Dysfunction in Large Companies
I feel large companies are extremely dysfunctional and inefficient, because the average employee benefits more from pushing their own agenda, rather than helping the company. I have two questions: (1) Can you share some patterns you have observed? (2) What percentage of time do you think is wasted on such activities? My guess is 30% Examples I have seen over the years: (A) Pushing a complicated project to gain visibility, even when simpler solutions exist. (B) Write docs and send messages on Slack to look like a leader, instead of cleaning the code to make it easier for others to onboard. (C) Refactoring a large codebase to warrant a new name (and a promotion of course), even when the old system was just as good. The list goes on… the general pattern is clear I think. Any other kinds of dysfunctions welcome. I am curious and would like to get “a full list” if such a thing exists… TC: 390k
Managers over promising to show that they are the next hot shit in the company. Too much time spent on performance reviews by ICs and by managers and by directors. Everything is all about BS.
I think part of the reason is incompetency in every level from ICs all the way to C suite
Sure, that’s kind of unavoidable, but don’t you think that incompetence can happen anywhere, regardless of the incentives a large company may impose? I mean, even a 5-person startup can be inefficient for these reasons.
There’s a lot of things that make no sense. Some things however is explained by office politics. To get more power/ money, you have to lie; overblown projects, make things sound more complicated than it is: can ask for even more money. Bigger team/ more money = more power. Doesn’t matter if people are smart or not. Aside from that, there’s also a lot of incompetency. See Dilbert comics. It explains just about everything.
Incentives. Everyone top-to-bottom is working for their own bottom line. Taking your examples: A) Of course Im going to choose the high visibility path. I’m lazy, so I’ll probably try to make the simple solution more visible but I’ll go for the credit for damn sure. B) “make it easy for others” not gonna happen unless that feeds back into my paycheck somehow. C) Of course I’m going to optimize for a promotion…I’d be crazy not to. Better question: what % of your time is “wasted” on “doing the right thing” for a multi (b/tr)illion dollar company that doesn’t benefit your personal bottom line?
Managers not allowing people to switch teams or projects because they want to flex team size or specific projects for their promo paths. I’ve seen some annoying career destroying strategies from managers.