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I worked for large companies all my life and all of them are actually like this. I wonder how one can find companies with no office politics, and one that rewa

I worked for large companies all my life and all of them are actually like this. I wonder how one can find companies with no office politics, and one that rewards real engineering work. Do any of the FAANGs actually qualify for this?

glomgril 4y ago
let me know if you find out
feifan 4y ago
You'd probably want to look for small companies making something that impresses you (which may or may not be public). Hopefully they stay small for a while and preserve that culture.
endtime 4y ago
No group of thousands of humans will be politics-free. But I do think Google rewards good engineering. There are a bunch of other caveats though; if you do great work on something for a year and then it gets canceled before launching, you won't get rewarded for that.
- woooooo 4y ago
  Google rewards engineering work in a vacuum, divorced from customer impact. This can lead to bad engineering incentives like valuing system complexity over the actual problem you're trying to solve.
  - potatolicious 4y ago
    Agreed, having been on the inside at Google - they are not good at producing customer impact. The orgs are so large, so diffuse, and upper management so disconnected from on-the-ground execution that it's really all about gaming metrics. Even people who still want to produce customer impact have to play the game of stuffing their feature into a metrics-shaped-box so their projects don't get shut down. Google is obsessive about engineering quality - and IMO is a good example of why that shouldn't be the core principle of a tech company, even though as engineers we're biased towards it. Google excels at producing a lot of well-designed, scale-hardened, well-tested code... that doesn't do anything useful for the business and is a net drag on the company. re: customer impact, and if you want to define "real engineering work" as "real engineering work that your users actually use/love", IMO Apple is the way to go in the realm of BigTech. It's the only one of the FAANGs where simply juking metrics isn't enough to get ahead, and you have to deliver customer impact in a reasonably robust way to succeed. I've been at 3 FAANGs now, and Apple is the only one where a conversation has gone something like "wait, the metrics you're proposing are bad at measuring the actual quality of the user experience and does not account for hard-to-measure factors like (a), (b), or (c)", and that conversation is coming from an executive.
    - sebhook 4y ago
      I listened to Kara Swisher interview some top Apple execs who used to work closely with Steve Jobs recently. Unfortunately I think we're now in an era where design and user experience is a lower priority when shipping new products. I'm not sure what the path to fixing this is, or if it even needs to be fixed, but I do think that Steve Jobs created a cult of innovation and a beacon to aspire towards creativity-wise, even if he wasn't the most pleasant person to interact with. This aspirational figure forced individuals and companies to be better.
      - mousetree 4y ago
        Are there hard facts to support this view? I've heard such an opinion so many times that I'm always skeptical on whether this is just the popular thing to say.
        drc500free 4y ago
        I don't know about hard facts, but iOS has turned into a usability nightmare. Sedimentary layers of settings on layers of settings, unintuitive gestures that require perfect precision, and unstable behavior. Try tapping the play button and guess what's going to happen. Try getting the passcode screen to actually appear when you want to get into your phone and your face/finger aren't working. You can feel the competing teams shoehorning their thing into a platform that's already overstuffed, with no top-down editor removing the bloat.
      - hnaccount_rng 4y ago
        They just delivered on the biggest customer facing improvement of any single piece of technology in the last 5 years with their switch to Apple Silicon. In an environment where it really wasn’t absolutely necessary. Yes people were crumbling. But nobody was switching away when they started the transition. This was a _completely_ proactive move. Yes I’m also worried of them getting cocky and lazy. But so far they have done good
  - seanmcdirmid 4y ago
    How would they go about associating engineering effort with customer impact when they have a bunch of sales people, product managers, project managers, UX designers, and so on, in between them? Heck, any large company where there is a division of labor will begin running into the problem of relating individual performance to overall customer impact, and if you begin measuring everyone by that singular metric, you will lose all of your good engineers very quickly (they will switch companies or move to non-engineering roles that have direct customer impact).
    - woooooo 4y ago
      Customer impact, business impact, some other subjective or objective measure. The point is that there's a thing you're trying to accomplish with a project and the engineering techniques should be a means to an end rather than an end in themselves.
jedberg 4y ago
Netflix of eight years ago rewarded real engineering work (I left then so I don't know how it is now). Metrics didn't really play a part in anything other than providing information to guide business decisions (like direction and success, not comp). Or more specifically, they used a lot of metrics to determine comp but they weren't individual, they were market metrics of how much it cost to get new people on board.
lbotos 4y ago
The best example of why large organizations are like this was Engels writing on "the state": “The state is, therefore, by no means a power forced on society from without; just as little is it ’the reality of the ethical idea’, ’the image and reality of reason’, as Hegel maintains. Rather, it is a product of society at a certain stage of development; it is the admission that this society has become entangled in an insoluble contradiction with itself, that it has split into irreconcilable antagonisms which it is powerless to dispel. But in order that these antagonisms, these classes with conflicting economic interests, might not consume themselves and society in fruitless struggle, it became necessary to have a power, seemingly standing above society, that would alleviate the conflict and keep it within the bounds of ’order’; and this power, arisen out of society but placing itself above it, and alienating itself more and more from it, is the state." Replace state with "management". The answer for "reduced politics" and "real engineering" is smaller organizations. These are often early stage startups. There are two types of startups: - Those that will find product market fit and sell things - Those that are pushing the vanguard of tech Sometimes, a startup may do both, but it's rare. If you are financially stable and skilled, you can jump to a startup doing "tech advancement" but you won't have job stability. If you want reduced politics but are down to make your 5th a crud app, then a startup that is finding product market fit and selling things should give you less politics.
- karamanolev 4y ago
  I've seen many a "startup within a corporation", but the benefits of that are almost never, what what I've seen, realized. I wonder what gives. Why can't anyone figure out how to make that work?
  - AlexandrB 4y ago
    When I've heard of this kind of thing working it's almost always informal and not pushed down from upper management. That also makes it very fragile as losing a few key people means the "startup" just gets absorbed into the larger culture.
  - scottyah 4y ago
    In my experience, they just get absorbed quickly and the label of “startup within a corporation” gets dropped, becoming so-and-so’s org/team
joshstrange 4y ago
Smaller companies are the answer. I know people worry about things like "what if it goes under?" but honestly you should always be worried about that, even if the whole company doesn't go under they will jettison people to save the company without a second thought. Might as well work somewhere where your work is appreciated and actually moves the needle. Someplace where your voice matters and you get real work done.
pcurve 4y ago
I just resigned last week having worked at a big company for 18 years. They dangled sr. director title, but it was just not worth it in the end. I did so without any job lined up. I wanted a break. My former colleagues are reaching out to see if I'd be interested in their gigs. But they're all large companies, and all large companies have the same big company bullshit. I do think smaller paycheck and smaller company helps, but I'm sure the grass isn't always greener.
- nosequel 4y ago
  Left what I would consider a big company for a < 10 person startup. I couldn't be happier. I honestly don't care that I had to take a paycut for it.
  - tasuki 4y ago
    > I honestly don't care that I had to take a paycut for it. Good for you. Here in Eastern Europe, the difference between working for big tech versus working for a local small business appears to be a factor of 5 to 20. I'm not saying money is the most important, but gee an 80% to 95% paycut does seem like a lot...
    - nosequel 4y ago
      That's an incredible paycut, I'm sorry. I definitely had to hunt, most small startups offered me about 60% of what I made. I finally found one which offered me 85% of what I made. While still significant for me, it wasn't a deal breaker.
      - tasuki 4y ago
        > That's an incredible paycut, I'm sorry. No need to be sorry. The flip side is that Eastern Europe is actually cheaper than the West (though perhaps less cheap than the West might think). So while a local salary here is not great, getting a Big Tech salary in Eastern Europe is even more of a win than it is in Silicon Valley.
  - 4y ago

