10 ms·

Why You Need To Work For A Big Company

130 points by codegeek 13y ago

SkittlesNTwix 13y ago
This is exactly how people rationalize the story of how they became "trapped." And learning politics is nothing to be proud of or to seek out.
robbyking 13y ago
I guess it depends on your definition of "large." I worked at a large company (20k+ employees), and each department was like its own dysfunctional 50 person company: nothing got done, the technology was stale, and the perks were minimal. I work at a medium-sided company now (~200 employees according to Wikipedia), and I love it. We have a great mix of technology and perks, and are all treated really well. I worked at a handful of start-ups during the first tech boom (and during the crash), and some were exceptional and some were meh. I wouldn't rule out working at another start-up sometime in the future; it would just be one of the many factors I consider.
- AndyNemmity 13y ago
  It depends more on the company than the size. I work for a company with over 60k employees and the technology is incredible, and the people are interesting and super smart.
rhokstar 13y ago
Had my own startup. Brought my lessons into a large company. Worked wonders as a result and proud to work with them. To this day, still learning a lot.
mikestew 13y ago
Say what one will about Microsoft, I probably learned more there than anywhere else. Source control and how to branch/merge at scale. How to work cross-team relationships. How to work with people much smarter than I'll ever be. How to do a little political wrangling when necessary, and a bunch of other things I've probably forgotten. Having worked at several small companies since, it's disappointing how often I get to watch teams find out the hard way why things are done this way, or not that way. Sure, I will point out the potential folly along the way, but few care to hear it, and instead wish to invent their very own wheel because their case requires a special kind of roundness.
- marssaxman 13y ago
  It sounds like our experiences at Microsoft could hardly have been more different. Virtually everything I learned at Microsoft could be filed under "whatever you do, no matter how desperate you are, never do it this way". The systems were unreliable, inefficient when they worked, and the number of person-hours routinely wasted on tool management was staggering. The culture was unhealthy, competitive and individualistic, sometimes to the point of hostility. You saw cross-team communication, I saw at least a quarter of every working day wasted in routine status meetings, in which two or three of the ten or twelve people present spent an hour making a couple of decisions while the rest of us tried not to look too bored... Of course Microsoft is a big place and different divisions work differently. I'll never take the risk of landing in such a mess again, though.
  - megrimlock 13y ago
    > I saw at least a quarter of every working day wasted in routine status meetings, in which two or three of the ten or twelve people present spent an hour making a couple of decisions while the rest of us tried not to look too bored.. That sounds horrible. Did you mention your concerns to the people who owned those meetings, in a way that made it clear you were trying to help improve them? I've had success several times with this in BigCo, with various satisfactory outcomes: 1. "You're right, this meeting is BS! But it has to happen for various reasons X Y Z -- since you don't care about this area you don't need to come, we'll grab you if we need you." 2. "You're right, and other people feel tuned out as well, so let's try cutting it to 10 minutes / mailing out an agenda beforehand / starting exactly on time." 3. "You're right, this is an inefficient way to gather state so we're going to just swing by each person 1-on-1." 4. "You're right, this team is too big so we're splitting in 2/3 smaller groups"
    - marssaxman 13y ago
      No, I never did. It just seemed to be an accepted part of the institutional culture, and I felt like fighting against it would have only made me look like a complainer. Maybe someone with more status could have tried it, but I was just a newbie and nobody seemed to care what I thought. I think the project I worked on was worse than average because it was the sort of cross-cutting change that affected a lot of different teams - six different products, I think? There were a lot of PMs involved.
paulbjensen 13y ago
It's a valuable experience, but can be a very frustrating one to go through, especially if the company has internal power battles and little appreciation for the importance of technology.
- AndyNemmity 13y ago
  Same can be said of startups, it's not really big company specific.
  - avelis 13y ago
    It can be said in general: If there is a lack of technical expertise or value for any company, expect much frustration.
OhHeyItsE 13y ago
Gah. Sorry, No. My experience has been the opposite. In particular: "You see lots of very good ideas (like proper source control)" - you mean the group that still uses VSS 4.0 on a network share b/c they're terrified of moving their repo to Git (or even SVN)? "You get to work with lots of clever people" - no, you get to work with people who work there for no reason other than they live close to the office and have spent the last 14 years building an impenetrable fortress around themselves. "They have lots of perks" - Yes, that one day a year I got to donate $5 to cancer research so I could wear bluejeans (collared shirt still, of course) makes it all worth it. I'll take my catered breakfasts, lunches, impromptu beer runs, work-from-anywhere policy and unlimited vacation days, thank you. "You are not going to be sent on that week-long training course on using Oracle or have your part-time MBA fully-funded while at that boot-strapping startup." - Ok, starting to think this is a case of Poe's law in action... Yeah startups (and small companies) come with their share of headaches, but I'll take it any day over the soul-crushing, creativity-stifling cubicle hell that is a big company.
- jmduke 13y ago
  A few retorts (I work for Big Tech): "You see lots of very good ideas (like proper source control)" - you mean the group that still uses VSS 4.0 on a network share b/c they're terrified of moving their repo to Git (or even SVN)? Unsurprisingly, companies that have millions of lines of code have to take extra precautions. "You get to work with lots of clever people" - no, you get to work with people who work there for no reason other than they live close to the office and have spent the last 14 years building an impenetrable fortress around themselves. This is a lazy dismissal. In reality -- lots of smart people work at big companies and small companies. That being said, big companies will invariably have more people dedicated to research than startups. Microsoft Research alone has over a hundred people just doing brilliant things. "They have lots of perks" - Yes, that one day a year I got to donate $5 to cancer research so I could wear bluejeans (collared shirt still, of course) makes it all worth it. I'll take my catered breakfasts, lunches, impromptu beer runs, work-from-anywhere policy and unlimited vacation days, thank you. Again, this is lazy and untrue -- unless you want to say that Facebook and Google's perk packages are about wearing bluejeans -- but I think playing the perks game is silly anyway. Distilling things down to money (with some exceptions, like WFH) is always the smarter way to go. --- Personally, I think the biggest difference working at a big company vs. a small one is that of depth vs. breadth. At a startup, its not beyond the realm of possibility to understand the majority of the code base: you'll be wearing lots of different hats, doing lots of things at once. At a big company, the organization is usually such that you'll spend your entire employment working on one little niche -- this has its advantages (you become an expert at that one thing) and disadvantages (you're only an expert at that one thing, after all). Personally, I can't imagine why someone wouldn't want to just spend time at both types of companies and see which one they like more.
