Software as a profession sucks, a rant.

[markw-4]

A rant from a 25 year veteran of the software/high tech industry

I am 46 years old and getting sick of the industry.  In case anyone
hasn't noticed, we've gone from white collar to blue collar in just over
a decade and a half. In the 80s and early 90s there was creativity and
growth. These days the only ones making money are the stock holders and
the MBAs that outsource the work.

I'm making effectively less today than I was 10 years ago. The work has
gone from technically challenging to challenging just to keep focused.
The atmosphere has gone from casual "our deadline is x/y/z lets get it
done" to "what are you working on right now?" with no understanding of
the engineering process. The management, perhaps because of the trendy
popularization of technology making it seem easy, which is, of course a
lie, thinks that architecture is also simple and that seemingly simple
ideas are simple to implement fast, efficiently, and quickly.

I understand the environment is competitive, ask anyone who's been in
the business, it has always been this way. It has always been full of
impossible deadlines and fierce competition. Debugging software on-route
to the trade show or customer is old hat.

Maybe you can argue that there is nothing really new to do in software,
but I can think of a few big projects, how about you? The industry has
gotten "smaller." It doesn't think big any more. It doesn't think about
"creating" something new and being sustainable. Startups think about
quickly riding some wave of popularity and hoping to get some funding
and then bought out by someone bigger. Its depressing. Existing
companies only want to milk the cash cow until it dies. If you can't
predict short term profitability you can't start something new.

Sure, I've heard the argument, "the industry is maturing and tighter
management means less risk." Well, that isn't true either, the same
percentage of software companies fail as they always have. I guess
lesser dreams just lose less when they fail.

As for the risk, we see how that's playing out. We are losing good
paying and creative jobs to overseas contractors, and those contractors
with actual experience and skills provided by jobs we sent them, are now
competing directly with us. It is a race to the bottom where the country
with the lowest standard of living wins. Who's risk is that?

Am I ranting nonsense?
What does BLU think?




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[DoctorMO]

On Thu, 2009-10-22 at 11:08 -0400, Mark Woodward wrote:
> In case anyone
> hasn't noticed, we've gone from white collar to blue collar in just over
> a decade and a half.

No matter how creative the job is, the matter the color of the collar,
your working class, even computer programming.

Americans are so funny with their daft definition of what it means to be
middle class. You don't get such an honour by simply holding a certain
kind of none labouring job.

No, you need a certain kind of economic freedom, owning your own
business, collecting vast rents on property (any kind, real of
imagined), You can sneak in by owning your own home I guess, but it'd
have to be outright.

After all the only reason the people you work for are able to get away
with pressuring you like they are, is because you don't have the liberty
to go elsewhere if your complaints are heard.

Until you've got the freedom to quit your job, your just as much of an
economic slave as a coal miner or steel worker.

Socially Yours, Martin

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[darose]

On 10/22/2009 11:08 AM, Mark Woodward wrote:
> What does BLU think?

I think a lot depends on what company you work for.

My recent personal experience I think gives me a good view of the
industry today.  I've worked 3 different places over the last 5 years.
The first was a large Wall St. bank.  The second was a small-to-medium
sized (~200 employees) enterprise software vendor, about 10 years old,
whose customers consisted primarily of ... large Wall St. banks.  The
3rd (and current) one is a < 1 year old tiny venture-funded start-up in
the online advertising industry.  (And no, it's not a frivolous "twitter
add-on"/"social networking" kind of startup.)

IME the negatives you point out appear far more often in larger and/or
more mature companies.  I saw a lot of it at the bank - to the point
where I was practically in tears from hating my job so much.  I saw
quite a bit less of it at the enterprise vendor - although still some
stodginess, as well as a bit of a lack of interesting/challenging tech
work.  At the startup ... I see none of this.  I'm swamped with
interesting and challenging work, the environment is exciting and
enjoyable, and outsourcing isn't even a remote threat to my job right now.

So just my opinion, but I think a lot of this depends on how big and how
mature the company you're working at is.  And the best way to get back
to the interesting/exciting type of positions you like is to try to find
  new startups who are doing interesting things (and are already funded!
- and thus have been vetted by a reputable VC.)

DR
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[Jack Coats at coats.org]

No issue with your arguments.
The difference in the two is, IMHO, the difference in a knowledge worker
and a 'mechanical' worker.  Yes, there does seem to be some social
status that comes with white collar over blue collar work, but from what
I have seen, they are both wage slaves.

