> we want to operate like the world’s largest startup
This is a phrase I hear repeated by leadership a lot, and it's usually code for "why doesn't everyone else just make the business grow faster?" It is almost always, as in this case, followed by statements that suggest they don't understand what is actually different about the way a start up functions and why they stopped operating that way at some point in the first place.
Sounds like some marketer got tasked into trying to convince a group of people that the company is looking at aggressive growth and unrealized markets for as long as they are willing to entertain that delusion.
Google seems to have always said this externally, but every time I met with Google pre-COVID, all their engineers dialed in from home. Managers in the office. I would even travel to their office. Engineers? Nope. At home.
Okay but I can think of 5 teams, all of whom showed this behavior? Even if it is "team by team" that is not the same as what Google seems to generalize about itself.
Not sure if you meant this as a counterpoint or as confirmation, but let's be clear that that ALSO doesn't sound like solidly-entrenched one-party rule is good.
I wasn't sure if the person I was responding to was expressing a sincere belief, or just one of the conservatives that love hypocritically pointing out SF's flaws. Figured with this we'll find out.
Not gonna go hunt for the link right now, but I think Minix 3 was intended to be more industrially applicable than it's predecessors: there's a talk somewhere where Tanenbaum talked about the need for a more fault tolerant kernel in all sorts of applications, and I think he got a grant from some European institution for that purpose.
There is a handful of people whose tabs I would instantly pick up were I to meet them somewhere because of the immense value I have gotten from their free work online, writing stuff, answering forum posts, etc.
I mean I volunteer for a church that does a huge amount of philanthropy, and as what we do comes in waves, we store up funds when we don't have a lot of community needs. Looking at the US economy I would actually expect needs to increase for some time so I think we should be saving more than we are at the moment in anticipation. I don't trust the government to personally bail me out very well and I don't trust them to do anything better with tax revenue.
Even this $100B hedge fund could be completely spent by the federal government in 6 days and a lot of that would just be servicing debt I've never agreed with carrying in the first place, or funding a military that I don't think makes the world a better place any better than my church does.
This is definitely one place where it gets morally tricky. The church has facilities and programs to run, and needs protection against economic downturn. And it's not financially wise to have a bunch of liquid cash on-hand. For me the points in my original comment push it into immoral territory.
Yeah the irony here is getting regulated by a government that demands more, still goes into awe inspiring amounts of debt, still manages to flirt with defaulting on it, and whose leaders get even wealthier.
> we want to operate like the world’s largest startup
This is a phrase I hear repeated by leadership a lot, and it's usually code for "why doesn't everyone else just make the business grow faster?" It is almost always, as in this case, followed by statements that suggest they don't understand what is actually different about the way a start up functions and why they stopped operating that way at some point in the first place.