wf 13y ago
> "And you will get a range of ages - let's face it, most startups reckon you are past it if you are over 23." What? Not to disparage people my own age but that seems like hyperbole. Is this the image most people have of startups? Fresh out of college at 23 (a few months ago) I couldn't even find a decent startup (that I wanted to work at*) that was offering positions to new grads.
zwieback 13y ago
I worked at startups before joining megacorp. I always thought I wouldn't like working at a big company but everything the author said resonated with me. At some point I can see myself going back to a smaller outfit but for now it's great. What the author doesn't mention and what I perceive as a great plus are the tools and infrastructure I get to enjoy. We've got a lot test equipment, machine shops and technicians a smaller shop couldn't afford. On the other hand, I keep hearing managers say "we have to be nimble, like a startup". I think that's exactly the wrong approach, big companies should approach big problems that startups can't tackle.
johnbenwoo 13y ago
You also learn what kinds of unmet needs there are in the marketplace. You learn how decisions are made, who the gatekeepers are, how budgets are allocated, and what frustrations exist with the current roster of vendors - not to mention building your network and credibility in the industry. Want to develop a product/service to sell to the ______ industry? Go work there for a year or two first.
zw123456 13y ago
Over the years I have worked for both, much of what the author said is true, there are many things that are great about working for a start up,I would be preaching to the choir to mention them here. The one thing that got left out is the access to resources. Some of the projects I have worked on, just due to the scale, would have been impossible to do at a start up level, they just do not have access to that kind of capital usually. There are some things that are just too big to do that way.
ExpiredLink 13y ago
8. You work on really large applications and projects. This is completely different from working on small projects.
peterwwillis 13y ago
Some of the things I learned at big companies: - Process is not the enemy, inefficient process is the enemy - Project Management makes a huge difference - Technical people make for bad managers - Communication is critical, ego only creates conflict, learn to pick your battles, don't sweat the small stuff: how to deal with your work and other human beings - Perks are the last thing you should worry about - When nobody cares, everything turns to shit - Not centralizing/simplifying management of resources makes everything take a lot longer to get done - Salaries are arbitrary and 2 weeks of vacation is total bullshit - Health insurance for non-corporate people is expensive - Unless you want to fix the same problem twice, do it better the first time
- Diederich 13y ago
  > - Technical people make for bad managers In my experience, it's "some technical people make good managers". Some of them are bad managers; most of them are somewhere in between. Kind of like regular people. :)
  - EvanKelly 13y ago
    I think the "technical people make for bad managers" idea derives from: Companies which have limited advancement opportunities within the technical realm force technical folks with no desire for management into management positions that they're unfit for, leading to the conclusion that technical people are bad managers.
    - perlpimp 13y ago
      Yeah like the article states, you get to look at the complete picture and can make your own - multitude of conclusions can be narrowed to a certain subset when running a company and have a decision to make.
    - johlindenbaum 13y ago
      The company I works for has a great solution to that, it allows people that want/deserve to move into management paybands (they leave the union), but stay in their technical roles. The become managers without direct reports. Career / Pay advance, without having to take on managerial responsibilities.
obeleask 13y ago
I think the article misses on all the biggest benefits I had working at a BigCo: 1) You can actually get to work with a lot of companies. We acquired a ton of companies over the years, and I'd often go work in those companies post acquisition while it was still being run as a separate company. So these were smaller companies that were generally successful - you got to see a lot of different practices. 2) Once you are done learning a new job/role (or new company as above), you can easily get the opportunity to move to around to different departments or jobs. I personally did consulting, product management, engineering, architecture, sales operations and strategy (sometimes for the mothership, sometimes for the acquired companies). 3) It's not about smart people I wouldn't say - its about mentors. At a small company, there are just less senior people around, and they are often more focused on delivering. At a big company, more senior execs are really willing and able to mentor the superstars in their teams that make them look good. You combine that with moving about companies or departments, and you get a mix of different mentors with different styles and strengths. 4) It won't apply to everyone, but I personally must have evaluated 50 - 100 companies for M&A or partnerships. I know exactly how to analyze a business, where to look for skeletons, what works well/what doesn't, what a big company will look for (and what are red flags) in an acquisition, when you can/can't get a partnership and what you can use to your advantage in negotiations, etc. Will all be extremely useful skills when you're on the other side of the table. Between the above things, you can learn so much. Stuff like the food/work environmental is so irrelevant compared to this. Don't get me wrong - I have no intentions of ever going back to a big company again. But these were the big benefits for me.
- lifeisstillgood 13y ago
  I think you were fortunate, perhaps exceptionally so, in your experiences - few people will get to move around as much as that.
- VladRussian2 13y ago
  > and they are often more focused on delivering. that nailed it.
mathattack 13y ago
There are things to be learned at big companies, but it is very bad to say X is right for everyone. Big companies have been good for: - Providing training - Formalizing feedback - Introducing me to a lot of people But they also: - Stifle career progression ("We have you doing X, so we are sorry that you can't help on Y") - Are not nearly as safe as their size would suggest - Tolerate mediocrity
kyllo 13y ago
The main difference between working for a big company vs. a small company is that the roles tend to be explicitly defined and specialized at a big company. You don't need/get to wear as many hats as you will at a small company or a startup. Basically, instead of being a jack-of-all-trades / "full stack" developer, you might become an expert on one layer of a huge technology stack. This can be good, or bad, or mixed. There is more formal training and you can get deeper knowledge, but it's harder to get broad knowledge. It can be hard to change roles or try new things. Generally, I think learning "full stack" is preferable when you're young, and specializing might be better as you get a little older.
- jfasi 13y ago
  A good point in a sea of trolling. Thanks.
