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Comment by davidw | Hacker News Reader

I think the real "unicorns" are

* Small/medium size companies where you recognize most everyone even if you don't work with them. There are enough people so you don't have to do things you're not qualified for like in the very early days of a startup.

* Steady growth, but not crazy, venture fueled moonshots.

* Selling something that earns enough money to grow the business in a fairly organic way.

I worked in a place like that once and loved it, and did some of my best work there. I wasn't anxious that it would implode like a startup, and there wasn't much bureaucracy.

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I’ve worked at 3-4 small companies (less than 30 employees) and I’ve never been happy. There is always 1 person that makes my life miserable (constantly rejecting my ideas, ego is larger than their experience level, etc). I’ve worked at a 100, and two 1,000 engineer count companies and I never met any “coding princesses” in those roles.

I think part of the problem that triggers this is in small companies, one engineer codes, a significant portion of the code base and has a strict vision in their mind about how that code should be structured. When new employees come in to bring new ideas, they become personally offended that their baby is no longer their baby. At large companies no one feels like they own 100% of the code, and each change is very collaborative.

200-400 is the sweet spot, I've found.

Yeah I could see that. The place in question where I worked was developing some new products, so we didn't have that kind of situation where someone was gatekeeping or otherwise being unpleasant.

Oh, I've definitely met princesses at large companies, though you are spot on about the ownership issues. The problem really isn't the size of the company but how siloed the code is.

Yeah, one of the 1000-person companies had a dev whole-own a critical microservice. Changing it was always a battle, because the owner was very critical of anyone touching 'his' service. Large companies aren't immune, but due to eng specs and collaboration baked into development, its less likely for this to happen.

It looks management was a problem too, as "wholly owned" is a double-edged sword, especially if it's a microservice.

Make sure you have solid metrics on your side to record problems with that microservice, document any delays caused my missing features, and eventually even non-technical management should get your point and start to apply pressure.

Problems were resolved and everyone was professional, but there certainly was more friction than necessary.

Usually management doesn't want to participate in these discussions, because they are more careful about retention (and stepping on toes). 1 engineer quitting is a 10% reduction in their workforce.

> At large companies no one feels like they own 100% of the code, and each change is very collaborative.

That's how you end up with endless process, design by committee, and having a dozen meetings with all "stakeholders" before actually writing any code.

I'd much rather work at a place where individuals or small groups have a strong vision on the code and product and are capable on executing independently on that. It sounds like the OP would too. But I understand it's a personal preference.

I read something about how a lot of 'super group' bands kind of don't do anything truly great because of this type of dynamic. They all know they're good, they know the others are good, and they all have a bit of an ego and don't want to stomp on the others, so they all tend to "go along with it" without getting too pushy. That leads to good, but not great music.

Definitely. Though there are exceptions. Led Zeppelin comes to mind first.

I think part of the idea was that in an actual band that has been a band for a while, they usually find a way of working together that includes "difficult conversations" and saying no, and sometimes listening to one person's vision rather than tiptoeing around egos.

This is the long term way to greatness. In companies and life.

Enterprise software is not art and shouldn't be approached the same way. You want a roller-coaster-like experience, go join a startup

No one said 'roller coaster'. Part of quality software is saying 'no' to stuff, or having a coherent vision, not 'software by committee'.

Only if you have a quality engineer at the wheel though. Otherwise you just end up with horrible software.

I guess that’s why large enterprises hate it, since they’re all about reducing risk.

If they get middling software every time then that’s preferable to the two extremes.

Enterprise software isn't middling, it's usually only barely functional and falls just short of what it should do (i.e. it's shit). Everyone is just so pathologically used to it they think it can't be better. Probably due to the allergy to risk that you mentioned. Ironically risk is eliminated, but in doing so you've just ensured you have consistent problems that can never get better.

"I'd much rather work at a place where individuals or small groups have a strong vision on the code and product and are capable on executing independently on that"

Isn't that dependent on whether you are the person guiding the code though?

Honestly, not necessarily--there are often many ways to solve a given software problem. If someone else has a vision for the software and a plan to achieve it as a team, as long as I can see that it is looks like a viable alternative I'm generally happy to go along with it. Far better than flapping in the breeze with nobody providing clear guidance or input, in my opinion!

> But I understand it's a personal preference.

Indeed. No company size is perfect. There are dysfunctions typical for small companies. There are dysfunctions typical for large ones.

But people have preferences; some things they can handle, other things drive them crazy. What drives you crazy may be different from what drives your friends crazy.

Perhaps everyone should try to work once in a large corporation, and once in a startup, to figure out their own preferences.

Small groups of 1+ with a vision isn't really software engineering though. You aren't building to solve someone else's problem and it's that which is engineering. Turning up to the beach with bricks and cement on a whim with mates to create a small damn because it's your vision? Well that's kind of build it and (hope) they will come.

Or to be kinder. If you are filling your own hole (identified need) you can be more free in your approach. After all only you decide if it's right, finished, a failure or success.

> I’ve worked at 3-4 small companies (less than 30 employees)

What I vastly prefer is the 500-ish size. You can realistically at least know of every other developer (and find those you prefer working with and can learn with), there's more resources than just a 30 person company, and you're just not a tiny insignificant cog in the machine at a 100k mega corp.

It really depends what team you're on! My little corner of megacorp is fast, pretty lean, and I definitely feel like I am able to make an impact on our product (which is a smaller product in the company). I feel much better here than at some of the mid size companies where I felt there was a low ceiling on growth opportunities.

Are you ideas normally implementable in the next month or something far-fetched? Try to come up with ideas that are low hanging fruits, easy to do but have a high value. I don't think any company/management in their right mind would constantly reject "good" ideas that ultimately result in more revenue. The ideas I see being rejected are either too far out there or some "dev utopia"-kind of ideas that don't bring in more cash, just burn effort.

