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Ask HN: Is it really so dull to work in huge company?

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Re: Ask HN: Is it really so dull to work in huge company?

#21

Post by artyom »

lemonwaterlime wrote: post #17

There’s nothing dull about it! Make sure to keep detailed records of everything you and more importantly the people around you do and say. Working in a corporation is about having brag lists for yourself and nuclear information to use against those around you, especially your boss. As you get experience you realize that at any given time everyone has said or done something that could be taken out of context as eviden…

You just described Microsoft.

(and I'm sure its FAANG friends too)

Re: Ask HN: Is it really so dull to work in huge company?

#22

Post by throwup238 »

lemonwaterlime wrote: post #17

There’s nothing dull about it! Make sure to keep detailed records of everything you and more importantly the people around you do and say. Working in a corporation is about having brag lists for yourself and nuclear information to use against those around you, especially your boss. As you get experience you realize that at any given time everyone has said or done something that could be taken out of context as eviden…

> and nuclear information to use against those around you, especially your boss.

Always remember MICE: Money, Ideology, Compromise, and Ego. You probably don't control the money and the only ideology is capitalism so compromise and ego are the ones you should focus on.

Honey pots work the best as compromise (especially sexual in nature) and you should always practice your skill of manipulating your coworkers' egos to help them along in the path to self destruction ("never interrupt your enemy when they are making a mistake").

Re: Ask HN: Is it really so dull to work in huge company?

#23

Post by rqtwteye »

Barrin92 wrote: post #12

I like the culture of huge companies because as a programmer I enjoy working on technical problems and working on a large system and improving things that millions of people actually use is cool. You can make something 2% better and that's worth like 50 million bucks. Seeing really large stuff come together that many people work on is fascinating to me. That there's more streamlined processes to me is a good thing, b…

The huge company I work for has managed to combine the drawbacks of small companies with the drawbacks of large companies. We need a ton of approvals and reviews for even the slightest thing but the processes to actually get things done barely exist so it's chaos with a ton of overhead.

Re: Ask HN: Is it really so dull to work in huge company?

#24

Post by wharvle »

All the layers and interrelated systems means that any given change of note requires a lot more input and communication than at a small company. Some of this is necessary, but usually a lot of it’s because most organizations are terrible at communication and making relevant information accessible.

This means one of two things:

1) You will work with similar independence to a developer at a smaller company—but spent 10-20% as much time directly working on code and related things, with the rest going to tracking down people and systems to get what you need to start/proceed/complete a feature.

2) Or, someone else will do all that for you, you’ll have far less independence, and will basically just be killing detailed Jira ticket exactly as assigned. But you’ll write a lot more code and such.

Re: Ask HN: Is it really so dull to work in huge company?

#25

Post by dzonga »

jvm___ wrote: post #15

Do you want to produce something, or do you want a paycheque for doing work? If you're a plumber, do you want to be responsible for building a brand new skyscraper with top of the line pipes, or do you just want to show up to your dead-boring factory maintenance job, fix the things you know how to fix and go home to your wife, kids and/or hobbies - which is where you draw satisfaction from life. Hackernews is slanted…

I also think this is also industry dependent --

sometimes you just wanna work at a small company that prints money, with a boring tech stack, say ROR, Golang -- but doing interesting work.

compared to big company where it's a lot of custom tooling, then other people bringing the latest and greatest tech to enhance their resumes or profile of the company through tech talks etc.

end of day -- it's finding what works for you.

Re: Ask HN: Is it really so dull to work in huge company?

#26

Post by JohnFen »

whartung wrote: post #18
stop50 wrote: post #2

The bigger a company get, the more burocracy it develops.

And the problem here is the lack of agency of the individual people. Larger companies run everything through committees, even ad hoc ones (i.e. "meetings"). The approval chain is long and slow. My favorite anecdote was when the company basically told us that we could not talk directly to the person next to us, and had to route everything through the project systems. Small companies, more folks are "on the line", and…

> My favorite anecdote was when the company basically told us that we could not talk directly to the person next to us, and had to route everything through the project systems.

I have a similar anecdote, but at a medium-sized company (a famous, now-defunct computer game outfit).

They had a rule that you couldn't talk about your work to anyone who wasn't on your direct team. In practice, what it meant was that nobody talked to anybody about anything other than trivialities. I found it so alienating that it's the primary reason why I quit.

Re: Ask HN: Is it really so dull to work in huge company?

#27

Post by artyom »

jvm___ wrote: post #15

Do you want to produce something, or do you want a paycheque for doing work? If you're a plumber, do you want to be responsible for building a brand new skyscraper with top of the line pipes, or do you just want to show up to your dead-boring factory maintenance job, fix the things you know how to fix and go home to your wife, kids and/or hobbies - which is where you draw satisfaction from life. Hackernews is slanted…

I never bought the idea that work has to be hell to be financially viable. That's just marketing from the C-suite psychopaths.

Have you seen many new skyscraper-level sites pulling all-nighters constantly? And if you saw one, do they do it with the same people that was there at 7am the day prior? There's regulations (and sometimes unions) that make those the best-paying jobs for plumbers and also making sure that the plumbers can go to their families at the end of the day.

Re: Ask HN: Is it really so dull to work in huge company?

#28

Post by Muromec »

wharvle wrote: post #24

All the layers and interrelated systems means that any given change of note requires a lot more input and communication than at a small company. Some of this is necessary, but usually a lot of it’s because most organizations are terrible at communication and making relevant information accessible. This means one of two things: 1) You will work with similar independence to a developer at a smaller company—but spent 10…

That really depends on a company, culture and your relationship with the manager who is doing chasing and approving things for you. I would agree that bigger organizations are slower at deciding things and some things are just decided for you, but the two extremes are not necessary mutually exclusive.
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