5 ms·

I understand your frustration because I work in a large company and stuff can take forever. And this is the case for 99.9% of large companies. However one thin

I understand your frustration because I work in a large company and stuff can take forever. And this is the case for 99.9% of large companies. However one thing you should consider is this: there are probably 50 other people like you demanding to just have feature xy implemented. They are all totally simple etc.. until you have seen a large enterprise code base with lots of legacy cruft. Test suites that take hours to run.. And then the team has to fix bugs that also pile up. Every fix makes the code base uglier. And then people come along and want direct access to your repository to "help". You see where I am going? Long story short: it's not as simple as you think it is. If it really bothers you that much and you cannot understand "the other side", you should probably find another startup to work at. And I am not snarky.. this is my honest recommendation.

achillesheels 5y ago
- jonathankoren 5y ago
  >Is this how military's organize themselves, or do they just get shi*t done? If you think the military isn't a large government bureaucracy with mountains of paper work, I recommend you talk to a veteran.
  - zarkov99 5y ago
    It depends. Special Forces team typically cut through a lot of that bullshit. Perhaps there in lies the answer. If you want the resources of a large organization and the freedom of a startup you need to look for the smaller elite teams within the org.
    - jacobr1 5y ago
      Often called the "Tiger team" in the lingo of corporate jargon.
    - jonathankoren 5y ago
      Well it depends what they're trying to do. The don't spend all their time executing raids.
- danielmarkbruce 5y ago
  The explanation given above is that you aren't the priority you used to be.. it doesn't take a month to get something done, it takes a month to do all the things in the queue in front of you. If there is a lesson here it might be that companies quickly lose focus and try to do too many things. Then there are giant queues of things to do and important things are held up by unimportant things. Your thing might be important, but it also might be a problem holding back more important things.
  - achillesheels 5y ago
    The judgment, however, is that while one is not the same priority any longer, one's priorities are necessarily devalued, due to the a competition for resources, namely, time. I see the common explanation here is to just shrug at the state of affairs. Is this the best management can do? I can see why Fortune 500 companies die now.
    - danielmarkbruce 5y ago
      When you say "is this the best management can do", I believe you are thinking about it in the wrong terms. It's a trade off. Almost all these decisions are trade offs and there isn't a strictly better option available. I read most of the explanations here pointing to that trade off and understanding it. Let's assume for a minute the poster has joined google. Do you want some random person changing code in a system used to deploy applications? No. That same code deploys Google Search. That thing pumps out over $50 bill a qtr of high margin revenue. The process described could be at Google, Microsoft, Facebook, Amazon, Netflix, Apple. These are Fortune 500 companies and while they will die eventually, it isn't going to be in any time soon and it isn't going to be because the team working on internal infra doesn't move fast enough.
      - achillesheels 5y ago
        Fair point regarding the golden goose. My point is there is more motivation to keep things as-is then to continue to adapt. Why is that? Because all the key decision-makers can just get up and leave when revenue starts to deteriorate. The good ones always do, because they are in it for more than a paycheck to support their mortgages. Give birth and do not possess-Tao Te Ching, 10
- korijn 5y ago
  Let's see you solve 50 tickets each worth a couple days in a couple days.
  - achillesheels 5y ago
    - yibg 5y ago
      Why do you assume the code isn't clean? Maybe if the code wasn't clean it'd take a couple of weeks instead of a couple of days to implement.
      - achillesheels 5y ago
- nexuist 5y ago
  > accept it takes >1 month to get something done > Is this how military's organize themselves The world's largest superpower just ended a 20 year engagement, so... US basic training was also the origin of the phrase "hurry up and wait."
- CRConrad 5y ago
  > So the honest recommendation is to accept it takes >1 month to get something done in an orderly fashion when it can take days? No, the honest recommendation was based on the included explanation of why it can't take days.
- rossdavidh 5y ago
  The honest answer to your question, is that the military usually operates like the original post describes, but in wartime or other very special cases there is super high priority and you just get s&*t done. The startup's app is probably not, to the larger corporation, a particularly high priority, so it is happening in a way much like the military does most things in peacetime, i.e. a lot of bureaucracy and politics.
  - achillesheels 5y ago
    “To secure the peace, one must prepare for war.”

achillesheels 5y ago

jonathankoren 5y ago
>Is this how military's organize themselves, or do they just get shi*t done? If you think the military isn't a large government bureaucracy with mountains of paper work, I recommend you talk to a veteran.
- zarkov99 5y ago
  It depends. Special Forces team typically cut through a lot of that bullshit. Perhaps there in lies the answer. If you want the resources of a large organization and the freedom of a startup you need to look for the smaller elite teams within the org.
  - jacobr1 5y ago
    Often called the "Tiger team" in the lingo of corporate jargon.
  - jonathankoren 5y ago
    Well it depends what they're trying to do. The don't spend all their time executing raids.
danielmarkbruce 5y ago
The explanation given above is that you aren't the priority you used to be.. it doesn't take a month to get something done, it takes a month to do all the things in the queue in front of you. If there is a lesson here it might be that companies quickly lose focus and try to do too many things. Then there are giant queues of things to do and important things are held up by unimportant things. Your thing might be important, but it also might be a problem holding back more important things.
- achillesheels 5y ago
  The judgment, however, is that while one is not the same priority any longer, one's priorities are necessarily devalued, due to the a competition for resources, namely, time. I see the common explanation here is to just shrug at the state of affairs. Is this the best management can do? I can see why Fortune 500 companies die now.
  - danielmarkbruce 5y ago
    When you say "is this the best management can do", I believe you are thinking about it in the wrong terms. It's a trade off. Almost all these decisions are trade offs and there isn't a strictly better option available. I read most of the explanations here pointing to that trade off and understanding it. Let's assume for a minute the poster has joined google. Do you want some random person changing code in a system used to deploy applications? No. That same code deploys Google Search. That thing pumps out over $50 bill a qtr of high margin revenue. The process described could be at Google, Microsoft, Facebook, Amazon, Netflix, Apple. These are Fortune 500 companies and while they will die eventually, it isn't going to be in any time soon and it isn't going to be because the team working on internal infra doesn't move fast enough.
    - achillesheels 5y ago
      Fair point regarding the golden goose. My point is there is more motivation to keep things as-is then to continue to adapt. Why is that? Because all the key decision-makers can just get up and leave when revenue starts to deteriorate. The good ones always do, because they are in it for more than a paycheck to support their mortgages. Give birth and do not possess-Tao Te Ching, 10
korijn 5y ago
Let's see you solve 50 tickets each worth a couple days in a couple days.
- achillesheels 5y ago
  - yibg 5y ago
    Why do you assume the code isn't clean? Maybe if the code wasn't clean it'd take a couple of weeks instead of a couple of days to implement.
    - achillesheels 5y ago
nexuist 5y ago
> accept it takes >1 month to get something done > Is this how military's organize themselves The world's largest superpower just ended a 20 year engagement, so... US basic training was also the origin of the phrase "hurry up and wait."
CRConrad 5y ago
> So the honest recommendation is to accept it takes >1 month to get something done in an orderly fashion when it can take days? No, the honest recommendation was based on the included explanation of why it can't take days.
rossdavidh 5y ago
The honest answer to your question, is that the military usually operates like the original post describes, but in wartime or other very special cases there is super high priority and you just get s&*t done. The startup's app is probably not, to the larger corporation, a particularly high priority, so it is happening in a way much like the military does most things in peacetime, i.e. a lot of bureaucracy and politics.
- achillesheels 5y ago
  “To secure the peace, one must prepare for war.”