When I first join a company, I usually grasp the technical stuff pretty easily. But figuring out the company's culture and how they motivate employees is tough. It's like there are these unwritten rules about what's good and what's not.
For instance, knowing what actions get praised and which ones might get you in trouble can be tricky. And then there's trying to make sense of why certain decisions were made in the past. Sometimes I've tried to solve a problem only to find out later that there were factors I didn't know about holding me back. It can be frustrating.
My main question is whether your understanding of T-POP's "P" includes things like incentives, culture, and context. If it does, can you explain how T-POP helps us delve into these aspects?
Good point. The first "P" (people) is about networking and relations. The cultural aspects, incentive model, etc. is about how the system operates (the "O" in T-POP). I think the people aspect and the culture aspects are decoupled because the same person may behave differently in different environments. On the other hand people make up the culture and build the product. So all these letters connected.
Re: "knowing what actions get praised and which ones might get you in trouble can be tricky." I fully agree and the 3L model here helped me a lot: https://blog.alexewerlof.com/p/3l
oh, good question. Personally I think F2F onsite meetings provide the highest bandwidth especially when meeting someone new. But that's not always possible. In my experience, the Look and Listen part of 3L is severely limited in a remote setup particularly when the company doesn't have a mature async work culture (e.g. verbal culture where there's not much written/read, top down hierarchical culture where you don't get access to "the room" where decisions are made, poor performance metrics like McKiensey style as a replacement to sit with people and get to know what they want to do and their struggles, etc.).
This impacts the last L obviously. Overall, remote is hard to get right. Maybe I should do an article on that particular topic in the future, but at the moment I'm experimenting with different tools to learn more for a solid write up.
Thanks and I share your believe. A lot of companies calling themselves remote friendly doesn’t get it right. Looking forward for articles tinkering about this topics.
Not having the role is a luxury, because you get to observe and learn from the best and the worst. So, when it's time for you to assume the role, you don't fall into those traps. That's exactly how I identified those examples. I've seen all of them in my engineering career unfortunately.
When I first join a company, I usually grasp the technical stuff pretty easily. But figuring out the company's culture and how they motivate employees is tough. It's like there are these unwritten rules about what's good and what's not.
For instance, knowing what actions get praised and which ones might get you in trouble can be tricky. And then there's trying to make sense of why certain decisions were made in the past. Sometimes I've tried to solve a problem only to find out later that there were factors I didn't know about holding me back. It can be frustrating.
My main question is whether your understanding of T-POP's "P" includes things like incentives, culture, and context. If it does, can you explain how T-POP helps us delve into these aspects?
Good point. The first "P" (people) is about networking and relations. The cultural aspects, incentive model, etc. is about how the system operates (the "O" in T-POP). I think the people aspect and the culture aspects are decoupled because the same person may behave differently in different environments. On the other hand people make up the culture and build the product. So all these letters connected.
Re: "knowing what actions get praised and which ones might get you in trouble can be tricky." I fully agree and the 3L model here helped me a lot: https://blog.alexewerlof.com/p/3l
I read the 3L article and recognized some phases I was aware of. How is the 3L approach adapting in a remote setting opposite to being on-site?
oh, good question. Personally I think F2F onsite meetings provide the highest bandwidth especially when meeting someone new. But that's not always possible. In my experience, the Look and Listen part of 3L is severely limited in a remote setup particularly when the company doesn't have a mature async work culture (e.g. verbal culture where there's not much written/read, top down hierarchical culture where you don't get access to "the room" where decisions are made, poor performance metrics like McKiensey style as a replacement to sit with people and get to know what they want to do and their struggles, etc.).
This impacts the last L obviously. Overall, remote is hard to get right. Maybe I should do an article on that particular topic in the future, but at the moment I'm experimenting with different tools to learn more for a solid write up.
Thanks and I share your believe. A lot of companies calling themselves remote friendly doesn’t get it right. Looking forward for articles tinkering about this topics.
Great article Alex. While I haven’t been in such a role myself, I’ve seen few from the side, and the ‘broken’ T-POP section resonated.
Not having the role is a luxury, because you get to observe and learn from the best and the worst. So, when it's time for you to assume the role, you don't fall into those traps. That's exactly how I identified those examples. I've seen all of them in my engineering career unfortunately.