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Comment by lifeisstillgood | Hacker News Reader

Rubbish

Every CxO at every large company looks at startups as the model to emulate - lean, focused, full of feedback.

The benefits listed, every single one, are examples of overlooked, hidden or inefficient practises by the large company - practises they try hard to eliminate.

Do you think the CEO of Megacorp thinks that weeks "training" in Amsterdam was a good use of his money? Do you think he realises there are good passionate people trying to do good on no budget. If he found out he would either give them a budget or fire their arses for working in the wrong things.

As for your time for reflection ... screw that, reflect at home.

No - big companies are trying very hard to stop being a source of "informal" VC money, rest stops for the tired and weary or uncontrolled cash spenders.

One day they might succeed.

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I'm not sure when you last surveyed every CxO at every large company but I think some of them have moved on since then. After scores of aborted "internal startups" some of the more mature CxOs have realized that emulating startups is the worst thing a big company can do.

The dangers of informal VC money is another factor that drives experienced managers away from that strategy.

Put simply, large companies are inefficient at almost anything not utterly core. Look at Microsofts famous "the start menu took a year".

I would guess that projects of all stripes need some sort of escape velocity to fly by themselves. Things like initial enthusiasm, number of people who might be affected, likelihood of them complaining or ability to veto, degree of risk, reversibility - all of which means gravity at a large company is much higher.

i've recently spotted in the wild the latest mutation of the beast - "lean 6 sigma".

10 years ago we had "6 sigma" pandemic in the Valley, last 5 years - "lean" and now ... behold their monsterous progeny.

Those buzzwords, more than any, give me a strong urge to vomit. My previous employer, and the defense industry as a whole, is in love with that shit.

As a current Lean Black Belt and 6Sigma Green Belt working in QI... I cannot agree with you more.

Still, some people just can't look at a rubric to help you organize your thoughts/analysis without dropping to their knees and worshiping it as the second coming of Christ.

Lean, 6S, TQM, CQI, not a single one of them has conclusively been shown to actually work long-term (post-6 months). But, on the bright side, it's a fantastic job for getting to see every last corner of operations in an organization. I'm using the position to learn the pain points of my preferred field, before going into start-up land to address their needs.

> One day they might succeed.

Would you mind defining success for us?

A large company (revenue > 100m) generating per employee profits in the million plus range?

A large company that is efficient, fast to react to threats and opportunities, can monitor and measure each and every part of its own behaviour in real time, and have that feedback passed to all employees

Just a company that is large acting like a well run small outfit

A large company profiting 7 figures per employee is probably out of ideas and milking the business.

If I had such a business, I'd be trying to figure out how to plow 25-50% of that profit into experimentation and expansion.

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