- sukuriant 13y ago
  Unless you're a tester, then you get to wear lots of hats, too.
- DougWebb 13y ago
  I worked for a fairly big company (100+ employees pre-acquisition) and I was able to develop a very broad role. I started as just a web UI developer, but soon helped design the deployment architecture of our entire runtime system and throughout my tenure I designed and implemented many of the services within that architecture. That included everything from DB schemas, custom XML databases, authentication servers, several mid-tier servers/services, as well as always being the lead owner of the UI. What helped, I think, is that I was part of a small team in that big company. At peak we probably had about two dozen programmers, with 8-10 on my team. That's not much bigger than the team I'm on now in a tiny company where I also get to work end-to-end. I disagree with specializing as you get older: there's going to be a tendency to do that, but it's the last thing you want to do. Never stop learning, never stop broadening your skillset. Sooner or later you're going to be a 40+ year old developer looking for work, and if you're a specialist you're going to be looking for a long time. As an experienced developer with a proven track record of adaptability you'll be able to justify the salary that you're going to want/need.
lifeisstillgood 13y ago
Rubbish Every CxO at every large company looks at startups as the model to emulate - lean, focused, full of feedback. The benefits listed, every single one, are examples of overlooked, hidden or inefficient practises by the large company - practises they try hard to eliminate. Do you think the CEO of Megacorp thinks that weeks "training" in Amsterdam was a good use of his money? Do you think he realises there are good passionate people trying to do good on no budget. If he found out he would either give them a budget or fire their arses for working in the wrong things. As for your time for reflection ... screw that, reflect at home. No - big companies are trying very hard to stop being a source of "informal" VC money, rest stops for the tired and weary or uncontrolled cash spenders. One day they might succeed.
- jfasi 13y ago
  > One day they might succeed. Would you mind defining success for us?
  - lifeisstillgood 13y ago
    A large company (revenue > 100m) generating per employee profits in the million plus range? A large company that is efficient, fast to react to threats and opportunities, can monitor and measure each and every part of its own behaviour in real time, and have that feedback passed to all employees Just a company that is large acting like a well run small outfit
    - sokoloff 13y ago
      A large company profiting 7 figures per employee is probably out of ideas and milking the business. If I had such a business, I'd be trying to figure out how to plow 25-50% of that profit into experimentation and expansion.
- VladRussian2 13y ago
  i've recently spotted in the wild the latest mutation of the beast - "lean 6 sigma". 10 years ago we had "6 sigma" pandemic in the Valley, last 5 years - "lean" and now ... behold their monsterous progeny.
iblaine 13y ago
The point of the article is to say everyone should have experience working at a large company to get perspective. The same thing can be said for small startups. The debate over which is better is endless and childish.
steven777400 13y ago
The biggest difference that appears to me is the lifetime and size of applications. I work on applications that have existed for a decade (and that's short, among our various application teams). Many of our applications are hodge-podged mixes of legacy and more modern technology. Whenever we "rewrite" an application that has outlived any possibility of keeping it alive, we can't start from scratch: we have to continue meeting all existing customer needs. So even from day one designs are often bloated and frustrating. There is no "MVP". Meanwhile at a startup you can "move fast and break things", and when an application starts to get stale either it can go away, or you can switch to another startup and begin fresh.
snorkel 13y ago
The biggest big company problem is the lack of focus slows everything down. The ability to execute is there, but the focus is not. Start ups will attempt to manage 20 products and services at once, and that feels like too much, where big companies attempt to launch 200 new products, 80 new services, 40 special partnerships, 750 pet projects, 380 special events, 30 broad initiatives, plus the CEO mandate of the week ... all while maintaining support for 3100 legacy products and acquisitions ... the result is everyone is very busy yet unfocused. Too much context switching at all levels, too many works in progress get blocked on waiting for other teams to contribute their part. Second challenge of big companies: trying to keep up with all of the latest project code names which change on a weekly basis.
slash-dot 13y ago
Not a very credible source seeing that onstartups.com is run by a co-founder of Hubspot, which is starting to become a rather big company.
Yhippa 13y ago
I really grok this article. One thing that I found was that after learning to navigate office politics I really didn't like it. I made it a point in subsequent jobs to get a feel for what politics are like and if they seemed to be too toxic to avoid the company.
johnkchow 13y ago
Politics is one of the most valuable lessons learned at a big company. Although I work in a small startup, all the management is from big companies. Like any other startup, what's valued the most is getting stuff done. But I learned that shouting at the top of your lungs or bottling your emotions while being passive aggressive are the worst strategies in leading discussions. I had to quickly learn how to present my argument in a non-confrontational way, get individual buy-in (and perspective) from all stakeholders before any meeting, and balance being transparent and forthright versus protecting your interests (it really helps that your interests aligns with company goals!). To sum it up, "politics" IMO has made me a more effective leader.
brianmcconnell 13y ago
The author's point isn't that big companies are better, just that it's a good experience to have. I worked for a public company post acquisition and it was a great learning experience (some good lessons, some "don't do it this way" lessons, but overall good). I wouldn't want to make a career working for big companies, but I think you're better off as a business person if you end up in one from time to time. Now if you want some definitive advice on where not to work. Don't work for a husband and wife operated company, ever. There you will encounter the worst aspects of a lifestyle business combined with nepotism (especially the unfireable but totally incompetent spouse). Otherwise spend some time in a combination of startups and big companies. Both have their strong points, and remember 90% of startups fail, so its not as if startupland is nirvana.
- edandersen 13y ago
  Never work for someone else's lifestyle business, ever.
varelse 13y ago
You'll probably make more money at a large company than at a startup unless you get in with single digit or better equity and you get lucky. Other than that, I prefer the creative chaos of startups to the process and tools over interactions and individuals of large companies (even the ones that pretend they're agile)...
elliottbell 13y ago
You get to work with smart people? How is that unique to bigger companies? In fact, I'd say it's more unique to smaller companies, that have to be more selective with their hiring process.
InclinedPlane 13y ago
