Hacker News Reader

Comment by drusenko | Hacker News Reader

Welcome to the wild ride of dealing with large corporations. What you encountered here is absolutely standard -- in fact, I'd say it's actually better than what you'd get when dealing with most large companies, since Steve actually replied back at the end with a "not interested".

You may have put a lot of hope in the "if you've already incorporated, we could acquire your company" line but I can guarantee they didn't put a lot of thought into it.

They were just talking about hiring you (with "acquisition" as the legal mechanism, or not). Maybe with a bit of a hiring bonus.

The standard play when dealing with any large company is always "hurry up and wait". For whatever reason, this is just something you need to get used to.

Do you really expect either Steve or this engineering manager to be replying within 48 hours? I think the second you started badgering them and brought Steve back in the loop, you were toast.

View on HN

Exactly, given the great opportunity he had a chance at the author should have been far more patient and dare I say a bit more professional.

The experience I've had with dealing with big corps is very much "hurry up and wait". Often this is a symptom of the structure and politics of bigger institutions, where you don't have to convince just the person you are dealing with but convince them to convince others. If they decide to try to bring you in it is their reputation on the line, a reputation that could be damaged even if the deal never goes anywhere.

I've been caught in the middle of some nasty office politics that have totally killed negotiations because I had the wrong guy championing my cause.

Oh and does it strike anyone else as a bit unprofessional to go posting correspondence to the world? I'd certainly think twice before dealing with anyone who had done this in the past, talk about burning bridges! Or am I alone in expecting a certain measure of privacy in my business comms?

I agree 100%, the author comes off a bit unprofessional, pushy, and demanding. You can't even begin to imagine how many people send in suggestions, feature requests, ideas, etc. to companies like Apple, Google, and Microsoft. I know because in middle school I sent such an email to Capcom on killer game ideas. After some time I received a nice letter in the company letterhead from them encouraging me to stay in school and excel in math. Even though I didn't get acquired or got a job, that letter meant so much to me.

Great post.

I agree he was a bit unprofessional. Gates' awareness probably did fall off as his earlier emails were buried under the mountain of new stuff. Rather than shouting "Hey look at me" he should have sent a gentle reminder about improvements that have been made in the last week or whatever. Bring him back to top of mind in a positive way. Who wants to get stuck working with a guy that annoying.

Copying Jobs as if he were an active part of the project is a total dick move, BTW. He should be thankful that Steve routed him to the right person. The only future communication to Jobs should have just been a quick thank you for the introduction.

> Do you really expect either Steve or this engineering manager to be replying within 48 hours?

It wouldn't be unreasonable for the engineering manager to get back to him within a few says. There are plenty of slow coasters and non-communicators in large organizations. Most people who are competent accept the beuracracy then find ways of routing around them to get things done. The good companies avoid hiring them in the first place.

It would have taken very little to:

* Real email sent specifically to them. I get a thousand plus emails a day and read every one of these within about 3 hours. My colleagues get way more but still do the same.

* Respond with 'completely snowed under, sorry, want to give this a few hours to look at properly' back to the poster.

That said, I don't think sending email to Steve was a good idea. Call or fax or whatever - if he's out, ask for an offsider to talk to. But bothering the CEO is inappropriate.

Reminds me of Edison's saying: "Tesla, you don't understand our American humor"

Of course, Edison said this after he screwed Tesla out of $50,000 (present value: $1.2 million) he had promised him. Was this the point you were trying to make?

Yes :)

You're probably not going to get on the good side of anyone at Apple if you start Cc-ing Steve on your communication with them.

From article:

It is unethical in all cultures to keep someone waiting while you flout the time commitments.

One thing that I noticed: he never told them where he got his feed data from. I would have taken that as stonewalling from him.

Not just large corporations. I've interviewed with tiny startups (a couple from YC) that couldn't be bothered to email me that they weren't interested.

My sense is that in practice the ethics of responding to email have simply loosened. It's no longer considered rude to leave email unresponded. It's just a fact of life.

I'll second this, but I don't think it's a question of e-mail, more an issue of 'I'll deal with it later' coupled with indifference and inconsideration.

I interviewed at one company that said they'd be making a decision by the end of the week (it was Monday), and would let me know either way. The following Tuesday I sent an e-mail asking if they'd made their decision. A week later, I got an e-mail saying they'd 'gone in a different direction'.

Another company I interviewed with, which involved going to their tiny office miles from anywhere in the rain, talked to me for an hour about not really a whole lot, then said they'd let me know by the end of the week. I didn't care, since I didn't want to work with them, but I was very surprised when I got an e-mail a month and a bit later saying they weren't interested.

There are always exceptions though. After I left my second-to-last job, I decided to take a month off. My last day was October 31st, and I relaxed, cleaned the house, and played video games for most of November. When I woke up on the morning of December 1st, I had an e-mail on my phone from LinkedIn about a friend request from the founder of a server hosting company we'd worked with. I e-mailed him back and asked if he was hiring. Met him at 4 PM, and got the 'welcome aboard!' e-mail at 6:15.

It really comes down to culture. Some people have the attitude of 'I'll do it later', even for things that will only take a few minutes, and some people are go-getters who are eager to get things done and off their plates, and make some progress in the meantime.

My favourite though was when, in September 2008, I signed up to be put on a waiting list for a job at the 911 dispatch for the area (since they had just filled up their quota the week before). 18 months later, I got a phone call asking me to call them back as soon as possible (the tone in the person's voice implied 'today or early tomorrow') so we could schedule a time. The call went to voicemail, and I got something to laugh at when I got out of the movie.

"Met him at 4 PM, and got the 'welcome aboard!' e-mail at 6:15."

Not really an exception if it wasn't a rejection. Once a company decides to bring you aboard it's in their interest to make haste.

Sounds like some manager just over stepping his mark, getting excited about a project, forgetting that Apple likes to do most of its work internally.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com