131–140 of 158 posts
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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.
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…
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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?
> that will be useful for work in other companies? No. But all those tools and processes? Those are valuable at smaller companies -- or maybe even a SaaS when you leave.
Tools and processes from “third-place mobile phone operator in country X” or “leading grocery wholesaler in country Y”? Most likely not.
The world is full of quite large companies that need surprisingly much software and are very bad at it.
If your boss tells you it is urgent, it is probably not.
If people working in the field call you directly, now you have a real emergency.
The reason is simple. If it comes from your boss, it probably went up the ladder, showed up in red in some report made to the top management who then got all worked up, started shouting orders that got down the corporate ladder until it hit you. In reality, it may have taken weeks between the time the problem happened and the time it came back to you. It can wait until you finish your current task.
People stuck on the field are not going to wait that long, they want a solution now and if they can't do it by themselves, they will focus all of their energy into finding people who can and contact them directly, instead of just writing a memo to whoever wants to read it.
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> Does "career development" just mean "more money"? If so, why not just say "there are opportunities to make more money"? If not, what is "career development" that is not just becoming more deeply buried in an organization with the various dysfunctions described in the rest of the post? In life, everyone that thinks a lot is eventually confronted with the reality that we're all just minor players within much bigger s…
Sure, "It's satisfying to write software I believe is a net positive to society used by millions". But, if there was no increase in compensation, you would try to move up the corporate ladder? I'm not trying to invalidate your post; I think your essay is great. I think it just does have enough cynicism. These $ENTERPRISE companies basically set up their employees some kinda game. There are certain rules (some written…
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…
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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 e…
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It's a tale of two cities, in my experience. Much like you, I'm sick of wasting away the best years of my life doing nothing of consequence at $ENTERPRISE and I'm willing to take a 20% pay cut at this point for a chance to actually ship things at a small company. Unfortunately, I've found that describing what I've learned over the past three years (without any negativity) gives founders the ick. The survival skills y…
> I'm willing to take a 20% pay cut at this point for a chance to actually ship things at a small company. Unfortunately the pay cut might be a lot bigger than 20%. I've seen people have "the same job" where one gets paid $300k p.a. at FAANG and another $60k at a small company (while getting a lot more done).
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> that will be useful for work in other companies? No. But all those tools and processes? Those are valuable at smaller companies -- or maybe even a SaaS when you leave.
The tools and processes we have here, I would not wish them on any other company, especially a smaller one.
It's incredible how starting a family and hitting your 40s moves this bullet point to somewhere near the very top of priorities for work. For all the complaints I've had about work over the past few years, I always finish it with: "But the paychecks don't bounce."