Principles of Technology Leadership | Bryan Cantrill | Monktoberfest 2017 on HackerTube: recommended by 9 Hacker News commenters across 7 separate months, 2018–2025.
talk · evergreen
Bryan Cantrill's Monktoberfest 2017 talk on leadership and organizational principles, ranging from the Gettysburg Address to Uber and Amazon. He argues for the difference between principles and values and criticizes vague corporate principles.
HN treats it as a classic, must-watch talk for any discussion of company values, and especially for its takedown of Amazon's leadership principles.
“No discussion of company values would be complete without a link to Bryan Cantrill’s classic talk,”
15 Hacker News comments link this video. Each one links back to its thread.
No discussion of company values would be complete without a link to Bryan Cantrill’s classic talk, “Principles of Technology Leadership”. ▶ this video Uber once had a stated company value of “Always be hustling”. Really.
in “What are your company's anti-values?” · View on HN
I love Bryan Cantrill for being that classy bad-ass engineer with so much integrity. His talk on companies principles is a must-watch: ▶ this video
in “Anti-Application video for YC120” · View on HN
Before we get to the list: if you only watch one talk of mine, please watch Principles of Technology Leadership (slides) presented at Monktoberfest 2017. This is the only talk that I have asked family and friends to watch, as it represents my truest self — or what I aspire that self to be, anyway. Let me just say, this is an extremely good talk[1]. Very uplifting and depressing at different times. It goes through serious turns, and very funny periods. Ultimately though, the message is very important and worth hearing. I highly recommend it. 1: ▶ this video
in “Talks I have given” · View on HN
Yeah, vibes with my experience working there. Toxicity beyond pale. Good riddens, they contact me every week to try to get me back. Fuck off Amazon, you have no integrity, you abuse your employees from white collar to blue collar. You literally fired people who emailed Jeff Bezos to report abuses, after you told them to, when the NY Times "crying at desk" expose came out. Bezos instilled this shite culture into Amazon. And his midlet pawns carried out his half-baked decrees like those fucking wet noodle "Leadership Principles" which make no actual sense and aren't principles at all in any sense of the word. Brian Cantrill (of 0x1de computers) gives a great breakdown of how sacrosanct Amazon's leadership principles are: ▶ this video Principles are things like Integrity, Honesty, Respect -- not Amazon's fuckwit bulletpoints like "Be right a lot" or "Frugality." Technologically, AWS is built like a fucking house of cards with spit, tape, and glue. There is no real cohesion or organization, just a bunch of teams doing their own practices and gluing their rando codebase into the Yellow Console. Sorry, but just making the frontend look unified doesn't undo what the backend spaghetti is... That's why the outages of late will continue. It's all bubbling up from the absolute toxicity in lack of basic humanism at the core.
in “Amazon Pip Horror Story” · View on HN
There's a great talk by Brian Cantrill about Leadership principles [0] which also includes a discussion of the Amazon Leadership principles. He argues that Amazon's leadership principles actually aren't helpful and don't make much sense and I tend to agree. [0] ▶ this video (The part about Amazon starts around minute 26, but I recommend watching the whole talk)
in “Amazon announce two new leadership principles” · View on HN
This subject and the utter vagueness of the values presented here require me to bring up Bryan Cantrill's talk, 'Principles of Technology Leadership'.[1] He gives Amazon a lambasting over their core principles, and Uber even moreso. It's both funny and sobering to examine how what seems like a useful and valuable foundation ends up being flimsy and easy to ignore when made vague enough. [1] ▶ this video
in “No Shenanigans” · View on HN
Is the Key:Values team (nice choice of name by the way!) familiar with Bryan Cantrill's talk on 'Principles of Technology Leadership'? ▶ this video It seems to resonate pretty closely with what you're building, so if it helps align or educate anyone (candidates, recruiters, or the team) that'd be neat. Edit: FWIW, the talk uses the term 'principle' to indicate what your site calls a 'value'; in practice I've seen tech companies talk about their 'core values' and so I think yours is very valid.
