21–30 of 326 posts
If you answer no to either of those, there is your answer to why your "startup within a company" can't hit it as big as real startups.
I'm not sure why everyone seems so focused on the cafeteria thing. I'm not sure people and their attitudes towards amenities are really the problem here. From my understanding, the differerence is the companywide attitude to risk. A startup has a "grow at any cost, or maybe perish" attitude. If things go south, bankruptcy will take care of the leftover excess risk (barring criminal charges). A bigco cannot easily go…
I mean, sure, but it also misses the point a bit. "Startup in a big company" doesn't mean "yo take some cashdollar and try build and release something to the public", but it does mean "hey, take a small team and do your own thing with less oversight and process overhead from higher-ups". The team I worked in at AWS was like this and it felt a lot like startup teams I've worked with. That didn't mean we could take 'br…
The success criteria are different, and measured differently.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
What's interesting about skunkworks is much it gets invoked by people vs how much it actually happens in practice. We engineers love skunkworks: working on cool stuff, without accountability and a lot of freedom ? Who would not want that ! But there are very few situations where this is sustainable, for reasons well explained by OP.
>We engineers love skunkworks: working on cool stuff, without accountability and a lot of freedom I'm pretty sure people who keep saying this have no idea what working at Skunkwork was actually like. If you read Ben Rich's book, which I recommend you do, you'll find out that they had tons of accountability, the more classified their projects were, the more they were drowning in paperwork. No employee was to be left a…
Nope. They want autonomy, mastery and purpose. They want to be able to apply what they know appropriately - not to be micromanaged or frustrated by instructions that make no sense. They want to be able to develop skills that make them valuable to their peers and their organisation - valuable enough to be secure and able to earn sufficient to protect their families. They want to know why they are doing the things that they are doing and to be able to believe that their efforts will contribute to something worthwhile.
If you can provide that all your engineers will both love you and jump into a bonfire for you.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
What's interesting about skunkworks is much it gets invoked by people vs how much it actually happens in practice. We engineers love skunkworks: working on cool stuff, without accountability and a lot of freedom ? Who would not want that ! But there are very few situations where this is sustainable, for reasons well explained by OP.
Strongly recommend reading the book - they had tons of accountability as critical projects were handed to them on tight deadlines. Yes, working on cool stuff, but delivering at an extremely high level.
Only when you own a startup and that means outside a 'company' can you ensure your efforts profit you primarily.
I mean, sure, but it also misses the point a bit. "Startup in a big company" doesn't mean "yo take some cashdollar and try build and release something to the public", but it does mean "hey, take a small team and do your own thing with less oversight and process overhead from higher-ups". The team I worked in at AWS was like this and it felt a lot like startup teams I've worked with. That didn't mean we could take 'br…
I personally got to the blue box - but then I gave up, when I realized that to get it to actually ship I had to sacrifice nights and weekends. Which would have been maybe fine - except that I knew that I didn't get to keep any upside. I had most of the risks of a startup, but very little of the payoff. Great learning process, but for me - it only managed to convince me that I shouldn't try within a corporation, if I want to try I need to actually do it by myself.
What is the main reason though? The BigCo being too risk averse? Or employees having too much of a safety net? Or BigCo processes weighing the team down? A combination of these?
It's that simple.