Networking Inside a Large Company

The wiki page about lunch discussions, etc. was brilliant. That is the kind of cool, outside-of-the-box thinking that gets your noticed in a large group of people. That people wanted to be 'featured' validates the idea nicely, too.

Can we ditch the 'hustle', though? Some things, like asking the CEO to lunch, seem like 'hustle' because they're obvious but 'hard'. This wiki page was a very clever idea more than it was hard work, I think it kind of demonstrates how the term has grown out of control.

As for the 'large' company, I think his definition is valid. Where I am now we're approaching 200 employees, and it's well beyond the point where everyone knows each other (there is a term for this limit). Even for 400 people, the traditional 'meet at the watercooler' methods break down, and you need to inject some innovation to meet everyone.

'Large Company' is quite relative. I have just left a job at what I consider a large company, with just under 300k employees. There it was a well known step in your career to build your network, over several years. Unfortunately it's hard to duplicate these steps in a really large company, since they have policies around social media, wikis, etc.

Upvoted because this is an important skill in a company of any substantial size-- even at 25 people. You should always have a sense of what kinds of projects and work are done within the company, because most of the people getting the best projects are there because they're the first ones to find them.

We quip a lot about the disadvantages of large companies. There is, however, one major advantage: transfer opportunity (even though the formal transfer system of most companies should be a last resort; you're better off being requested) and the chance to make contacts. However, to actually get at that, you need to be a bit more "entrepreneurial" and self-motivated (to meet people and ask them about what they're doing) than the typical big-company employee.

Another upshot of this is that if you do it right, people won't fuck with you and you're very well insured against being personally fired or PIP'd. You might be laid off if there's a huge cut, and your boss might tell you that it's time to transfer, but personally firing someone who is well networked within the company is so politically dangerous that most people won't fuck with you.

Please stop using the word "hacked" for every shit you do.