Live data from Hacker News

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

news.ycombinator.com

131–140 of 168 posts

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

#131
post #102
post #72

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".

No, that's not the way it works at big companies like AWS, Google, Microsoft (source: me, I've worked at all 3). A large company attracts various types of people. It's not homogeneous like what you describe. Also, there are plenty of opportunities to practice "intrapreneurship" within a large company with lots of resources to impact the world in a positive way.

“Intrepreneurship” is a nice euphemism for “here, you can work on your cute little side projects and then we will keep the IP and patents.”

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

#132
post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I have been a contractor/consultant for the last 7 years. What I've seen when you try and go down that "write a test" path is. Oh there's a 2500 line stored procedure with hardcoded network paths for production data in it. Or, this api only runs on the 2nd Tuesday of the Month but only after 8pm when the day of the month is also even. There's so much do-it-live embedded in the legacy systems it takes months to make enough seams to even test things in isolation outside of production. But, if you can get buy-in to make those changes, then exactly what you are talking about helps a ton.

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

#133
post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Love being a contractor. I'm currently unemployed but gave multiple years of savings.

It's such a nice feeling to be inbetween contracts and not have to worry about how you're going to pay bills. I feel like I've only just now gotten to that with my business. Congrats and hopefully not unemployed for too long (unless thats what you want!)

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

#134
post #72

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".

There will be plenty of this, and occasionally sub in "that's unprofessional". Requesting to work from home will be unprofessional. Taking PTO will be unprofessional. Coming in at 9:02am will be unprofessional. Requesting the 1-year raise that's in your signed employment agreement will be unprofessional.

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

#138
post #72

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".

Also like working with your parents, it is always better to ask forgiveness than to ask permission.

Getting permission/authorization for anything is often a bureacratic nightmare with people who neither care enough to help you, nor wanting to authorize something that might get them in trouble, nor even knowing who's the right person to get authorization from.

As long as you're not breaking important, just do it.

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

#139
I worked about 3.5 years at 2 huge companies, one as an employee (company #1) and the other as a consultant (company #2) as a developer.

There will often be inertia, delays, and even silence when having to go through organizational processes. It took almost 2 weeks for me to receive my laptop at company 1, and then I sat waiting for a week for word of security clearance for a piece of software. At company 2 I started applying for internal full-time positions a month and half before my contract was not going to be renewed (more on that later). I got a single in person interview (after waiting a month for pointless phone screens) my final week. The first few weeks after I left I was getting pinged asking for phone screens on positions I had applied to earlier.

There will be key people who carry tremendous weight politically, fiscally, and operationally. Finding them and making yourself visible/useful will be tremendously beneficial. I was lucky that both people who interviewed me fit this bill. I ended up getting moved into better, more enjoyable roles as a result. The security clearance I mentioned previously was resolved within a few hours of my direct manager emailing the security team manager (who she knew) asking what the status was (I was denied and they never bothered to inform me). These people are valuable for getting you where you want to be in the company, and tend to be more visible internally which is likely to make you more visible as well if you working with/for them.

There are going to be organizational decisions that are inexplicable, and there are limitations to the power of the people I mentioned above. At company 2 the first team I was on was one of 5 that were working on a single web product. The product lead was invaluable due to his domain knowledge and product skill. When I talked to him my final week he told me he was being moved onto another team during a key phase of his current product. The final team I was on myself and another dev was ineligible for FTE because we weren't physically located in one of the 3 areas the team members were located, even though the entire team itself was remote and they had been unable to hire new developers for the past couple of months that we were there.

Sometimes the company is rigid to the point of it being painful, and you're told "That's just how we do it here". We were expected to release a fully fleshed out, bug free product by a set date with zero wiggle room. This happened despite not having anyone to onboard it to for almost a month after release, after which it was barely used because the company decided to focus their efforts elsewhere.

Make a point to have a solid grasp of what is going on in other teams and the company at large. This will help you in seeing any funding/resource changes coming that will directly impact you.

Be mindful of politics and pick your battles wisely. You may not want to do one or both, but knowing who pulls great weight and who is aligned with who should keep your role cleaner.

There are likely going to be people who don't pull their weight, and they can even be above you in rank. Often times this is well known and there are reasons why, even if it's something as silly as the company doesn't fire FTE.

Meetings. There will be more of them than are needed, longer than is needed, and where you aren't needed.

Sometimes teams/groups can have drastic culture changes from the company at large. It can be remote vs in-office, everyone on the team works daily together in a large office (ugh), communication styles (email vs chat vs phone), lunch together/alone, etc.

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

#140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Having worked at Big Co and then on my own company for years, this is exactly what I was thinking. You'll lose professional autonomy in exchange for a good salary, job security, and resume bling. And you probably won't have to work as hard or as often (again, probably).

"you probably won't have to work as hard" For me, it was a question of: do I put in 40% to get 90% completed, or do I put in 150% to get 99% completed?

Yeah, I think that's accurate and reflects the low level of polish in many newer Google products
Post reply on HN