| I briefly worked for a large non-tech corporate in between two FAANG jobs. What really surprised me at the corporate was how much they love to TALK about Agile. We had Agile Coaches, an Agile Centre of Excellence, dedicated Scrum Masters (literally their entire job), Agile Squads to try and improve the Agile Process, mandatory Agile Training and we constantly talked about how things were Agile and if we could be more Agile. They even experimented for a quarter by adding a mandatory agenda item to every single meeting to review how Agile we were and what can be done to be more Agile. We got absolutely nothing done. Progress was glacial, decisions took months, it was painful to do anything. In contrast, at both FAANG tech companies I'm not sure I've ever heard someone say the word Agile directly. It just happens by default, no ceremony and rigour required. Shit gets done, at pace, and people are excited and motivated to do it. |
Gist of it: FAANG is very flexible as long as things get done (hinting at really understanding how things work), large corps somewhat flexible between teams (understanding in principle how it works but still being big corps) while start-ups stick to one methodology (sticking what some founder knows, or thinks to know). Brackets are my interpretation.
Based on what I saw in the last year in my current job, that rings true. Agile is the latest shit, so we aoply it to everuthing, from hardware development to ERP roll outs. Not sure if in those two cases it is the right approach.