Actual theme: LARGE tech companies suck.
Declared subject: you have to know how tech companies work
Actually subject: you have to know how large-and-or-disfunctional-and-or-sales-or-finance-bro-led-companies work.
Tagging @dang re title.
Notice that the author didn't write "getting good at delivering value." They wrote "getting good at shipping projects" because
> Shipping is a social construct within a company.
Delivering solid software that helps people get work done is a platonic ideal. Unfortunately there are many companies that value whipping stuff out the door more highly. As corny as this sounds the iron triangle ("good, fast, cheap - pick two") is a thing for a reason. Crapping something out as quickly as possible and leaving others to deal with the fallout of a bad data model and chaotic on-call isn't something to be rewarded but it's how many companies seem to work.
Sadly you've described precisely the optimal engineering strategy for promotion at my FAANG
And yet those five companies are among the most valuable in the world.
There's a cognitive dissonance that arises when you join a company that is performing extraordinarily well only to perceive dysfunction and incompetence everywhere you look.
It's so hard to reconcile the reality that companies can be embarrassingly wasteful, political, and arbitrary in how they run and yet can still dominate markets and print money hand-over-fist.
Engineers who do this leave nothing but ashes in their wake even if they keep getting promoted for it.
I suppose that makes AI Taco Bell for companies.
> The only way to truly opt out of big-company organizational politics is to avoid working at big companies altogether.
I've done plenty of really fun, engaging and interesting work in smaller companies. If you're able to be involved in open source work, what you do can still be something that many people appreciate, beyond the customers of your company,
This is perhaps what I find somewhat odd about Sean's writing. It sometimes reads to me like a scathing critique of the dysfunctional bureaucratic dynamics of big tech companies, but that isn't really his conclusion!
But I'd push back on the idea that all tech companies work this way. Smaller companies and startups can be different. The feedback loops are shorter, you're closer to customers, and it's harder to hide behind the appearance of shipping.
The trick is finding places where the incentives actually align with the work.
It amazes me how much low hanging fruit there is to grab to work on. At least things I felt would have had a truly positive impact on the customer and my own organisation.
The only way you get to work on it is if you don't ask for permission, but directly show some progress.
Now I'm switching to a different team within the same organisation that "wants to move like a start up". Let's see how things will move...
outside1234•1h ago
1. Do people like working with you 2. What would a competitor pay to hire you
The driving factor in the first is your UI, the second your skills.