There's a way to work in such an environment and not go crazy, but it will take time to get used to it. Think of it system with big asynchronous methods. You need to arrange your work to put in the slow running requests early, then focus on other things while waiting.
Ask HN: New job at BigCo. Everything has friction
41–50 of 219 posts
Re: Ask HN: New job at BigCo. Everything has friction
#42Can there be a better display of first world (actually SF bay) problems than this post by OP? All Over the world, workers yearn for breathing time - A few minutes away from the the production line. They wish their tool breaks and the management takes a long while to provide a replacement. What’s your issue, op? You seem very excited to generate shareholder profit.
Feeling like you're constantly blocked isn't fun either. Starting to get into the groove only to have to immediately stop, having to keep track of lots of threads where people put up roadblocks to justify their own jobs, etc. is not "a few minutes away from the production line". It's work all the same, and not the work most engineers sign up to do.
Re: Ask HN: New job at BigCo. Everything has friction
#43> Anyone else dealt with this?
> Anyone have any type of jobs where friction is minimal?
Tactically:
Get better at navigating it. Is there a person hitting a button somewhere? Get to know that team well. Make it easy for them to approve your requests by being exemplary. Automate the process on your end. I've written scripts to fill out forms and open sourced them internally at large companies.
Strategically:
Understand why it's so filled with friction at a systemic level. Legacy organizational structure? Lack of engineering resources on the platform teams? Try to suggest sensible, iterative fixes. This only works at some companies, others are so tribal that another team approaching them with a low effort / high return suggestion is seen as aggression.
It's much more rewarding to attempt to solve these problems and be an owner than to go into ugh whatever mode and passively take it. It's also better for your career in the long term.
Re: Ask HN: New job at BigCo. Everything has friction
#44It sounds like it’s pretty early, I’d give it time if you think you can hang on.
I do think it’s worth recognizing that any big company used to be a tiny company, and the road to “big” was probably long and complex.
The growth process from small to mid-sized, and mid-sized to large, comes with a lot of challenges that you may have never witnessed if you’ve been at smaller places. Some of the high-velocity/low-friction approaches to things you might miss (for good reason) become a nightmare at scale. Some of that friction might actually be healthy.
In that regard it’s a lot like jumping into a codebase that’s been around for many years. If it’s your first time some of the code is going to look just awful, but you don’t know why yet.
- maybe pressures at the time meant that code was the right call back then, but it’s not now
- maybe that code is the right call and you don’t fully understand the problem yet because you’re brand new
- or maybe the code really is just bad!
Either way, you can’t really know until you spend some time with it and gain context about the problem domain and the system’s history.
That said, your perspective as a new hire from a place that moved faster is really valuable. I hope you take some notes about these experiences and let them collect for a few months as you gain more context. A good manager and leadership chain should be interested in what you have to say! The more time you spend there the more you’ll be able to flag the areas that seem the best suited for improvement. That kind of stuff can turn into promotion-level accomplishments really fast if you have the right support.
FWIW I had no patience for big companies early in my career and I’m happy I left for smaller ventures, it just wasn’t what I was looking for whether or not the “friction” was justified. These days the pace and process of larger (but not massive) companies suits me better, and I can see some sound reasoning behind some of the things we do that would look like bureaucracy to someone coming from a startup.
Worst case scenario you’ll find out the BigCo life just isn’t for you, at least for now. It’s sweet you’re getting paid to find out :D
Re: Ask HN: New job at BigCo. Everything has friction
#45All these people telling you to coast are right for 80% of the population.
If you have great ability, do t squander it. Get another job where you can be more effective. Find your passion and your fortune will likely follow.
I eschewed advice like the others give, and I didn’t have to work after 35. Yes I got lucky but I also worked hard and failed and got back up and found a place to succeed.
Big companies are mostly for drones.
Re: Ask HN: New job at BigCo. Everything has friction
#46Can there be a better display of first world (actually SF bay) problems than this post by OP? All Over the world, workers yearn for breathing time - A few minutes away from the the production line. They wish their tool breaks and the management takes a long while to provide a replacement. What’s your issue, op? You seem very excited to generate shareholder profit.
