I keep my work identity(-ies) somewhat separate from my online social discussions, so I won’t go into specifics, but it was on the larger end of the scale, and the company did have a noticeable split between the corporate/retail, software dev, and operations/logistics parts of the business. I can only really speak to the software dev world, which was by itself extremely large.
The thing that’s not easy to see/remember from outside is that there is a very large amount of variance in structure and culture across the overall company, and the variance occurs at multiple levels. Some SVP-level orgs seem more maze-y than others, and some 50-person orgs within a division within an org seem culturally different from others. I suspect the competent engineers self-select to the better-functioning areas, which makes the overall company seem better functioning to them (because their peers are pretty reasonable).
I think my main concern with the Maze framing is that it assumes more homogeneity than is justified. There are absolutely parts of every large company I know of (I have close friends working at many different ones) that sound horrible. But the ones I know well also have pretty reasonable parts as well (not perfect by any means, there are lots of frustrating hindrances that get in the way, but nowhere as one-dimensionally horrific as described in Moral Mazes). As an employee, it’s best to consider the group you’re working in (say, 2-3 levels of management above your job) as somewhat independent in terms of work style of the overall company averages or typical outside reputation.
Thanks—I agree, that all seems correct. I’m not sure if Zvi intended the maze framing to imply every part of every large org was that way, but to the extent he did, yes, that’s going too far.
I keep my work identity(-ies) somewhat separate from my online social discussions, so I won’t go into specifics, but it was on the larger end of the scale, and the company did have a noticeable split between the corporate/retail, software dev, and operations/logistics parts of the business. I can only really speak to the software dev world, which was by itself extremely large.
The thing that’s not easy to see/remember from outside is that there is a very large amount of variance in structure and culture across the overall company, and the variance occurs at multiple levels. Some SVP-level orgs seem more maze-y than others, and some 50-person orgs within a division within an org seem culturally different from others. I suspect the competent engineers self-select to the better-functioning areas, which makes the overall company seem better functioning to them (because their peers are pretty reasonable).
I think my main concern with the Maze framing is that it assumes more homogeneity than is justified. There are absolutely parts of every large company I know of (I have close friends working at many different ones) that sound horrible. But the ones I know well also have pretty reasonable parts as well (not perfect by any means, there are lots of frustrating hindrances that get in the way, but nowhere as one-dimensionally horrific as described in Moral Mazes). As an employee, it’s best to consider the group you’re working in (say, 2-3 levels of management above your job) as somewhat independent in terms of work style of the overall company averages or typical outside reputation.
Thanks—I agree, that all seems correct. I’m not sure if Zvi intended the maze framing to imply every part of every large org was that way, but to the extent he did, yes, that’s going too far.