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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?

#421

Post by achillesheels »

danielmarkbruce wrote: post #250
achillesheels wrote: post #243

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? 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…

The S&P 500 doesn't demonstrate that. It demonstrates that businesses die. It doesn't demonstrate the cause. 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…

Good points. Will you agree that businesses die due to unprofitability? And what causes unprofitability in a firm? One might answer a whole slew of reasons, such as profit erosions, but it is mostly due to lack of innovation; at least at the rate in which business cycles naturally move external to the business firm. It is the decaying rate of sales growth, then, which seems tautological, but what underlies the inability for firms such as IBM to continue to grow?

I recognize it takes four years for McDonalds to add a new product to their global supply chain. That is a symptom of scale which the administration therein attempts to streamline. In the likes of $KO, I would wager there is less complexity in the internal administration of manufacturing a beverage which has not changed in recipe in a century, and which takes nearly the same amount of time to launch diet coke. The good manufacturing practices, in other words, have not changed nor do they need to as KO continues to grow in market share globally for beverages.

Meanwhile, business computing has simply exploded since 2010 yet IBM's revenue has shrunk ~30%. Are you to suggest it is not the personnel that are responsible for its tepid business development in response to a market which moves fast and breaks things? That maybe the preservation of the internal cohesiveness of the organization as intrinsically valuable kills companies in the presence of new market environments which the organization is motivated to be responsive at the risk of termination? I advise reading The Innovator's Dilemma to corroborate my assumption.

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

#422

Post by achillesheels »

geofft wrote: post #266
achillesheels wrote: post #242

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The end of a for-profit company, I will agree, is to profit, but what end is that for humanity? You imply that moral corruption toward profitable ends is of no difference to those where righteousness in action creates profitability to the owners of the business firm, e.g. honest income. What if the managers you advise working for are evil? You seem to affirm that it is not your problem so long as you are succeeding a…

I think you missed the part where I said this was not moral or virtuous. Don't go looking for virtue. You won't find it. If the managers you advise are working towards evil (say, they're having you find zero-days to deploy against human rights advocates in the service of murderous autocrats), by all means, stop working for them! But that's very different from the managers not being able to process your feature reques…

>I think you missed the part where I said this was not moral or virtuous. Don't go looking for virtue. You won't find it.

That's like, your opinion, man. There are plenty of businesses that run with integrity as a necessary motivation to sustain their future profitability. This ends up causing a more virtuous society where people do not need to tolerate evil in order to survive.

I don't buy into your argument for "effectively improving the world", i.e. one can keep a clear conscience and do extraordinarily well in life, metabolically speaking. And that's the point: the goal in life is not measured by temporal goods. But that's like my opinion, man.

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

#423

Post by danielmarkbruce »

achillesheels wrote: post #421
danielmarkbruce wrote: post #250

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The S&P 500 doesn't demonstrate that. It demonstrates that businesses die. It doesn't demonstrate the cause. 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…

Good points. Will you agree that businesses die due to unprofitability? And what causes unprofitability in a firm? One might answer a whole slew of reasons, such as profit erosions, but it is mostly due to lack of innovation; at least at the rate in which business cycles naturally move external to the business firm. It is the decaying rate of sales growth, then, which seems tautological, but what underlies the inabil…

> but what underlies the inability for firms such as IBM to continue to grow?

I think you've answered your own question with the examples you gave.

Alive companies: Environment hasn't changed much.

Dead/hobbled companies: Significant change in the environment around creating the product/service or distributing the product/service (or a substitute) which upended the competitive dynamic. 100s of companies try to take advantage of the new dynamic and the existing companies might win, but are just another 1 in the 100's who are vying to win the new game.

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

#424

Post by 62951413 »

fiachamp wrote: post #99
_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…

The amount of people on HN nowadays that are okay with getting nothing useful done is striking. Startup guy, you don't have to accept being part of a bloated hierarchy that rewards politics more than good decision-making. You could check out at the corpo job and start prototyping your own startup ideas. Or join another early stage startup where your performance matters. I'll be starting one soon - let's keep in touch…

As much as this sentiment feels natural for an engineer there are a few things to keep in mind:

* you get exposed to a wider range of technology at a startup and can work on different things; that's more fun for you personally especially when you're under 30 yo and still learning the ropes; political indoctrination is mostly non-existent

* many startups at best get acquired; so all your "useful" efforts could end up in /dev/null or be completely replaced after the next VC round

* a minority of startups are doing real tech that's worth tolerating small company inconveniences; for every Imply/Rockset/Starburst there are many more companies building another web app, likely using inferior programming languages

* Big Co compensation and benefits are unbelievable for people coming from startups. Work/life balance cannot be compared too. Unlimited PTO could actually be European-style 4 weeks. I believe there were not so many posh places to work at ten years ago and so it was less realistic to join one.