The biggest reason to work at a big company is that you can have an opportunity to work on "stuff that matters" fairly quickly and you get introduced to ways of dealing with processes around working with important things, which can give you skills and confidence you might not otherwise attain. You're not going to acquire the experience of knowing what it's like to jump headfirst into fixing a build break during the runup to release on a billion dollar product unless you're working at a company that has a billion dollar product, of course.
patio11 13y ago
One reason why one goes to college is to learn how to learn social acclimation around people wealthier than you are, because this is a useful skill in convincing them to give you things that you want. A company, and the decisionmakers thereof, is almost by definition richer than you are, and broadly representative of an entire class of entities whose behaviors are totally opaque to you if you've never worked in one (+). That would be unfortunate, because those entities have budgets and are willing to spend them on you if you know how to work with them. + People who have never worked in a megacorp often think that their literal internal decisionmaking model is "MAXIMIZE THE EVIL.", which is both wrong and will not allow you to successfully predict their behavior.
- svmegatron 13y ago
  Are there one or two things you would recommend to help bridge that communication gap between a solo person and a megacorp? One thing I've observed (possibly incorrectly!) is that megacorps seem to "like" to do business with other megacorps.
  - patio11 13y ago
    Rule #1: all megacorps are, like Soylent Green, made out of people. If you want to sell something to Microsoft, you aren't selling it to Microsoft, you're selling it to one or a few identifiable people within Microsoft. The entity we think is Microsoft is the sum of the emergent behaviors of lots of little Microsoftite particles which are bouncing around in Brownian motion. After you understand that, it's VASTLY easier to get Microsoft to give you money, and you might find that Microsoft (or whatever BigCo) you're dealing with considers More Money Than I've Ever Dreamed Of (TM) to be a fairly routine decision, in the same manner that you might decide to purchase a new keyboard. In terms of communication style: learn to talk to business people. ROI and TCO over TDD and DRY, PowerPoint decks over README.md in your Github projects, wearing a suit when appropriate instead of making fun of people who own one, etc etc. It's really not hard to learn how to talk like someone if you listen attentively. You've done this your entire life in other contexts and other communities. Decisionmakers at BigCo are not intrinsically a more hostile audience than, e.g., your local freestyle rap club meetup thing, the rhymes are just different, yo. [1] [1] I should stick to WoW metaphors, but you get the general idea.
mikeash 13y ago
Normally I'd just let a post like this go, but that word "need" really rubs me the wrong way. No, I don't need to work for a big company, ever. I haven't yet, and don't ever plan to do so. Go away. I learn an awful lot? Because I can't learn things otherwise? Come on. I get to work with lots of clever people? No problem doing that now. Large community? Ditto. Perks? Uh... how does that translate to "need"? You learn the art of politics. Great! What you're saying is, I need to work for a big company so I can learn something that's only useful when working for a big company. What? You have time to reflect? Why assume that all small companies are balls-to-the-wall, 100-hour-week, venture-funded, Valley startups? Oh right, because this post comes from a fantasy world where the only two kinds of companies are gigantic Googles and tiny places filled to the brim with foosball tables, not actually the Earth where I live. You get a baseline? What is this I don't even.
- bennyg 13y ago
  Don't be naive. There are plenty of real benefits too, and it's all about weighing them. Hopefully if you get an opportunity at BigCo, you can remain open-minded and actually explore the opportunity before dismissing it immediately.
  - mikeash 13y ago
    I never said there were no benefits, I just said that the word "need" is wrong, and that the listed benefits are ridiculous. I don't see how you can decide open-mindedness based on a point-by-point refutation of what are some pretty blatantly silly points.
- mbillie1 13y ago
  Probably "need" could be better replaced with "can and likely will gain loads of experience that is hard to get outside of big companies, that can illuminate and improve you work life (and sometimes personal life) for your benefit" So, if your only gripe is the word "need," I agree. Your tone I think is a little reactionary though. There are legitimately valuable things to learn in an "enterprisey" environment (even if many of them are around what _NOT_ to do - you still learn something best by experience, not reading blog posts or books or chatting with friends or whatnot), and there are some surprising benefits, depending on your personality type (stability, sometimes pay, etc). Just my two cents, YMMV
NamTaf 13y ago
Speaking from a non-IT standpoint (mech engineer, rail industry), BigCo offers a number of cool benefits that I'd not get working for SmallCo (that may or may not hold analogous to the IT sector in some cases): - Economies of scale #1: when you're purchasing 10,000 instances of something, people listen and new techniques of doing things become available. - Economies of scale #2: Design changes when milking an extra $100 out of the design or manufacturing process means saving $1m at 10,000 instances. You get exposure to new design/manufacturing techniques as a result. - Project diversity: I could find 20 projects in this office of 150 engineers, all significantly different. They range across design, asset management, PM work, maintenance/reliability, acquisition, etc. Each applies to a number of different targets - fixed plant, mobile assets, facilities, etc. If I grow bored of something I can reasonably rotate to something new and different within 6 months. More long-term, there's opportunities in multiple countries if I so wish to pursue them. - Institutional knowledge: I can walk in to our drawing room and still find drawings dated from 1870. Some of the greybeards here seem almost as old, and come with a huge amount of knowledge (both specific and simply general 'tricks of the trade') that isn't recorded anywhere. There's also downsides: - Work sometimes feels like it's a game of thrones. The fiefdoms can grow tiring. - Stuff happens slowly. BigCos carry inertia that can be cumbersome. Counterpoint: inertia can produce some amazing results if you get everyone paddling in the same direction - Career advancement usually requires jumping ship to different companies. Said greybeards are in it for the long haul and unless a new position opens up, you're generally stuck below the glass ceiling.
- mattdeboard 13y ago
  Great insight from the physical world. I really liked economies of scale points.
nness 13y ago
The thing to remember about "big companies" is that they don't just spontaneously come into existence at that size; with x-thousand employees, y-percentage of market share, and z-millions of revenue. They are grown, over years or decades, because they've done something right. Worth keeping in our minds when discussing such topics, before passing them off as competitive or cultural failures.
saintx 13y ago
I sincerely recommend working at a large University as an alternative to this. Instead of one large company it is a constellation of large companies. They are almost always desperate for more good talent, and in many cases the innovations you can bring to the table can benefit the entire community, not just shareholders and customers. Otherwise, all of these points hold true.

