
Tech company patterns - Impossible
https://richg42.blogspot.com/2018/10/types-of-tech-companies.html
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xte
Nice post, I would like to ad a super-category/type: companies of various kind
that think to be independent companies in a "free market" while are only slave
that works for few bigger one.

To explain this mega-pattern I start to the bottom: in the past we have had
blacksmiths that build their own tools regularly, it was common in chemistry
industry produce in-house any "glass made lab equipment", it was common
between carpenters to build most of their tools, these were mostly made of
wood and blades are made by the nearby blacksmith that also buy wood stuff
from the carpenter and I can keep going for long. Now without tools
essentially designed and made by very few subjects (yep, there are tons of
electric/pneumatic/... tools producers but they do not really produce them,
only design few aspects around pre-made components) nobody can work anymore.

In IT it's no different: in the past we have had many different architectures,
software etc, now anything is built essentially around ARM or x86 and mostly
around very few key software components.

Long story short: most type of companies you identify are not free player of a
free market but only lego player that depend on lego brick suppliers that are
more and more few, more and more powerful.

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batty_alex
This is brilliant and is true across so many industries outside of software. I
don't think there's anything "wrong" with it, but it seems like we get fewer
choices every year and that doesn't feel like progress.

Who knows how things will end up because of the state of things. It'll be
interesting to look back ten or twenty years from now and see where our
current trajectory took us.

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xte
Thanks, Well... IMO Being interdependent is not much a wrong thing until such
interdependency became too unbalanced between too many that depend on a
subject and to few subjects but to evolve we need few things: diversity is one
of them, without diversity interaction goes down and without interaction good
ideas hardly came up and spread.

Another problem is actual kind of private polarization, I mean if we end up
after an "evolution cycle" with few universities that essentially hold, build
and spread knowledge is not much a problem as long as universities are
public/open it's only a matter of how distance we have to travel to study
well. But when knowledge start to be concentrated in private hands things
change for worse.

Imaging few scenarios: what if we all communicate trough $bigEnterprise
services and $bigEnterprise have extensive data mining knowledge? How easy for
them became knowing anything that going to happen between anyone else and so
direct their investments for their own good possibly against anyone else
interest? What if our communications relay on "aggregators" from such big
subject so that it can spread certain news and reduce diffusion of other news?

An ancient proverb say that power corrupt, when we get "corrupted" as a
society it's dangerous but It's a thing we can handle between us all, when we
get "natural dictatorship" because of centralization well... It's easy to
understand that's not good for us.

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drieddust
> diversity is one of them, without diversity interaction goes down and
> without interaction good ideas hardly came up and spread

Diversity will sacrifice efficiency and that's unlikely in current
capitalistic scenario where pinching every ounce of performance from tools and
employees is the norm.

~~~
xte
True but we are humans, not machines, we work to live not live to work.

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jgh
Aardman Animation becoming a coop has captured my imagination. I am very
curious how well it could work in the context of a tech company.

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bogle
There are a fair number in the UK, there's even an group to help
[[https://www.coops.tech/](https://www.coops.tech/)]. Speaking to those who've
done it they say you should try to legally form as a co-op as soon as you can
as it gets expensive the longer you leave it (legal fees).

~~~
jgh
Interesting, thanks for the link! I'm strongly considering doing this for my
next project and all the information I can get is helpful.

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indogooner
Been through this - >3\. The Acquired Company Pattern >Resistance is futile:
Either the firm ultimately becomes fully absorbed into the megacorp or it will
be shut down.

There was massive attrition despite retention bonuses.

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debt
It should be noted that many of the time(most?), acquisitions are simply press
releases. I mean they actually happen, but the ability to spew out a true
press release is the actual value of the acquisition; not the data or the
customers or the software or the employees.

Just the ability to tell the market they acquired some company is the reason
for the acquisition. That should inform where you fit post acquisition.

