3 ms·

I was nodding along throughout this and pretty much agreeing that overall a big company makes sense for most people. Then I got to the final footnote. That kin

I was nodding along throughout this and pretty much agreeing that overall a big company makes sense for most people. Then I got to the final footnote. That kind of Kafka-esque bullshit is what keeps me working in startups. I could not stand working in a culture where policies which are widely seen as unhelpful and ridiculous are still routinely inflicted upon employees. Yes, startup "bullshit" also exists, but the difference is that it's totally possible to avoid that bullshit by picking a good startup to work at. I've never had anything like the experiences described in [1], despite working at 3 different startups. On the other hand, big company problems seem to be universal: it's not possible to find a big company without at least some arcane and employee-hostile policies. (For example, Google's blind hiring keeps me from ever considering working there.) [1] http://totalgarb.tumblr.com/tagged/startupbullshit http://totalgarb.tumblr.com/tagged/startupbullshit

quanticle 11y ago
Then I got to the final footnote. That kind of Kafka-esque bullshit is what keeps me working in startups. While I agree that big companies can have weird Kafka-esque bureaucracy, they're still generally a lot better at record-keeping than startups. I've never had a big company ask me if I could go without pay for a couple of weeks while they waited to "sort out my payroll paperwork". I did eventually get the back pay, but it was pretty tense for a couple of weeks, as I waited and wondered if I'd made a terrible mistake in quitting my work for a large corporation to go work for this startup.