130 points by codegeek 13y ago

This is exactly how people rationalize the story of how they became "trapped." And learning politics is nothing to be proud of or to seek out.

robbyking 13y ago

I guess it depends on your definition of "large." I worked at a large company (20k+ employees), and each department was like its own dysfunctional 50 person company: nothing got done, the technology was stale, and the perks were minimal. I work at a medium-sided company now (~200 employees according to Wikipedia), and I love it. We have a great mix of technology and perks, and are all treated really well. I worked at a handful of start-ups during the first tech boom (and during the crash), and some were exceptional and some were meh. I wouldn't rule out working at another start-up sometime in the future; it would just be one of the many factors I consider.

AndyNemmity 13y ago
It depends more on the company than the size. I work for a company with over 60k employees and the technology is incredible, and the people are interesting and super smart.

rhokstar 13y ago

Had my own startup. Brought my lessons into a large company. Worked wonders as a result and proud to work with them. To this day, still learning a lot.

mikestew 13y ago

Say what one will about Microsoft, I probably learned more there than anywhere else. Source control and how to branch/merge at scale. How to work cross-team relationships. How to work with people much smarter than I'll ever be. How to do a little political wrangling when necessary, and a bunch of other things I've probably forgotten. Having worked at several small companies since, it's disappointing how often I get to watch teams find out the hard way why things are done this way, or not that way. Sure, I will point out the potential folly along the way, but few care to hear it, and instead wish to invent their very own wheel because their case requires a special kind of roundness.

marssaxman 13y ago
It sounds like our experiences at Microsoft could hardly have been more different. Virtually everything I learned at Microsoft could be filed under "whatever you do, no matter how desperate you are, never do it this way". The systems were unreliable, inefficient when they worked, and the number of person-hours routinely wasted on tool management was staggering. The culture was unhealthy, competitive and individualistic, sometimes to the point of hostility. You saw cross-team communication, I saw at least a quarter of every working day wasted in routine status meetings, in which two or three of the ten or twelve people present spent an hour making a couple of decisions while the rest of us tried not to look too bored... Of course Microsoft is a big place and different divisions work differently. I'll never take the risk of landing in such a mess again, though.
- megrimlock 13y ago
  > I saw at least a quarter of every working day wasted in routine status meetings, in which two or three of the ten or twelve people present spent an hour making a couple of decisions while the rest of us tried not to look too bored.. That sounds horrible. Did you mention your concerns to the people who owned those meetings, in a way that made it clear you were trying to help improve them? I've had success several times with this in BigCo, with various satisfactory outcomes: 1. "You're right, this meeting is BS! But it has to happen for various reasons X Y Z -- since you don't care about this area you don't need to come, we'll grab you if we need you." 2. "You're right, and other people feel tuned out as well, so let's try cutting it to 10 minutes / mailing out an agenda beforehand / starting exactly on time." 3. "You're right, this is an inefficient way to gather state so we're going to just swing by each person 1-on-1." 4. "You're right, this team is too big so we're splitting in 2/3 smaller groups"
  - marssaxman 13y ago
    No, I never did. It just seemed to be an accepted part of the institutional culture, and I felt like fighting against it would have only made me look like a complainer. Maybe someone with more status could have tried it, but I was just a newbie and nobody seemed to care what I thought. I think the project I worked on was worse than average because it was the sort of cross-cutting change that affected a lot of different teams - six different products, I think? There were a lot of PMs involved.

paulbjensen 13y ago

It's a valuable experience, but can be a very frustrating one to go through, especially if the company has internal power battles and little appreciation for the importance of technology.

AndyNemmity 13y ago
Same can be said of startups, it's not really big company specific.
- avelis 13y ago
  It can be said in general: If there is a lack of technical expertise or value for any company, expect much frustration.

OhHeyItsE 13y ago

Gah. Sorry, No. My experience has been the opposite. In particular: "You see lots of very good ideas (like proper source control)" - you mean the group that still uses VSS 4.0 on a network share b/c they're terrified of moving their repo to Git (or even SVN)? "You get to work with lots of clever people" - no, you get to work with people who work there for no reason other than they live close to the office and have spent the last 14 years building an impenetrable fortress around themselves. "They have lots of perks" - Yes, that one day a year I got to donate $5 to cancer research so I could wear bluejeans (collared shirt still, of course) makes it all worth it. I'll take my catered breakfasts, lunches, impromptu beer runs, work-from-anywhere policy and unlimited vacation days, thank you. "You are not going to be sent on that week-long training course on using Oracle or have your part-time MBA fully-funded while at that boot-strapping startup." - Ok, starting to think this is a case of Poe's law in action... Yeah startups (and small companies) come with their share of headaches, but I'll take it any day over the soul-crushing, creativity-stifling cubicle hell that is a big company.

jmduke 13y ago
A few retorts (I work for Big Tech): "You see lots of very good ideas (like proper source control)" - you mean the group that still uses VSS 4.0 on a network share b/c they're terrified of moving their repo to Git (or even SVN)? Unsurprisingly, companies that have millions of lines of code have to take extra precautions. "You get to work with lots of clever people" - no, you get to work with people who work there for no reason other than they live close to the office and have spent the last 14 years building an impenetrable fortress around themselves. This is a lazy dismissal. In reality -- lots of smart people work at big companies and small companies. That being said, big companies will invariably have more people dedicated to research than startups. Microsoft Research alone has over a hundred people just doing brilliant things. "They have lots of perks" - Yes, that one day a year I got to donate $5 to cancer research so I could wear bluejeans (collared shirt still, of course) makes it all worth it. I'll take my catered breakfasts, lunches, impromptu beer runs, work-from-anywhere policy and unlimited vacation days, thank you. Again, this is lazy and untrue -- unless you want to say that Facebook and Google's perk packages are about wearing bluejeans -- but I think playing the perks game is silly anyway. Distilling things down to money (with some exceptions, like WFH) is always the smarter way to go. --- Personally, I think the biggest difference working at a big company vs. a small one is that of depth vs. breadth. At a startup, its not beyond the realm of possibility to understand the majority of the code base: you'll be wearing lots of different hats, doing lots of things at once. At a big company, the organization is usually such that you'll spend your entire employment working on one little niche -- this has its advantages (you become an expert at that one thing) and disadvantages (you're only an expert at that one thing, after all). Personally, I can't imagine why someone wouldn't want to just spend time at both types of companies and see which one they like more.

