category as Big Oil or Big Tobacco. And I think the industry has had a lot of growing up to do, but it doesn’t strike me as that simple. These products can be misused, but they aren’t carcinogens.
So in those conversations, I try to go beyond the hype and talk specifics. What is the specific situation and what are the specific challenges? If people are upset about Russia, or the mismanagement of user expectations with a new product launch, well, that’s a real concern. That’s something they should be upset about, and the company should respond to it. They’re entitled to not like a feature or a product, they’re entitled not to use it.
Probably the most frequent thing you hear when you say you work at one of these tech companies is people telling you, somewhat contemptuously and smugly, that they don’t use the product. “Oh, I don’t have that anymore.” “I don’t like that.” It’s almost like they’re trying to goad you into selling them on why they should use it. And I always find it a bit strange, because I really don’t care. I totally understand. If someone doesn’t want to use something, they don’t have to. That doesn’t bother me at all.Why did you stop doing this job? What prompted that decision?
I kind of burned out. Not necessarily with the company or the industry, but with my role. Burnout is a big thing in the industry. It’s a burnout culture. The companies have gotten a bit better in trying to help people balance things better, but still, the work takes a toll.
For me personally, I think I lost faith in words. I felt fed up with the mandate of merely talking, because in my heart I don’t think that the words about things matter as much as the things themselves.Why not?
Because the words don’t feel so effective. It’s been a tough few years. With the challenges we’ve been discussing, it can feel frustrating if all you’re doing is talking. There are communicators and there are builders. I’d like to spend my time building products rather than telling stories about them. There is no shortage of problems, and I’d like to help solve them. There are limits to talking.
Acknowledgments
This book would not have been possible without the people whose voices fill its pages. We’re grateful to them for speaking with us and letting us share their stories.
We’re also indebted to Chris Parris-Lamb for providing crucial encouragement early on, and to Emily Bell, Jackson Howard, and everyone at FSG Originals for taking a chance on this collaboration. To Zoe Tarnoff, for slowing us down. And, above all, to the other members of our Logic family: Jim Fingal, Christa Hartsock, Xiaowei Wang, Celine Nguyen, Jen Kagan, and Alex Blasdel. Without their wisdom and kindness, this book—and much more—would not exist.
Notes1. The Founder
1. API stands for “application programming interface.” It is an agreement that
