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Comment by CSMastermind | Hacker News Reader

I've found myself wondering recently how much impact I could have at one of these large companies if given a modest budget and a mandate to build a high performing engineering org.

I've spent my career at startups and growth companies building and scaling engineering orgs. So I take it as a given that I could get a highly capable team but wonder how much it would matter. Would we still be weighed down by internal bureaucracy to the point of failure?

I suspect that might be the case.

If so it's hard to fault a CTO for outsourcing. If your company isn't built to support having a tech org then you might see these kinds of failures no matter what you do.

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This is why these large companies often form "innovation" units that are spun out as separate entities or at lest setup as separate orgs sheltered from internal politics by the C suite.

It's possible. But it's really hard work, very politically expensive, and extremely high risk. So, yeah, not surprising.

I have seen a company spin up and after 2 years spin out a seperate innovation unit, and when it was a proper seperate entity outsource their core IT to the unit... Which was then branded a big success! It was liberating to see such systemic incompetence; The people were all highly educated but as a group just can't seem to organize effectively.

This Sounds like financial engineering. It is possible the people involved were incompetent, either individually or as a group. But this sounds like an incentive problem. Competence, misdirected.

> Branded as a success

I fear you aren't cyncical enough.

Was it a filure? Did the company's balance sheet improve? Did the company's stock price increase? Did the spinout attract a load of investment for its (pre-destined) success and turn that into a rich revenue stream?

Markets -- for both debt and equity -- are mostly idiotic machines on short timeframes. Your ability to generate free cash flow puts a floor on your price. Others' imagination and available liquidity are the only ceilings.

Additionally, these types of spin outs can behave like generational wealth. They may be incompetent idiots, but who cares? Daddy's money is more than you can raise and mommy's rolodex is richer than you could possibly imagine.

The problem isn't just the experience or capabilities it's the internal politics.

You have dozens of people with competing interests some of who are actively working against you and the C suite doesn't know what is really going on our what to do because all the information they are receiving is intentionally being distorted by people trying to spin it so they can keep creeping up the ladder.

The biggest enemy of a large organization is almost always itself.

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