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by volkk 3185 days ago
Doesn't that depend on your definition of creating value? Im biased because I'm a developer perhaps, but I think that these ideas would all be theoretical concepts if these developers weren't actively building them.

Perhaps I have a pessimistic view of the industry, but I've worked at 4-5 startups now (4-5 because one I'm on the fence about calling a startup) and I've come to find that the most value was always "created" when the devs and middle management (product) worked closely together to deliver and hustled/bustled without being blocked by some upper management bullshit. As soon as these companies grew, and these 250k-300k a year "executives" joined, everything slowly went up in flames. This is anecdotal, but it's an issue I've come to notice through personal experience in our industry.
2 comments
defined 3185 days ago
This. Seen the same thing in 3 startups. Add me to the anecdata.

It would be awesome if we could get statistically significant numbers of people to report on this effect, although how to avoid selection bias etc. is beyond me atm.

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cableshaft 3185 days ago
Happened at a company I worked for after we were bought by a larger corporation. And we were a company of 500+ employees.

Although we had a CTO that grew up with the company (used to be a programmer there) that reported direct to the CEO at the smaller, now we have no CTO and at least 5 layers in between us and the new CEO.

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ivanjovanovic 3185 days ago
It sure depends. The way I think is that it starts with an idea, ability to preserve the idea, develop it and maintain its essence through iterations with others. Still it is the idea that is making the difference at the start and working around that idea that makes difference at the end.

I was developer, and I was middle manager and I understand the sentiment fully. There are many aspects of reality that higher level management has to deal with which are not usually what they want reality to be but in practice you can not change it.

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volkk 3184 days ago
> There are many aspects of reality that higher level management has to deal with which are not usually what they want reality to be but in practice you can not change it.

The issue I see here is that there are plenty of companies that are very successful and have a small hierarchy and very little hoops to jump through.

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