> I don't think any company/management in their right mind would constantly reject "good" ideas that ultimately result in more revenue.

We must have worked at very different places.

The problem is there are many ways to implement a feature. Often one isn't objectively better or worse than the other (but subjectively it is).

Everyone wants the problem solved, but how the problem is solved leads to frustration.

> I don't think any company/management in their right mind would constantly reject "good" ideas that ultimately result in more revenue.

This happens extremely frequently and is in fact entirely normal.

I worked in a place like that and it was awesome. Unfortunately we were so good at what we did across the board that we got bought by another company to integrate into their larger offering. It made a lot of sense from a business perspective but the tech team in our office was made redundant and so my time there came to an end. I think this is the inevitable conclusion to good, small companies. Since it actually works they will eventually get swallowed by a larger fish who rightly identifies them as a tasty morsel.

The Peter Principle also applies to teams and companies.

Did you at least reap some of the buyout benefits?

Is it really that hard for owners to resist the alure of a buyout? I dunno, I always like to think that I’d continue doing the good thing that I’ve got going.

I really don't want to believe everyone has a price, since that would mean I have one, but the evidence offers very few if any solid counterexamples.

Sometimes you're kind of forced into it: if your growth starts taking off faster than you thought, you may be in need of more capital just to stay in business. At that point you have a choice: slam the brakes (turn down customers), borrow (risky), raise (dilutes you), or sell out. If you can find a solid working relationship within the acquirer's company, all is good...

There is actually nothing wrong with turning down business. No need to grow faster than you can handle. A company in the situation you describe is doing something very right, so maintaining that seems like a good strategy.

For an entrepreneur who set out to fix a problem in the world, it can feel very wrong not to give customers the solution that you know you can give them, for mere capital reasons.

There is nothing wrong with it, but it's hard to do skillfully, especially in the chaos generated by rapid growth, and you may not realize the need until you're already trapped by your existing commitments. Good relationships in the company can fall apart in the decision-making, too (e.g. if someone's personal/career growth path is cut off by the decision to stop pursing something that's been built towards for years.)

Some types of businesses can do it more easily than others. Professional services can probably do it the easiest. A B2C business with a turnkey offering could have a lot of trouble paring back, especially if the product has a physical aspect.

If it gets that much bigger you (the owner) probably aren't doing the same thing you were doing.

Try reversing this argument and talk about employee resisting much better offer, to remain loyal and you'll get eaten alive by commenters :-)

Is that so? I see a lot of people not wanting to switch for solely more money because they expect to hate it at a potential new company.

Yes and the same works for founders. If they expect, they will hate it after buyout, they will probably resist.

But what if new opportunity is ok, gets you 30% more money, but your departure makes your current company very sad and perhaps worse place for everyone to work at?

I wouldn't expect a lot of support for the idea of staying if you ask the internet for an opinion.

The two aren't unrelated. In the distant past companies had professional and personal development programs. Some even had a commitment to try to avoid layoffs.

When MBA culture took over in the 80s it became normal for companies to act like extraction machines. Employee loyalty crashed, with a corresponding increase in churn.

Taking investment money makes it hard to create a humane culture. But smaller private companies do at least have the option to consider it.

You try dealing with everyone's problems and hitting all the deadlines all the time..!

If you don't, your successor will. Money makes the world go round.

Same here. Got absorbed and it killed everything good about the place.

I was going to say the same thing. Worked at a mid-sized startup, great culture, amazing coworkers that I'm still friends with today. We did great work and got bought out by a large company who had promised not to mess with our culture too much. That didn't last very long haha

> mess with our culture

What did they change/do? If I may ask

At a guess, having seen this before:

- Paperwork - Extra managers - Lots of "stakeholder management"

Seems that was a good guess, have a look at the sibling reply :-)

It was a very slow creep of changes. For the first year, they really didn't change much (except gutted our health insurance plan and got rid of "unlimited" vacation).

Eventually, they tried to get us to integrate with more and more of their other products, which introduced a TON of extra "stakeholders" on every single project.

With every extra stakeholder they also had to introduce extra meetings and extra process until even making a small change felt like a massive chore. I went from merging dozens of changes a week to maybe one or two.

Felt pretty claustrophobic after a bit so I ended up leaving to go somewhere smaller.

How interesting! (And sad, I hope that / guess that the new place is/was better)

> integrate with more and more of their other products, which introduced a TON of extra "stakeholders"

That scenario I hadn't heard about before. Good to know about that way for things to fail, too.

If you haven't seen:

"Excess management is costing the U.S. $3T per year (2016)" https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34290539

The company we were acquired by is massive ($2bil annual revenue, 7.5k employees). If you live in the US, I can guarantee that you've used their products before but don't know the name of the company. They basically just go around acquiring other companies and absorbing them into their other products. I'm talking like 10+ acquisitions a year (at least for the last few years).

So much this.

After 14 years in a workforce, my happiest moments were in software SMB (joined at 10 people and left at around 100).

Never felt like work. We were just building something cool together as a team on the same page.

Turned profitable after Series A and never raised again.

Later down the road I realised that these are the real unicorns once I actually landed in terrible jobs or corporates and how disengaged everyone is in the legacy organisations. Was genuinely shocked that these companies don't go out of business.

I am now trying to collate the list of companies which fit the criteria above but it's really hard.

The downside is a significant comp reduction unless it is some sort of trading/hedge fund.

Might be the exception but I’m at a company with tens of thousand of people and we don’t have many rituals, if you want to solve a problem you go and do it. But you do have to own your solution.

Just curious: why you didn't work there anymore?

Moved halfway around the world. That company is still doing well from what I can see.

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