<story><title>The Mess at Meetup</title><url>https://gizmodo.com/the-mess-at-meetup-1822243738</url></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>mft_</author><text>I&amp;#x27;m really conflicted by this article.&lt;p&gt;On the one hand, it&amp;#x27;s always a shame to read of cases where a company with a great culture which people clearly enjoyed and valued is changed for &amp;#x27;bad&amp;#x27; reasons - takeover, or profit, or similar.&lt;p&gt;...but...&lt;p&gt;&amp;gt; “I really don’t think they would have been able to attract the talent they did without it because the product wasn’t there. They didn’t innovate. Meetup is not attractive except for their culture, except for their values”&lt;p&gt;If the product sucks, then a) you&amp;#x27;ve got to ask why, and b) that probably needs to change, for the sake of the company (which actually offers a valuable product, IMO) &lt;i&gt;and&lt;/i&gt; its employees.&lt;p&gt;And here&amp;#x27;s what seems to have been judged to be the issue: if your &lt;i&gt;priority&lt;/i&gt; is to hire a diverse workforce that enables a gentle, happy, collaborative culture, then your &lt;i&gt;priority&lt;/i&gt; isn&amp;#x27;t to hire the best possible workforce, to create the best possible product.&lt;p&gt;I don&amp;#x27;t want to come over as James Damore here (and I&amp;#x27;m sure there are plenty of cases of a diverse workforce creating a great product) but this isn&amp;#x27;t fundamentally unreasonable.  If your priority is cultural excellence, you&amp;#x27;re going to get cultural excellence, possibly to the exclusion of other factors: if your priority isn&amp;#x27;t product excellence, you&amp;#x27;re not going to get product excellence.</text></comment>
<story><title>The Mess at Meetup</title><url>https://gizmodo.com/the-mess-at-meetup-1822243738</url></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>TekMol</author><text>The slide deck looks like a persiflage to me. Something I would expect to see in a movie [1].&lt;p&gt;Are employees in the US really such ducklings that they swallow such insult and paternalism?&lt;p&gt;If I would be a manager at Meetup and would be shown a bunch of bullshit bingo slides about how my current approach is shit and that I am supposed to become better at my job by &amp;#x27;pushing to achieve more&amp;#x27; my reaction would be clear.&lt;p&gt;I would say &amp;#x27;Dude, I have built and refined my management approach over many years. It&amp;#x27;s based on these key values. And these metrics. Held together by the following theory. And I have a lot to show for it. I achieved this and this and this and this last year. Tell me again with a straight face how this is not exceptional performance. And now take your pile of cliches and fuck off.&amp;#x27;.&lt;p&gt;[1] Popular movie version of the deck: &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.youtube.com&amp;#x2F;watch?v=Q4PE2hSqVnk&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.youtube.com&amp;#x2F;watch?v=Q4PE2hSqVnk&lt;/a&gt;</text></comment>