Even 'independant business persons' are wage
slaves to their customers.  Anytime someone has
power over you in any manner, makes one of them
subservient.

There is a reason why the only 'sovern' is a government.
They have the power to tax and control those under them.
Even the 'companies'/businesses are all under someone
elses domination/control as much as individuals that
work for them are in their control.

I found an unbelievable amount of feeling of being free
just by paying off my mortgage.  A little piece of freedom
from having to pay someone else for the right to live
in 'my house'.  Then the tax bill comes, and I still have
to pay someone else to use what I 'own'.

I need to switch to another topic, my blood pressure is going up again.

><> ... Jack



On Thu, Oct 22, 2009 at 10:27 AM, Martin Owens <doctormo@...> wrote:

>
>
> On Thu, 2009-10-22 at 11:08 -0400, Mark Woodward wrote:
>> In case anyone
>> hasn't noticed, we've gone from white collar to blue collar in just over
>> a decade and a half.
>
> No matter how creative the job is, the matter the color of the collar,
> your working class, even computer programming.
>
> Americans are so funny with their daft definition of what it means to be
> middle class. You don't get such an honour by simply holding a certain
> kind of none labouring job.
>
> No, you need a certain kind of economic freedom, owning your own
> business, collecting vast rents on property (any kind, real of
> imagined), You can sneak in by owning your own home I guess, but it'd
> have to be outright.
>
> After all the only reason the people you work for are able to get away
> with pressuring you like they are, is because you don't have the liberty
> to go elsewhere if your complaints are heard.
>
> Until you've got the freedom to quit your job, your just as much of an
> economic slave as a coal miner or steel worker.
>
> Socially Yours, Martin
>
> _______________________________________________
> Discuss mailing list
> Discuss@...
> http://lists.blu.org/mailman/listinfo/discuss
>

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[Gordon Marx]

On Thu, Oct 22, 2009 at 11:41 AM, Jack <jack@...> wrote:
> I found an unbelievable amount of feeling of being free
> just by paying off my mortgage.  A little piece of freedom
> from having to pay someone else for the right to live
> in 'my house'.

Until you pay off the mortgage, the bank is kindly letting you live in
THEIR house.

> Then the tax bill comes, and I still have to pay someone else to use what I 'own'.

This is because you get services from the government. It's part of
what we call the "social contract".

Yours in reality,
Gordon

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[Jack Coats at coats.org]

On Thu, Oct 22, 2009 at 10:46 AM, Gordon Marx <gcmarx@...> wrote:
> On Thu, Oct 22, 2009 at 11:41 AM, Jack <jack@...> wrote:
>> I found an unbelievable amount of feeling of being free
>> just by paying off my mortgage.  A little piece of freedom
>> from having to pay someone else for the right to live
>> in 'my house'.
>
> Until you pay off the mortgage, the bank is kindly letting you live in
> THEIR house.

Yep, it stays their house till you fulfill the contract you and they
signed up under.

>
>> Then the tax bill comes, and I still have to pay someone else to use what I 'own'.
>
> This is because you get services from the government. It's part of
> what we call the "social contract".
>
> Yours in reality,
> Gordon
>

Yes, it is a 'social contract'.  But if you can't pay the tax, you still
don't own it, and someone else will after you are evicted.

Just a different perspective of the same events.  And unless there is enough
un-rest to re-envoke indivituals rights, it will continue.  To one
extent or another
we have been fighting this battle from the first vollies in Cambridge over 200
years ago, and we still have an opertunity to fight it every time we
go to the polls.

Now how we view and vote is our collective answer to how much liberty we
as individuals want.  The good thing is we get to re-fight this war in a more
civil manner on a regular basis, rather than just pull out the
Declairation of Independance
and 'reboot' the country.

... sorry, I don't mean to be preachie. ... just a personal hot button
as of late.

Take care... Jack

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[theBlueSage]

> What does BLU think?
>
For the most part I would agree. However there are a few beacons of hope
in the dark miasma that is production-line programming. For example,
there are companies like this (granted not many of them, but the fact
that even this one exists gives me hope for the years to come) :

http://www.fogcreek.com/About.html 

I would also echo DR's comments, and say from experience that working
for a much smaller startup gives me the chance to work on 'cool' things.
The price you tend to pay for this is financial, and I see it breaking
down like this :

Big Company == Higher Wages == Boring work/slave mentality.

