I’d like to introduce you to one of my favourite metaphors for work:
Cucumbers get pickled more than brine gets cucumbered.
It basically means that individual people at a company get transformed by the company more than the company gets transformed by them. Whether you notice it or not, you’re getting brined.
🥒 The brine matters a lot.
Whatever role you’re doing, “good” isn’t the same at every company. That means that wherever you are, your company has a vision of “good” for your role that is not neutral. Progression at your company means developing along their ideas of what good looks like.
This can be a good or bad thing.
Companies can definitely transform you for the better. Intentional leadership that has a clear vision of what “excellent” looks like, a challenging but kind culture, and great practitioners are all contributors to fantastic brine. Being a cucumber in this environment can mean you grow in your role at a faster rate, develop better skills, and overall just become more employable.
(If it sounds like I’m describing startups here, I’m not. You can find this at all kinds of company stages, and it’s not always consistent across departments.)
But companies can also transform you for the worse, by instilling bad habits or limiting your growth. That might be because the culture is too oppressive to get the right amount of challenge, or because the leadership team isn’t able to set the bar effectively. You see this a lot in non-tech companies trying to run tech teams – if the tech leadership doesn’t understand tech, their teams are always fighting uphill and, if they don’t have good experience from elsewhere, will not be able become the best versions of themselves.
🪜 Getting promoted isn’t always the same as getting better.
Part of the brine is how progression works at your company. Promotions, raises, and other recognition are based in what good looks like… to the company.
If you’re in a place with really good brine, typically that means progression is harder to achieve. The bar is higher, the expectations are higher, and there’s more challenge. It also makes it more rewarding, because getting promoted in a good-brine environment means you can feel your own growth.
It can be easier to be promoted in a bad brine company. But it’s not as transferrable if you’re trying to break into a good-brine company. (I mentioned it briefly in last week’s post about hiring “true seniors.”)
🫙 A world outside the jar.
You might not be able to tell if you’re in good-brine or bad-brine, especially if you’re relatively new to your role. That means you need to actively spend time outside of your jar to calibrate:
Go to meetups or other events where you can meet other people in your role at different companies to see what they’re doing.
Read articles or books, or listen to podcasts, with thought leaders in your area.
If you know of a "good-brine” company, see if you find any thing they’ve documented before, like a handbook, values, career ladders, or even just LinkedIn posts from leadership. You may be able to learn something from that.
Over time, you’ll start to form an opinion on whether your brine is going to help you get to where you want to go.
I love this quote a lot – not because I like pickles (yuck!), but because I’m very fortunate as a leader in a small company to actually influence the brine. I’ve also worked at companies that definitively changed me for the better, and others where I was trying so hard to cucumber everyone around me that I was exhausted.
A lot of people choose companies they work for without intention. It’s usually about the role, title, salary, and the job description. But the company will shape you to an extent, so you need to take that seriously.
