Ask HN: Is it just me or are most businesses insane?
I realize that its probably me, I'm the dumb one, but please bear with me and help me understand. I've been recently looking for a new job as I am slowly viewing my previously functioning workplace accelerating towards a static dysfunction.
I have spoken to quite a few companies and read a lot of recruitment boards in a rather sizable european city that ought to be filled with opportunities. With tech-sovreignty on everyones lips I would expect some drive and excitement in the european software scene, but to get to companies with a mission I have to wade through The Swamp. The Swamp is waist high in Scrum certifications and gigs where the key skill is "navigating red tape". There the architects roam, with no expectations of from management, and with a mandate to stop every system that does not yet include an Azure Event Hub. In the large corporations where the most important roles are the power-BI analysts and the best metric for value-creation is the fill of your calendar and your hours of overtime.
And somehow, if feel like your getting somewhere with a company that thats primarily motivated by crafting something good, not focusing on vanity metrics or micromanaging how things are done -- its going to be a marketing startup.
Summarized: Most of the businesses I see seem to be bloated. They have way to many employees for what they produce. They have too much structure and too many rules to effectively generate new income, and new ideas are shut down and not welcome.
But I genuninly do wonder: Are businesses somehow incentivised to become inefficient? Is it possible for a business to stay ambitious over time? Has one seen it succeed or how have you seen it fail?
This is how BigCo works. They are optimized for resilience and providing predictable cashflows for investors, not efficiency as such. If they had, say, 2 "10x" engineers who were brilliant and could do everything with no red tape or inefficiency, then one or both of them could leave, or demand pay raises, and the company would be screwed - it would be a very brittle, unsustainable period of efficiency.
So, it's better to have 20 1x engineers, with significant slack in the system, who are all interchangeable cogs in a machine that takes tickets in one end and pushes mediocre software out the other end. That way, if 5 or 10 of them leave, they can be replaced, and nobody will tell the difference. If there's a lean quarter, you can lay off half of them, and then rehire a bunch of average randos off the street a few months later, and again, nobody will be able to tell the difference.
Also, the mayor will visit the grand opening of the new office, and the media will write a lovely story about how many jobs have been "created", and the company will be able to negotiate some tax breaks for creating so many mediocre jobs.
You might find things are better at a mom & pop, or startup, or maybe outside of a big city.
They aren't incentivized to become inefficient, but once they grow large enough you get into a situation where everyone is playing a political game to minimize their own risk and effort.
And worse, the only people with motivation to fill the top tiers of the company are usually a little off. You essentially have to be a bit nuts to want to be C-level or above in a large corporation. I've seen it, there are employees who will ruthlessly seek out more money. Usually their competence levels aren't quite there, but they are the only people who want the job.
You have discovered Wally's playground. Wally is one of the guys from the Dilbert comic strip.
Basically, many incentives are "misaligned" in such a way, that micromanaging demise is (locally) considered more valuable than actually bringing in cash from customers by actually giving them something.
As long as the company's owners don't pick up on this and are effective at doing something about it, "all bets are off."
It sounds like you’re applying to enterprises rather than startups. There _will_ be a startup scene in your city, you just need to find it. Look for the meetups, gravitate to where the founders are, find out which meetups _they_ attend, and go network there.
It could be incentives to lower prices (race to the bottom from competition).