wf 13y ago

> "And you will get a range of ages - let's face it, most startups reckon you are past it if you are over 23." What? Not to disparage people my own age but that seems like hyperbole. Is this the image most people have of startups? Fresh out of college at 23 (a few months ago) I couldn't even find a decent startup (that I wanted to work at*) that was offering positions to new grads.

zwieback 13y ago

I worked at startups before joining megacorp. I always thought I wouldn't like working at a big company but everything the author said resonated with me. At some point I can see myself going back to a smaller outfit but for now it's great. What the author doesn't mention and what I perceive as a great plus are the tools and infrastructure I get to enjoy. We've got a lot test equipment, machine shops and technicians a smaller shop couldn't afford. On the other hand, I keep hearing managers say "we have to be nimble, like a startup". I think that's exactly the wrong approach, big companies should approach big problems that startups can't tackle.

johnbenwoo 13y ago

You also learn what kinds of unmet needs there are in the marketplace. You learn how decisions are made, who the gatekeepers are, how budgets are allocated, and what frustrations exist with the current roster of vendors - not to mention building your network and credibility in the industry. Want to develop a product/service to sell to the ______ industry? Go work there for a year or two first.

zw123456 13y ago

Over the years I have worked for both, much of what the author said is true, there are many things that are great about working for a start up,I would be preaching to the choir to mention them here. The one thing that got left out is the access to resources. Some of the projects I have worked on, just due to the scale, would have been impossible to do at a start up level, they just do not have access to that kind of capital usually. There are some things that are just too big to do that way.

ExpiredLink 13y ago

8. You work on really large applications and projects. This is completely different from working on small projects.

peterwwillis 13y ago

Some of the things I learned at big companies: - Process is not the enemy, inefficient process is the enemy - Project Management makes a huge difference - Technical people make for bad managers - Communication is critical, ego only creates conflict, learn to pick your battles, don't sweat the small stuff: how to deal with your work and other human beings - Perks are the last thing you should worry about - When nobody cares, everything turns to shit - Not centralizing/simplifying management of resources makes everything take a lot longer to get done - Salaries are arbitrary and 2 weeks of vacation is total bullshit - Health insurance for non-corporate people is expensive - Unless you want to fix the same problem twice, do it better the first time

Diederich 13y ago
> - Technical people make for bad managers In my experience, it's "some technical people make good managers". Some of them are bad managers; most of them are somewhere in between. Kind of like regular people. :)
- EvanKelly 13y ago
  I think the "technical people make for bad managers" idea derives from: Companies which have limited advancement opportunities within the technical realm force technical folks with no desire for management into management positions that they're unfit for, leading to the conclusion that technical people are bad managers.
  - perlpimp 13y ago
    Yeah like the article states, you get to look at the complete picture and can make your own - multitude of conclusions can be narrowed to a certain subset when running a company and have a decision to make.
  - johlindenbaum 13y ago
    The company I works for has a great solution to that, it allows people that want/deserve to move into management paybands (they leave the union), but stay in their technical roles. The become managers without direct reports. Career / Pay advance, without having to take on managerial responsibilities.

obeleask 13y ago

I think the article misses on all the biggest benefits I had working at a BigCo: 1) You can actually get to work with a lot of companies. We acquired a ton of companies over the years, and I'd often go work in those companies post acquisition while it was still being run as a separate company. So these were smaller companies that were generally successful - you got to see a lot of different practices. 2) Once you are done learning a new job/role (or new company as above), you can easily get the opportunity to move to around to different departments or jobs. I personally did consulting, product management, engineering, architecture, sales operations and strategy (sometimes for the mothership, sometimes for the acquired companies). 3) It's not about smart people I wouldn't say - its about mentors. At a small company, there are just less senior people around, and they are often more focused on delivering. At a big company, more senior execs are really willing and able to mentor the superstars in their teams that make them look good. You combine that with moving about companies or departments, and you get a mix of different mentors with different styles and strengths. 4) It won't apply to everyone, but I personally must have evaluated 50 - 100 companies for M&A or partnerships. I know exactly how to analyze a business, where to look for skeletons, what works well/what doesn't, what a big company will look for (and what are red flags) in an acquisition, when you can/can't get a partnership and what you can use to your advantage in negotiations, etc. Will all be extremely useful skills when you're on the other side of the table. Between the above things, you can learn so much. Stuff like the food/work environmental is so irrelevant compared to this. Don't get me wrong - I have no intentions of ever going back to a big company again. But these were the big benefits for me.

lifeisstillgood 13y ago
I think you were fortunate, perhaps exceptionally so, in your experiences - few people will get to move around as much as that.
VladRussian2 13y ago
> and they are often more focused on delivering. that nailed it.

mathattack 13y ago

There are things to be learned at big companies, but it is very bad to say X is right for everyone. Big companies have been good for: - Providing training - Formalizing feedback - Introducing me to a lot of people But they also: - Stifle career progression ("We have you doing X, so we are sorry that you can't help on Y") - Are not nearly as safe as their size would suggest - Tolerate mediocrity

kyllo 13y ago

The main difference between working for a big company vs. a small company is that the roles tend to be explicitly defined and specialized at a big company. You don't need/get to wear as many hats as you will at a small company or a startup. Basically, instead of being a jack-of-all-trades / "full stack" developer, you might become an expert on one layer of a huge technology stack. This can be good, or bad, or mixed. There is more formal training and you can get deeper knowledge, but it's harder to get broad knowledge. It can be hard to change roles or try new things. Generally, I think learning "full stack" is preferable when you're young, and specializing might be better as you get a little older.

