The future of work: What happens when talent trumps capital?
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The future of work: What happens when talent trumps capital?
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Re: The future of work: What happens when talent trumps capital?
#2I don't think it's quite that simple. The overarching problem that big companies face is not single, hard knots, that can be solved in isolation by an outside team of experts. The real problem are with infrastructure and even culture. Big co. traditionally treat IT as a suppirtive function. Unless they start thinking IT as an integral part of the company's processes, nothing will change.
Re: The future of work: What happens when talent trumps capital?
#3I think it is an interesting scenario, but I don't think that every competent software engineer will want to start their own business, even if the capital cost is zero. I believe that even most of the competent people in the world likes a safe employment where they are challenged. So maybe there is a middle ground somewhere.
Re: The future of work: What happens when talent trumps capital?
#4In circumstances, where the means of software production outweighs the readily available business intelligence (see: every "Show HN" poster, ever), largecorps posting their pain-points might be sufficient alone to get things started. Savvy engineers, armed with some knowledge of customer development, can use this to kickstart problem validation, with a significantly higher probability of turning into a viable startup, than the de-facto "let's make a better mousetrap" way.
Re: The future of work: What happens when talent trumps capital?
#5>the best creatives would rather start their own company than work for someone else
I do not believe this is true. There are many very good technical people who don't mind running businesses, but my experience is that the best technical people? they don't want the headache.
The best technical people I know lack the business/social skills to negotiate what I think their maximum salary as an employee would be, much less the ability to run a business.
We can't all be polymaths.
Re: The future of work: What happens when talent trumps capital?
#6> spectacular business failures over the next decade as the incumbents who fail to engage the "technical creative class" are eviscerated by nimbler and more tech-savvy operators
Sorry, this is encouraging for us here, but I think it's silly. Clayton Christensen studied why strong incumbents fail. He found again and again that incumbents were the best at adopting new technology, even radical architectural changes, provided that the technology gave an improvement that was valued by their customers.
They failed when the new technology wasn't valuable to their customers. Even when they developed the technology in-house, to a level of excellence, it didn't help them - if their customers didn't want it. The reason it eventually caused them to fail was that other people did want it, and firms grew up to service them. Eventually, the new technology improved enough so that the incumbents' customers also wanted it - but they bought from the new guys, who had by now become the "incumbents" for that technology, and had all aspects of the business worked out (engineering, product design, brand, advertising, channels, distribution, support etc).
It will be the same here: if incumbents can harness new technology to serve their customers, they will do so. If they are fighting for their lives, will put their massive resources into play to secure the necessary technical talent.
And the danger that is hard for them to fight: other firms serving different customers, with technology that one day will be good enough for their customers (but not yet).
e.g. target people who cannot afford the incumbents' product, with a product that's not good enough for the incumbents' customers.
e.g. target people who can't use the incumbents' product in a specific situation, with a product that is not as good as the incumbents' product in the usual situation.
e.g. target people who lack the time, skills or expertise to use the incumbents' product (i.e. not worth the hassle), with a product that is not as good as the incumbents' product for their customers (who do have the time, skill, expertise).
This is the mechanism - avoid threatening incumbents, and you have a chance. Threaten them, and they will kick your ass (you will "provoke a competitive response"). It's not as simple as lacking technical expertise.
Re: The future of work: What happens when talent trumps capital?
#7>the best creatives would rather start their own company than work for someone else I do not believe this is true. There are many very good technical people who don't mind running businesses, but my experience is that the best technical people? they don't want the headache. The best technical people I know lack the business/social skills to negotiate what I think their maximum salary as an employee would be, much les…
That's true to a point. But most companies aren't willing to treat their top talent well enough to keep them. There comes a time when running your own business is less headache than dealing with a bureaucracy, and they go do that.
But again, I said 'most companies'. Some of them have a very clear view of the situation and make sure that talent is happy and unwilling to move to another company, let alone start their own. And I think there are more of those companies all the time.
And to be fair to the rest, they probably can't afford it.
Re: The future of work: What happens when talent trumps capital?
#8>the best creatives would rather start their own company than work for someone else I do not believe this is true. There are many very good technical people who don't mind running businesses, but my experience is that the best technical people? they don't want the headache. The best technical people I know lack the business/social skills to negotiate what I think their maximum salary as an employee would be, much les…
That's true to a point. But most companies aren't willing to treat their top talent well enough to keep them. There comes a time when running your own business is less headache than dealing with a bureaucracy, and they go do that. But again, I said 'most companies'. Some of them have a very clear view of the situation and make sure that talent is happy and unwilling to move to another company, let alone start their o…
My experience has been that top technical talent doesn't want to focus on non-technical things, like finding a new job, or even maximizing their income as an employee, so I think keeping them happy has more to do with how you feed them technical challenges and how much freedom you give them (and how you give them that freedom) and how valued they feel than with how much you pay them. I mean, if you pay them so little that it's a problem, they will deal with that problem, but after that? yeah, I don't think that compensation is as important as you say.
My experience has been that the people who really focus on maximizing the money are folks like me; I mean, I'm no idiot, but I'm certainly nowhere near the best of the best technically. And even me, I'll choose freedom over maximizing my short-run income.
Re: The future of work: What happens when talent trumps capital?
#9The toughest problems in large enterprises are not solvable by one or two guys. And these are the problems that interest me. Where implementation of OK software can save $100k+ a year, and implementing a good software solution: millions.
They can be solvable by a small team who raise capital, innovate, build a team, win some smaller customers, grow their sales... but by that point they are approaching 100 people and have been around 5 years.
That sort of success is around. I used to work for a company, started in 1996, which was acquired around its 10th birthday. That's exactly what they did - now part of a 20,000ish person company, they are now considered the incumbent (and all of their peers from the late 90's have also been aquired!).
Re: The future of work: What happens when talent trumps capital?
#10You can acquire as many top talents as you want, but if you don't look at your customers and their real needs you go as far as with a group of bottom talented engineers.
The real problem big corporation face is that they don't even think there is a problem. If they can't see the holes in such things as, let's say, SAP, how can you even think to apply a better solution? And even when you manage to convince them to see IT as a strategic part of the business, even there, you don't neew top talents. The situation in corporations is so bad that almost any decent programmer whose brain has not been killed by corporate software 'values' can bring something to the table.