* there's no question that startups and large corporations require dramatically different mindsets/habits. But you really get paid a lot to tolerate that smaller-than-a-tiny-cog feeling.

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

#425

Post by achillesheels »

danielmarkbruce wrote: post #423
achillesheels wrote: post #421

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Good points. Will you agree that businesses die due to unprofitability? And what causes unprofitability in a firm? One might answer a whole slew of reasons, such as profit erosions, but it is mostly due to lack of innovation; at least at the rate in which business cycles naturally move external to the business firm. It is the decaying rate of sales growth, then, which seems tautological, but what underlies the inabil…

> but what underlies the inability for firms such as IBM to continue to grow? I think you've answered your own question with the examples you gave. Alive companies: Environment hasn't changed much. Dead/hobbled companies: Significant change in the environment around creating the product/service or distributing the product/service (or a substitute) which upended the competitive dynamic. 100s of companies try to take a…

I think you are abstracting the personnel too much from your analysis. Clearly Apple, for example, persists and thrives in a world with such dynamism. The difference is one of talent, and the internal organization therein.

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

#426

Post by bastijn »

achillesheels wrote: post #425
danielmarkbruce wrote: post #423

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> but what underlies the inability for firms such as IBM to continue to grow? I think you've answered your own question with the examples you gave. Alive companies: Environment hasn't changed much. Dead/hobbled companies: Significant change in the environment around creating the product/service or distributing the product/service (or a substitute) which upended the competitive dynamic. 100s of companies try to take a…

I think you are abstracting the personnel too much from your analysis. Clearly Apple, for example, persists and thrives in a world with such dynamism. The difference is one of talent, and the internal organization therein.

Apple is a company that has rigeous processes and hierarchies. It also operates efficiently. So we are back to the start, both company types can thrive or die. Indeed, it is the brilliant leaders (at any level of the organization) that bring excellence. In one organization that may be knowing what to hack or where to take a shortcut, in another it may be knowing how to escalate things through the organization to push through an idea. The processes keep the train on track and on schedule, the escalation path is to still have a way to change tracks in time. The first takes a protective manager, the second a leader that knows when to ignore the rules. You cannot only have the protective managers but you also cannot change tracks every other day. Hence the enterprise.

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

#427

Post by [deleted] »

ryandrake wrote: post #290
tanjiro wrote: post #282

I have seen this happen many times - the only way to get other teams to prioritize your work is to convince your leaderships its important so they can talk to the leadership of those team that it is important. Sometimes, even after leadership pressure, teams refuse to move priorities or don't deliver on time - always account for those as well. No matter what you do, the slow pace & politics of large companies will hi…

Yes, yes yes! This is an interview question I (at big tech) like to ask candidates: "You have a very high priority project and need another team's help. You find they already have many "high priority projects" that they are working on. How do you go about getting this help?" A good answer to this question often separates the actual senior engineers from the junior "Senior Software Engineers". Navigating a corporate b…

[deleted]

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

#428

Post by danielmarkbruce »

achillesheels wrote: post #425
danielmarkbruce wrote: post #423

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> but what underlies the inability for firms such as IBM to continue to grow? I think you've answered your own question with the examples you gave. Alive companies: Environment hasn't changed much. Dead/hobbled companies: Significant change in the environment around creating the product/service or distributing the product/service (or a substitute) which upended the competitive dynamic. 100s of companies try to take a…

I think you are abstracting the personnel too much from your analysis. Clearly Apple, for example, persists and thrives in a world with such dynamism. The difference is one of talent, and the internal organization therein.

They were 1 in 100 in a new (gigantic) game - smart phones. Sometimes an existing company will win. They happened to have a good set of people with the right skillset for the new game (phones basically became mini computers) so maybe it was really 1 in 5, but it wasn't a sure thing they would win in the new game. And I'll bet $1 they won't win in the next new game and everyone will lament what happened to the $3 trillion company who couldn't innovate.

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

#429

Post by cwkoss »

DyslexicAtheist wrote: post #401
ascar wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

odd that most in this thread think this story is fiction, some even suggest it might be a marketing ploy to peddle a book. Is really the whole world like this or is there a difference depending on jurisdiction (e.g. comments reflect values of US?). While I can't prove a negative, this story is highly plausible in Europe where legal/HR will be on your ass and even fire the CEO if it turns out they had knowledge. In 20…

The disbelief and learned helplessness in this thread is a really disheartening view into the state of modern american work
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