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I work in big tech I selected all my previous companies because they seemed to have a worthy mission from the outside. Each disappointed me immensely. At start

I work in big tech I selected all my previous companies because they seemed to have a worthy mission from the outside. Each disappointed me immensely. At startup scale you have to see the sausage be made or at least sit next to it. I know big tech companies have too much power because every other company I’ve worked at would be most accurately described as an unscrupulous Rube Goldberg machine for moving money from VCs to ads+cloud. Do what works for you, but don’t be so sure you’re engaging in a “better” way with this late-capitalist hellscape. I feel so much better aligned getting paid by big tech to build cool tools for engineers than I did getting paid to knife fight for their scraps.

kbenson 5y ago
The problem is that "worthy mission" is incompatible with being a public company for the most part. Once your mandate is not profitability but growth, some cohort of people at the company will push for that growth in ways that others think is unacceptable, and they will hide these programs because they know some will objects and those that would object are incentivized from all sides and from themselves to not want to see them. Private companies have a much better chance of actually following those missions(at least if not struggling). At a minimum, not as many incentives are aligned against you.
jsiepkes 5y ago
> than I did getting paid to knife fight for their scraps. Seriously, cut the drama. Amazon fulfillment workers can say they are "getting paid to knife fight for their scraps.". There is no way that statement needs to apply to tech workers. It sounds as if you are forgetting there is a world outside silicon valley, startups and fortune 500 companies. In most countries SMB's account for almost 50% of the economy. > I feel so much better aligned getting paid by big tech to build cool tools for engineers Well thats actually an honest statement; You want money, cool toys and these outweigh any moral concerns with big tech.
- nkingsy 5y ago
  At one company I was asked to make demos of things that didn’t work and never would. I listened to the ceo lie to the faces of law enforcement and gov bigwig potential customers as they paraded themselves around the room behind us, watching the tech geniuses work their magic. I witnessed junior employees get screamed at routinely, more or less for being junior. The company before that overrode all engineering complaints and implemented call to cancel because it made money. My boss had to do it himself. Both companies competed in a way not unlike a knife fight, meaning throw ethics out the window and pull every lever you can think of. Both had very few happy customers, and rolled every penny into ads and cloud spend, operating at a sickening loss despite locking b2b customers into large monthly contracts. This is my experience in the industry. The company before that didn’t even pay me and jerked me around about options that weren’t worth anything anyway. Your response seems quite uncharitable. I mentioned getting paid on both sides, so yes it’s important. I would like to retire some day and live in modest comfort until then. I have young children and happily live in the sf bay. I said nothing about cool toys. I like that I get to work on a passion project that will likely be open source some day. I like that my customers are engineers and that they chat with me directly. Generally speaking, if a company isn’t doing every legal (and possibly illegal but unlikely to be enforced) thing to gain competitive advantage, it will be out competed. It is the responsibility of the government to keep the laws up to date. Companies are not good. They can sometimes be owned by people who are willing to sacrifice profits for warm fuzzy feelings, but that’s an unstable position that will be corrected when ownership changes. I feel secure knowing I work for a company that turns a large profit and has already pulled all the levers available to them to make more. Less nasty surprises that way.

kbenson 5y ago

The problem is that "worthy mission" is incompatible with being a public company for the most part. Once your mandate is not profitability but growth, some cohort of people at the company will push for that growth in ways that others think is unacceptable, and they will hide these programs because they know some will objects and those that would object are incentivized from all sides and from themselves to not want to see them. Private companies have a much better chance of actually following those missions(at least if not struggling). At a minimum, not as many incentives are aligned against you.

jsiepkes 5y ago

> than I did getting paid to knife fight for their scraps. Seriously, cut the drama. Amazon fulfillment workers can say they are "getting paid to knife fight for their scraps.". There is no way that statement needs to apply to tech workers. It sounds as if you are forgetting there is a world outside silicon valley, startups and fortune 500 companies. In most countries SMB's account for almost 50% of the economy. > I feel so much better aligned getting paid by big tech to build cool tools for engineers Well thats actually an honest statement; You want money, cool toys and these outweigh any moral concerns with big tech.

nkingsy 5y ago
At one company I was asked to make demos of things that didn’t work and never would. I listened to the ceo lie to the faces of law enforcement and gov bigwig potential customers as they paraded themselves around the room behind us, watching the tech geniuses work their magic. I witnessed junior employees get screamed at routinely, more or less for being junior. The company before that overrode all engineering complaints and implemented call to cancel because it made money. My boss had to do it himself. Both companies competed in a way not unlike a knife fight, meaning throw ethics out the window and pull every lever you can think of. Both had very few happy customers, and rolled every penny into ads and cloud spend, operating at a sickening loss despite locking b2b customers into large monthly contracts. This is my experience in the industry. The company before that didn’t even pay me and jerked me around about options that weren’t worth anything anyway. Your response seems quite uncharitable. I mentioned getting paid on both sides, so yes it’s important. I would like to retire some day and live in modest comfort until then. I have young children and happily live in the sf bay. I said nothing about cool toys. I like that I get to work on a passion project that will likely be open source some day. I like that my customers are engineers and that they chat with me directly. Generally speaking, if a company isn’t doing every legal (and possibly illegal but unlikely to be enforced) thing to gain competitive advantage, it will be out competed. It is the responsibility of the government to keep the laws up to date. Companies are not good. They can sometimes be owned by people who are willing to sacrifice profits for warm fuzzy feelings, but that’s an unstable position that will be corrected when ownership changes. I feel secure knowing I work for a company that turns a large profit and has already pulled all the levers available to them to make more. Less nasty surprises that way.