
Deprogramming corporatism - abstractbill
http://blog.garrytan.com/deprogramming-corporatism
======
zobzu
"We said all the right secret words! Why am I failing? It was never about
those words to begin with."

Yep yep yep. I see that a lot.

". It turns out you have to work on things that a) you know are right, and b)
most people don’t know ye"

that's also very true. just be pragmatic. always works.

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ExpiredLink
So founders are 'doomed' to success when they switch to startup culture? I
worked in corporate and startup environments. Corporations _can_ be extremely
efficient, startups _can_ be extremely inefficient. It depends. Simplistic and
false stereotypes are not helpful.

~~~
skriticos2
I agree. A company's efficiency and effectiveness all depend on a working
interlude between (org) process and sane leadership decisions. No kind of
process or organizational structure will fix bad management.

I guess, for bigger organizations the challenge is make this work across
multiple layers of leadership, which seems to be a very difficult task.

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cbd1984
Just so we're on the same page, here's what corporatism means:

[http://www.sjsu.edu/faculty/watkins/corporatism.htm](http://www.sjsu.edu/faculty/watkins/corporatism.htm)

> In the last half of the 19th century people of the working class in Europe
> were beginning to show interest in the ideas of socialism and syndicalism.
> Some members of the intelligentsia, particularly the Catholic
> intelligentsia, decided to formulate an alternative to socialism which would
> emphasize social justice without the radical solution of the abolition of
> private property. The result was called Corporatism. The name had nothing to
> do with the notion of a business corporation except that both words are
> derived from the Latin word for body, corpus.

> The basic idea of corporatism is that the society and economy of a country
> should be organized into major interest groups (sometimes called
> corporations) and representatives of those interest groups settle any
> problems through negotiation and joint agreement. In contrast to a market
> economy which operates through competition a corporate economic works
> through collective bargaining.

~~~
copsarebastards
Just so we're on the same page, that's not what the OP is talking about,
everyone intelligent can tell that, and you're being pedantic.

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bsbechtel
I find this interesting in the context of Google and Apple, and a post I read
recently discussing how many former Google employees go on to found their own
start ups, but relatively few former Apple employees do so. Ironically, Apple
is laser focused on a few highly successful products and has a highly
disciplined brand, while Google launches new products every few weeks and
kills most of them off when they don't gain any traction. The latter fits the
bill of Tan's description of corporatism here, but Google's company alums have
started more start ups post Google. I wonder if Google alum founders leave
because of the corporatism environment, and are a better fit for the
environment of founding a start up, while Apple employees who would be good
founders stay at Apple because the environment is more conducive to what
founders desire?

~~~
brudgers
For extended periods of its history, Apple has had a culture where leadership
recieved credit for each success and never offered a _mea culpa_ in times of
trouble. These may facilitate CYA habits and filtered to select people who
prioritize not losing their jobs.

To put it another way, engineering culture tends to tolerate higher rates of
public failure than design culture. Google tends to present itself with an
engineers face, Apple as tastemaker. Apple's choreographed public includes
locking down communication of corporate internals. Google sends a lot of
speakers to conferences to talk about their work. Apple selects for people for
whom giving that up is not a deal breaker. Even the NSA has a culture more
favorable to sharing research and ideas at conferences.

~~~
digi_owl
I noticed the highly coreographed nature of Apple recently when checking some
videos of people getting a demo of the Apple Watch.

Different Apple reps, different people recording, but the demos where blow for
blow the same.

Put a watch in non-interactive demo mode on the recoders wrist, then demo
watch faces on the reps functional watch, finish off by drawing a heart on the
watch face and point out the vibration notifications.

And this was the after-presentation demos at the WWDC no less. You find less
drilled presentations on show floors where everyone are trade reps for big
companies.

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Wonderdonkey
Yes! Every publishing executive in America needs to read this.

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deciplex
> _At 23, I turned down the shot to be first engineer at Palantir (now rumored
> to be worth $20 billion!) even though Peter Thiel personally took me out to
> dinner to recruit me._

So he left (a lot of) money on the table, but aside from that isn't this a
good thing? The NSA is a client of Palantir and I've assumed they write a lot
of the software that spies on and tracks innocent people. Is this not correct?

~~~
garry
Palantir actually uses audit logs to keep better track of how three letter
agencies use the data, so that it really does go through the right oversight.

~~~
michaelt
And I bet those audit logs are classified, right?

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roflmyeggo
The stark reality of entrepreneurship can be one of the greatest teachers.

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jacquesgt
This is a remarkably content-free posting.

> People become corporate do-nothings because it’s easy to become disconnected
> from the act of creating when you’re at a big company. Even at the best big
> companies, employees can just do things that look like work that aren’t, and
> you wouldn’t be able to tell.

I’ve seen this at startups and big corporations. People seem to get fired for
doing nothing productive with about the same frequency at both. What are some
examples of do-nothingism that occurs at big successful corporations?

> Startups can’t survive blindly following buzzwords or whatever trend is hot
> because you actually have to know what’s coming in the future and be right.
> That’s all there is. If you chose the wrong market, or you’re wrong about
> what people want, then you’re toast.

