

Ask HN: What did you have to unlearn after leaving a large corp?  - BadassFractal

As someone who's currently working for a software giant and is planning to move into the world of startups as soon as the time is right, I'm concerned that many unfortunate habits that have been ingrained in my head over the years will haunt me for a while.<p>I've read several times on these very pages that folks coming from large orgs tend to be overly conservative, not think outside the box enough, not take risks and instead worry about covering their asses.<p>As I haven't made the transition yet, I cannot speak from experience, but I'd love to know what such traits you were able to identify in yourself when you joined a leaner business and how you dealt with it.<p>Thanks!
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petervandijck
1\. Stop asking permission. Permission in BigCo is usually asked in the form
of documents that "plan" what you want to do in 3 months. Don't do that.

2\. Stop thinking that documents are "progress". Most stuff that is rewarded
in BigCo isn't actually progress. Almost all documentation. Most of the stuff
you tend to spend your time on.

~~~
BadassFractal
Good answer, thanks.

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Vandy_Travis
Learning to just do something when it resonates with you. Stop asking
permissions, stop asking ahead of time what the outcomes will be. Treating the
market as a lab, of sorts, rather than trying to predict results ahead of
time.

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anothertodd
1- Explaining how it can make profit. well making profit is top priority of
every company, but at least explaining that a lot is not really feeling good
_to us_ tho :)

2- Reporting progress of something you work on.

3- Confidential data. If you're gonna work/found startup, you probably should
forget this and be openminded. I saw some who really don't want to talk about
(even) brief blurb of idea.

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pasbesoin
A big corp environment can condition you into being a passive, reactive
person. IMHO, this can be one of the hardest things to "unlearn".

This might be considered to be akin to the "just a number" paradigm.

~~~
BadassFractal
Would you elaborate on that point please? Do you mean that a large
organization teaches you not to be proactive and wait for instructions to be
passed down to you?

~~~
pasbesoin
For example, you're young and both want to solve problems and make an
impression. You've heard and read comments and advice about "initiative".

But, it turns our that your own immediate management is heavily invested in
the "status quo". A few things may happen:

1) They outright don't understand your initiative, even in the face of the
proof of the model you may have up and running. "That can't work." "No one
will want it." "Why would you do that?" It can be rather disheartening to
invest yourself in such work, only to be criticized for "wasting" your time,
resources, etc. You can literally show someone that it works as you describe,
with all the affected parties liking it, and still be shot down.

More likely, you may have some good ideas for improvements, but not the actual
implementations. When you suggest these, you get a similar reaction.

2) They feel threatened by your work. They've cornered their own little domain
within the organization, and your improvements threaten that model. If all the
reporting becomes electronic, how will the reporting managers justify their
headcount, or their own position? Maybe the organization would find value in
the transition; however, _your_ interface to the organization is a manager who
sees this innovation as a threat.

3) You know of a better tool, but you "can't use it". Your management has
decided on [crap product] from [other big co.] and you _will use it_. You
spend 8 hours doing what should take you 4, or less. Your management does not
care. (All the more so if they signed off on [$big-budget] for [crap
product].) If you are lucky, you may be able to install or develop and use an
alternative "unofficially". Management becomes a mockery as the effective
people count such "under the radar" workarounds as some of their larger
successes. (At least this scenario allows for individual initiative.)

4) You are forced to make decisions that you feel compromise your own ethics.
E.g. the compensation system is not tallying credit correctly. You could fix
it, but you are told this is "not a priority". You know people are not being
compensated correctly -- albeit within rules that are in practice already
interpreted loosely and somewhat at management's discretion -- but your
management is telling you to ignore this.

5) You see co-workers slacking for hours each day. In brief, "social" results
win over actual productive results, in your corner of the organization.
Perhaps adding to this, you see other areas of the organization struggling to
make up for this deficiency. But the reporting structure keeps your area
isolated from these downstream effects.

Spend a few years under these conditions, and you can become very cynical. The
only real solution is to get out. (Some people successfully climb in the
organization; others leave.) But if you start to see the world in these terms,
the job hunt itself can become difficult to engage in.

I guess a quippy way to sum it up is, "You are what you eat." And that
includes your work.

From others' experiences, I gather not all Big Co. environments are this way.
Often, it seems in good part a matter of which team you are on -- which domain
within the larger organization. But, the Dilbert cartoon strip has been
successful for a reason.

~~~
BadassFractal
I can definitely relate to the cynicism, thanks for the extensive response.
The speed of progress even within small teams is pitiful. Moving away from
ancient tools, especially when they were written by the company itself, is
incredibly painful and slow, wasting days of engineering time every months.

Reminds me of my company where we spend hundreds of hour maintaining the
service's docs as Word docs files checked into a proprietary source control
system, instead of relying on a wiki or anything else easily editable on the
fly. God forbid someone makes a modification to the document you were editing
before you submit, you'll be copying and pasting between the two docs for
ever.

