The strangely unsettling motivational posters of Silicon Valley

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A bunch of stale platitudes in which to ‘live’ your life. Ugh.

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So then, shortly after a boss I thought I liked put up a batch of these, including “Make Mistakes”, I got sacked for making a dumb, easily reversed mistake…

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At least everyone is reading these in the same uncanny dystopic frame of mind.

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This one is especially cute since almost every single one of them is working on trivial first world consumer bullcrap like how to steal Craiglist feeds and present them with a tile UI and oh yeah, Facebook integration.

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Poster 1: “You have to make every single detail perfect.”
Poster 2: “Done is better than perfect.”

Are they trying to give people the tools to make “Dilbert” real?

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LESS?!? This poster would get torn down so quickly in my presence.

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I know, right? Sigh.

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It’s things exactly like this that came to mind when reading the refreshingly different Damned Good Advice posted the other day.

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And this pack of craptastic posters is a mere $415. The corporate version of the $2k Pentagon toilet seat?

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Cayce, Look over here!!!

(blaaaarrrrggggg!)

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They are an attempt to live up to Tom Peters’s classic management advice to exploit chaos and reward failure. Tom meant not just that managers should noisily reward someone who tries hard, even if the attempt fails, but that managers should not even internally seethe and plot revenge against failure.

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I like how several of them are contradictory. “Done is better than Perfect” vs “You have to have every single detail Perfect and you have limit the number of details” vs “Don’t Compromise” (removing details is often compromise) vs “Move fast and break things” (broken things are not perfect) vs “Always deliver more than expected” (kind of hard if we’re limiting the details. Etc…

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My favorite part of the site is the page header that says “GREAT, WE SHIP TO UNDEFINED!”

I would like to test that claim.

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And what a deal at 525$

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The NULL people of UNDEFINED. Now there’s some Science Fiction I would read…

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What’s going to be the Silicon Valley version of the Tacoma Narrows bridge to end all this Tinkerbell nonsense?

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Ask your self, “Is this good for the COMPANY?”

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I don’t know if it’s the half-assed design, or my vision of the target audience, but something about these posters is irksome. All of a sudden those corny motivational posters you see hanging in every car dealership are looking much better.

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Dilbert isn’t real?

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