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I can buy the part about putting up fences between business people at the tech team. Been there, done that, modernized project management. But the "thank you"s, bonuses and all that? Complete fantasy. :)
I 100% guarantee it's someone who has recently read "The Phoenix Project" and made it up based on that.
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>Learn how the system works, and learn how to be effective within that system. And what if the system is corrupt? Do you advocate complacency? > but I also know for sure that new employees who try to bypass process and question the priorities of other teams, before they learn the ropes and build credibility and trust with other people, do not succeed. And what if the people who do not succeed with such bureaucracy ar…
Literally the point of a job at a for-profit company is to make money, yes, primarily for yourself and secondarily for the business. This is by no means moral or virtuous. But it is true , and because it is true, the people who admit the truth of it will be more successful in the sense that they will be working with the system, and the people who act as if it is somehow untrue and there is some greater virtue behind…
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The judgment, however, is that while one is not the same priority any longer, one's priorities are necessarily devalued, due to the a competition for resources, namely, time. I see the common explanation here is to just shrug at the state of affairs. Is this the best management can do? I can see why Fortune 500 companies die now.
I see a lot of startups dying, much more than fortune 500 companies. Can I now conclude not having processes kills companies faster? It's not that this thread advices to shrug it off. They try to explain why some things can't go faster that easily and what seems cloggy and stupid can still be an effective machine at scale.
No you cannot, because your starting premise is flawed. One organization has demonstrated its value over time - quite possibly inter-generationally - and the other has not proven its certainty in returning income. And what created that value in time? The people. With startups, it could be the idea.
>It's not that this thread advices to shrug it off. They try to explain why some things can't go faster that easily and what seems cloggy and stupid can still be an effective machine at scale.
My point is it looks effective, but the S&P 500 historically demonstrates bureaucracies asphyxiate. I'm simply pointing that out to people in this thread who likely participate in the miscarriage of organizational competency.
You have 3 choices:
1) You either accept this is how it is, collect a paycheck, and live with it.
2) You try to change it. But you are 1 against 100's or more. Not likely to happen.
3) You quit and find a new gig.
I have tried all 3 multiple times but now skip 1 and 2 and just go right to 3 as soon as any retention bonuses expire.
I have been through a total of 11 startups being acquired, 3 of those as a (co)founder, 6 of them an advisor to the process.
The recipe to get acquired is simple once you realize what these big companies are looking for.
All large human systems, government, academia, business, whatever, converge to this. Everybody's comfortable, nobody's working too hard, sure, we'll get to it in a couple months...maybe. The paychecks will keep on coming, we can all go home at 5, everything's great.
Then, all of a sudden, some small startup "cuts corners", doesn't fill out the paperwork, kind of ignores all this "compliance" a bit, and somehow...out-executes you with 1/10th the staff, at half the price.
The immediate reaction is always disbelief, and rationalization. "They don't have feature X". "They aren't PCI-DSS compliant." Yet somehow, the customers are lining up and can't get enough. Someone figured out precisely what mattered and what didn't (what people were willing to pay for), and delivered it.
Single-payer healthcare, the DMV, and private equity-created monopolies are what happens when there's no competition. There lies the world of consistently higher prices, "waiting rooms", we can't do that because "it's never been done that way before", etc.
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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.
I can buy the part about putting up fences between business people at the tech team. Been there, done that, modernized project management. But the "thank you"s, bonuses and all that? Complete fantasy. :)
Great bosses like this exist
> 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…
>Learn how the system works, and learn how to be effective within that system. And what if the system is corrupt? Do you advocate complacency? > but I also know for sure that new employees who try to bypass process and question the priorities of other teams, before they learn the ropes and build credibility and trust with other people, do not succeed. And what if the people who do not succeed with such bureaucracy ar…
The OP's situation is unfortunate because they didn't choose this workplace themselves (as their startup was bought), but "not being compliant" seems like a poor solution to the problem. Quitting seems more reasonable.
Working in a startup is very different from working in a corporation, as you found out. As a single developer, you can not change the big corporation in its ways, how ever wrong they are. I think you have three options: 1) keep trying - and burn out in a few years 2) Adjust to the corporate life style stop caring, make do, and find something else important in your life. A hobby, a side project, something to burn for.…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I see a lot of startups dying, much more than fortune 500 companies. Can I now conclude not having processes kills companies faster? It's not that this thread advices to shrug it off. They try to explain why some things can't go faster that easily and what seems cloggy and stupid can still be an effective machine at scale.
>I see a lot of startups dying, much more than fortune 500 companies. Can I now conclude not having processes kills companies faster? No you cannot, because your starting premise is flawed. One organization has demonstrated its value over time - quite possibly inter-generationally - and the other has not proven its certainty in returning income. And what created that value in time? The people. With startups, it could…
You might assume it's increased bureaucracy or lack of organizational competency but there isn't compelling evidence, I don't buy it, and good investors like Warren Buffett don't buy it. Talk to anyone who worked at a big successful newspaper in the 80s and anyone who worked (or works) at Coke (or Pepsi). Both will give you horror stories about bureaucracy. The newspaper industry is dead, and Coke keeps printing money (Pepsi too). Why?