Live data from Hacker News

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

news.ycombinator.com

41–50 of 88 posts

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

#41
Something most people don't think about with large companies:

They aren't monoliths. Your experience could be totally different in a different part of the company. 300k people is going to create a ton of variance.

That said, I've found the larger the company, the more politics matters. And the more politics matters, the less your performance matters, and the more the other things matter.

Personally, if given my way, I might never work for a company over ~50 people, again. (I'm working for a small firm now. And pretty happy overall.)

The ability to walk up to high management and get a fairly straight answer on what is going on, is something you simply can't get in a 300k company.

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

#42
No, it doesn't have to be dull. In fact, huge companies are more likely to have interesting technical problems than startups. The value of most startups is in their business plan, not their codebase. The code is just there to sketch out a rough prototype of the idea. Startups rarely have the time or money to sink on deep theoretical research. Also, few startups operate at a scale where they actually need fancy tech.

Consider Google: they invented Borg, MapReduce, GFS, etc. because of their sheer scale. Microsoft (disclaimer: I work here) has MSR. Xerox had PARC. There's tons of fascinating tech buried inside, things you'll never find at start-ups.

It's easy to become invisible and embed yourself into your team's narrow silo, but you can make a monumental impact by doing the opposite of that.

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

#43
People always love to compare efficiency at a micro level.

The thing is effeciency isn't what you actually want to maximize.

It's not surprising that a small team of 5 people in a startup can build 1 thing faster than a team of 5 in a big org.

The orgs goal is to keep adding anything that makes a net profit even if means a loss in effeciency caused by the extra overhead of being more complex, bigger and slower.

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

#44
A large company values redundancy more than efficiency. In a startup having Steve do all the website design is efficient and cost effective. At megacorp, having Steve do all the website design means there is a single point of failure, and gives Steve incredible leverage over the company.

In the past you could carve out a community at the office, make some friends, realize your work is kind of bogus, and go home on the weekend.

In our new hybrid wfh world everyone seems much more closed off. So now you’re just doing bogus work on slack/zoom from the spare bedroom without the sense of community or consistency.

If you have a family to take care of this probably still sounds like a good trade.

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

#45
If you want some sparetime, go find some colleaques you can make up Teams calls with. Just call those "Jourfixe Devops Learning path" or the like. Nobody will ever question you beeing "red" or even presenting. This might not fill your timesheet, but helps a lot aginst unexpected RSVPs.

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

#46
post #41

Something most people don't think about with large companies: They aren't monoliths. Your experience could be totally different in a different part of the company. 300k people is going to create a ton of variance. That said, I've found the larger the company, the more politics matters. And the more politics matters, the less your performance matters, and the more the other things matter. Personally, if given my way,…

There was an abusive manager (cursing, shouting, making subordinates cry) at a 200+k employee client I worked at. Subordinates told HR. I assumed they would fire him but they transferred him. I asked my manager because that seemed bonkers to me. He explained that that group had jobs to do that were low priority, had their own building, could only be transferred to. You couldn't leave except by quitting/retiring.

Some beancounter had figured out that the price of letting these horrible people wear each other out and quit was lower than firing for cause and facing lawsuits.

Sometimes at other clients I've wondered if the department I'm working with is their "roach motel" department.

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

#47
I think there are a lot of factors at play in what you're describing. Sorry for the wall of text, tl;dr: skip to the last section about startups undercutting behemoths.

> My first impressions is that everyone knows only quite narrow field of the project

When you reach an employee count that can sustain it, this is the "optimal" way to organise a company. Division and specialisation of labour is how Big Corps operate. At that size, one person can't know almost-everything like they can in a startup. They most likely don't even know everything about their own product, depending on its size.

> Next thing that really struck me was how hard is to just approach someone and get to know him

This is both a function of the people themselves, and the amount of stress and/or deadline pressure they're under. In both cases you can imagine people not having time to get to know someone new, particularly if they're not on the same team. This is not an insult, it's just a function of prioritising who and what to interact with in a company of ~300K.

> As there are people sitting next to each other that have way different work.

This also exacerbates the above and is one of the key reasons I loathe hot-desking. If you're going to colocate people you should colocate people on the same team where possible. That is a hill I will die on.

> it is hard to approach someone since most of the people spend large amount of time on online calls

Also common at Big Corps, but there's also an explosion of this since covid / remote work normalisation, etc.

