[deleted]
Ask HN: New job at BigCo. Everything has friction
131–140 of 219 posts
Re: Ask HN: New job at BigCo. Everything has friction
#132Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yeah, It's a good learning experience at least. Never worked at one of these. Guess I naively assumed that since it was from #SiliconValley it might be different. What do you think would be the best types of jobs to target for lower friction? Startups I guess.
Ask yourself the bigger question; what do you want out of life? Do you want to grind code for 80 hours a week and deal with 24/7 on-call rotations? Or do you want to put in your 40 hours, collect your RSUs, and live happily ever after? There is more to life than work, and #BigCos make it far easier to enjoy that.
I really want to do interesting enjoyable work to be honest.
Re: Ask HN: New job at BigCo. Everything has friction
#133There was another thread[1] a few months ago with a very similar question. I'm not going to cut and paste my reply[2] here, but it applies to this question too I think. TLDR: There are very good reasons everything has friction and requires approval--they're not doing it just to be ridiculous.
Re: Ask HN: New job at BigCo. Everything has friction
#134Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yeah, It's a good learning experience at least. Never worked at one of these. Guess I naively assumed that since it was from #SiliconValley it might be different. What do you think would be the best types of jobs to target for lower friction? Startups I guess.
Mid-sized well established companies engaged in markets where there is active growth. You get maturity, experience, and a true desire for competition... and if you can move the needle for that type of group you will be well rewarded and you'll probably actually enjoy it.
How many employees is considered mid sized? Like 200?
Re: Ask HN: New job at BigCo. Everything has friction
#135Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yeah, It's a good learning experience at least. Never worked at one of these. Guess I naively assumed that since it was from #SiliconValley it might be different. What do you think would be the best types of jobs to target for lower friction? Startups I guess.
I've come to prefer working in companies that are between Series A and Series B funding: After Series A is when the startups really have money for compensation. Series B is where companies start implementing bureaucracy like OKRs, permissions for everything and the org chart starts getting deep.
Interesting. How can one identify what Series a company is? Ask during interview?
Re: Ask HN: New job at BigCo. Everything has friction
#136Earlier quoted context omitted.
I feel like it's not ridiculous to want to have the single biggest part of your life be for something.
You go to work for money,not for something. Otherwise you would be busy doing charitable stuff.
Yeah, and it sucks. I'd much rather be doing something charitable.
Re: Ask HN: New job at BigCo. Everything has friction
#137So far I have found the key to being efficient in this type of environment is to have many things on the go at once.
You are used to things having few dependencies so you can focus on one task and take it to completion. Now there are many dependencies and so you have lots of downtime. You can use this downtime to set other things in to motion.
Re: Ask HN: New job at BigCo. Everything has friction
#138Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
I worked at a bank for 8 years, but I learned how to work around the red tape and get things done. I wasn't alone. We had a ridiculous project approval process for any work that would take more than X man hours. They'd shut you down because you didn't have have approval for the budget. Yes, even though they're paying you to sit at a desk, you have to get executive sponsorship for the budget to cover the wages that th…
> you can get 10 incident tickets created over a 1 week period, this gets picked up as a "major problem"
This is an interesting perspective but perhaps crosses the line.
Re: Ask HN: New job at BigCo. Everything has friction
#139How big is the co?
Re: Ask HN: New job at BigCo. Everything has friction
#140Ah, fond memories. At the worst place, it was 5 weeks before I could log into a computer. Then daily "scrum" conference calls with 40 people on 3 continents, which took about 90 minutes each. Detailed written proposals (Word docs, multiple pages) required for every code change, even small fixes.
Minimal friction is the opposite scenario - be a contractor, take whole jobs, do it all yourself. I prefer it, but there's no coasting.