4 ms·
I don't think you can run a 3000 person ~1B/y company like a startup. It's one thing if there are make or break projects at a bigger company that people sign u
by owyn 15y ago
I don't think you can run a 3000 person ~1B/y company like a startup. It's one thing if there are make or break projects at a bigger company that people sign up for explicitly, but it's not scalable. Not everybody can work at that pace and people who can't or won't are just as valuable (perhaps even more so) over the long haul. You have to pace yourself for the long term and put in a reward structure to match that goal. Look at Apple vs a place like Zynga and think about who is more likely to be around in 5 years...
Also, I've seen that 4-5 years is about how much time engineers are willing to put into a startup company before they want some kind of a cash out : liquidity : burn your options in a barrel at burning man situation. If you think about the expected half-life of a silicon valley engineering career, you can probably do 2 or 3 of those before you are burned out entirely or prefer to work at a non insane company. Founders are probably not as aware of this because they naturally are 100% invested, but you have to surround yourself with quality employees who won't put up with your bullshit forever.
- nostrademons 15y ago"Look at Apple vs a place like Zynga..." Bad example. The folks I know at Apple are ridiculously overworked. I've got a cousin who works on FileMaker that's been putting in 12+ hour days and weekends for the last year. I've got a friend who works on iMessage for the iPhone, and his roommates never see him at home unless they specifically arrange a social event with him. I think that if you want a company in Silicon Valley with decent work/life balance, it'd probably be Microsoft, Adobe, Cisco, or one of the other last-generation giants. Google depends on your team; there're parts of Infrastructure, Apps, etc. that work reasonable hours with little deadline pressure, but people on the money teams (Search, Ads, Android, Doodles) are often there at all hours because they set very ambitious and complex goals for themselves. Facebook has a reputation for long hours and weekend hackathons. Yahoo is apparently very variable: some folks are putting in 12-14 hour days and still not getting all their work done, while others work for like 2-3 hours and spend the rest of the day on Facebook. Apple I already mentioned.
- raghus 15y agoDoodles?
- nostrademons 15y agoY'know those occasionally interactive bits of artwork on the front page?
- deleted 15y ago[deleted]
- olalonde 15y agoThey make money from doodles??
- nostrademons 15y agoThey make happy users from Doodles. With Google's business model, happy users can be trivially converted into money. (Technically, Google doesn't make money from Search or Android either, but they get happy users from them too, which can be trivially converted into money.)
- Maven911 15y agoI think he was referring to the mention that doodles are part of the money team, which sounds strange
- deleted 15y ago[deleted]
- brown9-2 15y agoMakes some sense - highly visible, probably short and unmovable deadlines. Just a different meaning of "money".
- raghus 15y agoSorry I wasn't clear, yes I did mean to ask if Doodles were as high-pressure/high-reward an area as Ads and Android