A few years ago I participated in a committee of individual contributors tasked with proposing a set of core values to management (who would then integrate it into their core values and propose it to execs…who would then integrate it into their core values and propose it to the PE Board and…)
Not sure what happened between us and the other nodes on that telephone game but these exact four “core values” (enron) popped out.
A couple years later, 100% of the ICs on that committee are still around. Most of the management layer and nearly all of the exec layer are gone.
we talk about this in our onboarding. Its why we have two guiding docs, values & operating principles.
The values are active and hopefully not aspirational, master your craft, listen first, learn why. We stole from the famous netflix deck to create them and they boiled out of our first few employees.
The operating principles are different. They came from a couple sr folks while we were hiring pretty aggressively. They had the job of training and onboarding and wanted to encapsulate how we engage more tactically. I like them, my favorite is exothermic, i would have never created them though, which is cool to see.
Unfortunately CDPR is showing some signs of Bioware-ing. As much as I liked Cyberpunk 2077, it was visibly "less than" Witcher 3 in too many ways. This is a sign of decline.
I am not talking about graphics or bugs, but about story and immersion. I don't care at all about the Witcher 3 remastering, but I loved the land, story and feeling of Toussaint. Cyberpunk does not reach that level, even if it is quite good.
Not really sure if they're comparable to a Bioware since CD Projekt Red the studio is basically the one and the same as CD Projekt the publisher. They also own GOG.com. They're probably more comparable to a Valve, with game development, game publishing and game distribution under a single roof.
Dragon Age: Inquisition (2014) was their last critically acclaimed and successful game, and even that oen was considered a drop in quality for the series.
I'm playing ME: Andromeda now on a handheld and I don't get the hate. Sure it's not ME2 but graphically more polished though the storyline lacks the impact of the first trilogy. Otherwise, I think it's a fine game.
Andromeda got critized a lot for admittedly unnecessary flaws, but at its core it was a great mass effect. It even corrected many mistakes of the original trilogy, like having a proper ending that used the allies won during the game.
I think Andromeda was actually more of a victim of modern "outrage" culture. A few bugs, memes, and suddenly a game is "trash". The game wasn't terrible and I recall enjoying playing it at the time. Sure, some of the animations were stiff and the main character design wasn't stellar but those were _really_ blown out of proportion in games media at the time.
Nowadays if your game has even one thing wrong and the wrong influencer makes fun of it, suddenly it's trash. At the same time, your game can be trash and if an influencer laughs their ass off at the bugs (in a good way), everyone wants it. It's a sad culture. /rant
I still think Mass Effect Andromeda was one story DLC away from being my favorite Mass Effect game. The team behind Andromeda was the team that made all the best story DLC for the previous three games. Their wheelhouse was taking the game past the last stages of polish to telling the small stories that really tie the whole thing together. I still wonder what we might have gotten from the cancelled DLC if the technical bugs of the Frostbite engine switch hadn't created such a bad first impression.
(Side note, the ME: Andromeda novels are really good and hinted at a lot of storylines that we may never see closure on, but were certainly building blocks the game was working on getting to.)
Cringely was a character. I can't say he changed the world in a major way - he was no Bill Gates or Steve Jobs. Heck, he wasn't even Eric Schmidt. But he was a clever, charming, and interesting person, and his coverage of the tech industry made it feel a lot more glamorous that it really was. He was also a fabulist and possibly even a bit of a scoundrel. That said, I do think our industry was better with him in it.
- Respect: Treating others as one would like to be treated, while explicitly rejecting ruthlessness, callousness, and arrogance.
- Integrity: Working with customers and prospects openly, honestly, and sincerely, and honoring commitments.
- Communication: Maintaining an obligation to talk and listen to one another, believing information is meant to move people.
- Excellence: Demanding the very best in all operations and continuously raising performance standards.
-Enron
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