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> The results of GitHub’s quarterly anonymous employee survey — which showed a decline in trust of leadership ... In 100% of cases where I've known a small com

by ken 7y ago

> The results of GitHub’s quarterly anonymous employee survey — which showed a decline in trust of leadership ... In 100% of cases where I've known a small company that got bought by a much bigger company, this has occurred. It's amazing anyone still believes that their small company can get bought and somehow they'll be able to preserve (what they think is) their "company culture".

paulddraper 7y ago
> It's amazing anyone still believes Has anyone ever believed that?
- hinkley 7y ago
  Management implies, the old owners imply this, and some large fraction of the rank and file employees buy this. When the rank and file realize there is no lottery ticket for them, or that they are the lottery ticket, then there's a lot of burnout. And yes, I am fun in interviews. :)
- brogrammernot 7y ago
  Yes. I’ve worked at a couple of companies now where this has happened. It’s really hard for founders to let go of their “baby” and as such, there’s a lot of rationalization that goes into the decision when they sell the company or go public. One of the common ones is that they will have a large enough say to keep the culture of the small company intact and often say things like “we’re just going to continue being ourselves but with more funding or resources or XYZ so it’s really great!” In the end, they don’t accept the fact that the larger company’s values/culture is their company now and they can try to enact change as much as they want but they are no longer the key decision maker for the company overall. For a public company at scale, it’s incredibly hard to 1.) grow exponentially or greatly and 2.) keep the hiring bar high enough to maintain your culture. There’s a trade-off made there that you’re public & you cannot slow growth at the risk of upsetting shareholders but it’s a catch-22 cause you can’t also let your salaries go out of control to hire the right talent for your culture cause you have to explain that cost increase to your stakeholders.
- braythwayt 7y ago
  There was that time Apple “acquired” NeXT... But for all n where n > 1, no.
  - deleted 7y ago
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- deleted 7y ago
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- ken 7y ago
  Fair point. I’m not sure if they did, or simply believed the benefits (financial and otherwise) of being bought outweighed the loss of company culture. They at least seemed to, in my experience. JWZ — or maybe Spolsky — wrote about (a more general case of) this. You can either grow fast, or maintain company culture. You can’t do both. Being bought by a larger company is just one case of growing really fast all at once.
csallen 7y ago
Stripe acquired Indie Hackers two and a half years ago, and I love it. I get ample support and encouragement, while also retaining my freedom to run the community how I see fit. Most IHers would also tell you that the site has improved since then. One of the many keys is aligned incentives and values. If there's even a small 1-2 degree difference in the direction you and your acquirer would like to head in, that gap will widen into a vast chasm given enough time. Also, kudos to the leadership at Stripe. They're intelligent, well-meaning, and they get it.
- chrisseaton 7y ago
  Stripe (2,000 employees) is not really comparable to Microsoft (144,106 employees) when the context is corporate issues.
- mrits 7y ago
  I don't think we should dismiss your argument so quickly just because Stripe isn't a large corporation. I'd be interested to know more about the approach Stripe took. I'd imagine there are plenty of mistakes to make regardless of company size. I'd also like to point out that a small company can be so toxic that the employees would welcome any change in leadership -- because anything different can bring temporary relief.
andyroid 7y ago
Huh? GitHub’s company culture has been described as toxic way before they were acquired - not at least here. The problem seems to be exactly that they’ve managed to preserve that. Kudos to the employees speaking up though!
- ken 7y ago
  I’m simply going off what the article says. If it was “toxic” before and still managed to decline, that sounds even worse!
- matt4077 7y ago
  I'm not sure if I would characterise it as toxic? There is obviously disagreement. But my impression has always been "this is a company where people have values other than technology & money, and are empowered to speak up". The alternative isn't really never having disagreements, but rather being secretive and vindictive to the point where employees fear to speak up, or consider it useless in the face of corporate bureaucracy and unaccountability. <side-eyes to IBM>

by ken 7y ago

paulddraper 7y ago

> It's amazing anyone still believes Has anyone ever believed that?

hinkley 7y ago
Management implies, the old owners imply this, and some large fraction of the rank and file employees buy this. When the rank and file realize there is no lottery ticket for them, or that they are the lottery ticket, then there's a lot of burnout. And yes, I am fun in interviews. :)
brogrammernot 7y ago
Yes. I’ve worked at a couple of companies now where this has happened. It’s really hard for founders to let go of their “baby” and as such, there’s a lot of rationalization that goes into the decision when they sell the company or go public. One of the common ones is that they will have a large enough say to keep the culture of the small company intact and often say things like “we’re just going to continue being ourselves but with more funding or resources or XYZ so it’s really great!” In the end, they don’t accept the fact that the larger company’s values/culture is their company now and they can try to enact change as much as they want but they are no longer the key decision maker for the company overall. For a public company at scale, it’s incredibly hard to 1.) grow exponentially or greatly and 2.) keep the hiring bar high enough to maintain your culture. There’s a trade-off made there that you’re public & you cannot slow growth at the risk of upsetting shareholders but it’s a catch-22 cause you can’t also let your salaries go out of control to hire the right talent for your culture cause you have to explain that cost increase to your stakeholders.
braythwayt 7y ago
There was that time Apple “acquired” NeXT... But for all n where n > 1, no.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
ken 7y ago
Fair point. I’m not sure if they did, or simply believed the benefits (financial and otherwise) of being bought outweighed the loss of company culture. They at least seemed to, in my experience. JWZ — or maybe Spolsky — wrote about (a more general case of) this. You can either grow fast, or maintain company culture. You can’t do both. Being bought by a larger company is just one case of growing really fast all at once.

csallen 7y ago

Stripe acquired Indie Hackers two and a half years ago, and I love it. I get ample support and encouragement, while also retaining my freedom to run the community how I see fit. Most IHers would also tell you that the site has improved since then. One of the many keys is aligned incentives and values. If there's even a small 1-2 degree difference in the direction you and your acquirer would like to head in, that gap will widen into a vast chasm given enough time. Also, kudos to the leadership at Stripe. They're intelligent, well-meaning, and they get it.

chrisseaton 7y ago
Stripe (2,000 employees) is not really comparable to Microsoft (144,106 employees) when the context is corporate issues.
mrits 7y ago
I don't think we should dismiss your argument so quickly just because Stripe isn't a large corporation. I'd be interested to know more about the approach Stripe took. I'd imagine there are plenty of mistakes to make regardless of company size. I'd also like to point out that a small company can be so toxic that the employees would welcome any change in leadership -- because anything different can bring temporary relief.

andyroid 7y ago

Huh? GitHub’s company culture has been described as toxic way before they were acquired - not at least here. The problem seems to be exactly that they’ve managed to preserve that. Kudos to the employees speaking up though!

ken 7y ago
I’m simply going off what the article says. If it was “toxic” before and still managed to decline, that sounds even worse!
matt4077 7y ago
I'm not sure if I would characterise it as toxic? There is obviously disagreement. But my impression has always been "this is a company where people have values other than technology & money, and are empowered to speak up". The alternative isn't really never having disagreements, but rather being secretive and vindictive to the point where employees fear to speak up, or consider it useless in the face of corporate bureaucracy and unaccountability. <side-eyes to IBM>