The idea that top leadership is responsible for culture is exactly what makes organizing in tech so exasperating.
Tech workers can have their own culture, their own priorities, their own views on what is ethical, important, and valuable in life. And they can come together in defense of those values in a way that senior management must understand, accept, and respect.
That ability to come together, organize, and prevail is something people gave their lives for. It mattered to them and should not be something we give up.
Perhaps a better way to phrase things is that top leadership is responsible for creating a set of environmental conditions where the right culture can thrive and grow.
A not-insignificant chunk of that is in choosing the right people, which is more than just selecting for raw ability.
It's a mix of having enough skills to contribute, and having the ability to rapidly adapt and upskill on top of that, but it's also being collaborative and working to strengthen the organization at all levels, and being kind and considerate of others.
The way that you structure your organization has a huge impact on all of those things.
Stack ranking? Kiss collaboration goodbye. You've just put every team member at odds with their peers for their very survival.
Purely top-down performance reviews? People will put more effort into being visible to their managers than in being helpful to their peers.
And so on it goes with interviews, onboarding, etc.
All of these things matter hugely, and they all very much flow from the top of the organization.
You're missing the point of organizing, which is to ensure that if the workers don't like the culture, they can force the top leadership to make changes to the "environmental conditions"
I agree. They are also missing the conflictions with top leadership first being responsible for making money. I think the points made here are fine and good, but not exactly helpful.
Tech workers can have their own culture, their own priorities, their own views on what is ethical, important, and valuable in life. And they can come together in defense of those values in a way that senior management must understand, accept, and respect.
That ability to come together, organize, and prevail is something people gave their lives for. It mattered to them and should not be something we give up.