4 ms·

What are these unicorn companies? I've worked at 7 companies (and interviewed at many more) and never seen anything close to this mythical "company that values

What are these unicorn companies? I've worked at 7 companies (and interviewed at many more) and never seen anything close to this mythical "company that values programming and real productivity". I feel like they must be exceptionally rare.

411111111111111 4y ago
The term unicorn in this context makes it hard to understand what you're asking, as unicorn companies are usually defined to be corporations with i believe a billion in revenue. This often comes with the usual downsides. Smallish companies often leave a lot more freedom for their developers, but you'll most likely also be missing a lot of things you've gotten used to (highly automated CI/CD, teams "responsible" for each part of the system etc)
- at_compile_time 4y ago
  They're referring to the mythical animal, using a metaphor to express that such a company is mythical or non-existent. Coincidentally, this is same metaphor that the person who coined the term "unicorn company" was using. Given that private companies with over $1B in revenue actually exist while examples of "[companies] that values programming and real productivity" are yet to be forthcoming, the parent post is using the metaphor correctly and the finance world is not.
ss108 4y ago
How diverse have the companies you've worked at been in terms of size, etc? As a perhaps incomplete or shoddy heuristic, smaller startups tend to focus on productivity and moving fast.
kasey_junk 4y ago
I’ve worked at about 10 companies and half of them didn’t have the soul sucking processes (though all of them did have process). The correlation I see is big companies have processes that kill productivity, though I did work for a big company that was able to avoid it for a long time (new leadership did end up killing productivity right before I left). And for what it’s worth there was no correlation with “agile”. I’ve seen good and bad agile.
deleted 4y ago
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Aeolun 4y ago
The only ones that I’ve found like that are the ones in which either the company, or the team, is led by a former/current programmer.

411111111111111 4y ago

The term unicorn in this context makes it hard to understand what you're asking, as unicorn companies are usually defined to be corporations with i believe a billion in revenue. This often comes with the usual downsides. Smallish companies often leave a lot more freedom for their developers, but you'll most likely also be missing a lot of things you've gotten used to (highly automated CI/CD, teams "responsible" for each part of the system etc)

at_compile_time 4y ago
They're referring to the mythical animal, using a metaphor to express that such a company is mythical or non-existent. Coincidentally, this is same metaphor that the person who coined the term "unicorn company" was using. Given that private companies with over $1B in revenue actually exist while examples of "[companies] that values programming and real productivity" are yet to be forthcoming, the parent post is using the metaphor correctly and the finance world is not.

ss108 4y ago

How diverse have the companies you've worked at been in terms of size, etc? As a perhaps incomplete or shoddy heuristic, smaller startups tend to focus on productivity and moving fast.

kasey_junk 4y ago

I’ve worked at about 10 companies and half of them didn’t have the soul sucking processes (though all of them did have process). The correlation I see is big companies have processes that kill productivity, though I did work for a big company that was able to avoid it for a long time (new leadership did end up killing productivity right before I left). And for what it’s worth there was no correlation with “agile”. I’ve seen good and bad agile.

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

Aeolun 4y ago

The only ones that I’ve found like that are the ones in which either the company, or the team, is led by a former/current programmer.