> Therefore you really never know if you can approach someone and don't look like an disturbing idiot ... I mean the people are actually pretty nice, they are not stupid at all, but everything just seems so dull.

Assume everyone is friendly. "Excuse me, sorry to disturb you, [I'm new here] ..." is a great opener if you're worried about this. Their reaction will tell you whether your initial assumption is valid at that time in that context.

> And I have feeling like it really does not matter if you are really good or under average.

Different companies handle performance very differently. My advice is to not tie your worth or goals _specifically_ to the company's performance measurements, but look at your own personal growth as the yardstick for how satisfied you are with your role and progress. Then only interact with the company's performance model where necessary to succeed within the box the company is imposing.

> I feel like we are dealing with not that much of complicated technical products, but the complexity of work is created by all the processes (SAP, etc.). And I have feeling like it really does not matter if you are really good or under average

Complexity of technical products obviously varies wildly within a company and across companies, but in general yes: process is a defining hallmark of a Big Corp. Process is essential for replicating the success they've achieved and maintaining the redundancy needed to take risks and fail.

> and suddenly can understand why startups can undercut such behemoths.

I think this half of the key observation. The other half is: every bet a startup makes runs the risk of killing the company. A Big Corp can make 100 bets and fail every single one of them, and still operate successfully as a company.

But that doesn't mean they're any more likely to win any individual bet -- innovation is hard -- they can just make a ton more of them without going bankrupt. They can only do that because they've built an enormous, redundant, safe, "dull" system that has the best chance to grow over time with their existing successes.

The only way a startup can compete with this is to find the one thing that a Big Corp can't/won't do, hasn't noticed, won't admint, can't move fast enough to capture (e.g. new technologies), etc, etc, and successfully execute on it, fast, with an entire company of like, 10 people.

Scary if you're betting with peoples' livelihoods, intense, and requires an enormous breadth of knowledge across 10 people to operate in all kinds of roles. But certainly not dull.

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

#48
It'll be dull if your team has more people than real work. It'll be dull if your team can't articulate what the problem it solves or why it matters. It'll be dull if you are solving a problem that has better solution somewhere else. It's not about company size, but about culture and project. It was not dull to build the first version of S3 or EC2 or DyanmoDB. It was not dull to come up with Chrome or JAX or TPU. It was not dull to drive the project of Vision Pro or iPhone or Apple Watch. It was not dull to build Github Copilot.

It's just that statistically speaking one has fewer chance per 1000 employee to work on something fun without being dragged by company culture in a huge company.

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

#49

No, it doesn't have to be dull. In fact, huge companies are more likely to have interesting technical problems than startups. The value of most startups is in their business plan, not their codebase. The code is just there to sketch out a rough prototype of the idea. Startups rarely have the time or money to sink on deep theoretical research. Also, few startups operate at a scale where they actually need fancy tech.…

I have worked for both of the companies you mention, hoping to get involved with the interesting technical problems they are famous for, and in each case I was disappointed. What I observed was that you cannot really get a job doing the interesting work, not directly, because a megacorp does not hire for those positions; those core jobs go to trusted veteran insiders.

The organization grows from its edge, not its center; as a newbie, you will most likely be assigned to some minor piece of functionality extending the outlying periphery of whatever it was you actually wanted to work on. If you can stomach that for however many years it takes to build up an internal reputation, you may eventually be able to move inward toward the job you actually wanted; but there is no guarantee this will be possible.

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

#50
Depends on what you're working on. I still feel like I'm learning new things fairly often and I'm working within a large corporation (as a consultant).

I've worked in startups and small companies as well, and while I liked what we worked on, it never really got used by a lot of people, and sometimes felt like I ultimately wasted my time, even if I learned a lot during it. Meanwhile for large corporations I've worked on applications (and been the primary builder of applications) that have been used by millions of people.

Sometimes the slow pace (it's not always slow, in some ways be thankful it is, I've worked some nightmare situations before at some corporations) is nice, you can keep your head clear for your own projects before or after work, or just let yourself relax on a Friday or whatever.

Really depends on the project though. Don't let yourself be assigned to a legacy product if you can help it, especially if it's not being used to win new business, just maintain existing business. That seems to be where most of the problems you're complaining about lie.

There are days when I miss the large amount of autonomy at startups, but I don't miss the intense stress to get something made quickly, or the hours that crept up to 50, 60, 70 hour weeks.

I don't have any time or energy left to work on my video and board game designs if I'm working that intensely and that long during the day.

Post reply on HN