4 ms·

My totally ignorant hypothesis is this: When a company becomes successful, salaries increase and company reputation improves. This obviously increases the inc

My totally ignorant hypothesis is this: When a company becomes successful, salaries increase and company reputation improves. This obviously increases the incentives to get into the company, which in theory should be good: more people want to work there, so the company has more options to choose employees from. But this pay and reputation increase disproportionally attracts the kind of people that don't really care about doing a good job or creating an exceptional product, but only care about the money and status. If the company lets these people in, they will slowly destroy the culture that made the company succesful in the first place. The general feeling goes from "how do I contribute to the company creating the best product ever?" into "how do I get a promotion as fast as possible?" But that's just my personal hypothesis that isn't supported by hard data.

GianFabien 2y ago
My years of experience and observations confirm your hypothesis. Furthermore, managements don't take kindly to messengers (i.e. engineers) who deliver negative news, viewpoints. What I have seen is that over time, such companies leak competent staff at all levels. The Yes-persons outnumber those with critical thinking. The critical thinkers eventually give up and/or leave.
- sublinear 2y ago
  Everyone hates the fire inspector, but love the fireman.
nothercastle 2y ago
There is a whole theory about how companies in different stages attract different types of leaders/managers. At some point they attract cut throat middle/micro managers that rise up and kill innovation and loot the company. The it dies. Innovators, organizers, managers, looters and scavengers in that order.
000ooo000 2y ago
If I can add to this, I think there's something attractive to many about the large, stable, slow-to-steer ship that is a large company: often there's low expectations (relative to startups), you can get "lost in the bureaucracy", and rarely do you get to make a real, influential decision because of the incredible amount of in-fighting and empire-building above you, so you can coast. Taking a different angle to your conclusion, these conditions set up the departure from "how do I contribute to the company creating the best product ever" to "doing more than the bare minimum to guarantee my paycheck nets me a low/negative ROI". Not the ideal attitude for your team to have. I'm in an org at the moment and I'm watching new layers of middle management being created, excess processes being introduced, ICs being disempowered, consultants being engaged over in-house, eye-watering dollars being pissed away while penny-pinching on things that keep the lights on, etc. I have to wonder what are the conditions that mean these (what I consider to be) mistakes can go on for years before a company actually begins to be seriously impacted? Is it actually extremely difficult to kill a large enough org from the inside once it has enough momentum, provided the org avoids doing anything particularly stupid? I can't actually think of something an org has done that was particularly stupid and resulted in its end. Do big companies even fail?

GianFabien 2y ago

My years of experience and observations confirm your hypothesis. Furthermore, managements don't take kindly to messengers (i.e. engineers) who deliver negative news, viewpoints. What I have seen is that over time, such companies leak competent staff at all levels. The Yes-persons outnumber those with critical thinking. The critical thinkers eventually give up and/or leave.

sublinear 2y ago
Everyone hates the fire inspector, but love the fireman.

nothercastle 2y ago

There is a whole theory about how companies in different stages attract different types of leaders/managers. At some point they attract cut throat middle/micro managers that rise up and kill innovation and loot the company. The it dies. Innovators, organizers, managers, looters and scavengers in that order.

000ooo000 2y ago

If I can add to this, I think there's something attractive to many about the large, stable, slow-to-steer ship that is a large company: often there's low expectations (relative to startups), you can get "lost in the bureaucracy", and rarely do you get to make a real, influential decision because of the incredible amount of in-fighting and empire-building above you, so you can coast. Taking a different angle to your conclusion, these conditions set up the departure from "how do I contribute to the company creating the best product ever" to "doing more than the bare minimum to guarantee my paycheck nets me a low/negative ROI". Not the ideal attitude for your team to have. I'm in an org at the moment and I'm watching new layers of middle management being created, excess processes being introduced, ICs being disempowered, consultants being engaged over in-house, eye-watering dollars being pissed away while penny-pinching on things that keep the lights on, etc. I have to wonder what are the conditions that mean these (what I consider to be) mistakes can go on for years before a company actually begins to be seriously impacted? Is it actually extremely difficult to kill a large enough org from the inside once it has enough momentum, provided the org avoids doing anything particularly stupid? I can't actually think of something an org has done that was particularly stupid and resulted in its end. Do big companies even fail?