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

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

#151

Post by jrmg »

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…

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 unit's benefit and they can take every ounce of credit).

Or, more usefully, find (or ask your management to help you find) something else useful to do while you're waiting on the other team.

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

#152

Post by treis »

ascar wrote: post #136
harmegido wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's pretty interesting to contrast OP's experience with this recent /r/bestof that describes in detail why things might be the way you're describing: https://www.reddit.com/r/bestof/comments/rkru22/uloosesignif...

Direct link https://old.reddit.com/r/antiwork/comments/rkk9qg/im_a_new_s... for everyone else having a hard time figuring out how to find the actual comment. Really worth a read and absolutely puts OPs story into perspective.

Yeah that story is total bullshit. It's someone's fantasy. The equivalent of me telling the story of my epic comeback in the Superbowl.

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

#153

Post by lolinder »

bps4484 wrote: post #146
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…

And it's not just large companies that slow down, either. I work for a very small organization (three developers) that's been around for 10 years. We'd love to spend more time building new stuff, but we've got 10 years' worth of old code to support. We don't have bureaucracy getting in the way, but we still can't move as fast as new startups.

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

#154

Post by danielmarkbruce »

timdaub wrote: post #134
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.…

I dislike your condescending tone and I also think your speech doesn't generalize. There are large code bases in production that are productive: Everything that is open source - and still the process isn't as shit as op describes. So this has to do with corporate hierarchies and not the quality of the code.

The original post is pretty condescending, it's just worded slightly less so. Now, that doesn't mean the very best response is to be condescending, but the invitation is right there. Sometimes a reasonable response to ~ "can you believe these idiots!" is "actually, look in the mirror, and squint a little".

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

#155

Post by mavelikara »

nightpool wrote: post #103

A lot of people have talked about the issues with this post, but I wanted to call out one specific thing: 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. This is definitely not odd. The whole point of managers is that they're there to protect their engineers from getting off track with every random request that comes up.…

> This feels like a rant that comes from someone who doesn't have a lot of experience deploying and maintaining complex systems over long periods of time.

Agree. Also:

> Finally, after many rounds of arguing about why this needs to be done in the first place (ahem: you told us to migrate to your platform, and it literally does not work for our app)

If migrating the app to the new platform is a priority, why not escalate up the startup's leadership chain to get it prioritized higher in the infrastructure team's roadmap? Looks like the startup was poorly run, with no clear escalation paths, and employees unaware that such mechanisms exist in companies (and find it odd when they notice another engineer do it).

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

#156

Post by rajangdavis »

Is it possible that there might be a code freeze at the end of the year so that engineers that are on call don't have to work through the holidays?

Without knowing the codebase, can you accurately assess that the fix you want can truly be completed within a few days? Does that cover testing and documentation?

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

#157

Post by Simon_O_Rourke »

Count yourself lucky you had the necessary kit to actually interact with the codebase at all.

I've seen large corporations dragging their heels getting basic laptops, database access or repo permissions out to devs, even when there's some critical fix required.

Accept there's little you can do in these situations except play their game. You're now going to have to figure out whether the financial gain is worth the loss of agency, simple as that.

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

#158

Post by bastijn »

timdaub wrote: post #134
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.…

I dislike your condescending tone and I also think your speech doesn't generalize. There are large code bases in production that are productive: Everything that is open source - and still the process isn't as shit as op describes. So this has to do with corporate hierarchies and not the quality of the code.

> There are large code bases in production that are productive: Everything that is open source

Yes there are but these are not without rules. Try to add a new feature to a large open source project as a new contributor. That has probably as much chance of succeeding as doing this in an enterprise.

There is a reason larger OSS projects have the "good first contribution" section. These are small bug fixes where the work is already spelled out typically. You do these to get familiar with the codebase and learn how to make a valuable contribution the size of a feature.

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

#159

Post by bastijn »

lojack wrote: post #140
_skel wrote: post #37

> 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. Your simple task, which you think would only take a few days to implement, is probably one request in a long queue of requests that team is dealing with. That means they won't be able to start on it for a long time. That team probably set up t…

> is probably one request in a long queue of requests that team is dealing with You've explained away the crux of the problem without even identifying it as a problem. Queues are an inappropriate construct for managing work. If something urgent & important takes weeks to even get looked at then there is a prioritization problem. If something that isn't urgent or important even gets worked on at all then there is a co…

The queue can be WSJF-t and still be long. Crux of the problem is OPs issue might not be as important as OP thinks.

Now if there are too many people waiting on the central team and all requests are valid the company should address the single point of failure. Grow the central team, train more externals to become contributors or agree to have duplication to a certain agree. Not everything is worth a platform with today's tools and (SaaS) services.

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

#160

Post by zebraflask »

_skel wrote: post #37

> 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. Your simple task, which you think would only take a few days to implement, is probably one request in a long queue of requests that team is dealing with. That means they won't be able to start on it for a long time. That team probably set up t…

Echoing other comments, your company was acquired. The way you're used to doing things sounds like it's quite different from how the new owners do things.

I can't make any sort of judgment call on which is or isn't "better" based on a brief HN post, but I think it's worth keeping in mind that it pays to be adaptable and to scout out the post-acquisition lay of the land before you let it affect you too much.

You don't want to create an impression of being a "difficult" employee "left over" from the acquired company, as unjust or unfair as that may seem.

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