4th Post: Dell's Culture!

In this post I’d like to quickly talk about corporate cultures; in particular: Dell’s culture.

Dell’s culture is – I believe – quite unique. People here keep stressing ambiguity – and I think it’s important to understand just how much this culture is about being in a state of constant flux. For instance, as I mentioned in a previous post – the instructions I got when I got to Dell were: “This is the name of the product you are focusing on. This is a list of names. Talk to them. Figure it out.”; when I had mentioned this to other employees in the company they mostly chuckled and said “Welcome to Dell.”

The culture here is essentially one of taking initiative and knowing which resources can help you get the job done. Essentially, it’s an entrepreneurial culture in which you don’t have your hands held by your bosses. They don’t teach you to swim, they kick you screaming into the deep end, fully expecting you to either learn to swim or sink down to the bottom. I love it.

People who like to take initiative and set their own agenda can really blaze their own trail here. They can create new business lines from scratch, they can take the ball and run with it and people will not get in their way too often. This is something that I think truly distinguishes the corporate culture here from others. All too often in large corporations there is a certain entrenched thinking that is seldom challenged. I find Dell’s culture to be very accepting to critique and fresh thinking.

The deeper into the internship I get, the more productive I become, which is fortunate, because the work keeps piling on and on. Workdays quickly now become 10 hour-11 hour workdays, and I’m sure that as the date of my final presentation looms I will be racking up the over time like it’s nobody’s business.