Deprogramming corporatism

http://blog.garrytan.com/deprogramming-corporatism

by abstractbill • 11 years ago

86 31 11 years ago

blog.garrytan.com

Wonderdonkey• 11 years ago

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

zobzu• 11 years ago

"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.

jacquesgt• 11 years ago

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.

garry4• 11 years ago

Examples of do-nothing-ism at large companies— lots of launches of bad products. Huge advertising budgets. Large staffs of ineffectual people. Pointy headed bosses. Where do you think that meme came from? Big companies!

Obviously bad startups have this too. I never said it never happens at startups. Those startups die, though, which I do mention.

Re: acquihires, lets be frank. These do not happen with the frequency you may think, and they're not nearly as good as you might hope. It may seem like startups are just like the show Silicon Valley, but that ignores the fact that there is still real signal, real companies, real revenue. It's overly cynical to think that it's a winning strategy to play it like the HBO show. Do the buzzwords, the song and dance, look like a startup. It does not work, nor should it. It's a recipe for disaster. I see it every day.

venomsnake• 11 years ago

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.

garry4• 11 years ago

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.

sjg007• 11 years ago

Priorities can change and packaging is an important tool for communicating. This happens in all companies at all levels.

brandnewlow• 11 years ago

The number of startups that don't get acquihired vastly outnumber the few that do. "The age of the acquihire" trope is seductive grounds for argument because it plays to the crowd of folks who follow the tech scene but resent the folks participating in it, but it's invalid grounds for argument because it's just not true.

roflmyeggo• 11 years ago

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

ExpiredLink• 11 years ago

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• 11 years ago

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.

garry4• 11 years ago

Never said they were doomed. I agree with you that it all depends.

dogweather• 11 years ago

Can be, but do they tend to be?

Toyotas _can_ be unreliable, but who cares? Because in the aggregate they're not.

deciplex• 11 years ago

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?

garry4• 11 years ago

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• 11 years ago

And I bet those audit logs are classified, right?

paganel• 11 years ago

So he left (a lot of) money on the table, but aside from that isn't this a good thing?

I felt the same thing, initially, and wanted to congratulate the author for inadvertently staying on the "right" side of things. But then I googled his name and found out that he indeed joined Palantir only a year after that.

snowwrestler• 11 years ago

While I'm sure Palantir is very happy for you to assume that they've written core software for the NSA, that is not the reality. Palantir's software is built to filter and display data, not collect it in the first place.

The NSA employs a lot of very skilled progammers and system administrators. They write their own core technologies.

bsbechtel• 11 years ago

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?

brudgers3• 11 years ago

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• 11 years ago

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.

bpyne• 11 years ago

I wouldn't extrapolate too much from the observation you made about Google producing more founders. Both companies are "corporate" in that they have lots of jobs dedicated to keeping the company running, but have no direct impact on the revenue streams. A good example would be a license manager who negotiates licenses with third parties and makes sure his/her company stays in compliance. I'm sure there is at least one of those positions in both Apple and Google.

Without knowing a breakdown of the people who left Google to become founders, it's hard to draw any meaningful conclusion. The 20% time policy may have given engineers ideas for their own products. Or, Google may operate like an startup incubator for its own products, so employees feel very comfortable with the mentality and pace of a startup. Or, you may be right that Google is more "corporate" than we think. Who knows?

michaelochurch3• 11 years ago

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.

eli_gottlieb• 11 years ago

You should consult for Mike Judge on the next season of Silicon Valley.

michaelochurch3• 11 years ago

I've considered it. I haven't had offers pertaining to that specific show, but I did have an offer recently pertaining to a different cultural institution. (I didn't take it because it would have required full-time commitment, and there were reputation risks involved.)

brudgers3• 11 years ago

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.

michaelochurch3• 11 years ago

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.

cbd1984• 11 years ago

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

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• 11 years ago

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.

anonbanker• 11 years ago

Remember that episode of Rocky and Bullwinkle when every time the words "Civil" and "War" were used, a southern man would stand up and correct the person talking with "War between the states"?

Thanks for bringing some of that to HN.

Deprogramming corporatism

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