This really doesn't match my experience about what the interesting parts of "culture" are.
How much do we value doing the work vs. talking about it? Are the highest-status people the most skilled practitioners, or something else? Are policies and processes designed with empathy for practitioner workflows, do they make any intuitive sense to practitioners, or are they decrees from clueless faraway box-tickers?
Are people on top of their shit and constantly improving it, or do they not even realize what's wrong with it until you tell them? When you file bug reports and feature requests are they responded to promptly and taken seriously?
How much do we value consistency, reliability, stability - both in our work product and in our interactions with each other? Are APIs stable? How are migrations handled? Do platform teams provide nice off-ramps? Do they continue providing adequate support for the old thing until you're actually off, or just shrug and say you should have been using the shiny new? When you get a "monthly newsletter" - was there an issue last month? Will there be next month? If you come across a 2-year-old "approved" design doc in unfamiliar territory, what are the chances it was actually executed?
I have seen all these things vary quite a bit between teams and over time.
How much do we value doing the work vs. talking about it? Are the highest-status people the most skilled practitioners, or something else? Are policies and processes designed with empathy for practitioner workflows, do they make any intuitive sense to practitioners, or are they decrees from clueless faraway box-tickers?
Are people on top of their shit and constantly improving it, or do they not even realize what's wrong with it until you tell them? When you file bug reports and feature requests are they responded to promptly and taken seriously?
How much do we value consistency, reliability, stability - both in our work product and in our interactions with each other? Are APIs stable? How are migrations handled? Do platform teams provide nice off-ramps? Do they continue providing adequate support for the old thing until you're actually off, or just shrug and say you should have been using the shiny new? When you get a "monthly newsletter" - was there an issue last month? Will there be next month? If you come across a 2-year-old "approved" design doc in unfamiliar territory, what are the chances it was actually executed?
I have seen all these things vary quite a bit between teams and over time.