I work in technology for an investment bank and i hear “we are not a technology company” every quarter. Ironically, the tech we develop is a major factor, if not the only factor, for revenue. My motivation is instantly shattered when i hear that.
Now that I'm older and not working there anymore, I understand that it's a culture problem and that management just didn't know any better, but I've come to accept the fact that it was a great way to cut costs and get away with it. After all, they still have many employees and manage to make more profit year after year. It just made for a very demotivating environment.
This has literally always been the case with IT; they were always seen as cost-centers, not profit.... which is largely due to IT departments historically falling under the CFO....
CEO: "Keep these motherfuckers from spending money"
IT: if "You want this [project] to meet your requirements of [XYZ]?, then == $2000000
CFO: "Fuck you, lets do it for half that and drop security and accessibility as a result"
Ironically, the orgs responsible for technology “get it” the least, as they are in the business of ITIL bullshit and order filling. IT bureaucracy will spend $10,000 to save $0.10.
We’re prudent, we don’t like to waste money, and we analyze investments from every angle we can think of.
But we look at Tech (we don’t call it IT) as a profit center. We don’t invest in anything unless it can drive down costs, increase revenues, or is needed for regulatory or security reasons.
And when we pull the trigger, I want to make sure that we’ve got the best stuff on the market. Everyone uses either Macs or PCs (we’re agnostic), and run as many monitors as they need to feel productive. Everyone has an iPhone and an iPad. When the hurricane hit Houston, our office building was out of commission for over a week, but we kept running the business.
I want to make sure that Tech allows us to multiply our capabilities. We have a paperless office where any paper is scanned at hi-res, put into our systems and linked to client or regulatory records. Everything is shredded afterwards.
Long ago, I worked in IT, and was dumbfounded by the shortsightedness I saw inside companies who don’t know how to utilize IT. I love competing against those idiots now, because my capabilities are way higher and our cost structure is lower. If we didn’t have all our paper copies scanned in when the hurricane hit, we would have been dead in the water (sorry for the pun).
So, I really feel sorry for all those people who work for morons like the Parent describes, but here’s my recommendation: go start a company and run with your vision. You may fail a couple times (I did), but once you win - and it only takes once - you will never look back.
Appreciating something just because it's novel is bullshit. Appreciating something that solves an actual problem effectively.. that's where I want to be.
It's an instant turn-off for me when I hear something like that. These are companies that should be thinking of tech as a means to an end, and not an end in an of itself. Even when I worked at a major software vendor, the tech was still just a means to an end.
Companies too invested in tech tend to spend themselves into bankruptcy. Companies not invested enough in tech tend to be overcome by companies with better tech more slowly.
1. The person who said it may be fancying his own role as tech-heavy and might relate to his/her imagination of what tech-pure companies do. Saying, we are like Google, appeases the person saying it, and satisfies their ego.
2. Often candidates like listening to this. It may not have worked for you, but for the candidates who like hearing this, this works wonderfully. If I were to wager, this line works for more candidates than it pisses off.
While I can see why you find it grating, I think I would forgive them. Whatever else they are, interviews are also those awkward social moments when new acquaintances are just trying to push beyond small talk while trying to please each other. At this stage, it's normal for people to try a little too hard.
Interviews aren't really like a casual social interaction. Progressing past the initial phone call typically involves spending from several hours up to to a whole weekend on some cute homework project, shirking on one's current job for more phone calls, burning PTO for on-site interviews and whatnot. I've got precious little time I'm willing to spend on that sort of stuff, so it's in my interest to be supremely petty.
Our head of technology strategy for Americas is on hacker news at quarter to midnight. And hiring, not just for blockchain. (See my “about” text.)
Worth a chat if you’re in NYC or San Diego.
(I understand what you're going for and appreciate it, it's just interesting how social signals are interpreted given different industries / contexts.)
(... and yes, me posting this comment does, in fact, mean that I'm not doing any work while I post it.)
https://qz.com/668514/if-you-want-to-be-like-warren-buffett-...
Being aware of HN is part of my work.
In my case, we get four key dimensions of value:
1. Seeing trends early is in the job description, and a small slice of zeitgeist is here. I check here, several other self-selecting subgroup sites, a broad RSS list, white paper subscription sites, etc., and typically also read one subject matter book a day. With enough dots of info across a broad array of sources, you can see trends earlier.
2. Finding emerging tech likely able to go ‘enterprise’ is also part of my JD. That often depends on leadership. Some of those leaders are here. You can tell a lot about a company from its founders. I’ve been an extremely early customer of startups found here, years later they lead their segment and we’re already on board. Examples like Hashicorp or CoreOS come to mind.
3. Emerging debates that do matter are often here early, where threads are high quality enough to get exposure to well thought, good logic, alternative views. Being able to absorb more of those improves low data decisions.
4. You can even find talent early. Many met here have gone on to release awesome tools, join or found cool companies, get acquired by BigCos... it’s great to see talented and motivated trajectories and learn it’s not all just luck.
It would seem if we can get the data to banks such as MUFG in a usable format, then it presents a large opportunity, however how would one even begin to interact with such a large entity to explore it?
You’d troll their LinkedIn looking for a title that esonated, read the job description to be sure, and try connecting, exchange enough convo to move over to their bank email, and then share the idea.
In our case, I’m the right guy. You can email me (and connect on LinkedIn if you like) and I’ll reply with my bank email. Elaborate on the idea then.
I’ve got 250 leaders thinking about how they could use new kinds of data, we’ll connect you to right groups. Even I have a team of PhDs looking for interesting things to tie together to better serve communities.
Note though, getting capital isn’t our problem, we’re interested in more ways to give it out, use it, put it to work.
The rules of old business still applies in most organizations: the closer you are to the transactional point where money changes hands, the more you make. This many times means sales, then management, then finance, then marketing, then engineering, then back office.
The deal-makers can get by with a spreadsheet and a BlackBerry, but the rest needs serious amounts of technology.
Ideally advisory business is balanced with dealing and financing, but different houses will be slanted one way or another.