Small company == Smaller wages == Interesting innovative work


What I have also found is that there is no algorithm for
stability/longevity, and in fact I think given the current climate that
the smaller companies are more likely to last.

I currently work for a startup (13 employees), and in the last month
have build 3 MySQL CLusters; one 5 machine production beast, one 'total
localhost' test box, and now a single beefy machine hosting five virtual
machines (vmware-server) running a cluster network. It has been
extremely challenging, thought provoking, frustrating, '3am wakeup with
solution from a dream' invoking, and highly rewarding. I had never done
much like that before, but with limited resources, and a 'give it a go'
CEO, we ended up with a fantastic solution to a huge production problem
we were facing.
If I had been working in a large company, I know we'd still be in
committee about choosing the right solution, and even if I had offered
it up I'd lose to the committee member who went to see the Patriots in a
Box seat, courtesy of the guys at Oracle, regardless of whether Oracle
was the right solution or not.

Downside, my salary is less than I would get elsewhere, likely by a good
25% - 50%, but my stress level is low, 'hate-my-job'ness is almost nil,
I am learning huge amounts on someone else's dime, it is fun, and my tie
is gathering dust at the bottom of my closet, along with my blue shirts
and khaki pants.

And for the record, I will be 44 in December, and have programmed all
but 3 years of my professional life. The glory days of the late 80's and
late 90's are gone. It is up to us programmers to define ourselves, I am
not blue collar or white collar, I am no-collar, My life is worth more
than a fat miserable salary, I choose fun over dollars, (when the margin
is livable), life is too short to spend every working day hating what I
do and living for a (short) weekend full of chores.


Richard

>
>
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[Richard Pieri]

On Oct 22, 2009, at 1:28 PM, theBlueSage wrote:
> Big Company == Higher Wages == Boring work/slave mentality.
>
> Small company == Smaller wages == Interesting innovative work

I disagree.  I've worked as a sysadmin for small, medium and large  
companies and I have to say that the size of the company has little  
bearing on pay and type of work.  What matters is senior management  
and what it collectively wants out of the company.  A smaller company  
with a cash cow that management simply wants to milk to death is going  
to have a boring work/slave mentality and below average salaries.  A  
larger company with management that wants to build on success and  
branch out in new directions and crush the competition can have above  
average salaries and interesting work.  What really sucks is when  
there is a significant management change like happened at my last job,  
when a dynamic management team is replaced (or encouraged to leave --  
same thing) by a stagnant, brown-nosing collective.

--Rich P.

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[Jack Coats at coats.org]

we can all talk in generalities.  In general what BlueSage says is true.
But some of the best work and most interesting I have done was for a
very large international oil company (building and moving mainframes
and users around - software and data wise - with a very small team),
a large natural gas producer (another NYSE company) doing simulations
of tankers and another project doing one of the first major company
e-filings - back in the 1970's (prior to that it was submittin 10 copies of
20 volume sets of 3" 3 ring binders for one return).

Small comanies and consulting have also had their great projects.

At every company there is 'bad work'.  Boreing, un-interesting,
repedative, but I have also run into people that just LOVE that
kind of work. ... Different needs and wants for everyone.  The best
most of us can hope for is to find a spot where we feel needed,
wanted, and productive, all with enough challenge and variety to
keep us from getting bored to often.

IMHO, trying to please someone else is a loosing struggle.
Do good work, you are proud of, serve your customers, and hopefully
see some of the fruits of your labor ocassionally.  If you depend on
other to say 'good job' all the time, you can grow bitter and
resentful, at least I did.

><> ... Jack



On Thu, Oct 22, 2009 at 4:40 PM, Richard Pieri <richard.pieri@...> wrote:

> On Oct 22, 2009, at 1:28 PM, theBlueSage wrote:
>> Big Company == Higher Wages == Boring work/slave mentality.
>>
>> Small company == Smaller wages == Interesting innovative work
>
> I disagree.  I've worked as a sysadmin for small, medium and large
> companies and I have to say that the size of the company has little
> bearing on pay and type of work.  What matters is senior management
> and what it collectively wants out of the company.  A smaller company
> with a cash cow that management simply wants to milk to death is going
> to have a boring work/slave mentality and below average salaries.  A
> larger company with management that wants to build on success and
> branch out in new directions and crush the competition can have above
> average salaries and interesting work.  What really sucks is when
> there is a significant management change like happened at my last job,
> when a dynamic management team is replaced (or encouraged to leave --
> same thing) by a stagnant, brown-nosing collective.
>
> --Rich P.
>
> _______________________________________________
> Discuss mailing list
> Discuss@...
> http://lists.blu.org/mailman/listinfo/discuss
>

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[Matthew Gillen]

On 10/22/2009 11:33 AM, David Rosenstrauch wrote:
> On 10/22/2009 11:08 AM, Mark Woodward wrote:
>> What does BLU think?
>
> I think a lot depends on what company you work for.

