41–50 of 312 posts
I was thinking about this part and I realize Y Combinator doesn't look too different from that.
I am a 27 year old programmer and have worked for two small companies ( < 20 employees ) and for one company of 200+ employees. The only thing I can say about working for the large company is that it felt like breathing through a straw. Go work for a small company or as Paul Graham suggests, go start up your own. Leave the big companies for the burnt-out folk with kids and debt.
I'm 26 and just passed my fifth year at a very large company (18000+), with four years in IT and the past year in Software Engineering. I've been looking for an oppurtunity at a smaller company, since my current one is stifling my ability to learn and be productive. The issue I'm finding is that small companies are typically looking for someone with more experience than I could currently offer. Has anyone else come a…
Another would be just to look for a good startup. All a good startup cares about is how good you are, not how many years it took you to get that way.
This made me think of something Peter Drucker wrote, and I think it came from the article summarized here: http://knowledgeworks.wordpress.com/2007/06/05/article-the-c... pg says that the modern firm is the product of modern technology, but this summary of Drucker's article points out that technology is also obviating the need for much of the "middle management" layers that pg criticizes as anathema to humankind's na…
If I had to structure an organization of 1,000 people, here's how I'd do it: rather than tiers of management on the order of 1, 10, 100, and 1000, I'd just have two levels. At the top would be a small committee that controls allocation of money and from time to time publishes non-specific guidelines about where they'd like the company to go. One person on the committee is in charge of hiring salesmen, who once hired…
Suppose Team X isn't doing well. Probability of getting fired is 50%. They decide (independently) to do Z, with a 90% chance of increasing their team's profits (and not getting fired) as well as a 10% chance of major lawsuit that will crush the company.
This nearly doubles Team X's survival probability, while exposing the company to a massive risk. This is a classical example of agency costs. And this is why big companies are usually pyramid shaped.
Baboons, particularly Hamadryas Baboons, can be found in troops ranging from 5 to 250 animals (although a troop of 400 has been reported). These troops have a very strict hierarchy with about 4 "levels": a harem - containing one male "follower" and up to ten females, two to three harems unite repeatedly to form a clan, and two to four clans form a band.
Very large hierarchies do and can work in the wild, although they are rare or last a limited period of time.
My first job out of school was at IBM. This was invaluable not because I learned a lot but because I witnessed firsthand the bureaucratic inertia described in the article.
When I left to launch a startup, I never looked back or second-guessed myself because I knew I wasn't missing anything.
Consequently, is being 'wild' necessarily a positive attribute?
Doesn't this (and comparisons to animals) to some degree reflect de-evolution?
I think that this analysis only focuses on one half of the forces that direct survival. Humans may work more efficiently as small groups, but we have also formed into large hierarchical structures for as long as we have had history. Egypt and Summaria were both hierarchically governed. Organizations survive by becoming more efficient, but they also survive by have more labor available. Napoleon would not have won a s…