I was naive. I used to think that coming up with new ideas, finding opportunities and delivering great results will get me recognized and promoted. It happened for a bit, but slowly I recognized how toxic management culture is. At that level, people are in maintenance mode. They have more to lose by being wrong than by missing out on opportunities. It creates this culture of massive risk averseness. People who are really risk averse are more welcomed than people have risk tolerance. Cover your ass and do as told is much more important than trying to create and break something. And its happening at all levels, not just IC. Minor mistakes are documented and come back to haunt you for days to come. I think these are symptoms of a company with declining growth. T-Mobile had its ride but now its too big, beaurocratic and operates more like old Microsoft. I wonder if people who work at companies that are not growing as fast feel the same way. Does anyone relate to this? How do you manage yourself in such environment?
Interestingly, I think of T-Mobile as being biggest risk-taker in telcom.
Billion dollar mistakes cost billions of dollars
Gotta understand the risk appetite. If you take a risk and you're wrong you should be blamed. Own it, document your learnings and correct your assumptions. This is how you grow
Once you have stockholders, risk aversion is expected.
I can totally relate to this. Exactly the view I have. In tech, my favorite view of managers is described by Paul Graham. Search for “managers schedule” , “you weren’t meant to have a boss” etc And then once YOU get into power make sure you follow that advice
Don’t be too attached to the company’s interests. Let it go and do what you are told to do without asking too many questions. Unfortunately, this is the best strategy to keep your job in the long run at many large companies including Faang.
We're not curing cancer. Pay your mortgage.
Couldn’t agree more. I see people around me who would be happy to retire. Having stayed for 15+ yrs here there is no industry connect. Unfortunately, I see most managers from Indian service companies (some good) but most of them from the “work long hours” mentality, not smart. Technically, few people care about scalability, security or implementing things the right way. Figure this; people get promoted when things fail and directors join outage call and the one guy who keeps updating him ends up being the hero. All this when the problem was totally avoidable and a stupid mistake in the first place.
In smaller startups where there isn't much to protect yet, the mentality is different. Consider joining one.
New Microsoft is just the same! I take calculated risks. Get appreciation when I achieve something and get blamed when I fail. I rather try and fail than do nothing... I think the way out is to get a good manager. Bad managers are everywhere.