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Ask HN: Moving from a startup to a big co, what should I be aware of?

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Re: Ask HN: Moving from a startup to a big co, what should I be aware of?

#71

Post by bcrosby95 »

mrslave wrote: post #32
ornornor wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Seriously. I heard big companies were slow before but I didn’t realize the magnitude of it until I joined one. Most people where I work either only produce real work for anywhere between 40 to 10% of their time. The rest is either filled by busywork or twiddling your thumbs (depending on individuals)

Or meetings, meetings, and... more meetings! My 2 cents: As a contractor, charge a lot. They either have budget and want to spend it RIGHT NOW or they don't. The manager engaging you doesn't really care about your daily rate (relatively speaking). Above comments on automation is spot on. Test suites might be terrible, so the care required to make changes without breaking things is your responsibility, hence the slow…

> Learn to work with this and you can extract gold.

Curious if you have any tips for this stuff? My instinct would be to just poke and prod things, writing tests or documenting things as I go along. "I wonder what happens when I do X" -> write a test, get a result. "I wonder what data looks like here" -> examine it, write a summary of what I found. Etc.

Re: Ask HN: Moving from a startup to a big co, what should I be aware of?

#72

Post by lunias »

Remember when you used to ask your Mom / Dad, "Why?" and they'd respond with, "Because I said so." It's like that, but subtly more infuriating because it's never a single identifiable person saying "no" that could be spoken to, understood, and reasoned with. The answer that you'll get at a big company is, "because that's the way it is".

Re: Ask HN: Moving from a startup to a big co, what should I be aware of?

#73

Post by tombert »

I have no idea if you're anything like me, but when I moved to a big megacorp, the thing that caught me off guard is how often you're expected to check and respond to emails.

In a smaller environment, if you have an email that slipped past you, typically someone will just ping you or bother you in person to ask you something, but in a megacorp that's simply not going to fly.

We can actually abstract that a bit; if you're not used to having a lot of imposed structure and restrictions, moving to a megacorp is going to be initially difficult for you. I've been at mine for about two years, and I only recently feel like I've found a workable pattern.

Re: Ask HN: Moving from a startup to a big co, what should I be aware of?

#76

Post by stuaxo »

Half the job when trying to get something done, is working out who to speak to.

You'll find out this stuff by a sort of osmosis, there isn't really one person who knows stuff, you just sort of bump into the useful person eventually.

Keep track of names and acronyms, there will be lots of both.

Re: Ask HN: Moving from a startup to a big co, what should I be aware of?

#78

Post by jefftk »

The biggest difference I've seen is around product maturity. At a startup you typically have something very new and no reputation. You have to move very quickly to build it out and expand, and you sacrifice a lot to make this happen.

At a big company you're typically working on something much more mature, making lots of money, with many users who rely on it. You still need to make it better, but it's now much more important not to break what's already working. Even if your project is a new one, you still have the company's reputation to protect so you don't hurt existing products. Different companies handle this different ways (I lean towards investing in efficient end-to-end testing and experimentation) but all the options here trade velocity for reliability.

Re: Ask HN: Moving from a startup to a big co, what should I be aware of?

#79

Post by christopherwxyz »

KKKKkkkk1 wrote: post #38
austincheney wrote: post #5

Here is what it means to work at a big company: * Things work slowly, so relax. There are many people that have a hand in every aspect of a product decision. * At a startup you are actively changing the world. That’s done now. Put that completely out of your head. You are cog in a machine. Instead focus on your assigned product, help your teammates, and just learn to relax. * You, the individual, are not important. T…

> At a startup you are actively changing the world. That sounds very exciting. Can you point to one startup that's changing the world?

Stripe
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