glomgril 4y ago

let me know if you find out

feifan 4y ago

You'd probably want to look for small companies making something that impresses you (which may or may not be public). Hopefully they stay small for a while and preserve that culture.

endtime 4y ago

No group of thousands of humans will be politics-free. But I do think Google rewards good engineering. There are a bunch of other caveats though; if you do great work on something for a year and then it gets canceled before launching, you won't get rewarded for that.

woooooo 4y ago
Google rewards engineering work in a vacuum, divorced from customer impact. This can lead to bad engineering incentives like valuing system complexity over the actual problem you're trying to solve.
- potatolicious 4y ago
  Agreed, having been on the inside at Google - they are not good at producing customer impact. The orgs are so large, so diffuse, and upper management so disconnected from on-the-ground execution that it's really all about gaming metrics. Even people who still want to produce customer impact have to play the game of stuffing their feature into a metrics-shaped-box so their projects don't get shut down. Google is obsessive about engineering quality - and IMO is a good example of why that shouldn't be the core principle of a tech company, even though as engineers we're biased towards it. Google excels at producing a lot of well-designed, scale-hardened, well-tested code... that doesn't do anything useful for the business and is a net drag on the company. re: customer impact, and if you want to define "real engineering work" as "real engineering work that your users actually use/love", IMO Apple is the way to go in the realm of BigTech. It's the only one of the FAANGs where simply juking metrics isn't enough to get ahead, and you have to deliver customer impact in a reasonably robust way to succeed. I've been at 3 FAANGs now, and Apple is the only one where a conversation has gone something like "wait, the metrics you're proposing are bad at measuring the actual quality of the user experience and does not account for hard-to-measure factors like (a), (b), or (c)", and that conversation is coming from an executive.
  - sebhook 4y ago
    I listened to Kara Swisher interview some top Apple execs who used to work closely with Steve Jobs recently. Unfortunately I think we're now in an era where design and user experience is a lower priority when shipping new products. I'm not sure what the path to fixing this is, or if it even needs to be fixed, but I do think that Steve Jobs created a cult of innovation and a beacon to aspire towards creativity-wise, even if he wasn't the most pleasant person to interact with. This aspirational figure forced individuals and companies to be better.
    - mousetree 4y ago
      Are there hard facts to support this view? I've heard such an opinion so many times that I'm always skeptical on whether this is just the popular thing to say.
      - drc500free 4y ago
        I don't know about hard facts, but iOS has turned into a usability nightmare. Sedimentary layers of settings on layers of settings, unintuitive gestures that require perfect precision, and unstable behavior. Try tapping the play button and guess what's going to happen. Try getting the passcode screen to actually appear when you want to get into your phone and your face/finger aren't working. You can feel the competing teams shoehorning their thing into a platform that's already overstuffed, with no top-down editor removing the bloat.
    - hnaccount_rng 4y ago
      They just delivered on the biggest customer facing improvement of any single piece of technology in the last 5 years with their switch to Apple Silicon. In an environment where it really wasn’t absolutely necessary. Yes people were crumbling. But nobody was switching away when they started the transition. This was a _completely_ proactive move. Yes I’m also worried of them getting cocky and lazy. But so far they have done good
- seanmcdirmid 4y ago
  How would they go about associating engineering effort with customer impact when they have a bunch of sales people, product managers, project managers, UX designers, and so on, in between them? Heck, any large company where there is a division of labor will begin running into the problem of relating individual performance to overall customer impact, and if you begin measuring everyone by that singular metric, you will lose all of your good engineers very quickly (they will switch companies or move to non-engineering roles that have direct customer impact).
  - woooooo 4y ago
    Customer impact, business impact, some other subjective or objective measure. The point is that there's a thing you're trying to accomplish with a project and the engineering techniques should be a means to an end rather than an end in themselves.