Feeling like you're constantly blocked isn't fun either. Starting to get into the groove only to have to immediately stop, having to keep track of lots of threads where people put up roadblocks to justify their own jobs, etc. is not "a few minutes away from the production line". It's work all the same, and not the work most engineers sign up to do.
During that while, what stops you from reading a book, working on a consulting project on the side (thanks, WFH), learn some new skill? Life is more than serving your boss in the office.
Re: Ask HN: New job at BigCo. Everything has friction
#47> Anyone else dealt with this? I imagine that the majority of white collar workers are employed by large corporations, and so the majority have to deal with this. Given the number of startup layoffs happening, I imagine a lot of people will be having their first experience with large corporate bureaucracy. > To get anything done is emotionally exhausting. Onboarding as a new hire is usually the most frustrating perio…
serious question: why do you want to "get work done"? You are getting paid regardless. Maybe take time out and work on an open source project. Maybe do consulting on the side. Read a book or something, perhaps?
I feel like it's not ridiculous to want to have the single biggest part of your life be for something.
Re: Ask HN: New job at BigCo. Everything has friction
#48Yes. It even happens at medium sized companies. One answer is to accept the way things are at BigCo and to just coast along in your role, which is not necessarily a bad thing. Another answer is to work at an early-stage startup or a small non-tech company where you can move fast. The tradeoff there is lack of job security and lesser pay. Don't ever expect to move fast at BigCo. It's a BigCo for a reason. By moving fa…
This is a great comment. I urge OP to take this on board
Look at the lifers at BigCo, and how they roll with it. They choose their battles carefully, they don't fight the system. They are good colleagues, and they are paid well for their long service. They also go home on time!
Re: Ask HN: New job at BigCo. Everything has friction
#49Can there be a better display of first world (actually SF bay) problems than this post by OP? All Over the world, workers yearn for breathing time - A few minutes away from the the production line. They wish their tool breaks and the management takes a long while to provide a replacement. What’s your issue, op? You seem very excited to generate shareholder profit.
It's not wrong to enjoy your work. This person's experiences are real to them, and they have the right to feel them. If only the most unfortunate person in the world can claim injustice or dissatisfaction, if only their problem can be solved, progress will grind to a halt.
If they have the right to their experiences, I have right to provide my opinion on their experiences. And let's be honest, if their way of life makes it worse for the rest of the world, it's perfectly okay to publicly shame even.
Re: Ask HN: New job at BigCo. Everything has friction
#50Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yeah, It's a good learning experience at least. Never worked at one of these. Guess I naively assumed that since it was from #SiliconValley it might be different. What do you think would be the best types of jobs to target for lower friction? Startups I guess.
Friction is a continuum. As the company gets smaller, the amount of friction gets lower. Also it depends on what you do for the company, putting a button on the front page of Amazon.com has more friction than putting a button on an internal service support tool or a test tool. That is to say Big companies can be OK if you land in the right department.
Yes, that's probably true, but ... as somebody who actually put a button on the front page of Amazon.com (back in 2010-ish, I wrote the presentation code for an MP3 sample player for album recommendations) it was actually pretty low friction. Write code, test it locally, deploy it as an A/B test, test was not negative - ship it. The only people I had to talk to were translators for internationalization.
There was a team that was responsible for cohesive look-and-feel across the gateway (front page), but mostly they trusted us to do our thing.
The principle of a team completely owning their little bit of territory within a page on the Amazon site was a very good one, IMO, and helped cut down on what could have been a bureaucratic nightmare. Of course it had its downsides: some teams didn't pay as much attention to presentation or browser compatibility or interoperability in a range of scenarios as others did; and by its very nature, this team organisation led to pages which were divided into not-particularly-cohesive slices, each its own little fiefdom.
Still, there are some BigCorps which do at least pay attention to optimising processes, even if it's only in a particular direction. (Shipping stuff at Amazon was easy. Want to talk at an open source conference or ship open source software? ...ooh, we'd better talk to the lawyers.)