Factions develop, tensions mount, and you get angry employees leaking confidential information constantly. Most of the negative press the public has heard about Google in the past year is a direct result of leaks.
It just doesn't feel as "fun" anymore.
I would disagree that it's possible to build a strategic relationship with all small company CEOs... some are just way too dysfunctional.
For example, a company with 5,000 employees might have about 500 positions that could actually be eliminated via automation, improved processes, and removing net negative contributors. If the average fully loaded cost is $100k/year (many old companies still have people not comped as high as Silicon Valley folks), you’re looking at roughly $50 million in dollar savings, not to mention the top performers aren’t distracted by the under-performers.
If I’m at the C-level, it’d be completely reasonable to pitch making this move, pocket an extra $500k for myself, and give $5 million worth of bonuses to the remaining 4,500 people ($1k minimum each), and you’ve still saved roughly $45 million to the company’s bottom line for savings or growth investment or higher comp for top performers. These are all rough numbers, but you get the point.
I suspect companies don’t do this more often because 1) they have a hard time, from the upper management vantage point, knowing where to cut/identifying the poor performers who try to hide, 2) scared to accidentally cut someone actually important, and 3) like managing a “big” company, even at the expense of their own potential executive comp.
They do, it‘s classic „rank and yank“, but perhaps slightly harder nowadays due to diversity and other such ideological concerns.
Bang. You're spot on.
From what I've seen, it's an unfortunate artifact of many (if not most) large companies. There are just too many places to hide.
I'm keen to know if it's the same at Apple and Amazon.
I've yet to hear of any large company that doesn't inevitably end up this way.
Probably not true but I did really wonder at times. Walking past people waiting in line for 30 minutes to get food when I would just grab a PB&J. Seeing people playing ping pong and video games, the same people every day, all day, as I walked between meetings. I eventually felt like I was Doing It Wrong.
When interviewing ask the following questions:
* How do you define personal success?
* In the fewest words how do you define product quality?
* Do you require honesty/transparency as a primary cultural value even when it makes people uncomfortable?
> It's almost as if the "largeness" of a company allows the non productive people to hide within it
Yes, absolutely.
So your observation reminded me that our society has plenty of people on a similar sort of hidden dole: vast corporate structures with uncountable layers of non-productive paper pushers, with a very small proportion of employees setting the vision and another small bunch generating most of the value. A social welfare program by any other name ...
So like do large human groups just inevitably have some subset that doesn't quite fit (in terms of work and productivity) but who need taking care of so we semi-deny their existence ("no slackers here!") while we semi-throw'em a bone ("here's a paycheck, go look at Facebook for a few hours and fiddle with PowerPoint while I harass my secretary")?
This is why everyone wants to be university educated. The great bulk of "respectable" office jobs require no real skill or effort, just some cultural knowledge about how to talk like you're contributing.
AKA people invent novel ways to support themselves when the alternative is starving in the street
Some non-productive people are non-productively lazy, and UBI may work for them.
Others are non-conformist creative types, and UBI will half work for them. IMO it's good to have some of these types around in a business to shake things up - as long as they have some practical skills and aren't just dreamers.
Others are primarily interested in accumulating power, and corporations provide a perfect cover for them. They will get off UBI as soon as they can, but they're often incredibly toxic, and large organisations of all kinds are very good at empowering them.
With the odd exception, they're probably the biggest threat to the future of any business. And they're very good at disguising this. They're the people who turn in solid financials and performance stats. But the results are built on rubble, and often their management doesn't discover this until it's too late.
https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.vox.com/platform/amp/2018/5...
I’m inclined to view this almost as a basic income type situation.
Much can be automated away, but what do we end up if we do that today? We need to find meaning in life other than money for a whole bunch of non-nerds.
That's a very big claim.
I can instant message mine. And I still have my last one's personal mobile number.
FAANG aren't the only companies.
I was hoping you would have a personal experience to share but I guess that's not the case. I wonder how often in anonymous forums people share beliefs (not data) on things they haven't personally experienced but have heard other people on the internet experience (who may have been lying).