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The Enterprise Experience

churchofturing.github.io

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111–120 of 158 posts

Re: The Enterprise Experience

#111

Post by churchofturing »

rf15 wrote: post #109

> As paradoxically as it sounds, aside from the rounds of redundancies the job security feels quite good. As paradoxically as it sounds, aside from the rounds of russian roulette my health feels quite good. ... what? Should you really just accept that and still claim job security? Is this what stockholm syndrome feels like?

I think it's relative, really. The redundancy waves have a rhythm to them, and if you avoid one you're safe until the next. Contrast this to one of my previous experiences at a startup where I came in on Monday to discover there was no money, the CEO had been funnelling company funds to his boyfriend and once discovered the small office had turned to Lord of the Flies.

I wouldn't say I have the perfect job security, but I'm reasonably assured I'll get paid this month and I try not to worry about situations that haven't happened yet. I think if I had a family that depended entirely on me I'd be much more concerned.

I'm not sure I'd call it stockholm syndrome directly, but I'd agree it's definitely some form of conditioning.

Re: The Enterprise Experience

#112

Post by Gazoche »

I'm in a similar situation, having left a startup a year ago to work at $BIGCORP, naively thinking it would benefit my résumé. This is all painfully accurate.

The other thing about working for $BIGCORP is that it molds your skills to be hyper-specific to this company. It's less about learning to use cool technology stacks, than it is about learning the internal tools, procedures, and unspoken etiquette of the company. Skills that are vital to navigate the everyday complexity of $BIGCORP, but that you can't really export to any other job.

Re: The Enterprise Experience

#113

Post by hdgvhicv »

BrenBarn wrote: post #99
lelanthran wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Does "career development" just mean "more money"? If so, why not just say "there are opportunities to make more money"? That was not my takeaway, because earlier he alluded (twice) to the fact that titles are a thing: 1. A senior technical person who can't turn on a computer and an analyst not being able to speak english, 2. `I have met no less than 6 (six) people with the title "head of architecture".` So I am gue…

I've never understood why anyone would care about titles at all.

With more title comes more salary. Usually more ability to influence more policy too.

Re: The Enterprise Experience

#114

Post by Ntrails »

Simon_O_Rourke wrote: post #107

> If the selection function for senior leadership is tuned to a certain personality type, you're doomed to repeat your mistakes. Amen, Amen... Preach brother! All this rings true, from the complete org dysfunction, to the security theatre, all of it paints the hellscape of large enterprises in great detail. My own personal struggles in this corner world resonate strongly here. I worked in a large energy company, with…

> Security theatre where bozos would open your desk drawer if it was unlocked and confiscate your paper notes and books

The ultimate shame. Do you care nought for the security of the ip on those pages?!

Re: The Enterprise Experience

#115

Post by hdgvhicv »

SamuelAdams wrote: post #62
Aeolun wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don’t think enterprise software is by definition bad. You can absolutely make good enterprise software, but doing that while adhering to the morass of requirements is a skill unto itself. And something that most people in an enterprise are just not all that interested in, since they’re never judged on how pleasant the software they deliver is to use. Hell, they not ever see any of the users interacting with the sof…

In my experience enterprises do not want to pay for excellent software, simply because it is expensive. I would love to work on software that was: - in more than two AWS regions - required screen reader / disability support - required multi-language support - required multi-cloud - actually needed a big Hadoop cluster - most enterprise data processing can be done on a MacBook Pro M4.

My second major project at $ENTERPRIsE was 15 years ago and incorporated the first 4 (well multiple servers on different continents, why would I care about AWS)

It was internal shadow IT at its finest. It’s still used today, despite the people at the top not liking it the users think it’s the best thing since sliced bread.

Re: The Enterprise Experience

#116

Post by rf15 »

churchofturing wrote: post #111
rf15 wrote: post #109

> As paradoxically as it sounds, aside from the rounds of redundancies the job security feels quite good. As paradoxically as it sounds, aside from the rounds of russian roulette my health feels quite good. ... what? Should you really just accept that and still claim job security? Is this what stockholm syndrome feels like?

