My assumption with mission statements was that they were always bullshit made up by a marketing team or some exec and I wouldn't expect them to have much relation to reality. Was I in the minority?

Ironically I think Facebook is one example that (at least in the early days) had values that actually had teeth.

"Move fast and break things" isn't just a feel-good truism like most values that companies come up with are. It's something that at least some people are going to disagree with, and it's something that can actually be instructive when making a decision at that company.

I don't personally agree with it, but I respect that at least in the past Facebook was willing to take a stance on how they developed products that wasn't some saccharine feel-good BS that values usually are.

"Break things" like democracy, I guess.

It might actually be that things like election interference came up so quickly that their problem was not moving fast enough to stop it before it was a problem. If their motto was "observe the problem for a year and have at least thirty-three planning meetings before making a decision", would they have addressed the problem better? Probably not. The problem was that they didn't move fast enough and break enough things.

Move fast and say oops, we'll try to do better.

That was their motto, but didn't they also have a mission statement that was about connecting people?

That was just TED talk style marketing fluff.

So every company mission statement ever?

"Move fast and break things" sounds more like humanity's approach to global warming than a wise and sustainable business approach.

That's the point of the parent : at least the motto has a point and mean something that you can debate, a nice change from marketing meaningless bullshit like "Imagination at work" (GE) or "Energy lives here" (Exxon)

That's more of an operating mode than a purpose.

It unofficially changed a couple years ago to: "Move fast and break things. And fix your shit."

(source: my brother, who worked there for a few years following acquisition)

Think of them as the "objective" section on a resume, something you really only tend to have early on in your career... as you get more experienced, you dont have an "objective" section any longer - and you realize that the only true objective-statement on a resume is "to get a paying job"...

Tech is generally worse. Mostly because there's no check on hyperbole.

Most businesses have an official mission statement to the effect of: "Help people do {x} at a competitive price."

Only a 23 year old CEO says things like "Changing the world by connecting people."

Amusingly enough, I’d argue Zuckerberg nailed that mission.

We grew up wondering how we'd change the world but never stopped and thought about whether or not what we had in mind was all that good of an idea...

There's a Jurassic Park quote in here somewhere...

"Hold onto your butts"

"Clever girl"

That's a cynical position, and tends to be correct!

A real one does have a _huge_ effect on the culture of the organisation, above and beyond what is achievable otherwise. I've seen one be transformative at a former workplace. I hope you have the opportunity as part of your career.

That outlier quality is why they are seen as important, even if they get cargo-culted in most instances.

Maybe it's the flip side of the hustle mentality that the mission statement is used to manipulate rather than a genuine expression of shared values and goals?

>My assumption with mission statements was that they were always bullshit made up by a marketing team or some exec

In my experience they are concocted by a dozen people from across the company sitting in a room all day filling white boards with feel good, businessy words that only vaguely relate to their employer.

Agreement on the mission statement has to be unanimous within this group as well as being signed off on by several execs who will not be present during its drafting. The requirement for consensus ensures that only something incredibly tepid can get over the line.

Amazon has "Leadership Principles". Lots of them. And they (we? I work there) do seem to take them seriously.

Hiring? Every interviewer is trying to gain insight into one or two of those specific leadership principles. Promotions? Better have demonstrated them and have documentation to prove it.

It's not perfect, but the company tries really hard to make them not be bullshit.

Not at all, but it's important to know that they're not universally bullshit. The last two companies I've worked for (both <1k people) have genuinely valued their mission statements, and finally incentivise results that exemplify it.

I work in Google and the mission statement seems to be followed.

Show the ads to the most users with the highest bid price ?

What is Google's mission nowadays? I don't see them following a lot of "Organize the world's information and make it open". There's a ton of closed walls, they even acquired companies like freebase and then their stuff went behind closed doors.

If I remember right from when I worked there (years ago), the wording is "Organize the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful." I can definitely see interpretations of that which require direct and open access to the raw data and others which just require universal and useful access to an assistive/suggestive product or service that leverages the data.

To be clear, I prefer the first interpretation, but I realize open data geeks (and those who would use the raw data if granted access) are far fewer than ML geeks (and those who enjoy the automagic suggestions) and the gap is only widening.

