Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Ask HN: Startup acquired by a large company and it sucks. What to do?

news.ycombinator.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

141–150 of 464 posts

Re: Ask HN: Startup acquired by a large company and it sucks. What to do?

#141

Post by misterbwong »

Having been _exactly_ where you've been a couple different times I can assure you that things can & will get better, if you let them. It's really up to you to learn and work within the system or to begrudge it. No judgement either way, bigco's aren't for everyone.

   I'm working on migrating our apps to the parent company's VM launching and deploy platform. Should be fairly straightforward, I think. Unfortunately, the deploy tooling isn't entirely compatible with our app so I ask the team if they can implement $X feature to support our app.
> The actual fix is rarely the long pole in the tent for implementation. In the other team's mind this translates to: "Can you support a completely unfamiliar platform in your app from now until eternity?"

  The first engineer I talk to doesn't even attempt to answer my question but redirects me to their manager. Ok, that's odd, I think, but whatever.
> Engineers being hit up directly by other teams is the first thing a manager stops in bigco. It's good for their team but not necessarily outside teams or for moving fast.

  Manager says sure, just fill out this feature request doc. [...] delivery timeline of end of Q1 in 2022.
> This is about prioritization and ROI. They need to document the feature, compare against other company and team priorities, and get approval to move on it. Bigco is a cruiseliner not a speedboat. It takes a lot to turn it so it naturally wants to be sure that it's headed in the right direction before turning.

  At this point I am in absolute shock. This should take no more than a few days to implement.

  So I reach out to the manager and ask what is going on. This is a simple task, I said. Why does it take an entire quarter for your team to deliver? He doesn't have an answer.
> Again, the code isn't the hard part.

  I tell him I'm happy to fix the issue myself [...] and that only members of his team have R/W on that repo. What???
> CYA, get used to it. What happens WHEN your patch breaks and deletes customer data? Who takes the fall? Probably not the guy who submitted a PR one time to help the team out.

  This is insane. And this entire time I was only alllowed to interact with managers and have not spoken to a single engineer about the actual technical details. It is impossible to get anything done here now.
> Sounds like you also need to update your team structure for the realities of bigco. In bigco, there are people (scrum master, eng mgr, product owner, product managers, etc) that deal with all the things in this post and shield your eng team from having to deal with bigco's mess.

  Is this how it's like at all large companies? What should I do?
> You should adapt. Or not. It's up to you. Some people like it, some people don't. Personally, I've come to terms with it and have tried to carve out a "smallco team" within the bigco structures. It's not perfect but it helps scratch my "get things done" itch. Also keep in mind, there are benefits to bigco. Work/life balance, etc etc etc.

Re: Ask HN: Startup acquired by a large company and it sucks. What to do?

#143

Post by dools »

Don’t think of it as one company, imagine every team is a company. What you’re experiencing is no different from when I use a SaaS product and I would love them to implement a feature in their API, but it’s not their priority.

Imagine if I asked that SaaS company for access to their codebase so I could submit a patch.

Re: Ask HN: Startup acquired by a large company and it sucks. What to do?

#144

Post by piyh »

pavel_lishin wrote: post #127
CogitoCogito wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Take this as a learning experience: don't assume that you are at a startup where people will drop everything to handle a request from you right away. This doesn't explain why they wouldn't accept the offer of work from /u/lopkeny12ko. I've been in the same situation multiple times. Sometimes I've been allowed to do the work and sometimes not. In the cases where I was allowed to do the work, I certainly took longer…

> This doesn't explain why they wouldn't accept the offer of work from /u/lopkeny12ko. I know of at least two teams who would kindly ask me to refrain from doing this; me doing the work doesn't mean they don't have to do any. They still have to take the time to review my code, provide feedback, possibly explain to me their standards and conventions. Afterward, they have to maintain and own my changes - what if I intr…

Plus the ability to jump into another repo with zero assistance to implement a change is not common. Aside from the technical skills needed, other stuff like filling out change control forms or making sure the build passes CI isn't something you can do with repo access alone. To go down all those possible roads with anyone who asks can turn into a full time job when you multiply it in a large org.

Then after supporting those requests and cleaning up after those people, you job becomes lumpy and irregular with tons of people owning your time. Getting out of a role like that either takes years or quitting.

Re: Ask HN: Startup acquired by a large company and it sucks. What to do?

#146

Post by bps4484 »

nocturnial wrote: post #28

You wanted something done, you explained why it should be done, they agreed and will implement it. I would quit that job immediately! I'm not even being sarcastic. If it bothers you that much that people like to plan things and that takes too much time according to you then yes, just quit. I've been on the other end of things where someone said: "Oh, I can implement this in 5 minutes". The first few persons I would h…

My response to "Oh, I can implement this in 5 minutes" is always "but will you support it?"

I think this is the hardest thing about moving from a startup to a more mature company (either through growth and age or acquisition); you have to move your mindset from building to supporting. Building is fun and creative, supporting can be tedious and soul sucking (but needed!). It's a huge, and legitimate, reason why large companies slow down (either to support, or to consider support in the build process).

Re: Ask HN: Startup acquired by a large company and it sucks. What to do?

#147

Post by dools »

dllthomas wrote: post #101
shadowtree wrote: post #41

Tell me you never ran a large code base in production, without telling me. Past a certain point there are no "simple code changes" anymore. Automation and functional QA needs to ensure zero regressions, internal and external docs need to be considered, it all needs to be bundled in with many other code changes (feature and fixes), etc. There is no shortcut. Even FB had to dial back their "break shit in prod" mantra.…

> very grown up sport, more like running a country than building a house We need to stop calling things "grown up" when what we mean is that they take a different set of skills. It's childish, and I think it's been causing harm in our industry.

So it’s okay to refer to something as childish but not as grown up?

Re: Ask HN: Startup acquired by a large company and it sucks. What to do?

#148

Post by atmosx »

JamesBarney wrote: post #42
dogleash wrote: post #21

>Is this how it's like at all large companies? Not all, but a lot. >What should I do? Short term: Mentally check out. Embrace the Zen of just doing what's asked of you. It's not your job to be a go-getter anymore. Half because of institutional complexity/inertia, and half because in a tall organization hierarchy the middle managers don't want anyone below them swimming outside their lane (even if it would be to their…

This. I call this achieving Enterprise Zen. You have to let go of your attachment to productivity and ponder on kohns such as "If a task is accomplished but no one sees it on a report, was that task accomplished?"

we call this :PASOK:

Re: Ask HN: Startup acquired by a large company and it sucks. What to do?

#149

Post by pvarangot »

seattle_spring wrote: post #10

Those feature request intakes occur because otherwise infra teams become bombarded with multiple requests per day. In isolation they're not much work, but the cumulative requests could take years and truly need prioritization. Being a recently acquisition, I recommend scheduling time with their manager to talk directly about your situation and trying to get on as part of their primary priorities. If that doesn't work…

But what's not allowing access for compliance reasons and that's it? There should be a form where he can request access if he thinks he can pull off an implementation in days of something that takes months otherwise.

I worked in big and very big corporations and cut through PCI, HIPPA, and lots of those with requests like that. That they have forms and scheduled for a month in the future (assuming second half of December doesn't exist which is reasonable) is good. But that there's no process to get access to their code and figure our what's going on is not ok. Specially if they are an infra team.

Post reply on HN