Ditto that.

> ...
> IME the negatives you point out appear far more often in larger and/or
> more mature companies.

I would venture to say it happens a lot in companies where software is
not the core product.  I can't say I have a lot of broad experience with
different kinds of companies (I'm still working at my first 'real'
employer), but there was a stark contrast in some of the interviews I
went on.  At an insurance company, I was interviewed by managers that
had no idea about technology; he looked like a deer in headlights when I
asked them why they were using a platform-specific version of Java (C#),
and I could see the red lights going off in his head.  They didn't want
someone who had technical opinions, they wanted cogs for their machine.

By contrast, when I interviewed at my current employer, there was a
department manager at my presentation asking better technical questions
than I would have asked.

My theory is that as IT has become less of something that people (MBAs)
see as a competitive advantage, and more of just the process of doing
business, they're less likely to be interested in pushing the envelope
and supporting excursions into risky (interesting/new) technology.  But
there will always be companies that are "high-technology", who have the
values you seem to be nostalgic for.  Likewise, there will always be
customers for those companies, businesses for which technology (and
software in particular) /will/ be a competitive advantage.  It's just
that the pool of companies in that category is smaller than it used to
be (it used to be everyone, but now a lot of core business software has
become a commodity).

Matt

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[darose]

On 10/22/2009 05:40 PM, Richard Pieri wrote:

> On Oct 22, 2009, at 1:28 PM, theBlueSage wrote:
>> Big Company == Higher Wages == Boring work/slave mentality.
>>
>> Small company == Smaller wages == Interesting innovative work
>
> I disagree.  I've worked as a sysadmin for small, medium and large  
> companies and I have to say that the size of the company has little  
> bearing on pay and type of work.  What matters is senior management  
> and what it collectively wants out of the company.  A smaller company  
> with a cash cow that management simply wants to milk to death is going  
> to have a boring work/slave mentality and below average salaries.  A  
> larger company with management that wants to build on success and  
> branch out in new directions and crush the competition can have above  
> average salaries and interesting work.

But that's exactly the point:  large companies for the most part are -
by definition - in "milk the cash cow" mode.  As a function of their
size and maturity in their market, most large companies are not risk
takers and don't branch out in new directions.  (At least not until some
other company has "proved" the new direction first.)  There's a few
exceptions to this rule (e.g., Apple) but very few.

DR
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[darose]

On 10/23/2009 08:53 AM, Matthew Gillen wrote:

> On 10/22/2009 11:33 AM, David Rosenstrauch wrote:
>> On 10/22/2009 11:08 AM, Mark Woodward wrote:
>>> What does BLU think?
>> I think a lot depends on what company you work for.
>
> Ditto that.
>
>> ...
>> IME the negatives you point out appear far more often in larger and/or
>> more mature companies.
>
> I would venture to say it happens a lot in companies where software is
> not the core product.

> But
> there will always be companies that are "high-technology", who have the
> values you seem to be nostalgic for.  Likewise, there will always be
> customers for those companies, businesses for which technology (and
> software in particular) /will/ be a competitive advantage.  It's just
> that the pool of companies in that category is smaller than it used to
> be (it used to be everyone, but now a lot of core business software has
> become a commodity).
>
> Matt

I would say that's exactly right.  If the OP wants to keep doing
exciting interesting tech work, he needs to seek out companies where
technology *is* their business.

In my work experience examples, the bank I worked for was not, while for
both the enterprise software company and the internet startup it was/is
- and my job satisfaction reflected that.

