4 ms·

"For individuals the upshot is the same: aim small. It will always suck to work for large organizations, and the larger the organization, the more it will suck.

by cow9 8y ago

"For individuals the upshot is the same: aim small. It will always suck to work for large organizations, and the larger the organization, the more it will suck." do you agree?

MrTonyD 8y ago
I think that is usually true that big companies have little autonomy. And I've usually noticed that the people who say they have autonomy are those who control other people - and disregard the fact that they reduce the autonomy of others.
FrankyHollywood 8y ago
Definitly not! Few years ago I worked as developer at a startup. 4 devs, 2 sales, 1 marketing and 1 CEO. It was a mess, sales made horrible promisses to customers, and letting us build demo after demo. The CEO was going round every day pushing people to work harder. And everytime the guy read some tech news we had to drop everything and switch technology to be 'more innovative'. Right now I'm working in a large company (> 1000 employees) I have a steady budget for my team. There are targets offcourse, but overall a lot of freedom to do with my team we think is best. Management doesn't get involved in any tech descisions. Wouldn't wanne go back to my startup years...
fernandotakai 8y ago
honestly? i do. i've worked for a big bank as well as a small (10~15 people) startups and i hugely prefer a startup; mostly (if not all) because of stuff pg cites on this article. i feel more free to be creative, to implement interesting stuff, to experiment. not having that management layer on top of you is kind of liberating. ofc this is not for everyone (just like remote work is not for everyone -- i love it, but i don't recommend that every single developer out there stays at home from monday on), but i do think (from my own experience) that you will become a better professional working for startups.
UncleMeat 8y ago
I work at a large organization. My worldwide impact here is literally six orders of magnitude larger than what it was when I was working in a small team in grad school. Large institutions are powerful. This blog post is crazy.

by cow9 8y ago

"For individuals the upshot is the same: aim small. It will always suck to work for large organizations, and the larger the organization, the more it will suck." do you agree?

MrTonyD 8y ago

I think that is usually true that big companies have little autonomy. And I've usually noticed that the people who say they have autonomy are those who control other people - and disregard the fact that they reduce the autonomy of others.

FrankyHollywood 8y ago

Definitly not! Few years ago I worked as developer at a startup. 4 devs, 2 sales, 1 marketing and 1 CEO. It was a mess, sales made horrible promisses to customers, and letting us build demo after demo. The CEO was going round every day pushing people to work harder. And everytime the guy read some tech news we had to drop everything and switch technology to be 'more innovative'. Right now I'm working in a large company (> 1000 employees) I have a steady budget for my team. There are targets offcourse, but overall a lot of freedom to do with my team we think is best. Management doesn't get involved in any tech descisions. Wouldn't wanne go back to my startup years...

fernandotakai 8y ago

honestly? i do. i've worked for a big bank as well as a small (10~15 people) startups and i hugely prefer a startup; mostly (if not all) because of stuff pg cites on this article. i feel more free to be creative, to implement interesting stuff, to experiment. not having that management layer on top of you is kind of liberating. ofc this is not for everyone (just like remote work is not for everyone -- i love it, but i don't recommend that every single developer out there stays at home from monday on), but i do think (from my own experience) that you will become a better professional working for startups.

UncleMeat 8y ago

I work at a large organization. My worldwide impact here is literally six orders of magnitude larger than what it was when I was working in a small team in grad school. Large institutions are powerful. This blog post is crazy.