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The Enterprise Experience

churchofturing.github.io

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Re: The Enterprise Experience

#31

Post by al_borland »

i_love_retros wrote: post #8

Also if your preferred method of non urgent communication is message based such as slack, good luck in an enterprise. Sure you'll get messages, but every one will be "quick call?"

A “quick call” usually means a re-org or a layoff in my experience.

I once had a boss who used to day, “got a second” every time he was pulling someone out to lay them off. He said it to me once and my stomach dropped… turned out he was just giving me my review. I told him to never say that to me again. He had no idea the entire team picked up on that phrase and it had a reputation.

Re: The Enterprise Experience

#32

Post by BrenBarn »

beering wrote: post #29
BrenBarn wrote: post #23

Always worth keeping in mind Remy's Law of Enterprise Software ( https://thedailywtf.com/articles/graceful-depredations ): if a piece of software is in any way described as being “enterprise”, it’s a piece of garbage. Joking aside, I was intrigued by the list of good things at the end of the post. Some I could understand, but some seemed to fall into that strange category of things that people say are good but really…

> Does "career development" just mean "more money"? Big companies means more opportunities to lead bugger project. At a big company, it’s not uncommon to in-house what would’ve been an entire startup’s product. And depending on the environment, you may work on several of those project over the course of a few years. Or if you want to try your hand at leading bigger teams, that’s usually easier to find in a big compan…

> Big companies means more opportunities to lead bugger project. At a big company, it’s not uncommon to in-house what would’ve been an entire startup’s product. And depending on the environment, you may work on several of those project over the course of a few years. Or if you want to try your hand at leading bigger teams, that’s usually easier to find in a big company.

Okay, so career development means "bigger projects"?

> There’s nothing inherently good about startups and small companies. The good or bad is case-by-case.

Well, maybe not, but I think the post illustrates some ways big companies are worse. I'd say that, all else being equal, companies tend to get bigger by becoming more doggedly focused on money, which tends to lead to doing evil things because you no longer see refraining from doing so as important compared to making money. Also, all else equal, a company that does something bad on a small scale is likely less bad than one that does something bad on a large scale.

Re: The Enterprise Experience

#33

Post by neilv »

Trasmatta wrote: post #27
gherkinnn wrote: post #9

I can't handle such organisations. I simply cannot. I don't care if they pay 3x, they break me within a few months.

Sometimes I consider optimizing for money, and getting a much higher paying job at $ENTERPRISE, then peacing out once I have enough saved for an extended sabbatical. But just the thought of going through the interviewing hazing ritual takes the wind out of my sails immediately. I'm currently at $MIDSIZENOLONGERSTARTUP, which incidentally has its own slew of insane and draining things that are breaking me in its own w…

> But just the thought of going through the interviewing hazing ritual takes the wind out of my sails immediately.

Several times, I've been ready to do really great work for my two favorite FAANGs, but their insistence on the hazing rituals wipes out any interest I have.

Re: The Enterprise Experience

#34

Post by XorNot »

nlawalker wrote: post #15
teddyh wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People adopt the communication style of others. If the “quick call?” method is common, it means that many of its users don’t want their communications logged , meaning they commonly ask for sketchy stuff. Act accordingly; i.e. always send a follow-up email summarizing what they asked you to do, and give them the opportunity to change their tune.

>If the “quick call?” method is common, it means that many of its users don’t want their communications logged, meaning they commonly ask for sketchy stuff. In my experience, the reason for most "quick calls" isn't quite this nefarious. It's usually just about making a request for which the asker wants immediate confirmation of handoff, and/or for which they haven't done much thinking or built a good justification, a…

I mean conversely you will absolutely get advised by lawyers to not use email for discussions about things which might be litigated. But this happens at any scale: it's evergreen advice.

Re: The Enterprise Experience

#35

Post by claw-el »

3eb7988a1663 wrote: post #28

Missing - new leadership will push out the old guard and replace them with friends - groups get renamed for the Nth time in N years. People continue to do the same job, but now the department has an additional "Innovation", "Discovery", or "Leadership" inserted into the title

> - groups get renamed for the Nth time in N years. People continue to do the same job, but now the department has an additional "Innovation", "Discovery", or "Leadership" inserted into the title

Sometimes, I wish we name the team ‘Pikachu’ and continue on working. This way, others would know the name does not really matter, so they would stop changing the name. The amount of work to change the documentation and lets others know our team changed name has caused a lot of unnecessary work.

Re: The Enterprise Experience

#36

Post by appreciatorBus »

or_am_i wrote: post #26
i_love_retros wrote: post #8

Also if your preferred method of non urgent communication is message based such as slack, good luck in an enterprise. Sure you'll get messages, but every one will be "quick call?"

It sucks when your communication preferences are overridden! To be fair though, many valid reasons to prefer a quick call over a message (a potentially infinite sequence of messages, really). Even on the receiving end of a request: perhaps I want to poke around the context behind their non-urgent ask, like what they are _actually_ trying to achieve, why not do X instead etc. -- often easier to call and solve all the…

I understand that async communications has some benefits, but I am continually flabbergasted that instead of weighing async & sync comms suitability for different situations, we've landed in a place where everyone is terrified to make or receive a phone call.

Re: The Enterprise Experience

#38

Post by bentinata »

Very fun and interesting article. I'm currently working in enterprise for around 3 years. I sure am growing technically, but I feel like I learn more about people, communications and bureaucracy here. That comment about budget and mouse is also on track, but with financial stability that working in $ENTERPRISE brings, I can just buy the mouse myself. Maybe some empire will question me regarding the unauthorized mouse, but I can just... ignore... um, talk myself out of the fake urgencies of mouse authorization.

Re: The Enterprise Experience

#39

Post by linkage »

almostgotcaught wrote: post #6

I think people have these kinds of thoughts (and then commit them to paper) because they're utterly flabbergasted that such things can exist - as if there's some kind of massive conspiracy by Big Enterprise that enables this even though both $ENTERPRISE and SMEs play in the exact same market (by definition). Newsflash: yes small organizations are better solving small problems (like "small tool has broken feature X").…

You're conflating development with operations. Many of the greatest software tools we use every day were built by small teams.

Your examples of big projects are great, but the majority of enterprise companies are not sending people to the moon or building physical infrastructure. If you look at the top 20 companies in the United States by headcount, the majority of those companies are large because they require a physical presence all over the country (Walmart, Home Depot, Marriott). The largest company that does not require a physical presence is Cognizant. Has Cognizant ever made anything worth using?

Re: The Enterprise Experience

#40

Post by bentinata »

claw-el wrote: post #35
3eb7988a1663 wrote: post #28

Missing - new leadership will push out the old guard and replace them with friends - groups get renamed for the Nth time in N years. People continue to do the same job, but now the department has an additional "Innovation", "Discovery", or "Leadership" inserted into the title

> - groups get renamed for the Nth time in N years. People continue to do the same job, but now the department has an additional "Innovation", "Discovery", or "Leadership" inserted into the title Sometimes, I wish we name the team ‘Pikachu’ and continue on working. This way, others would know the name does not really matter, so they would stop changing the name. The amount of work to change the documentation and lets…

It won't gonna change how people (mostly management) see the name. I've seen whole empire named after Pokemon, only for another round of restructure that will change teams name to another Pokemon.

While talking to friends at other empire:

> I've been digging around, who are the members of Ludicolo?

> Oh, we've renamed to Felbat.

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