In the age of the acquihire for failed startups, this is especially laughable.
With plenty of money for early stage deals, and the likelihood of an acquihire
or other soft landing if things go badly (followed by funding for a new idea a
year or two later), it’s the best environment in years for startups to blindly
follow trends and spout buzzwords.

~~~
venomsnake
A Googler I know claims he spends roughly 90% of his time playing politics and
writing long cover your ass emails. Ditto people in other big places. Or just
wait for stuff - like waste a month waiting for ops to give access to
something.

If you are in a small company - you can spend half your time playing diablo
and still be more productive. I also know people that bust their asses trying
to do all the work, but have no idea how to get fired the entrenched
politicians.

~~~
garry
The latter example happens all the time to good people. Doing a lot of work in
most organizations is anti-correlated with success because the only thing that
happens is that even more work is pushed your way.

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michaelochurch
Is it 1997? No? Huh, my computer says it's 2015, a year in which the VC elite
_is the new fucking corporate elite_.

I have about 6 feet of clearance this morning, so this post can get through,
but the fucking high horse has got to go. Sorry, but I don't have space to let
it in.

 _There’s no air cover for startups. You don’t have backup troops. It’s just
you versus the world. So naturally, if your product or service sucks, then you
die. You can’t just look like you’re doing stuff. You actually have to make
it, and almost totally on your own._

Correction. If your VCs don't like you, then you die. Even if your company
succeeds, you die if the VCs don't like you. (Just as, in a large corporation,
you can do your job very well but have your project taken over because the
higher-ups don't like you. Which is, let's be cynical and honest, something we
like even less than having the project fail.) If your VCs like you, then they
will keep funding you and, if your company fails according to market forces,
they'll line you up with an executive position at a portfolio company while
you recharge your batteries.

 _If doing things that aren’t effective don’t get you fired, then what does?
Usually making mistakes that make your boss look bad. Big organizations are
just groups of people, and people sure like to talk shit. The one thing you
can’t do is look like a bozo. It’s fine to work really hard to no effect (hey,
you worked hard!), but if you become a social liability, you’re donezo._

The last time I checked, small organizations were also groups of people. And
the VC-funded world is just a postmodern corporation in which the VCs have set
themselves up as the actual executive team while "founders" are mid-ranking
product managers (who _might_ get 8-figure bonuses, and promotion to the
investor ranks, if they totally rape the odds... but are, for the time being,
still in the second tier and forced to manage up into the man-child oligarchy
on Sand Hill Road).

Corporate VPs don't have a monopoly on reputation management at the expense of
the corporate good.

Founders care more about their "personal brand" than their companies, and I
don't begrudge them for this at all. Fuck, I _also_ care more (far, far more)
about my career and reputation than whatever company I work at, at a given
time. I take no issue with self-interest, and I don't even necessarily think
the "disposable company" model of the postmodern VC-istan meta-company is the
wrong one. I just can't fucking stand the high horse. You (rhetorical "you";
I'm not trying to be confrontational to any specific person) fuckers in VC and
in founder-land aren't much worse than the existing corporate elite, but
you're not better either. You fucking _are_ the corporate elite. Accept it.
The fact that you wear sandals instead of a suit when you lay people off
doesn't make you a better person.

~~~
brudgers
One thing I see in the VC to Founder relationship is that it is not primarily
going to be driven by _relative_ social status. Sure a particular investor may
make as soft landing for a founder based in part or in whole on affection, but
the idea of making a hard landing for a founder out of a concern that the
founder's success would knock the VC down in the butt sniffing order of the
pack, isn't going to be part of their calculus. Indeed, "It's great if you get
rich off this deal" can legitimately be a part of the VC to founder
relationship.

In terms of follow on, my suspicion is that a lot of these incredible
valuations are not the VC's investing $100's of millions with expectations of
100x returns, but rather acting as agents for traditional capital transactions
carried out by institutional investors. With a 1x liquidation preference and
bond yields near zero, the risk reward ratio of an investment in an Uber or
AirBnB starts to fall in line with a REIT and to become attractive to an
institution like an insurance company.

At least that's my take from way on the outside.

~~~
michaelochurch
VCs don't arrange soft landings out of affection or "butt sniffing". It's
about control and power.

VCs like to say, "failure is OK, get up and try again" but the truth of the
matter, in the Valley, is that you're completely fucking _screwed_ post-
faceplant unless the VCs are willing to help you out and place you. You're
completely reliant on them for your career and reputation, because they will
be the ones who decide (and I use the word _decide_ rather than _judge_
because it really is up to them) whether you failed in good faith or were
incompetent and shall become untouchable. This means that you can't buck them,
even if they decide to fire you and even if they decide to kill your company
(to suit the needs of a competitor that they're also funding, and that they've
already picked as the winner over you).

In other words, the soft landings aren't about affection but control. They
want an ecosystem where unless they extend something that sorta looks like an
out-of-band favor ("sorry that it didn't work out, but my friend is looking
for a VP/Eng Post-B, 250k and 3%") the founder is completely fucked.

~~~
brudgers
I guess what I was getting at is that the primary driver is economics which
might be called "a meritocracy of money" rather than social status along the
lines of "Do I know your parents" or arbitrary criteria like which church a
person attends.

That's a bit different and probably an improvement over going to the local
bank for a loan where "what will my fraternity brothers think?" can easily be
a part of the loan officer's analysis. VC's at least have FU money. That
doesn't make them good people but it does provide some social latitude.

