In the context of companies, cultural idiosyncrasies are fascinating to me. I’m of the opinion that culture (including mission, principles, and values) is one of the biggest factors that differentiate companies from one another. Sure, the product or service is often the largest differentiator, but company cultures—and in particular, their idiosyncrasies—have an outsized impact on public image, internal perception, and job satisfaction.
Why?
I believe it’s because these idiosyncrasies are evidence of what a company does, and not just what it says it does. They reflect principles and values in uniquely powerful ways to both potential customers and employees.
Some examples
Let me draw some examples from my own lived experience, and I’m sure I’m missing some compelling examples further back (Sun Microsystems, Xerox PARC).
Also, and importantly, I’m not saying any of these idiosyncrasies are “right”, but I am saying they all have an outsized impact on my perception of the companies.
One of the earliest examples from my own memory is Google. Not only did I experience how Google Search took over the market with its minimalism and effectiveness, but I also grew up hearing all sorts of news about how Google was “the best place to work”. In those articles, did they talk about search? Nope. They talked about cultural idiosyncrasies: free meals from on-site cooks, nap pods, 20% projects, slides in the lobbies, micro-kitchens, laundry services!
Oxide Computer
Oxide is a prime example. They frequently feature in online discussion, but in my perception, the majority of this discussion isn’t about their product; it’s about their culture, often with highly positive sentiment. They find this so core to their company that they dedicated a podcast episode to it.
Some examples are demo Fridays, morning water-cooler, no-meet Wednesdays, recorded meetings, dog-pile debugging, RFDs (requests for discussion), no performance reviews, an overwhelmingly writing-focused hiring process, and uniform and transparent pay, to name a few.
GitLab
GitLab may not have the popularity of GitHub, but they have made a strong impression on me for at least two of their idiosyncrasies.
The first was particularly prominent during the COVID-19 pandemic: a global, all-remote workforce. They are one of the largest all-remote companies with over 1,500 members in 65+ countries.
They are also known for their transparent, handbook-first approach. They publish their handbook for all to see. This is not brief, either. It comprehensively covers everything: engineering, finance, sales, legal, and more.
This is an incredible show of transparency and goodwill in sharing hard-earned lessons publicly.
37signals
Not to be outdone, the 37signals folks also publish their handbook.
In their case, they have also published highly profitable books about their idiosyncrasies and culture, such as Shape Up (an engineering methodology that many companies are now adopting), REWORK (unconventional business advice), and REMOTE (on remote work).
They also have idiosyncrasies like Omarchy, an opinionated distribution of Arch Linux. They liked it so much they ditched MacBooks as the standard-issue developer laptop and switched to Framework laptops.
Tonari
Tonari is a small Japanese tech startup making some of the most interesting audio/video portals available.
Despite being very small, they contribute significant pieces of their stack to open source, such as innernet, a private network system using WireGuard under the hood.
They also value a heterogeneous mix of developer machines and were early on the Rust train (note how each of the four engineers mentioned in this blog runs a different operating system: macOS, Arch, Ubuntu, and Pop!_OS).
Palantir
Palantir breaks the mold a bit in this list, because most of the public discussion around it is controversial and focused on the ethics of its business.
That said, they are known for their idiosyncratic chaos culture, where “everything is up for debate”—even a random engineer confronting the CEO at all-hands—and where they do almost anything to move fast—like chartering a private jet to Palo Alto to get the engineering team together during the COVID-19 pandemic.
People I know who have worked there tell me this is an accurate representation.
Jane Street
Famously, it’s the OCaml shop people know about. Compensation so high, even for interns, that it’s an idiosyncrasy.
And, most notably to me, they have one of the most interesting tech blogs around. For example, their code review process has such a good reputation that other tech bloggers carve out exceptions for it when talking about code review problems. They care so much about rigor in tests that they not only leverage bleeding-edge strategies like deterministic simulation testing (DST) but also led the funding round of Antithesis, the pioneers in DST. This is highly idiosyncratic.
Amazon
Even for massive companies like Amazon, some cultural idiosyncrasies still have an outsized impact.
For example, I suspect most people have heard of Amazon’s 6-page memo approach to meetings. In this approach, attendees don’t read anything beforehand; instead of using PowerPoint, executives sit around a table and read six-page memos in silence before discussion commences.
Likewise, Amazon is well known for its two-pizza teams, where the idea is that a team should be no larger than two pizzas can feed. That way it stays small, cohesive, and efficient.
Zappos
Zappos is well known for its unique pay-to-quit approach to making sure the team is invested. It provides an attractive off-ramp for those who are less committed to or interested in the company after their training period, instead of staying despite lacking passion for the work.
Patagonia
Patagonia is well known for its Let My People Go Surfing policy, which prioritizes work-life balance, purpose, and employee autonomy. The policy encourages staff to embrace flexibility and spontaneity in balancing work and play. If the waves are good or the powder fresh, staff are trusted to step away, surf, or enjoy nature, returning to work with renewed purpose.
Valve
Valve is the famously “flat” company, or “flatland”, as their public handbook calls it. They “don’t have any management, and nobody reports to anybody.” They playfully poke at Google’s 20% time by saying that at Valve, it’s 100%. Of course, this comes with its challenges, but this idiosyncrasy has become an integral part of my perception of Valve.
Vannevar Labs
Sample size of 1, but I have a friend who really appreciates Vannevar’s $250/month stipend for mental/physical health and $300/month stipend to pay for house cleaners. These dedicated benefits are particularly on point for a mostly remote team. As a company they heavily hire forward-deployed engineers (FDEs) and empower them with very high autonomy.
Thoughts
I’m sure this list could be ten times longer with some more thought. But perhaps that supports the point. All of these examples came almost immediately off the top of my head!
If you’re running a company, I think it’s important to be intentional about your culture. Both in the mission, principles, and values you profess and in the idiosyncrasies that uniquely evolve because of them.
People will talk about your cultural idiosyncrasies to the benefit or detriment of your company. Your employees will reach for your idiosyncrasies when they talk about what is good or bad about working for your company. Your customers will point to your idiosyncrasies as evidence for or against value alignment. Your future employees will compare and contrast your idiosyncrasies with their experiences as they consider their next career move.
And random people like me will evidently spend (too much?) time thinking about your idiosyncrasies and trying to theory-craft the perfect set of cultural idiosyncrasies for their hypothetical future company.