Principal Financial-Remote work
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I've worked for companies as small as 20 and as large as 100,000. I'll take the small company almost every time. The only two drawbacks I've seen from small companies is they typically don't/can't pay as well and if someone near the top sucks, it's probably going to suck. A small company with decent people to work with is definitely preferred in my book. I can't stand corporate culture. It's nauseating.
the only person I've met higher up is my manager's manager (aka skip meetings). Every company should have them. It's once every couple of months but at least you can talk about your manager face to face with his manager.
everyone should have 1 or 2 questions about the company at the end. That question is a good one or something related to the culture of the company.
I like to ask questions about the current team and structure. I also will ask "how long everyone on the team has been here for" and "how many sr. vs how many juniors are there".
The first question will answer how much turnover my team has. A lot of new people on the team is a red flag...then it'll make me want to find out why there's so many new people (manager's a ****, bad work/home flexibility, team culture sucks, etc).
just go on LinkedIn if you want enough corporate cringe for a lifetime
That's been my experience too. Small companies run at the whims of 1 or 2 people so you have to deal with that. It's much slower in big corps but to some degree that happens there too. The one thing I've experienced at every big company is upper mgmt gets "reassigned" after missing too many sales goals, they bring in some new flunkey who immediately changes the org chart so they can take credit for the same work that's been happening for years, rinse and repeat.
- Mar 27, 2006
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Agreed that frequent leadership changes and reorganizing can be a big detriment at larger organizations. Don't get me wrong, they're bound to happen sometimes, and they don't have to be bad, but re-orgs, when they occur too frequently or are poorly planned, can result in significant disruption.
I was at a company where my specific business unit had their name changed, no fewer than 5 times within a 2 year period. It wreaked havoc on help resources and documentation, because we were forced to either spend a huge amount of time updating everything, or leave things as they were, which will lead to long term problems. Nobody knew what we were called or what we did.
And the frustrating part was that the majority of these name changes were done seemingly on a whim, without an explanation or good reason given. They were just dictated from the EC, usually after a new person was added to that level.
Or my favorite "new executive" exercise, is when they come in with some grand plan to run things in a certain way, that was successful at their previous stop. Usually it has some catchy name in Japanese or Latin, and they bring in consultants to give everyone training on how this new way of thinking has led to massive success at other companies.
Then they half-ass the implementation, with tons of fervor and excitement at the beginning, before slowly petering out, or getting thrown out completely when the next freak of the week initiative begins, and the cycle repeats.
this is a really good point. thus far in my career i've worked in 4 units across 2 companies (all large corporations) and i've never had anything more than a brief intro to anyone above my manager's manager. in all cases there would be benefit from having the "skip meetings" you describe. issue I see is the manager two levels up committing to the time to meet with the ~60 employees individually.
I feel seen! I've worked at companies with 5,000+ employees, 500 to 1,000 employees, and now work for a firm that has 12 employees. Left my last job for this one because the founder sold me on being a "partner" in building the business. 14 months in and I'm just another employee/profit center.
Our culture is "nothing is good enough." No matter what you do, there's no congratulations, no "atta boy," nothing. Just "why isn't it this way?" or "I didn't like what you did so I re-did it all myself without telling you." It flows from the top and it is really tough on people.
Skip meetings can be effective if everyone is on the same page.
Some skip meetings aren't given the time or preparation necessary to be a true benefit.
Like most everything else, a check the box process does very little.
https://www.reddit.com/r/LinkedInLunatics/
If you want to see cringe, check out that reddit thread. It's one of my favorites.
I once had a job where I had two titles on 2 different levels. I would have had to talk about myself.
It would be next level if you could have a skip meeting and wedge the cost into an expense report.
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I inherited a group that non stopped complained. They would go to my boss because they thought if they didn’t see me i wasn’t working. CEO always told me about them, I was the largest profit center by 3-4x anybody and had to help oversee 6-8 other areas. So I was usually at one of those when I wasn’t in my main office.
When I left they split my job into two people and they would call me for help non stop and complain about the amount of work they had.
- Mar 27, 2006
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I didn't know that subreddit existed. Thank you!
I read /r/antiwork which has plenty of horror stories on its own, but I suspect a lot of it is made up. A lot of the stories on there follow the same template. "I'm great at my job, but overworked. My A-hole boss made a ludicrous/impossible demand, so I quit on the spot. Now I have a job making double what I did before. My old boss begged me to come back and now he's fired/the company went out of business."
They're entertaining stories, but I put about as much credence in them as I do Penthouse Forums.
- Mar 27, 2006
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I'm sorry, but if it's still a dream after 14 years, it's probably never going to happen.
You can probably quit that night watchman job at the frilly underpants factory across from the Cheerleading Academy/frozen banana stand.