[bx_lr]

Notice the following "AMD says it maintains a start-up mentality even though it's a large company".

This is becoming a trend now, hardly the only company touting this. My current company is doing the same. My old company approached me recently and told me are going to start working in start-up mode in California, and this is an old and rigid company.

I'm holding Paul Graham, Joel Spolsky and others accountable for this. They have glamourized start-ups so much that these big and established companies have started feeling bad about themselves. Or maybe they have finally realized that big organizations and rigid processes don't work very well.

There are probably upsides to this. But the downsides are killing me. Obviously for large company working in start-up mode means that engineers work even harder, are more accountable and have to deliver to even more ridiculous schedules. And the result is even more chaos and avoidance of work and responsibility, more panic in QA, and so forth.

Personally I don't like this trend. If I want to work start-up hard, I will join a start-up and potentially become rich in the process. Working in start-up mode in a big company has so far meant that I work through weekends and don't get paid for that.

[Tautologistics]

This is such an annoying new trend to claim one's company is in "startup mode" when it is all just superficial or even straight out bullshit; it has become quite the trend in NYC now.

One place I declined to work at claimed to be in startup mode yet their offices looked like those of a financial company (which they were not), everyone seriously dressed up, and the code base and infrastructure was pretty big and inherited from the parent organization.

A place I used to work at is also going through the motions of "becoming a startup" -- a company that has not been an internet startup for over 10 years. Apparently being a startup means rewriting the whole codebase in Java, offering free snacks and drinks, tearing down the walls from the cubicles (say goodbye to ever getting "in the zone" when coding), and calling daily standups and using JIRA "being AGILE". Sticking feathers in ones butt does not make one a chicken...

[li]

I like this trend. As a developer, I always try to spend all time on tech stuff, not on overhead of management of big company. Of course, I don't want to work OVER TIME.

[aphexairlines]

What does jira have to do with it? It's just an issue tracker like any other.

[Tautologistics]

Nothing wrong with JIRA or Greenhopper but its use, by itself, does not make a group "agile".

[berntb]

Check for Java, standups, JIRA, snacks, etc.

But only free espresso -- I should forward your comment to my boss, so we get more drink options. :-)

(A Python guy just started and makes predictable noises about rewriting thousands of pages of working code from a scripting language with very similar capabilities... That will probably happen simultaneously with free Coca Cola being introduced.)

[Tomek_]

that scripting language is Perl or PHP?

[berntb]

Perl (sorry for sleeping before answering :-).

I've pointed the Python guy to Moose, "Perl Best Practices", etc. Didn't help. Sigh... It is sad when people don't stop the language wars garbage after turning 20. :-(

At least he didn't argue to replace the toilet paper with bills...

In my anecdotal experience, this seems to be a not totally unusual Python thing. (One True Way, etc.)

(And before someone starts arguing about that it might be motivated with a rewrite in some cases -- they guy is so new, he doesn't know the particulars for that area.)

[jasonkester]

If so, they seem to have appropriated the 1998 definition of "Startup".

Hiring 1000 people at once doesn't seem like the best way to maintain your startup's corporate culture, but it does seem like an effective way to burn through $250M in funding. All they need is the fooseball table in the middle of the dev space and they'll have that oldskool dotcom vibe nailed.

[adamc]

So find another job or another career. I'm not being mean: there are still jobs that are 40 hours per week. If those jobs don't appeal to you, switch careers and find a work-life balance that does.

People get exploited because they don't act on their other options. I work 40 hours a week.

[bx_lr]

I was just pointing out a trend. It seems that more and more companies are trying to appeal to the start-up types. I'm not too optimistic that these big-corp-in-start-up-mode ideas will work, most people are not up to the task. I view this kind of mode as an exception not the norm.

Personally I don't mind working hard. In my case the work has been interesting enough and I'm viewing the long hours as an investment to acquire certain technology experience. At the same time I do feel an increasing urge to go and start working for real start-ups again.

[salemh]

Companies are trying very hard to attract the talent that do not want to sit head-down in a cubicle for 8-10 hours a day ina tomb (no conversation) like development department, and come up with the term, "startup" even if a 40 hour work week exists. Like the catch phrases Agile (true Agile, creative environment) etc. But, some programmers love that environment :D It is all fit.

Though, the companies established like AMD, Amazon and Netflix, for example, do require the insane hours (if not blatantly then tacitly).

[storborg]

I actually think the explosion of software engineering salaries (led by VC-funded SF startups) is responsible for this work attitude, not just glamorization of startup life.

Larger companies (and even smaller companies that aren't ultra-rapid-growth) have to pay much more to compete on salary, and as a result, they now have to get much more productivity out of each employee than before. Hence, more accountability, more ridiculous schedules.

[hello_moto]

Sounds similar to the event that leads many companies claiming that they're "Agile".

Someone I knew interviewed a candidate and asked what he knows about Agile. He responded by telling a story of what happened in his previous workplace: "We have a 1 hour status meeting everyday, the management decided to apply Agile/Scrum. The easy way to do this is to change the name of that 1 hour status meeting everyday to become Scrum Meeting".

[jswinghammer]

I agree there is a trend but I think it has more to do with the idea that you will be making something new not that you will need to work a million hours to do it. I've never needed to work a lot of hours to get my projects done and I always avoid companies where people seem to work too many hours.