jedberg 4y ago

Netflix of eight years ago rewarded real engineering work (I left then so I don't know how it is now). Metrics didn't really play a part in anything other than providing information to guide business decisions (like direction and success, not comp). Or more specifically, they used a lot of metrics to determine comp but they weren't individual, they were market metrics of how much it cost to get new people on board.

lbotos 4y ago

The best example of why large organizations are like this was Engels writing on "the state": “The state is, therefore, by no means a power forced on society from without; just as little is it ’the reality of the ethical idea’, ’the image and reality of reason’, as Hegel maintains. Rather, it is a product of society at a certain stage of development; it is the admission that this society has become entangled in an insoluble contradiction with itself, that it has split into irreconcilable antagonisms which it is powerless to dispel. But in order that these antagonisms, these classes with conflicting economic interests, might not consume themselves and society in fruitless struggle, it became necessary to have a power, seemingly standing above society, that would alleviate the conflict and keep it within the bounds of ’order’; and this power, arisen out of society but placing itself above it, and alienating itself more and more from it, is the state." Replace state with "management". The answer for "reduced politics" and "real engineering" is smaller organizations. These are often early stage startups. There are two types of startups: - Those that will find product market fit and sell things - Those that are pushing the vanguard of tech Sometimes, a startup may do both, but it's rare. If you are financially stable and skilled, you can jump to a startup doing "tech advancement" but you won't have job stability. If you want reduced politics but are down to make your 5th a crud app, then a startup that is finding product market fit and selling things should give you less politics.

karamanolev 4y ago
I've seen many a "startup within a corporation", but the benefits of that are almost never, what what I've seen, realized. I wonder what gives. Why can't anyone figure out how to make that work?
- AlexandrB 4y ago
  When I've heard of this kind of thing working it's almost always informal and not pushed down from upper management. That also makes it very fragile as losing a few key people means the "startup" just gets absorbed into the larger culture.
- scottyah 4y ago
  In my experience, they just get absorbed quickly and the label of “startup within a corporation” gets dropped, becoming so-and-so’s org/team

joshstrange 4y ago

Smaller companies are the answer. I know people worry about things like "what if it goes under?" but honestly you should always be worried about that, even if the whole company doesn't go under they will jettison people to save the company without a second thought. Might as well work somewhere where your work is appreciated and actually moves the needle. Someplace where your voice matters and you get real work done.

pcurve 4y ago

I just resigned last week having worked at a big company for 18 years. They dangled sr. director title, but it was just not worth it in the end. I did so without any job lined up. I wanted a break. My former colleagues are reaching out to see if I'd be interested in their gigs. But they're all large companies, and all large companies have the same big company bullshit. I do think smaller paycheck and smaller company helps, but I'm sure the grass isn't always greener.

nosequel 4y ago
Left what I would consider a big company for a < 10 person startup. I couldn't be happier. I honestly don't care that I had to take a paycut for it.
- tasuki 4y ago
  > I honestly don't care that I had to take a paycut for it. Good for you. Here in Eastern Europe, the difference between working for big tech versus working for a local small business appears to be a factor of 5 to 20. I'm not saying money is the most important, but gee an 80% to 95% paycut does seem like a lot...
  - nosequel 4y ago
    That's an incredible paycut, I'm sorry. I definitely had to hunt, most small startups offered me about 60% of what I made. I finally found one which offered me 85% of what I made. While still significant for me, it wasn't a deal breaker.
    - tasuki 4y ago
      > That's an incredible paycut, I'm sorry. No need to be sorry. The flip side is that Eastern Europe is actually cheaper than the West (though perhaps less cheap than the West might think). So while a local salary here is not great, getting a Big Tech salary in Eastern Europe is even more of a win than it is in Silicon Valley.
- 4y ago