Team vs. Family DEBATE: We Are "Not a Family" đź–•

Stay informed about critical strategic insights on the F2P gaming industry. Join today!

 [ YouTube | Podcast ]

To all,

September of last year, the Silicon Valley tech circle widely circulated discussion around the notion of companies described as “high-performance sports teams” in favor of “families.” In fact, calling the notion of companies as families “preposterous.” In particular, much of the discussion was kicked off by two famous tech CEOs: Tobi Lutke who emailed his Shopify employees suggesting Shopify is “not a family” and Brian Armstrong the CEO of Coinbase who famously asked employees who wanted to discuss societal values at work to leave the company.

According to Tobe Lutke:

Shopify, like any other for-profit company, is not a family, the very idea is preposterous. You are born into a family. You never choose it, and they can't un-family you. It should be massively obvious that Shopify is not a family but I see people, even leaders, causally use terms like 'Shopifam' which will cause the members of our teams (especially junior ones that have never worked anywhere else) to get the wrong impression.

The dangers of 'family thinking' are that it becomes incredibly hard to let poor performers go. Shopify is a team, not a family.

From Brian Armstrong’s blog post:

At Coinbase, we say that we are focused on building. What does this mean? It means we are going to focus on being the best company we can be, and making progress toward our mission, as compared to broader societal issues.

In a post on LinkedIn about this issue a month or so back, I found a lot of really interesting comments worthy of discussion and debate. Even further, as we contemplated and executed our first dismissal from my own start-up company, LILA Games, I found myself increasingly thinking about this issue.

To discuss and debate these issues in-depth, I had the fortunate opportunity to speak with some really smart thinkers in the games industry:

Speakers:

Key Issues & Takeaways

  • The Team vs. Family debate seems to have struck a nerve with many employees. Employees want to understand the environment in which they work but, even further, the metaphor used also reflects on employees’ personal image of themselves: hence, it's personal.

  • At a high level 3 key issues associate with the Team vs. Family debate: #1. Is the company a high-performance organization? #2. Should social justice issues be discussed or supported at work? and #3. To what extent should personal vs. professional lives be integrated or separated at the workplace?

  • A complicating factor in this debate is the way in which the terms family and team mean different things to different people. Family in particular is a word that is quite personal and has strong and different associations.

  • One key situational condition many Silicon Valley leaders fail to realize is that not all companies can be an organization of superstars. Some companies will hire and invest in training employees. Hence, the notion of a team of superstar high-performers isn’t applicable in that context.

  • Other situational conditions to consider are small startups vs. bigger more mature and profitable companies. It’s easier to promote a family metaphor at a small startup with a smaller number of like-minded individuals but it’s also easier to support work-life balance and lower performance at a bigger, profitable company.

  • Anecdotally, most companies do not clearly articulate the kind of company they are with respect to Team vs. Family. To some degree, it’s not in the best interests of a larger company with many employees to clarify this point: clarity may lead to upsetting a fairly sizeable proportion of employees.

So many more interesting and important insights during the discussion above, so check it out!

LILA Games is building one of the most ambitious shooter games ever designed! We are currently hiring aggressively in Bangalore, India. See below.

Visit our website!

LILA Openings (Bangalore or Remote):

LILA Openings (Bangalore Only):

Join the conversation

or to participate.