in “Key Values – Find Engineering Teams That Share Your Values” · View on HN
> Supposedly, every employee should be guided by the leadership principles during their day-to-day routine. The principles actually make a lot of sense, when used appropriately. As time went, I discovered that the most common application of the principles was to creatively find a leadership principle that best supports the situation. Bryan Cantrill has a sometimes hilarious takedown of Amazon's "leadership principles" here, which definitely corroborates this blog post: ▶ this video
in “Quitting Amazon 5 months after I started” · View on HN
Related talk by Bryan Cantrill (Principles of Technology Leadership) Watch the whole video, it's good! ▶ this video
in “Arizona Government Suspends Uber's Self Driving Cars from Roads” · View on HN
I am glad to see that many people are being correcting you, but just to put a sharp point on it: I am using that metaphor to condemn Ellison, not to condone or accept him. Unfortunately, since that talk in 2011, what was an aberration (albeit a broadly unspoken one) has since -- tragically -- become the norm. I refuse to accept this, however: I will continue to speak my truth about the moral decay in tech, and why we must hold ourselves to a higher standard.[0][1][2][3][4] And I obviously agree with your indignation that poor corporate behavior should not be the status quo! [0] Principles of Technology Leadership , ▶ this video (2017) [1] Andreessen's Corollary: Ethical Dilemmas in Software Engineering , [link] (2019) [2] (Anti-)application Video for YC120 , [link] (2019) [3] Coming Of Age , [link] (2022) [4] Intelligence is not Enough , [link] (2023)
in “Oracle justified its JavaScript trademark with Node.js–now it wants that ignored” · View on HN
I think I would point you instead to my beliefs about principles[0], values[1], and (because you are young), the promise and peril of youth[2]. [0] ▶ this video [1] [link] [2] [link]
in “How a startup loses its spark” · View on HN
The problem is that they are bromides and claptrap, not principles. There is an important distinction to be made here between principles and values, which they are not making in part because Amazon themselves do not understand the difference.[0] Having a community define its values is important[1], but this is emphatically not the way to do it -- and these are not it besides. [0] ▶ this video [1] [link]
in “I refuse to let Amazon define Rust” · View on HN
Tim O'Reilly's blog post (before this announcement, which likely comes on back of Bezos' final annual letter to shareholders [0]) contrasting Ingram's and Amazon's approach towards the marketplaces they operate in sheds light on why the inclusion of these principles is substantial [1]. Leadership principles, though in tension with each other (and so, some argue they really shouldn't be classified as "principles" but rather "values" [2]), permeates the culture of performance and team building at Amazon; and that makes me think this is not only a welcome but potentially a company-defining change. [0] [link] [1] [link] [2] ▶ this video
in “Amazon announce two new leadership principles” · View on HN
For whatever it's worth, the only (real) difference between the blog entry and the op-ed that Business Insider asked to run is this closing paragraph that I added at their suggestion: Some of the specifics of our model may or may not be a fit — we appreciate that uniform compensation is an unusual luxury, and we know that transparency of compensation can be a painful change to effect in an organization that has no history of it (or worse, has secretly been rewarding similar work vastly inequitably). But we do believe — fervently — that compensation reflects a company's values, and that it's absolutely essential that companies elucidate those values. If your company has no formal values, there's a tremendous opportunity to define them. This opportunity is not without peril, however, as my Monktoberfest 2017 talk on "Principles of Technology Leadership"[0] describes: Mistaken or crooked organizational values can be more damaging than absent or implicit ones. Don't define your values in terms of aspirations, aphorisms, slogans, or (because it apparently has to be said!) memes. Rather, they should be an honest expression of the shared values that bind the organization. Once your true values are elucidated, reevaluate your compensation in light of them. This isn't easy to do (especially because it will be a foregone conclusion that any reexamination will not result in the reduction of anyone's compensation), but your employees — current and future — will thank you for it. [0] [VID
in “Oxide cofounder: I pay everyone in my company the same salary – $180,250” · View on HN
Misdirected, not over the top, it's very appropriate especially when it was a sponsored project and they were getting called out as if Ben was their employee and they were cosigning whatever Ben's views were. Regardless how you feel on gendered pronouns, if you're writing documentation regarding all users it seems like a no brainier to actually involve all users in the language, something which Bryan puts great significance into. Bryan's talks[0] usually involve tone and messaging (as well as being triggered and raged) as key points. But back to the drama issue. The problem about this whole thing isn't about the pronouns really, it was the actions that Ben took even after it was explained and the hard stance Joyent felt it needed to take on the issue in the aftermath. Ben, if we're giving him the benefit of the doubt (because he isn't a native English speaker) to word something 'wrong', is a simple fix, who cares. - The real part of this whole mess was because he tried reversing a commit that was made by the project lead after it was worded to include more users. Ben was the main agitator in this almost 6 year old mess regardless of his amount of contributions. [0] ▶ this video
in “Anti-Application video for YC120” · View on HN