Two days ago I started a new job doing DevOps at a large public company. I was really excited about it because they were doing interesting things combining technology I know well – Python, Django, C#, PostgreSQL, and C in a Linux environment on AWS managed using Salt Stack. They were also using some interesting tools that I’d have a chance to learn – TeamCity, Gerrit, and Ansible.
I told my friends that I was looking forward to spending a while at a company that didn’t have all of the chaos and instability of a startup. A company that would still exist from one day to the next. There’s a thing on my bucket list that I’ve almost but not quite reached – working at the same company for 5 years (I got to 4 years and 9 months back in 2003). I thought there might be a chance with this one.
Yesterday, on my second day, they decided to disband the department I work for.
Why?
They had a bad quarterly earnings report and had to do something to “maximize shareholder value”. This normally means slashing your R & D budget to the bone and crippling your ability to generate new streams of income. So they slashed it, canceled the product we were working on, and dropped a surprise bombshell to everyone at once. A bad time was had by all.
Short-term thinking at its finest.
In any case, I don’t regret a minute of the experience. I met some really great people who made me feel welcome. I wish them all the best.
For further reading:
Why Companies Need to Think Long Term
Short-Term Thinking is Dangerous to Innovation
Can America’s Companies Survive America’s Most Aggressive Investors