
What do YC Founders think about working at Big Companies? - dayjah
http://rahfeedback.posterous.com/what-do-yc-founders-think-about-working-at-bi
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pg
It's fascinating that the biggest problem is bureaucracy. I don't think the
big companies are aware that it's such a big problem. When organizations
institute bureaucratic rules, it's always to avoid problems-- e.g. duplication
of effort. They never seem to consider the cost of the rules, only the cost of
not having them. But this shows how high the cost is. If you're too
bureaucratic, it doesn't just make people demoralized or unproductive. It
makes them not want to work for you at all. Which means you're not even
measuring the cost of such rules accurately; you're only measuring the effect
on the people they don't cause to opt out of your sample.

~~~
pg
BTW, if you have a range of answers, map it onto range of colors. Don't use
blue for no, red for weak yes, and purple for strong yes, because
chromatically purple is between blue and red.

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dayjah
Duly noted - the next set that go out will contrast more.

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neilk
Maybe I misunderstand you, but I think the point was it would be easier to
understand if there was _less_ contrast between adjacent answer groups. Strong
Yes should be distinct but similar to Yes, which should be distinct but
similar to Neutral, and so on. A stepped gradation between two colors works,
or even just tints and tones of the same color.

Also, just another minor quibble, could the bars be sorted by some weighted
score? So the statements they most agree with pile up on one side. Or, perhaps
score by strength of feeling in either direction, so the "important" factors
line up on one side.

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benreesman
As someone who went through the acquisition of a software startup, the year in
golden chains, and who is now working 12+ hours a day at a software startup
again my biggest problem with working at the "big" (in mentality and geography
if not employees or success) company was that it atrophied my skills. This is
of course ultimately my fault for not working harder to improve myself during
that time, but I certainly at the time got dragged under the water by all the
wrong incentives.

Standing out enough to get recognition, compensation and other perks required
a minimum of legitimate technical innovation and rewarded all the wrong kinds
of effort, mostly political maneuvering and the cultivation of a swaggering,
executive demeanor that I really hated about myself. Now that I'm back to
being judged by my (esteemed) peers on the basis of my direct work product,
I'm learning at a crazy pace and enjoying life more even though I'm tired from
the long hours.

Startups may not be for everyone, but they are for me, and that would likely
be the case even without the possibility of an exit payday.

~~~
paulbaumgart
Interesting. A couple of follow-ups, if you don't mind:

Where did the acquisition lie on the talent-/product-acquisition spectrum?

Also, how did those perverse incentives seep into the former start-up's
culture? Was it a result of working closely with people already at the
acquiring company who bought into the system? Were the executives at the
acquiring company directly to blame? Or something else?

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benreesman
The acquisition was done for a number of reasons, but most paled in comparison
to obtaining a particular piece of software (web browser and JS VM for tiny
feature phones) and the team who wrote it (and went on to maintain and extend
it). In addition a couple of the founders of the startup went on to be
important members of the management team at the new company, so I guess both.

The folks who came from the startup got scattered into every corner of the new
company both organizationally and in some cases even geographically and as a
result the values of the startup just sort of diffused into the larger company
and when we wanted advancement we quickly learned to play by the new rules. At
least I did.

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davepeck
Not a YC founder, but I was the first employee at a startup that was acquired
by MSFT in late 2001.

The founders and I were college friends and we were all quite green, having
graduated in 1999. As a result, I had a ton to learn. For the first three
years, Microsoft was a fantastic engineering training ground. I worked with,
and learned from, truly brilliant engineers and architects.

The _next_ three years at Microsoft taught me how not to design management
hierarchies, how not to determine customer needs, and how not to structure
incentives for individuals and teams in large organizations.

I'm no longer with Microsoft, and I'm quite excited about my current work,
though leaving was a difficult decision given how great my co-workers were.

~~~
dayjah
It seems the really sad fact is that a ton of middle managers make a handful
of mistakes. We're really hoping to be able to level that field through
education as well as giving clearly smart employees, such as yourself, the
ability to drive change from within.

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rogerclark
It's interesting to me that so many people in the startup community hate the
bureaucracy and overall attitudes in big companies, yet for quite a lot of
people, the high-paying exit is the ideal fate for their startups. Exits
normally involve one of these big, bureaucratic companies swallowing your
company whole.

~~~
robryan
The exit allows you to eventually start a new startup and go through it all
again, an IPO/ continuing private business means that your doing the same
thing for a long time and may eventually become big company you were trying to
escape from initially.

I guess that would be an interesting question to pose, if your startup
continued to grow would you wlecome the challenge of expanding it to more of a
big company or would you prefer to jump off and do something small again?

Tony Wright is a good example, leaving rescuetime to jump back into something
new now that rescuetime has become a more stable, growing company.

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philwelch
If I had to guess, I'd guess and hope most YC founders desperately want to
work at big companies, but only if it's their own company ;)

(It's not that they don't want to work for other big companies, just not quite
as desperately.)

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netcan
The most striking point was obviously bureaucracy. I wonder what the reaction
this would get if it was company specific and included only people who had
left the company.

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beau
I'm having a great time at Facebook.