DR
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[Jarod Wilson]

On Oct 23, 2009, at 10:42 AM, David Rosenstrauch wrote:

> On 10/23/2009 08:53 AM, Matthew Gillen wrote:
>> On 10/22/2009 11:33 AM, David Rosenstrauch wrote:
>>> On 10/22/2009 11:08 AM, Mark Woodward wrote:
>>>> What does BLU think?
>>> I think a lot depends on what company you work for.
>>
>> Ditto that.
>>
>>> ...
>>> IME the negatives you point out appear far more often in larger  
>>> and/or
>>> more mature companies.
>>
>> I would venture to say it happens a lot in companies where software  
>> is
>> not the core product.
>
>> But
>> there will always be companies that are "high-technology", who have  
>> the
>> values you seem to be nostalgic for.  Likewise, there will always be
>> customers for those companies, businesses for which technology (and
>> software in particular) /will/ be a competitive advantage.  It's just
>> that the pool of companies in that category is smaller than it used  
>> to
>> be (it used to be everyone, but now a lot of core business software  
>> has
>> become a commodity).
>>
>> Matt
>
> I would say that's exactly right.  If the OP wants to keep doing
> exciting interesting tech work, he needs to seek out companies where
> technology *is* their business.

Yep. I work for a not-huge, but certainly-not-small company (north of  
3k employees now, I think?), and its quite interesting and exciting  
here. Its the biggest company I've ever worked for, and by far the  
longest I've worked anywhere now. Historically, I've gotten bored w/my  
job after a year or so, because it ends up being more of the same. For  
the most part, that's not the case here, there is always something new  
and different to work on, lots of innovative and exciting new stuff  
happening all the time. Technology, and in particular, open source  
technology, most certainly is our business.

--
Jarod Wilson
jarod@...



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[Richard Pieri]

On Oct 23, 2009, at 10:42 AM, David Rosenstrauch wrote:
> But that's exactly the point:  large companies for the most part are -
> by definition - in "milk the cash cow" mode.  As a function of their
> size and maturity in their market, most large companies are not risk
> takers and don't branch out in new directions.  (At least not until  
> some
> other company has "proved" the new direction first.)  There's a few
> exceptions to this rule (e.g., Apple) but very few.

Again, I disagree.  Some large companies are like that.  Some small  
companies are like that, too.  But not all.  The exceptions are proof  
that the "rule" is invalid.

--Rich P.

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[Jerry Feldman-2]

Basically I have been a computer programmer professionally since the
early 1970s, first at a bank, then at a couple of fast food chains,
Raytheon, a few startups, and as a contractor with many years at
Digital/Compaq/HP.  Different companies, whether they are in the
computer industry or not take some widely different views on how they
manage. But every company must make money to survive. Larger companies
can lose money for longer peiods of time, but economics aside, how these
companies treat software professionals varies widely. In the bank, we
worked on a work order basis. Our bank or some of our client banks would
ask for changes, and that would filter to us. We also had firecalls
where the software would fail, and we'd have to fix it. Imagine a
midnight call from a Cuban computer operator who could barely speak
English waking you up out of a deep sleep at 3AM.
Basically, in a non-computer company essentially the people in IT are
simply at the same level as the accounting staff, or other areas of the
company. I found in some technology companies software was only what
made the hardware go. In other companies, like Digital, the software
engineers commanded more respect because of the nature of the product.
But I have also worked with other companies that have software products.
(I've also been a manager in some cases, but the main reason I became a
contractor was because I didn't like to be a manager). Essentially, in a
company that has software products, many times a product (or release)
may be announced with certain features. Sometimes some features my be
required under contract as well as release dates. There are 3 variables
in software development, time, resources, and function. Many times, time
may not be a variable, and function may also not be a variable, so you
need to add more resources. I was involved in Digital's Unix, and while
our release schedules were somewhat flexible, many times we would have a
major contractual obligation for specific functionality. We also had an
obligation to pass a number of standards test suites, such as X/Open and
SVID. So, to meet the contractual obligations, sometimes some planned
functionality would be deferred to the next release, including some
important bug fixes.

The bottom line is that we are not going back to the 90s when many of us
software guys made some good money. After my contract with Compaq/HP
when HP bought Compaq, I was at the end of my 3 years you have to leave
for 90 days, and when I cam back a couple of years later to the same
desk and computer, I was making a significantly lower hourly rate. I
just got my first increase since then last month (which is amazing in
this economy except I work for a company that develops Risk management
software).

It really is not so much how a company treats it's engineers (software
or otherwise) it is how a company treats its employees.  We once had a
VP of IT tell us that we had to be at our desks at 9Am and could not
leave until 5PM, and that lunches must be between 12 and 1. All my
colleagues were pissed because we routinely would come in on firecalls.
Some of us came in early in the morning, and others worked later at
night. It all came down to other manages would see us in the elevators
at odd times and would complain to our manager.


