Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

You weren't meant to have a boss

paulgraham.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

91–100 of 312 posts

Re: You weren't meant to have a boss

#91

Post by eddiepunchclock »

hunterjrj wrote: post #2

I am a 27 year old programmer and have worked for two small companies ( < 20 employees ) and for one company of 200+ employees. The only thing I can say about working for the large company is that it felt like breathing through a straw. Go work for a small company or as Paul Graham suggests, go start up your own. Leave the big companies for the burnt-out folk with kids and debt.

yet another 27 year old programmer hear. i've worked for google for the past 3 years. after saving up a bunch of money and working with a lot of very smart people on two very different projects, I'd have to say I'm happy I chose to work for a company :) That said, there is no substitute for being able to do exactly what you want. I get my kicks in that regard programming on my own (reading SICP, toying with scala, etc). But guess what, at a good company, so does everyone else. My smart co-workers all have interests in and out of work, and just being around them and talking to them day in and day out (while eating really good free food) is a great way to learn a lot and get pointers to places to start learning more on your own. We're not all brain dead code monkeys, believe it or not.

Ultimately though, the money I've saved will afford me the opportunity to strike out on my own. I certainly don't knock small companies, or starting your own. I just think large companies (OK, at least google) can be a great way to start your career before moving on to other stuff.

Re: You weren't meant to have a boss

#92

Post by Readmore »

fleaflicker wrote: post #48

"Work for another company if you want to, but only for a small one..." My first job out of school was at IBM. This was invaluable not because I learned a lot but because I witnessed firsthand the bureaucratic inertia described in the article. When I left to launch a startup, I never looked back or second-guessed myself because I knew I wasn't missing anything.

I'm also a recovering IBMer. It was awful... like 'Programming in a time of Cholera'

Re: You weren't meant to have a boss

#93

Post by neilk »

dfranke wrote: post #6
dpapathanasiou wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If I had to structure an organization of 1,000 people You might also want to read this: http://www.amazon.com/Maverick-Ricardo-Semler/dp/0712678867

Just based on the summary, it sounds like he has a lot of good ideas and one bad mistake: profit-sharing is socialized. So if the company does well then the employees do well, but individual contributors would have trouble getting rewarded.

That's not entirely true. Workers set their own salaries, subject to the review of their colleagues.

If you think you are awesome, you can give yourself a hefty raise. If your co-workers don't agree though, in a few months you'll be out on the street.

I think it makes sense to share profits equally, since the whole point is that the result was achieved collectively. Salaries can be all over the map.

Re: You weren't meant to have a boss

#94

Post by neilk »

Jd wrote: post #49

Have not the last 50,000 years of evolution primarily been of social structures and culture? Consequently, is being 'wild' necessarily a positive attribute? Doesn't this (and comparisons to animals) to some degree reflect de-evolution?

Multicellular life is faster, smarter, and more successful than unicellular life.

The corporation is usually way slower, dumber, and typically does not outlast any of its component organisms.

The difference is that the components of the corporation are individually intelligent and self-aware. The corporation's "thoughts" are comparatively slow and stupid. Maybe one day there will be some Borg-like way of making humans act together, which truly makes something smarter and more nimble than any individual. But I don't think you can argue corporations represent the next step in evolution.

Re: You weren't meant to have a boss

#95

Post by jamiequint »

fendale wrote: post #30
hunterjrj wrote: post #2

I am a 27 year old programmer and have worked for two small companies ( < 20 employees ) and for one company of 200+ employees. The only thing I can say about working for the large company is that it felt like breathing through a straw. Go work for a small company or as Paul Graham suggests, go start up your own. Leave the big companies for the burnt-out folk with kids and debt.

I am also a 27 year old programmer working for a very large company well over 10K employees. Unfortunately, doing well career wise is more about politics than programming. I have never worked for a small company so I cannot comment on that, but I hope for sure that there is something better than what I have experienced so far! Just have to pull my finger out and get out of there, or start some sort of startup ...

if you're serious about getting out check out some of the jobs we have up at http://snaptalent.com/ads.html There are some YC companies on there, but also some other really cool startups.

Re: You weren't meant to have a boss

#96

Post by neilk »

astine wrote: post #17

I think that this analysis only focuses on one half of the forces that direct survival. Humans may work more efficiently as small groups, but we have also formed into large hierarchical structures for as long as we have had history. Egypt and Summaria were both hierarchically governed. Organizations survive by becoming more efficient, but they also survive by have more labor available. Napoleon would not have won a s…

So what? Egypt and Sumeria were organized like North Korea today, worship of the head of state. And Napoleon was a tyrant trying to impose his will on an entire continent. If freedom is incompatible with Napoleonic dreams, that is not a bug.

Freedom fighters have often chosen the guerilla way.

A better example for your point would be the Americans in WWII. But even then, soldiers are not robots and the best commanders give their underlings the freedom to get the job done.

Re: You weren't meant to have a boss

#97

Post by abstractwater »

I work for a large company and I also feel the way described in the article. What baffles me the most is the constant need of approval in case I'm about to do something that goes a little beyond the "company policies", like setting up a public repository for code that's going to be released anyway.

Often these mysterious company policies are not explained in the first place, yet I'm supposed to adhere to them. So I find myself pondering, "Is it ok to do this?" Engineering-wise (and by common sense) it would be a no-brainer. Then I waste time and energy asking approval. Sometimes I get denied and so I wasted my whole train of thoughts related to an otherwise obvious choice. What bothers me the most is that the majority of people seem numb to these problems.

Why did you hire me if basically you're questioning my trust, and why are you blocking me from doing what I'm supposed to do? Then why you invite me to "fun" events afterwards?

Re: You weren't meant to have a boss

#98

Post by jsc »

Great essay.

I work at university (as assistant prof. in CS, not in US), and it feels a lot like working in a big corporation.

The difference is that we are free to do what we want. But this is because nobody cares about what we do, so it might be even worse in the long term.

Re: You weren't meant to have a boss

#99

Post by Elepsis »

Footnote [1] ("When I talk about humans being meant or designed to live a certain way, I mean by evolution.") makes me wonder...

If the most prevalent state of affairs at present is that people go on to work at large companies, and by most accounts these people are reasonably successful (in fact, in a reproductive sense they may be even more successful than the average startup founder, since they have more time to pursue relationships), wouldn't one logically assume that over time the footnote, and the point of the article that it isn't how humans evolved to work, no longer hold true?

Re: You weren't meant to have a boss

#100

Post by keshet »

As I read this article, I realized that if you scale its message up to include not just companies, but the way modern society is structured, you will see exactly the arguments presented by Theodore Kaczynski: http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Industrial_Society_and_Its_Fut.... If you read his words (ignore his actions for the moment), he is saying the same thing about society in general.
Post reply on HN