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StevePerkins
I not sure about #4: "The Legendary Company Pattern", and which example
companies the author had in mind:

> _Products are legendary and set the bar. There are two types of employees:
> The "Old Guard" that worked on the earlier legendary products, and everyone
> else. Can be a very good choice if you can fit in and get shit done. Don't
> expect to become an insider anytime soon if ever. Only old guard workers can
> be insiders._

Quite frankly, this sounds like what the top level at EVERY place would
select, if you asked them to identify which pattern their company fits.

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badpun
Every time I read richg’s blog post like this one (there’s at least a few
more), I’m glad that I mostly do tech outside the tech industry (in boring
enterprise - telco, banking etc.). Things there seem so sane in comparison.

~~~
apohn
I've worked for two megacorps. One non-tech and one tech (hardware and
software). Both fit the description on that page well. I came to these two
companies from a smaller tech company and each megacorp definitely seemed
insane.

IME The difference is that at the non-tech company all the decision makers saw
individual contributors the same way - didn't matter if you were a PhD
scientist or a Business Analyst. Individual contributors were cogs in a
business process.

At the tech company some of the decision makers seem to understand that
technical people are "advanced cogs" and not just regular cogs. To me, that's
the difference between feeling totally useless at the non-tech company and
occasionally useful at the tech company.

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maxxxxx
I have seen that too. I tend to tell young devs that it's better to work for a
company where the CEO has at least some basic grasp or appreciation for your
work and doesn't just see you as a cost.

~~~
alttab
The difference between tech and non tech companies is the value factor of the
employee.

If you're a software guy at a large global hotel, it's meh. You are a tier 3
or 4 employee. They make money booking rooms - anything else is a cost
component.

Software companies see developers as an asset because they build the product.
The dynamic is different and the pay and respect reflect that.

One time I almost quit a start up to take a little more money at a hedge fund
to do their internal software. The start up CEO talked me out of it and I
learned an important lesson about my trade.

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Arainach
The content is interesting, but if the author is reading - gray text on white
is an awful color scheme - impossible for some people to read and difficult
for everyone. I had to copy/paste the content into another editor to get
through it.

~~~
lanius
Is your screen calibrated? I had the same issue (especially with HN) before
adjusting my monitor.

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ChuckMcM
Those are fun. I have also found companies that move from one kind into
another based on the situation. (like multi-subscriber to one subscriber).

There are also healthier companies out there (healthy in that they are managed
by non-sociopaths and share a respect for their employees) as well. Two that
I'm personally familiar with would be:

Lifestyle business - company has a diversified revenue stream which remains
relatively constant over the years, management runs the business for
continuation, there aren't big hiring binges or firing binges. Same offices as
they have been in for a while, everyone gets along in a family sort of way.
Little in the way of advancement, just jobs that pay a given amount for as
long as you want to do them.

Services business - where the day to day activity consists of new customers
signing up for the service, old customers falling by the wayside, there is a
sales group, a 'customer facing' group, and a maintenance group. Maintenance
consists mostly of adding new features, porting to new environments, retiring
what technical debt there is. Customer facing consists of solving specific
problems with the service for that customer. And sales are sales.

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Balgair
Another semi-related write-up on internal company dynamics:
[https://www.ribbonfarm.com/the-gervais-
principle/](https://www.ribbonfarm.com/the-gervais-principle/)

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andyidsinga
yep - I think this is the original article -and a good primer / explainer for
these patterns: [https://www.ribbonfarm.com/2009/10/07/the-gervais-
principle-...](https://www.ribbonfarm.com/2009/10/07/the-gervais-principle-or-
the-office-according-to-the-office/)

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sigi45
"The we have our own product but its 100% big customer driven because money"

You have your own product? Your own idea? Great! Sell your product to bigger
customers to keep you afloat and do whatever they want because you only have
2-5 of them and they keeping you afloat not realising that you just became a
service provider.

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shan953
What pattern would Tesla be described as?

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unixhero
This is amazing.

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amelius
Reminds me of: [https://darkpatterns.org/](https://darkpatterns.org/)

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playpause
How, other than the word "patterns"?

