91–100 of 366 posts
It's insane to me how the manager culture is. Somehow going from an engineer to a manager is a "promotion"? No, they are equals. Just different people doing different kinds of jobs. There should be two tracks and people should be able to choose. If engineers feel they have to become managers to grow their careers, all you are getting will just be unhappy engineers and bad managers.
The salary is not equal.
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I've never seen a company that ... You have not seen Alphabet, Apple, Microsoft? Where are you looking? They all did tens of billions of share buybacks every year for many years now. Example: Alphabet has started share buybacks in 2015 and increased those every year. $70B in 2025 alone. And they are firing on all cylinders product-wise.
Has anyone in the last 10 years praised Google for anything, ever? They've been engaged in enshittification the entire time. Search is getting worse, Youtube is getting worse, Android is getting worse, Chrome is getting worse. They are indeed a hollow shell of the company that originally established themselves, but now that they have such a wide-ranging monopoly they can freely debase the value of their products to e…
And on the side they built the best AI and the best autonomous ride service.
Not bad for a "hollow shell" of a company.
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I worked for a big Belgian technology company in the past. It was surprisingly lean in terms of management structure. Then Philips television, which had a big division not too far away, went bankrupt and a lot of those people got absorbed into our company. Within a couple of years the Philips people were able to transform the company to be very management/top heavy until nothing worked anymore.
> Within a couple of years the Philips people were able to transform the company to be very management/top heavy until nothing worked anymore You see the same pattern with Siemens and a lot of their spinoffs: Continental(VDO), Infineon, Qimonda, Gigaset, Healthineers (yes, that's a real name that somebody got paid to come up with), etc THe ones without some major moat like trains or energy, got slowly run into the gr…
I almost cry at work from sadness. So much potential wasted, the company has great market access and still good name. Polishing old products would make this hockey stick revenue growth. But with management explosion everything is being wasted. Meetings about meetings, no product upgrades and total stagnation. While managers fight over parking spots near front door for VIPs.
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> I interviewed with ASML a decade and a half ago and while there was plenty to complain about (eg their tens of millions of lines of absolutely unmaintainable C code) How is one exposed to tens of millions of lines of unmaintainable code during an interview?
Making the right questions when they ask if you have any questions
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I want to say "it's because they're Dutch lol" but it's signed by Cristophe (Fouquet), who is French. 1700 managers is a lot, but also, it's a huge multinational so I'm not surprised they have that many. They will be alright I'm sure - one, if there's any forced firings they will be well taken care of under Dutch labour laws, and two, ASML will look very good on a CV.
> any forced firings they will be well taken care of under Dutch labour laws Yes. Notice period stays in tact. Transition payment is 1/3rd of a monthly wage per year worked. And then your unemployment runs for up to 24 months at 70% of your income capped at €4500. Unemployment benefits are unconditional until you find a new job.
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Every time I can remember that the finance people have become more important to a company, it has led to the disappearance of the internal culture geared towards excellence that got a company to that point in the first place.
It’s largely true. I believe Steve Jobs had some talk about this phenomenon; basically, at some point, the scale of an organization means the product people make less of an impact than the sales / finance people, and they slowly take over. Then over the span of a few decades, what’s left is a shallow organization without real innovation. Intel and Boeing are good examples of this.
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I worked for a big Belgian technology company in the past. It was surprisingly lean in terms of management structure. Then Philips television, which had a big division not too far away, went bankrupt and a lot of those people got absorbed into our company. Within a couple of years the Philips people were able to transform the company to be very management/top heavy until nothing worked anymore.
> Within a couple of years the Philips people were able to transform the company to be very management/top heavy until nothing worked anymore You see the same pattern with Siemens and a lot of their spinoffs: Continental(VDO), Infineon, Qimonda, Gigaset, Healthineers (yes, that's a real name that somebody got paid to come up with), etc THe ones without some major moat like trains or energy, got slowly run into the gr…
Sorry for the tangent, I haven't heard this name in over 15 years, I interviewed with them the summer before the final year of my BEng, and was offered a job in China to allegedly built a real-time voice/video communications system between what they said were their three facilities in beautiful looking part of China I can't remember the name of now.
Looking through my Gmail, it was 2008 they offered my the position; and looking at the Wiki page, I'm glad I didn't take the offer, as it appears it didn't last much longer?
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> Within a couple of years the Philips people were able to transform the company to be very management/top heavy until nothing worked anymore You see the same pattern with Siemens and a lot of their spinoffs: Continental(VDO), Infineon, Qimonda, Gigaset, Healthineers (yes, that's a real name that somebody got paid to come up with), etc THe ones without some major moat like trains or energy, got slowly run into the gr…
I work for a small German company. Some time ago the owner sold it to big bloated company. At the time under the owner the management circle was 6 people, now it’s 17!!!!! And the revenue is lower with bigger headcount, because managers manage and do not work. I almost cry at work from sadness. So much potential wasted, the company has great market access and still good name. Polishing old products would make this ho…
Germans just don't seem to get that successful SW was built by empowering the geeks working in "the trenches", and not by suits with business degrees in running conveyor belt assembly factories where everyone is a fixed cog that needs to follow a strict process thought out by someone above them.
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Has anyone in the last 10 years praised Google for anything, ever? They've been engaged in enshittification the entire time. Search is getting worse, Youtube is getting worse, Android is getting worse, Chrome is getting worse. They are indeed a hollow shell of the company that originally established themselves, but now that they have such a wide-ranging monopoly they can freely debase the value of their products to e…
Google is still the best search engine. YouTube is still the best video site. Android is still the best operating system. Chrome is still the best browser. And on the side they built the best AI and the best autonomous ride service. Not bad for a "hollow shell" of a company.