Principles of Technology Leadership | Bryan Cantrill | Monktoberfest 2017
Why Hacker News recommends it
HN treats it as a classic, must-watch talk for any discussion of company values, and especially for its takedown of Amazon's leadership principles.
What it is
Bryan Cantrill's Monktoberfest 2017 talk on leadership and organizational principles, ranging from the Gettysburg Address to Uber and Amazon. He argues for the difference between principles and values and criticizes vague corporate principles.
Recommended by 9 HN commenters across 7 different months, 2018 to 2025.
What Hacker News said
Strong rec kbenson · 2018-02 · on “Talks I have given”
Before we get to the list: if you only watch one talk of mine, please watch Principles of Technology Leadership (slides) presented at Monktoberfest 2017. This is the only talk that I have asked family and friends to watch, as it represents my truest self — or what I aspire that self to be, anyway. Let me just say, this is an extremely good talk[1]. Very uplifting and depressing at different times. It goes through serious turns, and very funny periods. Ultimately though, the message is very important and worth hearing. I highly recommend it. 1: [this video]
Strong rec warp_factor · 2019-02 · on “Anti-Application video for YC120”
I love Bryan Cantrill for being that classy bad-ass engineer with so much integrity. His talk on companies principles is a must-watch: [this video]
Strong rec nonfamous · 2022-02 · on “What are your company's anti-values?”
No discussion of company values would be complete without a link to Bryan Cantrill’s classic talk, “Principles of Technology Leadership”. [this video] Uber once had a stated company value of “Always be hustling”. Really.
Recommends z3t4 · 2018-03 · on “Arizona Government Suspends Uber's Self Driving Cars from Roads”
Related talk by Bryan Cantrill (Principles of Technology Leadership) Watch the whole video, it's good! [this video]
Recommends faitswulff · 2018-11 · on “Quitting Amazon 5 months after I started”
> Supposedly, every employee should be guided by the leadership principles during their day-to-day routine. The principles actually make a lot of sense, when used appropriately. As time went, I discovered that the most common application of the principles was to creatively find a leadership principle that best supports the situation. Bryan Cantrill has a sometimes hilarious takedown of Amazon's "leadership principles" here, which definitely corroborates this blog post: [this video]
Recommends jka · 2019-02 · on “Key Values – Find Engineering Teams That Share Your Values”
Is the Key:Values team (nice choice of name by the way!) familiar with Bryan Cantrill's talk on 'Principles of Technology Leadership'? [this video] It seems to resonate pretty closely with what you're building, so if it helps align or educate anyone (candidates, recruiters, or the team) that'd be neat. Edit: FWIW, the talk uses the term 'principle' to indicate what your site calls a 'value'; in practice I've seen tech companies talk about their 'core values' and so I think yours is very valid.
Recommends Fellshard · 2019-11 · on “No Shenanigans”
This subject and the utter vagueness of the values presented here require me to bring up Bryan Cantrill's talk, 'Principles of Technology Leadership'.[1] He gives Amazon a lambasting over their core principles, and Uber even moreso. It's both funny and sobering to examine how what seems like a useful and valuable foundation ends up being flimsy and easy to ignore when made vague enough. [1] [this video]
Recommends dev_snd · 2021-07 · on “Amazon announce two new leadership principles”
There's a great talk by Brian Cantrill about Leadership principles [0] which also includes a discussion of the Amazon Leadership principles. He argues that Amazon's leadership principles actually aren't helpful and don't make much sense and I tend to agree. [0] [this video] (The part about Amazon starts around minute 26, but I recommend watching the whole talk)