4 ms·

Depends on where you are in your career. Straight out of college I wouldn't recommend going to most big companies... you'll learn bad habits and not be pushed t

Depends on where you are in your career. Straight out of college I wouldn't recommend going to most big companies... you'll learn bad habits and not be pushed to do your best work. Join a startup.

mikepmalai 15y ago
"What I did take away from Intuit was an essential skill: How to rapidly test and iterate on ideas until you finally get to an indispensable product." I found that comment really interesting since I've heard this from multiple current and ex Intuit employees. Given how "hot" the lean start-up methodology is, you'd think Intuit would push this more in their recruiting.
- gunz_rozez 15y ago
  What is also interesting is that it appears like Intuit known for essentially building accounting software and accounting software inherently does not elicit "lean" emotions has a pretty good process in place where employees can translate their skills in the startup world. Like you had already mentioned that would be an invaluable recruiting tool.
slewis 15y ago
Can you give some examples of some bad habits you might learn? 40 hour weeks?
- bretthellman 15y ago
  During my first month at Intuit as Product Manger who coded, I pitched some ideas to my leader at the time. His feedback was to try to come up with ideas that were more practical. That pretty much sums it up. To credit Intuit, that leader is no longer with the company. The problem imo is this type of thinking shapes the way people think. On the flip side, VCs/Investors/Angels are only interested in the big ideas that sounds crazy that big companies reject.
  - Choppen5 15y ago
    >only interested in the big ideas that sounds crazy that big companies reject. Great! I've got that covered... we'll see though seems like a lot of VCs like safe a sure bets, proof that it is already working.
- pkteison 15y ago
  Bad habits I observed at a very big company: * I don't know [insert new technology here], I'd rather stick with [insert thing I know well here] * That isn't my problem * Is there a ticket for that? * Can you file a ticket for that? * I've hit my 40 hours * But it's always been done this way. * We need to schedule a meeting * [20 people in one meeting] * [20 people in one meeting every day for a month] * [More time in meetings than programming] * We can't use that open framework, who will support it? * We need this to be on [X] hardware platform because that's what ops has available * What does the vendor say / Has architecture reviewed and approved this technology? (this may have a useful point somewhere, but I have seen arch. approval mainly be a function of who took the arch team out to a nice restaurant or went golfing with them.) * We can't use [insert appropriate thing to use] because it's too hard. We should use [simpler thing] because our devs can understand it better. I know this list reads almost a stereotype of big dev at this point, but I personally saw all of these. I could probably come up with a few dozen more given a few hours of cringing.

Depends on where you are in your career. Straight out of college I wouldn't recommend going to most big companies... you'll learn bad habits and not be pushed to do your best work. Join a startup.

mikepmalai 15y ago

"What I did take away from Intuit was an essential skill: How to rapidly test and iterate on ideas until you finally get to an indispensable product." I found that comment really interesting since I've heard this from multiple current and ex Intuit employees. Given how "hot" the lean start-up methodology is, you'd think Intuit would push this more in their recruiting.

gunz_rozez 15y ago
What is also interesting is that it appears like Intuit known for essentially building accounting software and accounting software inherently does not elicit "lean" emotions has a pretty good process in place where employees can translate their skills in the startup world. Like you had already mentioned that would be an invaluable recruiting tool.

slewis 15y ago

Can you give some examples of some bad habits you might learn? 40 hour weeks?

bretthellman 15y ago
During my first month at Intuit as Product Manger who coded, I pitched some ideas to my leader at the time. His feedback was to try to come up with ideas that were more practical. That pretty much sums it up. To credit Intuit, that leader is no longer with the company. The problem imo is this type of thinking shapes the way people think. On the flip side, VCs/Investors/Angels are only interested in the big ideas that sounds crazy that big companies reject.
- Choppen5 15y ago
  >only interested in the big ideas that sounds crazy that big companies reject. Great! I've got that covered... we'll see though seems like a lot of VCs like safe a sure bets, proof that it is already working.
pkteison 15y ago
Bad habits I observed at a very big company: * I don't know [insert new technology here], I'd rather stick with [insert thing I know well here] * That isn't my problem * Is there a ticket for that? * Can you file a ticket for that? * I've hit my 40 hours * But it's always been done this way. * We need to schedule a meeting * [20 people in one meeting] * [20 people in one meeting every day for a month] * [More time in meetings than programming] * We can't use that open framework, who will support it? * We need this to be on [X] hardware platform because that's what ops has available * What does the vendor say / Has architecture reviewed and approved this technology? (this may have a useful point somewhere, but I have seen arch. approval mainly be a function of who took the arch team out to a nice restaurant or went golfing with them.) * We can't use [insert appropriate thing to use] because it's too hard. We should use [simpler thing] because our devs can understand it better. I know this list reads almost a stereotype of big dev at this point, but I personally saw all of these. I could probably come up with a few dozen more given a few hours of cringing.