It has been a while since I have last written and posted publicly. The reason for this mainly stems from the endless barrage of take down orders from individuals who held more senior roles than I did. Now that the gag order is off, it is truly liberating to be an individual again and voice opinions that represent more than the phony shade of positively cheerful.
I do not regret my time in the corporate environment. If anything I will look back fondly for teaching everything I know today. The negative examples I have had the opportunity to witness and be subjected to lays the foundation of how I will run my own team and company with my friend.
Culture and teams
Culture eats strategy for breakfast
The concept still holds true from time of inception till present. One thing I found lacking in startups is the endless chaos and the lack of structure. It reminds me of the time where communist Russia removed all ranks and let the military run loose. Order is burn from chaos as sure as a phoneix rises from its own ashes. However, the order may be worse than what is originally set in place – think Lord of the flies.
One of the key cultural pillars I am trying to replicate is diversity within the workplace. We currently have a rather unhealthy gender imbalance for the developers. However for the company as a whole, we do have a 40% to 60% ratio which is a good start. In terms of ethic diversity, I think we are lucky to have people from across Asia: Bangladesh (duh), Japan and myself from Singapore. Diversity cannot be stressed enough in the grand scheme of driving a successful culture. You do not need to like the ideas, but differing ideas must be in place to promote broad lateral thinking. Having people from different backgrounds, gender and age helps to tackle a problem more holistically. When you have 5 blind people feeling and elephant you must take in all the inputs and assess from all angles.
Being nearly the youngest person in corporate, I value the life experience my older colleagues share with me as a mentor and friend. From the viewpoint of technical competence the good ones have stayed relevant and up to date and are better able to understand technology because they understand the technology because they created the history. There is of course the faction of luddites who still brandish their Nokia 3310 bats with pride like technological neadrathals. For those individuals, sadly corporate darwinism does not exist to remove them.
That leads me on to the next point (and a slight backtrack), Structure. Regardless of how recruiters of corporations tries to sell their company as forward thinking, flat hierachy and having affable managers, the truth is far from the picture painted. The term business as usual sums it up nicely.
Business as usual means do not deviate, question or change the process that was handed down to you no matter how outdated or ridiculous it may be. The fanciful innovation in the news is meant for a select few. And when the curtains are open, sometimes you realise there is nothing more than a frail old man pretending to be a mighty wizard. My approach to the problem is to revisit Google’s 20% time and push for side projects as part of my assessment for my team.
As stated earlier, there will always be hierachy as sure as the sun rises from the east. Flat hierachy is nothing more than truthspeak for “four legs good, two legs better”.
Sincere managers are an endangered species that needs to be protected. As a child, we are taught to respect people in authority. Growing up I have nothing but disdain for the majority of people I have had to work with who call themselves leaders. I want to believe they contributed at some time in their past, but they are definitely way past expiration and has nothing to offer except being extremely inefficient with Excel and asking “what is the update” at a fixed internal of 24 hours (the irony are those who sell chatbots, because they should realise they can automate themselves). Even the food waste that has long decomposed serve a higher value of becoming compost then the space wasters I have had to face (the level of disgust and hatred is pretty obvious huh :P). My constant worry is nicely summarized by Harvey Dent
You either die a hero or live long enough to see yourself become the villain
What steps can be done to stay incorruptible? To stay up to date and relevant? To stay humble and listen to those who may have less work experience but still amazingly brilliant ideas. That is something that keeps me up at night.
I think one key thing is to have an evolving diverse team that keeps you honest. The team must change over time but the team size should remain the same to ensure 1 to 1 communications remain viable. My personal experience of constantly exploring new meetups and new interests have paid off in learning more about others and I would bring this back to team forming, building and growing. Each team should only last a duration of 3 years. Any longer would subject teams to comfort and group think. The state of discomfort keeps a team in a state of enough chaos for innovation.
Next steps
I doubt I will head back to the corporate scene (I really hope not and I doubt anyone will hire me as well).
My hope is to achieve a self propelling team by constantly learning, challenging and growing. Having my team build their own teams based while adopting some of the ideas they found good, dropping the ones that did not work so well.
This will be an exciting journey ahead. Signing off as my last time at Big Blue.