If I’m interpreting you correctly, both those approaches involve Google housing (owning?) the data.

In the early days of Google, I assumed that to organize and make accessible meant to index and link to information presented by others - and not to ‘own’ the data.

It saddens me that that interpretation is no longer correct - and perhaps never was?

I wouldn't know what the early interpretation was - I was there in 2006 as an intern plus 2011-2015 as a full-timer.

But the wording is certainly neutral on who houses and owns the data.

I'm guessing that you're right as to the early interpretation, since that's what makes sense for web search.

But other interpretations are the logical thing to think of first for some of their more recent ML-powered assist/suggest products, and the wording of the mission statement leaves product managers and architects/designers free to apply whatever interpretation makes natural sense in context.

I'm a very big user of Google Books. They've digitized a large chunk of the world's libraries and made them freely available. Despite the thousand and one ways in which they have betrayed their original principles, I am personally very grateful for this one offering of theirs.

Don't be evil...

...except when helping the Chinese government oppress and spy on its citizens.

That is not the mission statement.

Mostly, but not always. Patagonia seems to genuinely follow their mission statement:

"Build the best product, cause no unnecessary harm, use business to inspire and implement solutions to the environmental crisis."

https://www.patagonia.com/company-info.html

By making clothes out of plastic?

They make clothes out of plastic in order to recycle. It is a conscious choice they make. (I read the book by the founder.) Patagonia may be the only company I trust.

This was the book, I suspect:

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/22155.Let_My_People_Go_S...

Powerful read that also happens to be interesting.

Recommended.

They probably also contribute to microplastics pollution when the clothes slowly break down during washing. Intentions don't matter anywhere near as much as results. In the real world, you get rewarded only for achieving results, not for trying.

I'll take intentions over wilful ignorance any day

Ignorant/mistaken good intentions can do great harm. The difference comes when someone is told that they are doing harm. Do they stop or carry on?

Well when they’ve been told then it ceases to be good intentions no?

You must be fun in the real world.

Don't let perfect be the enemy of good. They acknowledge there are always trade offs and costs. Their goal is to find the option that does the least harm.

Plus they're actively working on the microplastics problem: https://www.patagonia.com/blog/2017/02/an-update-on-microfib...

In regards to their product, they make high quality clothing that lasts longer (reducing consumption) and sheds less.

Mission statements are always bullshit. The reason being that I have never seen a case where, when push comes to shove, that a company would forgo needed revenue if it contradicted their mission statement. Instead what happens is that leaders go through mental gymnastics trying to show "No, it still aligns with our mission statement, you just have to twist the meaning of the words in the mission statement beyond any reasonable recognition."

I am not going to argue that mission statements are not bullshit, but I don't think your argument is persuasive. Just because you will compromise some values when push comes to shove doesn't mean those values were completely meaningless... it just means they were not as important as another value that they came into conflict with.

For example, I value pacifism. I think non-violence is almost always the right choice, and feel we should work towards a world of peace.

However, if I saw someone attacking my daughter, I might use violence to stop them if I felt it was the only way to protect her.

This doesn't mean that I don't value non-violence, or that my non-violence stance is meaningless. It just means that my value of keeping my daughter safe is more important to me than non-violence.

If the mission statement is superceded by other implicit values, like creating shareholder value, it's not much of a mission statement. The whole point of a mission statement is to make your primary values explicit.

I mean, you might think that is what mission statements SHOULD be, but that doesn't mean that is the definition everyone agrees on. I think a more reasonable definition is "what our company stands for besides the things that every company stands for"

Then the mission statement should just be "Our goal is to make as much money as possible." That's what the goal always ends up being, at least once a company becomes public.

Categorically denying any role for these statements (or rather what they represent) seems slightly silly. We all have values and goals besides money, and when they inevitably come into conflict, we make decisions.

Google sees "organising information" as its mission. My desk would currently make an excellent opportunity to organise some information. Are they going to pay someone to sort all these papers? Probably not. Does that mean they have sold out their values? Unlikely...

You're hiding some of that range in the phrase:

> push comes to shove,..

...which makes the idea rather meaningless. I've shown one side above, the other is equally trivial: When Google has few billion dollars it can invest either into wearable sensors for health tech, or opening a Pizza chain, they are more likely to go with the former, even if they have similar expected returns.