jfasi 13y ago
A good point in a sea of trolling. Thanks.
sukuriant 13y ago
Unless you're a tester, then you get to wear lots of hats, too.
DougWebb 13y ago
I worked for a fairly big company (100+ employees pre-acquisition) and I was able to develop a very broad role. I started as just a web UI developer, but soon helped design the deployment architecture of our entire runtime system and throughout my tenure I designed and implemented many of the services within that architecture. That included everything from DB schemas, custom XML databases, authentication servers, several mid-tier servers/services, as well as always being the lead owner of the UI. What helped, I think, is that I was part of a small team in that big company. At peak we probably had about two dozen programmers, with 8-10 on my team. That's not much bigger than the team I'm on now in a tiny company where I also get to work end-to-end. I disagree with specializing as you get older: there's going to be a tendency to do that, but it's the last thing you want to do. Never stop learning, never stop broadening your skillset. Sooner or later you're going to be a 40+ year old developer looking for work, and if you're a specialist you're going to be looking for a long time. As an experienced developer with a proven track record of adaptability you'll be able to justify the salary that you're going to want/need.

lifeisstillgood 13y ago

Rubbish Every CxO at every large company looks at startups as the model to emulate - lean, focused, full of feedback. The benefits listed, every single one, are examples of overlooked, hidden or inefficient practises by the large company - practises they try hard to eliminate. Do you think the CEO of Megacorp thinks that weeks "training" in Amsterdam was a good use of his money? Do you think he realises there are good passionate people trying to do good on no budget. If he found out he would either give them a budget or fire their arses for working in the wrong things. As for your time for reflection ... screw that, reflect at home. No - big companies are trying very hard to stop being a source of "informal" VC money, rest stops for the tired and weary or uncontrolled cash spenders. One day they might succeed.

jfasi 13y ago
> One day they might succeed. Would you mind defining success for us?
- lifeisstillgood 13y ago
  A large company (revenue > 100m) generating per employee profits in the million plus range? A large company that is efficient, fast to react to threats and opportunities, can monitor and measure each and every part of its own behaviour in real time, and have that feedback passed to all employees Just a company that is large acting like a well run small outfit
  - sokoloff 13y ago
    A large company profiting 7 figures per employee is probably out of ideas and milking the business. If I had such a business, I'd be trying to figure out how to plow 25-50% of that profit into experimentation and expansion.
VladRussian2 13y ago
i've recently spotted in the wild the latest mutation of the beast - "lean 6 sigma". 10 years ago we had "6 sigma" pandemic in the Valley, last 5 years - "lean" and now ... behold their monsterous progeny.

iblaine 13y ago

The point of the article is to say everyone should have experience working at a large company to get perspective. The same thing can be said for small startups. The debate over which is better is endless and childish.

steven777400 13y ago

The biggest difference that appears to me is the lifetime and size of applications. I work on applications that have existed for a decade (and that's short, among our various application teams). Many of our applications are hodge-podged mixes of legacy and more modern technology. Whenever we "rewrite" an application that has outlived any possibility of keeping it alive, we can't start from scratch: we have to continue meeting all existing customer needs. So even from day one designs are often bloated and frustrating. There is no "MVP". Meanwhile at a startup you can "move fast and break things", and when an application starts to get stale either it can go away, or you can switch to another startup and begin fresh.

snorkel 13y ago

The biggest big company problem is the lack of focus slows everything down. The ability to execute is there, but the focus is not. Start ups will attempt to manage 20 products and services at once, and that feels like too much, where big companies attempt to launch 200 new products, 80 new services, 40 special partnerships, 750 pet projects, 380 special events, 30 broad initiatives, plus the CEO mandate of the week ... all while maintaining support for 3100 legacy products and acquisitions ... the result is everyone is very busy yet unfocused. Too much context switching at all levels, too many works in progress get blocked on waiting for other teams to contribute their part. Second challenge of big companies: trying to keep up with all of the latest project code names which change on a weekly basis.

slash-dot 13y ago

Not a very credible source seeing that onstartups.com is run by a co-founder of Hubspot, which is starting to become a rather big company.

Yhippa 13y ago

I really grok this article. One thing that I found was that after learning to navigate office politics I really didn't like it. I made it a point in subsequent jobs to get a feel for what politics are like and if they seemed to be too toxic to avoid the company.

johnkchow 13y ago

Politics is one of the most valuable lessons learned at a big company. Although I work in a small startup, all the management is from big companies. Like any other startup, what's valued the most is getting stuff done. But I learned that shouting at the top of your lungs or bottling your emotions while being passive aggressive are the worst strategies in leading discussions. I had to quickly learn how to present my argument in a non-confrontational way, get individual buy-in (and perspective) from all stakeholders before any meeting, and balance being transparent and forthright versus protecting your interests (it really helps that your interests aligns with company goals!). To sum it up, "politics" IMO has made me a more effective leader.

brianmcconnell 13y ago

The author's point isn't that big companies are better, just that it's a good experience to have. I worked for a public company post acquisition and it was a great learning experience (some good lessons, some "don't do it this way" lessons, but overall good). I wouldn't want to make a career working for big companies, but I think you're better off as a business person if you end up in one from time to time. Now if you want some definitive advice on where not to work. Don't work for a husband and wife operated company, ever. There you will encounter the worst aspects of a lifestyle business combined with nepotism (especially the unfireable but totally incompetent spouse). Otherwise spend some time in a combination of startups and big companies. Both have their strong points, and remember 90% of startups fail, so its not as if startupland is nirvana.

edandersen 13y ago
Never work for someone else's lifestyle business, ever.

varelse 13y ago

You'll probably make more money at a large company than at a startup unless you get in with single digit or better equity and you get lucky. Other than that, I prefer the creative chaos of startups to the process and tools over interactions and individuals of large companies (even the ones that pretend they're agile)...

elliottbell 13y ago

You get to work with smart people? How is that unique to bigger companies? In fact, I'd say it's more unique to smaller companies, that have to be more selective with their hiring process.