I think it's relative, really. The redundancy waves have a rhythm to them, and if you avoid one you're safe until the next. Contrast this to one of my previous experiences at a startup where I came in on Monday to discover there was no money, the CEO had been funnelling company funds to his boyfriend and once discovered the small office had turned to Lord of the Flies. I wouldn't say I have the perfect job security,…

That is somewhat of a sensible view if you've seen the worst of the worst in startups - I just feel that rounds of layoffs are more common; but then again I work in a government-y enterprise situation with no layoffs.

Re: The Enterprise Experience

#117

Post by leokennis »

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…

Commenting just on:

> > It's satisfying to write software used by millions of people. > > Is it still satisfying if that software is bad, or harms many of those people?

I work for a bank, so the software/service my colleagues and I deliver is probably at best "bottom of mind" for most people and at worst actively despised by many (maybe not even our specific implementation of it, but the idea in general that you depend on some behemoth to receive and send money).

Still it's very satisfying to deliver it, because if I mess up it's my mom that will no longer be able to pay for her online purchase or that large energy company everyone knows that can not pay out their salaries. What I do directly impacts people's lives in very practical and real ways. I would really miss that if I worked on some niche SaaS product with a few customers only.

Re: The Enterprise Experience

#118

Post by leokennis »

Gazoche wrote: post #112

I'm in a similar situation, having left a startup a year ago to work at $BIGCORP, naively thinking it would benefit my résumé. This is all painfully accurate. The other thing about working for $BIGCORP is that it molds your skills to be hyper-specific to this company. It's less about learning to use cool technology stacks, than it is about learning the internal tools, procedures, and unspoken etiquette of the company…

On the other hand, working at $BIGCORP will probably give you very good domain knowledge (as $BIGCORP's software is likely complex and actively used by many many people who signed very expensive contracts, and besides that also the knowledge on how to navigate the internal complexities of a $BIGCORP) that will be useful for work in other companies?

Re: The Enterprise Experience

#119

Post by throwaway346434 »

marssaxman wrote: post #73
beering wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

My experience at big companies has been that you only get the opportunity to do something big if you are willing to waste years "proving yourself" on a lot of tedious bullshit first. The job you want is not the job you get to apply for, and I've never had the patience to stick it out. Smaller companies let me do meaningful work right away.

Politely, I disagree. It means you are in a context where the risk aversion is high, everyone keeps their head down.

Done right, you can be a disruptor, for what are very benign or proven changes outside of the false ecosystem you are in.

I recommend these changes are on the level of "we will allow users to configure a most used external tool on a core object, using a URI template" - the shock, awe, destruction is everyone realizing something is a web app and you could just... If you wanted... Use basic HTML to make lives better.

Your opponents are then arguing against how the web works, and you have won the framing with every employee that has ever done something basic with a browser.

You might find this level of "innovation" silly, but it's also representative of working in the last few tiers of a distribution curve - the enterprise adopters lagging behind the late adopters.

Re: The Enterprise Experience

#120

Post by juleska »

I've worked in technology for 20 years, and at least 15 of those have been inside large enterprises. In my experience, technological innovation is almost nonexistent in these environments. Most people in enterprise IT are not deeply connected to technology itself — many come from unrelated areas, grew into roles without genuine interest in the craft, or were absorbed into the system through inertia. The result is a cycle of delays, low standards of software development, and a near-total disregard for quality and maintainability.

On top of that, the consultancy model dominates: endless "transformative" projects, pitched with buzzwords, costing upwards of $300,000 per month for an "agile squad" — usually 5–6 junior or mid-level developers rebranded as "senior." Value delivery is irrelevant because another part of the enterprise machine is dedicated to "protecting" budgets, ensuring they don't shrink year over year, and inflating headcount so managers can parade the size of their teams.

This creates the elephant-in-the-room effect: organizations that are slow, rigid, and performative rather than adaptive. In more than one company I've worked at, it was rare to find someone on a technology team who could even write a simple SQL query. But they were experts in "agility," microservices, and "scalability" — all while serving theie super systems/projetcs with a super number of 8 daily users and a mess of integrations with SAP, Salesforce, or whatever the enterprise flavor of the month happened to be.

With that I can say, it's frustrating, it's messy,full of political interactions, but it pays the bills, but it's still shit, maybe you decorate it a little here or there, but in the end it's just decorated shit.

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