If "push coming to shove" is intended to mean a situation where the very existence of Google is at stake, then they'll choose to live another day, even if they have to scale back their ambitions. I doubt anybody would expect them to behave differently.

As for examples: it seems that Apple is forgoing some profits by not participating in the big data grab. Yes, it might also be a good business decision. But it takes some commitment to values to be motivated enough, and to have the courage, to make a decision so markedly different than what the competition does.

Google leaving China is another example. Yes, they may soon return. But in the meantime they left a few billion on the table.

> Categorically denying any role for these statements (or rather what they represent) seems slightly silly. We all have values and goals besides money, and when they inevitably come into conflict, we make decisions.

Anthropomorphizing publicly held companies is quite a bit more silly. Just because I have values and goals besides money doesn't mean that companies do; I also go to the restroom and breathe oxygen.

It's often impossible to say conclusively whether money is being left on the table in the cases that you've mentioned, because there's a PR hit taken when certain things are done that could ultimately reduce revenue. In the case of Apple, the fact that the flipside of fairly tyrannical possessiveness over their customers is a vigorous defense of their customers from outside entities makes the lock-in and intentional incompatibility and obfuscation seem almost like a hug. Without that defense, it would just feel like a snare - being known to give anyone access to anything willingly would definitely affect Apple's sales in a big way. Courage in that case would be to exploit that data, figure out a way to sell that idea to the users or to conceal it from the users, and risk a lot of users abandoning the platform.

Also, Google doing what it takes to make it in China might endanger their increasing integration in the US government. The brave thing would be to try to work both at the same time.

>Categorically denying any role for these statements (or rather what they represent) seems slightly silly. We all have values and goals besides money, and when they inevitably come into conflict, we make decisions.

That's because we are people, not organizations.

>Google leaving China is another example. Yes, they may soon return. But in the meantime they left a few billion on the table.

Just because of bad PR/backslash. They were perfectly OK to work there.

Usually mission statements are crafted to align incentives between employees and customers (or users, if the product you sell to customers is users' attention). The company's mission should focus on what the customer is trying to achieve with the company's product. As the company works toward that mission, customers accomplish their goals, they become dependent upon the product, they fork over lots of money, and the company's revenues rise naturally.

Where this fails is when a company actually achieves its mission. At that point, its original mission is taken for granted, but all of the negative consequences of that mission are suddenly on everyone's mind.

For example, Microsoft's original mission was "A computer on every desk, all running Microsoft software." Throughout the 80s and early 90s, that meant making MS-DOS and Windows easier to use, making Office handle more of the tasks needed for a modern office, and getting distribution deals so that all of these came pre-loaded. Customers benefitted from the increasing computerization, they forked over lots of money, Bill Gates became the richest man on earth. But after around 1998, Microsoft basically succeeded in that, people already had a computer on their desk running Microsoft software, and the biggest problem on their minds was that Microsoft had a stranglehold on PC software and was unfairly killing off new innovations in software.

Google's initial mission statement was "Organize the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful." When search sucked, email sucked, online maps weren't a thing, finding a book meant going to a library, finding an academic paper meant forking over hundreds to Elsevier, and "web browser" meant IE6, this was a huge service to humanity. But then around 2010, they succeeded at all of these, the baseline became "I can find anything I want now", and the huge questions were what kind of information does Google have on us and what sort of nefarious purposes could they use it for?

Facebook's mission was "Make the world a more open and connected place." The world is now a more open and connected place. The result is that people are routinely put in contact with folks whose views they find abhorrent, and that you can influence an election from the other side of the world, and that Facebook has all our personal data. While the world was still cut off from each other, everyone was happy to sign up; now that we're all on one big social network, they're miserable.

Once the mission statement is no longer a problem that needs solving, then the bullshit starts. Without an actual reason for the company to exist or for anyone to do the work they're ostensibly doing, people fall back on "Well, might as well make as much money as we can."