InclinedPlane 13y ago

The biggest reason to work at a big company is that you can have an opportunity to work on "stuff that matters" fairly quickly and you get introduced to ways of dealing with processes around working with important things, which can give you skills and confidence you might not otherwise attain. You're not going to acquire the experience of knowing what it's like to jump headfirst into fixing a build break during the runup to release on a billion dollar product unless you're working at a company that has a billion dollar product, of course.

patio11 13y ago

One reason why one goes to college is to learn how to learn social acclimation around people wealthier than you are, because this is a useful skill in convincing them to give you things that you want. A company, and the decisionmakers thereof, is almost by definition richer than you are, and broadly representative of an entire class of entities whose behaviors are totally opaque to you if you've never worked in one (+). That would be unfortunate, because those entities have budgets and are willing to spend them on you if you know how to work with them. + People who have never worked in a megacorp often think that their literal internal decisionmaking model is "MAXIMIZE THE EVIL.", which is both wrong and will not allow you to successfully predict their behavior.

svmegatron 13y ago
Are there one or two things you would recommend to help bridge that communication gap between a solo person and a megacorp? One thing I've observed (possibly incorrectly!) is that megacorps seem to "like" to do business with other megacorps.
- patio11 13y ago
  Rule #1: all megacorps are, like Soylent Green, made out of people. If you want to sell something to Microsoft, you aren't selling it to Microsoft, you're selling it to one or a few identifiable people within Microsoft. The entity we think is Microsoft is the sum of the emergent behaviors of lots of little Microsoftite particles which are bouncing around in Brownian motion. After you understand that, it's VASTLY easier to get Microsoft to give you money, and you might find that Microsoft (or whatever BigCo) you're dealing with considers More Money Than I've Ever Dreamed Of (TM) to be a fairly routine decision, in the same manner that you might decide to purchase a new keyboard. In terms of communication style: learn to talk to business people. ROI and TCO over TDD and DRY, PowerPoint decks over README.md in your Github projects, wearing a suit when appropriate instead of making fun of people who own one, etc etc. It's really not hard to learn how to talk like someone if you listen attentively. You've done this your entire life in other contexts and other communities. Decisionmakers at BigCo are not intrinsically a more hostile audience than, e.g., your local freestyle rap club meetup thing, the rhymes are just different, yo. [1] [1] I should stick to WoW metaphors, but you get the general idea.

mikeash 13y ago

Normally I'd just let a post like this go, but that word "need" really rubs me the wrong way. No, I don't need to work for a big company, ever. I haven't yet, and don't ever plan to do so. Go away. I learn an awful lot? Because I can't learn things otherwise? Come on. I get to work with lots of clever people? No problem doing that now. Large community? Ditto. Perks? Uh... how does that translate to "need"? You learn the art of politics. Great! What you're saying is, I need to work for a big company so I can learn something that's only useful when working for a big company. What? You have time to reflect? Why assume that all small companies are balls-to-the-wall, 100-hour-week, venture-funded, Valley startups? Oh right, because this post comes from a fantasy world where the only two kinds of companies are gigantic Googles and tiny places filled to the brim with foosball tables, not actually the Earth where I live. You get a baseline? What is this I don't even.

bennyg 13y ago
Don't be naive. There are plenty of real benefits too, and it's all about weighing them. Hopefully if you get an opportunity at BigCo, you can remain open-minded and actually explore the opportunity before dismissing it immediately.
- mikeash 13y ago
  I never said there were no benefits, I just said that the word "need" is wrong, and that the listed benefits are ridiculous. I don't see how you can decide open-mindedness based on a point-by-point refutation of what are some pretty blatantly silly points.
mbillie1 13y ago
Probably "need" could be better replaced with "can and likely will gain loads of experience that is hard to get outside of big companies, that can illuminate and improve you work life (and sometimes personal life) for your benefit" So, if your only gripe is the word "need," I agree. Your tone I think is a little reactionary though. There are legitimately valuable things to learn in an "enterprisey" environment (even if many of them are around what _NOT_ to do - you still learn something best by experience, not reading blog posts or books or chatting with friends or whatnot), and there are some surprising benefits, depending on your personality type (stability, sometimes pay, etc). Just my two cents, YMMV

NamTaf 13y ago

Speaking from a non-IT standpoint (mech engineer, rail industry), BigCo offers a number of cool benefits that I'd not get working for SmallCo (that may or may not hold analogous to the IT sector in some cases): - Economies of scale #1: when you're purchasing 10,000 instances of something, people listen and new techniques of doing things become available. - Economies of scale #2: Design changes when milking an extra $100 out of the design or manufacturing process means saving $1m at 10,000 instances. You get exposure to new design/manufacturing techniques as a result. - Project diversity: I could find 20 projects in this office of 150 engineers, all significantly different. They range across design, asset management, PM work, maintenance/reliability, acquisition, etc. Each applies to a number of different targets - fixed plant, mobile assets, facilities, etc. If I grow bored of something I can reasonably rotate to something new and different within 6 months. More long-term, there's opportunities in multiple countries if I so wish to pursue them. - Institutional knowledge: I can walk in to our drawing room and still find drawings dated from 1870. Some of the greybeards here seem almost as old, and come with a huge amount of knowledge (both specific and simply general 'tricks of the trade') that isn't recorded anywhere. There's also downsides: - Work sometimes feels like it's a game of thrones. The fiefdoms can grow tiring. - Stuff happens slowly. BigCos carry inertia that can be cumbersome. Counterpoint: inertia can produce some amazing results if you get everyone paddling in the same direction - Career advancement usually requires jumping ship to different companies. Said greybeards are in it for the long haul and unless a new position opens up, you're generally stuck below the glass ceiling.

mattdeboard 13y ago
Great insight from the physical world. I really liked economies of scale points.

nness 13y ago

The thing to remember about "big companies" is that they don't just spontaneously come into existence at that size; with x-thousand employees, y-percentage of market share, and z-millions of revenue. They are grown, over years or decades, because they've done something right. Worth keeping in our minds when discussing such topics, before passing them off as competitive or cultural failures.

saintx 13y ago

I sincerely recommend working at a large University as an alternative to this. Instead of one large company it is a constellation of large companies. They are almost always desperate for more good talent, and in many cases the innovations you can bring to the table can benefit the entire community, not just shareholders and customers. Otherwise, all of these points hold true.