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[darose]

On 10/23/2009 10:57 AM, Richard Pieri wrote:

> On Oct 23, 2009, at 10:42 AM, David Rosenstrauch wrote:
>> But that's exactly the point:  large companies for the most part are -
>> by definition - in "milk the cash cow" mode.  As a function of their
>> size and maturity in their market, most large companies are not risk
>> takers and don't branch out in new directions.  (At least not until  
>> some
>> other company has "proved" the new direction first.)  There's a few
>> exceptions to this rule (e.g., Apple) but very few.
>
> Again, I disagree.  Some large companies are like that.  Some small  
> companies are like that, too.  But not all.  The exceptions are proof  
> that the "rule" is invalid.
>
> --Rich P.

Dunno ... I stand by my quote:  "for the most part" large companies are
in milk the cow mode.  Obviously there's exceptions.  But IMO this is
true often enough for it to be a pretty reliable rule of thumb.

DR
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[Bill Bogstad]

On Fri, Oct 23, 2009 at 10:57 AM, Richard Pieri <richard.pieri@...> wrote:

> On Oct 23, 2009, at 10:42 AM, David Rosenstrauch wrote:
>> But that's exactly the point:  large companies for the most part are -
>> by definition - in "milk the cash cow" mode.  As a function of their
>> size and maturity in their market, most large companies are not risk
>> takers and don't branch out in new directions.  (At least not until
>> some
>> other company has "proved" the new direction first.)  There's a few
>> exceptions to this rule (e.g., Apple) but very few.
>
> Again, I disagree.  Some large companies are like that.  Some small
> companies are like that, too.  But not all.  The exceptions are proof
> that the "rule" is invalid.

If you mean not 100% sure.  Not everyone who falls from a fifth story
window dies, but you should avoid planning your life based on the
opposite result.

By the way, a whole book was written to some extent on why the 'rule'
normally holds:

The Innovator's Dilemma by Clayton Christensen

Paperback: ISBN-10: 0060521996

It made a big splash when it came out in 1997.   Unlike most business
books, I felt it was actually worth reading.
The author is a professor at the Harvard Business School (for what
that's worth to you).

It doesn't actually say that large companies don't innovate.  It
suggests that they tend to only innovate in ways that are desired by
their largest customers.  As a secondary effect, since the largest
customers are often large companies which also
do the same you end up with a decided lack of innovation in large
companies.   If a company has revenue of $10 milllion dollars a day,
then it's not worth a senior manager's time to approve a change that
will save the company $100,000.  And
the answer will be NO if you can't prove that your change won't
negatively affect that $10 million a day revenue stream.

Bill Bogstad

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[Richard Pieri]

On Oct 23, 2009, at 12:43 PM, Bill Bogstad wrote:
> It doesn't actually say that large companies don't innovate.  It
> suggests that they tend to only innovate in ways that are desired by
> their largest customers.  As a secondary effect, since the largest
> customers are often large companies which also

And yet, today, large companies are some of the biggest innovators in  
their respective areas.  You just never see most of it because it  
doesn't make slashdot's headlines.  At the same time, some of the  
smallest companies do nothing but buy patents and extort (or litigate)  
royalties for them.  You can't look at the size of a company as a  
benchmark for innovation and fun vs. depressing monotony.  To the  
contrary, a large company probably has many small operating units.  
Some of those may be crushingly monotonous; others dynamic and  
innovative and fun and challenging.

> do the same you end up with a decided lack of innovation in large
> companies.   If a company has revenue of $10 milllion dollars a day,
> then it's not worth a senior manager's time to approve a change that
> will save the company $100,000.  And
> the answer will be NO if you can't prove that your change won't
> negatively affect that $10 million a day revenue stream.

That has absolutely nothing to do with the company's size.  That's  
senior management.  Like I said the first time.

--Rich P.

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[Matthew Gillen]

On 10/23/2009 12:43 PM, Bill Bogstad wrote:
> By the way, a whole book was written to some extent on why the 'rule'
> normally holds:
>
> The Innovator's Dilemma by Clayton Christensen

I'll second the recommendation for that book.  My boss mentioned it so many
times that I finally went out and bought it.  I haven't read the sequel (The
Innovator's Solution), but I think I know what the gist of it is.

