The Software Developer's Career Handbook

Chapter 9. The Culture Chart

They played bridge every Wednesday at Netscape. In the middle of the cafeteria. Like clockwork.

The players were a collection of ex-SGI guys, and they worked for a variety of different groups at the company, but as I learned a few months later, this core group of men quietly defined the engineering culture of the company...with a bridge game.

Days

In the first 90 days of a new job, you’re going to have a solid feel for the construction of your team. Who is who. Who does what. What they know. Who the oddball is. Who the free electron is. In a startup, when there are only 12 of you, you’re done. You know the initial people landscape because from where you sit you can see them all and you interact with all of them regularly. In a larger company, however, 90 days is only going to give you a brief glimpse of what you need to know about your coworkers, the company, and its culture.

Fortunately, in a large company, tools and documents have been created to help you traverse the culture and process and figure out where people fit. For example, what do you do when you get a random urgent Slack from a coworker who is a stranger? Even if the stranger takes the time to explain who they are and what they do, you still fire up the corporate directory with the simple question: Who does this stranger work for?

The corporate directory is the digital representation of a formerly very important document: the organization chart.

A quick glance at the org chart answers ...