Discovering Culture Through Artifacts

Congratulations! You've just got off the phone with the recruiter and you got the job. You can't wait to start and show them what a great engineer you are. This is the opportunity you've been looking for. You love the position, you've met the team and you understand the company's business model. But something is holding you back. You don't know much about the company's culture, and this is making you cautious. You just left a dysfunctional culture, at times even toxic. You would very much like to avoid joining another company like that. So what is it really like to work at this company? What do they believe in? How do people behave and treat people? In other words, what is the culture of this culture and how do I go about discovering it? 

Learning how to discover the culture of an organization can be extremely valuable to you, whether you are debating joining a new team, or just want to better understand the company you've worked at for the past decade.

In this talk, Mike McGarr (Engineering Leader, Slack), will share with you an approach to discovering organizational culture through its artifacts. Mike will share his model for understanding culture and the key artifacts you can seek out that will allow you to build an understanding of an organization's culture. Mike will also share a wealth of "experiences" (that's code for failures) that have shaped his approach to discovering culture.