[bushbaba]

Often those who’ve only worked at small companies don’t grock how much organizational bloat is needed to run a large enterprise. Alignment cannot be done in a 50k employee company by having everyone hash it out over beers.

Large companies also tend to have sociopaths become the VPs, who only care about their career progression and not the actual company direction.

[prepend]

> grock

“Grok” is from Heinlein’s Stranger in a Strange Land. It was a super important word to me as a kid. I’ve recently started hearing it again used by people who never read the book and find it interesting.

Do you remember where you first heard this word? I assume you heard it as it’s such a memorable word and difficult to misspell.

[alephnerd]

Not OP but I use the word Grok a bunch without having read Heinlein.

I heard about it from graybeards and HN, hence why there might be a resurgence now that HN is mainstream.

[lowbloodsugar]

The failure begins at around 150 employees, from what I've seen in startups I joined when smaller and grew to that point.