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Ask HN: New job at BigCo. Everything has friction

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Re: Ask HN: New job at BigCo. Everything has friction

#51

Post by tomwheeler »

2OEH8eoCRo0 wrote: post #22

Days? It once took me 4 months to have a package manager installed that was blocking a project. Defense software engineering is a whole other level of misery. I left defense and I'm now in a BigCo. and loving life because things only take days at most. Appreciate what you have?

This is my experience in defense as well. After my proposal for a talk at a software conference was accepted, I found out that the estimated date for getting the required content review from Corporate Communications, Legal, and InfoSec was several weeks later than the conference itself. In practice, though, a thoughtful VP up the management chain recognized that this was a problem and fast-tracked it.

Re: Ask HN: New job at BigCo. Everything has friction

#52

Post by spencerflem »

honkler wrote: post #21

Can 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.

Agreed that purely generating shareholder profit is not worthwhile. It does suck to be forced to spend a lot of time doing something both painful and meaningless tho. Something psychological there

Re: Ask HN: New job at BigCo. Everything has friction

#53

Post by magicink81 »

Your position at a job dealing with friction is much more common than the opposite case. If you're interested in learning and growing, here are some opportunities you may find in your new role:

1) Cultivate an attitude of optimism and gratitude despite the challenges, perhaps through a study of Stoicism and a cultivation of patience via a study of Buddhism. Gain more pain tolerance. Learn to not care so much about the outcomes, and care more about your own presence and the excellence of your contribution. Learn to care more about other people, rather than just getting the job done. Learn to have more fun, while also "digging the digital ditch". Being calm and steady despite feeling uncomfortable is an invaluable life skill essential to growth and doing big things.

2) Learn to politic. Recommended reading (and there is a lot) would be How to Win Friends and Influence People, as well as Robert Greene's The 48 Laws of Power. Navigating people and political systems is also an invaluable life skill and essential to growth and going big things.

3) Develop your life outside of work more fully. Consider getting more involved in helping your family, your friends, and your community. Volunteer opportunities abound. Perhaps they need a speedy hacker like you to help them with some part of their tech?

4) Study the challenges of BigCo for startup opportunities. Lots of startups are created by people who ran into a big challenge at a big co, then broke out on their own to solve the problem, then were able to grow by selling back to their previous employers to solve the problems with tech.

Re: Ask HN: New job at BigCo. Everything has friction

#54

Post by acomjean »

I've been at big companies and really small startups. I've tended to alternate between them.

My Big Company experience was they broke us up into smallish teams (6-20 people), which made us work more like a small company in many respects. There was a lot of process, but it was actually a good discipline to have. (Its always startling when I started in academia the "code repo" was CVS and not hardly used..)

My big company code was more thoroughly reviewed and frankly better.. I learned a lot from those reviews and being given the time to design before coding. Having to do it all at a small company you learn a lot too. Big companies actually measured productivity, and had a processes.. Much less input into what we were going to do.

Though it wasn't all great: I was put on the "Morale Committee" because morale was low. This didn't help my Morale, but we did get the company to do some ice-cream socials.

Re: Ask HN: New job at BigCo. Everything has friction

#55

Post by ardit33 »

Accept the fact that it takes a lot longer to do anything at a big co. Also, accept the fact that whatever you do, is not crucial to the company as you are just another engineer out of thousands. Hence, why the rush?

If you feel creatively constrained, try to do a fun project so you can learn new things. But don't through away a good job just because it takes long to do anything.

Re: Ask HN: New job at BigCo. Everything has friction

#57

Post by nonfamous »

ravenstine wrote: post #18

Yes. 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…

It took me a long time to figure this out, but the BigCo friction does come with benefits. Particularly benefits of scale and risk reduction. Need your app localized? Surprise, that happens automatically with BigCo processes. Didn’t think about GDPR compliance? Surprise, part of the delay you’re experiencing is that review. Need an awareness campaign? There’s a whole marketing team to help you with that.

Thing big and slow, and you’ll work it all out.

Re: Ask HN: New job at BigCo. Everything has friction

#58

Post by honkler »

spencerflem wrote: post #52
honkler wrote: post #21

Can 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.

Agreed that purely generating shareholder profit is not worthwhile. It does suck to be forced to spend a lot of time doing something both painful and meaningless tho. Something psychological there

No post body was provided.

Re: Ask HN: New job at BigCo. Everything has friction

#59

Post by mk89 »

roflyear wrote: post #40
ravenstine wrote: post #18

Yes. 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…

I've worked at a few startups that have this problem too. Mostly because tech leadership came from a bank. I would never hire someone again if they have worked at a bank for more than a couple of years.

That's a huge bias to bring in an interview.

Sometimes you work on some cool project for a while, then it becomes boring, etc. Or sometimes you're stuck with that job because of lack of other local opportunities. Or whatever other reason.

Re: Ask HN: New job at BigCo. Everything has friction

#60

Post by pphysch »

At SmallCo, scales are small enough that most of the information systems exist in wetware. The boss knows each employee personally and where they fit, more or less. You or the VM guy knows that the VM resources will not be abused. Relatively little is defined in software-backed protocol.

At BigCo, there is a lot more protocol, because there has to be. The boss is physically incapable of knowing every employee personally. You are physically incapable of knowing every possible point where VMs might get used or abused. There needs to be a protocol to authorize these requests and keep a record of it.

This is just the way it is, and you should understand and accept it if you want to keep working in these environments.

If there are BigCo's that seem to work better, it's because they spend more resources on improving their protocols and processes, not that they magically bypassed the inherent complexity of running an organization of 10,000 people.

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