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Careful! It's easy and fun to make fun of WeWork for calling itself a "tech" company, but we might be throwing rocks in glass houses. How many of us are curren

Careful! It's easy and fun to make fun of WeWork for calling itself a "tech" company, but we might be throwing rocks in glass houses. How many of us are currently working at """tech""" companies right now?

dastx 7y ago
I used to work for a startup bank. They used to always say "we're not a bank, we're a tech company with a banking license"..
- fjp 7y ago
  Even when I interned it proto-dinosaur Allstate they called themselves "a tech company that happens to sell insurance". It does sound absurd and annoying, but for businesses like that it's good reminder that they'll probably get their market share eaten away if they don't stay on top of things by someone that can move faster or cheaper with their underlying technology stack.
  - thenightcrawler 7y ago
    Or they are hoping for a higher stock price by calling themselves tech companies?
    - repolfx 7y ago
      Stock markets don't listen to glib slogans like that. I've been to a lot of conferences over the past few years where CEOs/CTOs stood up and said "we're planning to become a tech company", or words to that effect. It's become a totally standard announcement, no more meaningful than "innovation is in our core values" or "we value diversity". The motivation is a mix of fear and ambition. Almost all industries are stagnating or declining: https://www.wsj.com/articles/why-do-the-biggest-companies-keep-getting-bigger-its-how-they-spend-on-tech-1532610001 https://www.wsj.com/articles/why-do-the-biggest-companies-ke... The graph of the gap in productivity growth is the important thing here. The top 5% most productive firms captured nearly all economic growth (that wasn't merely due to population growth). And there's a lot of evidence that the top 5% of firms are essentially tech companies or at least have very high IT spending. I think there was some other story I read lately that claimed almost all wage growth up until recently came from wage growth at tech firms. Every industry has seen how tech startups or bigger tech firms can enter an industry and "disrupt" it, rapidly capturing huge control of the market through superior execution. So they all want to be like that. I know of one company where the senior management apparently goes and sits with Facebook employees once a month, to "learn how to be a tech firm"! My experience has been none of them really understand what tech firms are or why they're different, and wouldn't be willing to do what it takes to be one, even if they did.
- pearjuice 7y ago
  Is this B...? Really wondering what culture is like there now, though the CEO seemed to have ambition the recruitment process was really weird. The in-house HRM/recruiter basically warned me he was narcissistic and was still code reviewing everything, often publicly shaming you when you made mistakes. Whether I was okay with that and often doing unpaid overtime as it was quite common. This was a few years ago so not sure what it's like there right now or if the situation improved.

dastx 7y ago

I used to work for a startup bank. They used to always say "we're not a bank, we're a tech company with a banking license"..

fjp 7y ago
Even when I interned it proto-dinosaur Allstate they called themselves "a tech company that happens to sell insurance". It does sound absurd and annoying, but for businesses like that it's good reminder that they'll probably get their market share eaten away if they don't stay on top of things by someone that can move faster or cheaper with their underlying technology stack.
- thenightcrawler 7y ago
  Or they are hoping for a higher stock price by calling themselves tech companies?
  - repolfx 7y ago
    Stock markets don't listen to glib slogans like that. I've been to a lot of conferences over the past few years where CEOs/CTOs stood up and said "we're planning to become a tech company", or words to that effect. It's become a totally standard announcement, no more meaningful than "innovation is in our core values" or "we value diversity". The motivation is a mix of fear and ambition. Almost all industries are stagnating or declining: https://www.wsj.com/articles/why-do-the-biggest-companies-keep-getting-bigger-its-how-they-spend-on-tech-1532610001 https://www.wsj.com/articles/why-do-the-biggest-companies-ke... The graph of the gap in productivity growth is the important thing here. The top 5% most productive firms captured nearly all economic growth (that wasn't merely due to population growth). And there's a lot of evidence that the top 5% of firms are essentially tech companies or at least have very high IT spending. I think there was some other story I read lately that claimed almost all wage growth up until recently came from wage growth at tech firms. Every industry has seen how tech startups or bigger tech firms can enter an industry and "disrupt" it, rapidly capturing huge control of the market through superior execution. So they all want to be like that. I know of one company where the senior management apparently goes and sits with Facebook employees once a month, to "learn how to be a tech firm"! My experience has been none of them really understand what tech firms are or why they're different, and wouldn't be willing to do what it takes to be one, even if they did.
pearjuice 7y ago
Is this B...? Really wondering what culture is like there now, though the CEO seemed to have ambition the recruitment process was really weird. The in-house HRM/recruiter basically warned me he was narcissistic and was still code reviewing everything, often publicly shaming you when you made mistakes. Whether I was okay with that and often doing unpaid overtime as it was quite common. This was a few years ago so not sure what it's like there right now or if the situation improved.