> It doesn't actually say that large companies don't innovate.  It
> suggests that they tend to only innovate in ways that are desired by
> their largest customers.  As a secondary effect, since the largest
> customers are often large companies which also
> do the same you end up with a decided lack of innovation in large
> companies.

Another aspect of it was that big companies need a big market to achieve 5%
growth (or whatever their target is; the point is %5 for a big company is a
lot more than 5% for a small company), and so they're going to concentrate on
existing large markets.  The trick is that 'disruptive' technologies create
new markets that become large over time (as customers figure out new uses for
the tech), but may be tiny or non-existent during the technology's infancy.
Short-sighted companies (ie most companies) don't have the
leadership/foresight/courage to invest in things that have a very tiny market
(and unknown prospects for the future).  There's a fairly obvious cure for that...

Incidentally, going on my own political rant here, I believe that this leads
to one of the biggest value propositions for open-source software.  The key to
creating large markets is /customers/ figuring out ways to use your
technology.  But many proprietary system developers nowadays spend most of
their effort locking systems down so that they only do what the manufacturer
intended.  They are unwittingly limiting the market for their products.

By contrast, open-source software encourages the type of garage tinkering that
leads to innovative uses.  It's not impossible for proprietary software to
support innovation by customers.  You only need to look as far as the PC game
mod community.  Some of these mods are huge, completely changing the game.
Within that same industry you see the lock-down approach as well: the XBox360
requires digitally signed game data, and therefore doesn't support modding
(I'd be mad if I had the Xbox version of, say, Oblivion, and couldn't use any
of the great mods for that game).
</rant>

Matt
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[Bill Bogstad]

On Fri, Oct 23, 2009 at 1:17 PM, Richard Pieri <richard.pieri@...> wrote:

> On Oct 23, 2009, at 12:43 PM, Bill Bogstad wrote:
>> It doesn't actually say that large companies don't innovate.  It
>> suggests that they tend to only innovate in ways that are desired by
>> their largest customers.  As a secondary effect, since the largest
>> customers are often large companies which also
>
> And yet, today, large companies are some of the biggest innovators in
> their respective areas.  You just never see most of it because it
> doesn't make slashdot's headlines.  At the same time, some of the
> smallest companies do nothing but buy patents and extort (or litigate)
> royalties for them.  You can't look at the size of a company as a
> benchmark for innovation and fun vs. depressing monotony.  To the
> contrary, a large company probably has many small operating units.
> Some of those may be crushingly monotonous; others dynamic and
> innovative and fun and challenging.

The book wasn't written by reading Slashdot.  It was the outgrowth of
a Ph.D thesis in how companies react to opportunities to innovate.
To the extent that sociology, economics, business has rules (more like
probabilities) this appears to be one of them.
Hell, even much of what we consider the 'rules of physics' are often
just probabilities.  My understanding is that quantum mechanics says
that lots of really weird things are possible, they are just VERY VERY
VERY improbable.

>
>> do the same you end up with a decided lack of innovation in large
>> companies.   If a company has revenue of $10 milllion dollars a day,
>> then it's not worth a senior manager's time to approve a change that
>> will save the company $100,000.  And
>> the answer will be NO if you can't prove that your change won't
>> negatively affect that $10 million a day revenue stream.
>
> That has absolutely nothing to do with the company's size.  That's
> senior management.  Like I said the first time.

I disagree.  Senior management has only so many minutes to spend every
day.   At a large company, $100,000 decisions are just not worth their
time to analyze.  This is no different from the fact that most people
don't spend lots of time optimizing where theybuy gas for their car.
The principle remains the same only the scale has changed.

For various reasons, innovation usually starts small (not applicable
to a large customer base, uncertainty  about risks/rewards) and
therefore never gets the go ahead within a large organization.  The
size of the company inherently forces only 'big things' to be given
the green light at the highest level.  A really good company might
allow more autonomy at lower levels then a bad one, but they still
aren't going to be as flexible as a small one.  They can't afford to
risk their large revenue streams.  Particularly when it comes to
anything viewable to the external world.  It seems to be the received
wisdom from marketing (also not a rule/just probabilities) that
providing too many competing products via the sames sales channel just
results in customer confusion and your competitor ends up making the
sale.  Personally, I like 'high information'; but from watching
the rest of my family/friends/acquaintances; I appear to in the
minority.  (And thus not a good candidate for MegaCorps
next 5% growth target.  There just aren't enough of me.)

Bill Bogstad

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