4 ms·
From the outside, it feels much more like the company is hitting a midlife crisis (feeling unsettled, not as agile as they used to be) than a young adult.
by organsnyder 7y ago
From the outside, it feels much more like the company is hitting a midlife crisis (feeling unsettled, not as agile as they used to be) than a young adult.
- nostrademons 7y agoCompany lifespans these days are a lot shorter than human lifespans. 25-40 years seems typical, making a company-year 2-3x a human year. By that yardstick, Google was in its young adolescence when it IPO'd (seems reasonable), was an idealistic young adult when I joined in 2009 (also reasonable), is now hitting a midlife crisis, and will die sometime around 2040.
- tyingq 7y agoIgnoring the lifespan, they are pretty stodgy and conservative now, so middle-aged just seems a better fit.
- cmrdporcupine 7y agoYep I'm down with your timeline. I joined in 2012 and it felt like a person in their late 20s or 30s in an energetic but responsible part of their career, just settling down to have kids... But before all the buying of sailboats and sports cars and treatments for baldness...
- stallmanite 7y agoSo IBM is like a 300ish year old vampire then? They really seem like an outlier longevity-wise.
- jquery 7y agoWell, unlike people, companies don't begin to die at a super-exponential rate once they hit a certain age.
- ddalex 7y agoCertainly it feels like that :D
- SmellyGeekBoy 7y agoIf IBM is a "300ish year old vampire", Nintendo is basically God.
- SuoDuanDao 7y agoA better comparison is likely an old tree that is mostly dead tissue, but that dead tissue is solid enough to support its own weight.