[rgmerk]

Have you worked at a large (say 500+ employee) company that you would say isn't "deeply f'ed"?

I once read a fascinating corporate history of Xerox, and that company became deeply, deeply f'ed up in ways that are of their time but do have strong parallels to the issues I understand that FAANG, particularly Google, have.

[dehrmann]

> Have you worked at a large (say 500+ employee) company that you would say isn't "deeply f'ed"?

You get a weird insider bias where all you see are bug reports and problems, so you get the impression the product is shit, even if 99% of customers love it.

[eru]

> Have you worked at a large (say 500+ employee) company that you would say isn't "deeply f'ed"?

Perhaps Google until around 2010? Or Goldman Sachs until the 1990s?

[Horffupolde]

Could you please share any links or pointers for that? Sounds interesting.

[rgmerk]

One of them was called Xerox: American Samurai, and dates from 1986 (I read it when I was a teenager in the early 1990s, I think). There was another one from the early 1990s, I believe.

This book lauded Xerox's success at reforming its corporate culture, regaining a strong position in the photocopier market and even spent a chapter detailing their success in getting into electronic typewriters!

With the benefit of hindsight the company didn't survive its core product losing all relevance any better than Kodak did, but that was still some way in the future (if foreseeable by the 1980s).

That said, much of the material about a hugely bloated organisation, with a sclerotic bureaucracy and lots of cushy middle managers assembled through a previous period of explosive growth, turning out poor-quality product, sounds very reminiscent of some of what we now hear about the current big tech companies.

The title reflects another American obsession at the time - the idea that the US was "losing" to Japan.