Passionate about Work vs Company at subbu.org

Passionate about Work vs Company

Here is an excellent post titled Don’t ask employees to be passionate about the company!. Management of a number of companies value loyalty to the company/team/group (i.e. passionate about the company) more than the employees being passionate about work. This post makes a comparison between good companies and good UI.

I am certain that one of the key differences between successful companies and not so successful companies is the way loyalty is treated. This quote from this post says it best.

The company should behave just like a good user interface — support people in doing what they’re trying to do, and stay the hell out of their way. Applying the employer-as-UI model, the best company is one in which the employees are so engaged in their work that the company fades into the background.

I can not agree more. Companies should behave like a good interface, letting employees explore their creativity without getting interrupted with popups, alerts, crashes, hangs and so on. Companies should be like Mac OS X, and not like Vista, i.e. stay in the background and let me do my job better. Don’t keep interrupting me with things happening in the OS. Having switched to Mac from Windows+Linux about two months ago, I can now appreciate the role an OS provides its user. The Mac is like my place of work, not a tool I have to work with.

The sad part is that companies are not homogeneous in their values. There are always folks who value company/team loyalty over being competent, open and future-minded. When those folks start taking charge, watch out. That is one of the early signs of doom.