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The other side of the coin is that big companies do move slow. There is a lot of communication overheads, a lot of bureaucracy, backwards and cross compatibili
by YZF 10y ago
The other side of the coin is that big companies do move slow.
There is a lot of communication overheads, a lot of bureaucracy, backwards and cross compatibility concerns, conservatism, wasted duplicate effort, wasted pointless effort, some people who aren't contributing much etc. etc.
This is why tiny startups can sometimes dethrone a large leader. However that's often a multi-man-year effort.
So I'd rephrase the statement: "Why's that company so big? I could do that with 20 brilliant engineers and 18 months". I think that order of magnitude can attack pieces of any established software business from a technical perspective. Then there's obviously the business side.
- bastijn 10y agoThat would get you your first launch product maybe. Not an actual enterprise product. Sure, people forgive the small startup for their crashes, their unfinished and unpolished app, their weak customer support, their performance hiccups, etc. As long as they bring something that solves an actual new problem that isn't solved by another product easily available. But an enterprise product, no way you will make that in 18 months with your 20 people while keeping up the maintenance burden you introduced in v1 when you took some shortcuts.