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naraburns  nihil supernum  1yr ago (text post)   4360 thread views

Small-Scale Question Sunday for November 27, 2022

Do you have a dumb question that you're kind of embarrassed to ask in the main thread? Is there something you're just not sure about?

This is your opportunity to ask questions. No question too simple or too silly.

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How to acclimate myself to working at a mid-sized corporation after working at small shops forever?

I recently joined as a software engineer a company whose employees number in the low thousands. I'm finding it hard to get used to it. Everything's pretty impersonal. Things move slowly--what would normally take me a week takes three instead--which extends feedback loops to a great extent. It's uncomfortable: I feel like I'm failing to deliver, even though my manager and onboarding buddy say I'm doing great.

(It's not completely a huge-boring corporation; my sense of contrast is likely tickled by it being a big change for me.)

A friend of mine recommended I think hard about what my manager's scoring function is and to optimize for that. (I would like stay with this gig for 2-4 years). He also recommended I read The Prince.

Has anyone else made this kind of move? Or, if someone here has spent considerable time at corporations, do you have any advice/reading material (preferably less theoretical and more practical)?

I made the same move two years ago and I still feel like you do at present. My teammates are fairly personable and the atmosphere is alright, but the product is a huge tangled mess with responsibilities all over the place and it feels impossible to do anything without first going to a dozen different people to ask for contextual information, which naturally takes forever. The veterans who've been at it for >10 years can do this quickly and instinctively, the adaptable newbies learn how to do it within a few years, but I just keep facepalming every time I see a ticket that consists of a title and nothing else.

Eh, maybe not quite the same situation as yours. The relevant point is that yes, it can take a long time to become productive in a large software company.

Thanks, my morale is boosted knowing I'm not the only one trying to make headway in a situation like this.

I moved from a mid-sized corporation (with an IT department under 1000) to a huge-boring one (with an IT department in the tens of thousands). It's been a year and I still feel like I'm failing to deliver. I am a manager, so it's more likely I am actually failing.

Get to know people in all three dimensions: up and down the data flow, up and down the process flow, up and down the reporting chain. Don't be a headache for your manager. If you're on top of your obligations, you're golden. If you promptly escalate any blockers to your manager, you're silver. If you use your relationships with people along the dimensions to unblock yourself, you're brilliant, make sure to let the manager know and they will blow you. Don't be afraid to toot your own horn a bit.

Thanks. It seems my main focus should be on building relationships very broadly.

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