In short, "you either die a hero, or you live long enough to see yourself become the villain"

this is spot on

when these huge companies have succeeded what they set out to achieve, they are ultimately left without direction

in theory, that means the company would disband. mission accomplished, let's all go home -- right?

however, large organizations and all those who depend on them for pay cannot disappear overnight -- which leads to the type of ethically gray decisionmaking that creates this issue

This Weird Al song captures this perfectly - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GyV_UG60dD4

Fun fact: Nike's mission is to do everything possible to expand human potential.

https://www.economist.com/business/2018/08/02/mission-implau...

My friend was contracted to do some marketing for Frito-Lay and according to the team that hired them, Frito Lay's mission was to capture the 30% of non-prepackaged food eaten by Americans.

Their public mission statement is a bit more innocuous: At Frito-Lay, delighting our consumers is job No. 1. To us, that means putting consumers first in every decision we make - from the quality and care that goes into making our snacks to the ways in which we give back to the community and care for our environment.

What? Don't they exclusively make prepackaged food?

This is like something a stoned frat boy would come up with as their first attempt at a mission statement.

Sure, but is it wrong?

Insofar as it's absolutely not what Nike does at all, I suppose you could call it "wrong", yes.

I dunno about wrong, but it's too vague to be useful.

Does that mean nike are in favor of performance enhancing drugs?

In their sweatshops?

It's basic marketing. Draw in the followers under false pretense, then all you have to do is worry about maintaining them which is much easier than bringing them in under honest terms.

This can be seen in politics as well. How often do electees follow what they were promising constituents while in the running. Then they'll do the same thing again and make a big fuss for the week or 2 prior to reelection, then go back to business as normal.

Likewise with products. Get the customer to come into the store, visit your website, or call a number. Then by the time they see it, or in some cases have already made a purchase, and find out thing aren't as advertised it's either already too late with s purchase made or they've "come too far" and the shortfalls are close enough to where they shrug and purchase anyways.

Chomsky talks about this.

Any chance you know the pieces where he most focuses on this?

Here's a summary post:

https://medium.com/@wtfmitchel/the-political-nature-of-indus...

I guess I would read some of his books: Profit over People and the one on Media. He has a 1997 talk at northeastern on youtube where he addresses it a bit during question time.

There are some good thoughts and complaints in there about propaganda and nepotism, but isn't this old news? Isn't it also pervasive throughout society? I mean, there are even blatant industry-wide propaganda agendas such as Harvard scientsts lying about sugar, MIT scientists lying about climate change, and scientists lying before courts about leaded gasoline... Of course always after payments from profit-seeking industry.

There are countless examples. Of course Walmart is known for both nepotism, and brainwashing their employees about union membership. And of course they are also close with the top-echelon of politicians at state and federal levels.

Like the article mentions, companies say they are progressive, and for an example， promote gender equality, but their engineering divisions tell a completely different story. And then if you really take a moment to stop and look around the world we live in, we are in a society full of propaganda. Of course the War on Drugs, War on Terror, and War on Poverty all increased poverty, poor outcomes related to drugs, and removal of liberties and prosperity that terrorists sought for.

Over the last year, MSNBC covered Stormy Daniels on average >1/day. War in Yemen? 0 times. Or, here is Wolf Blitzer saying that arms sales to Saudis is a "moral issue" because defense contractors will "lose jobs."

Propaganda is part of our daily lives. My favorite Einstein quote is: "Few people are capable of expressing with equanimity opinions which differ from the prejudices of their social environment. Most people are even incapable of forming such opinions."

I think if you read Chomsky you will find that we've been lead this way for a long time. It is modus operandi.. aka meet the new boss same as the old boss. It's useful to understand the world and why it is the way it is. And in fact the more interesting idea is that we the people can actually exercise our democratic rights to change the situation.

An aside. Chomsky made a sizable contribution to intellectual criticism of the modern imperialism. I wonder who will pick up the reins when he's gone?

Matt Taibbi in collaboration with Chomsky is writing a sequel to Manufacturing Consent, discussing history and the media environment since its publication. I'm not suggesting he is an heir, only that interested readers might check out.

Obligatory link: https://taibbi.substack.com/p/introduction-the-fairway

This was very insightful for me. I enjoyed how he interpreted Manufacturing Consent and pointed out that the obvious interpretation is mistaken i.e. that the media peddles lies. The thesis is more subtle than that.

PR mission