Man, I must not have worked at dysfunctional enough companies. I can't relate to the opening remarks in this article at all. I'm used to really open communication from the top down and, even when we build in a direction I disagree with, we've discussed things enough that I'm at least interested in seeing why someone else I consider intelligent sees the world so differently. Perhaps it has to do with only working for companies founded by engineers rather than product/marketing? I'm not really sure.
Big American corporations (and to lesser extent, other countries that try to mimic US corporate culture) operate in a particularly dysfunctional ways. There’s ample literature on it (moral mazes, bullshit jobs and five dysfunctions of a team are particularly good books on the topic). You’re lucky to not have been a victim of that system!
I have seen how some big european and asian companies operate and every dysfunction which you can point out in an american corp is usually way worse there. Plus there’s some additional ones due to local customs
Different dystopias, for sure. The average Japanese big corporation values work hours way more than the average American one, for instance. In my experience in Germany and Switzerland, the corporate moral maze is definitely not as bad as the American one. Pick your poison, I suppose
Yeah, it's definitely miserable, but unfortunately frequently those larger companies pay a lot more, so there's the trade off. Kind of selling your soul.
I suppose that's because higher level VPs at large companies have broad goals and even broader notion means. It is not necessarily bad - allows to fiddle with different approaches before locking in on a specific technique. Wasteful? Yes. Efficient at satisfying board mandates informed by real time tectonic shifts in the industry? Also yes.
I dunno, maybe? It's tough to compare alternate realities. I had equity in the company that paid out well, had a base over 200k, 30% EOY bonus, was leading a team of 6, fully remote work, no on-call. Certainly there are areas I'm weaker in than I would be if I worked in a FAANG-style corporation (only doing minor work with microservices, not doing much with distributed computing), but the job was quite different than what I did when I was first hired out of college.
Frankly, I felt mentally and socially challenged enough while also being compensated more than fairly. If that means I've got a junior role while also avoiding toxic large-scale organizational dysfunction then I'm down to make that trade-off every day.
