New ask Hacker News story: Ask HN: Is it really so dull to work in huge company?

Ask HN: Is it really so dull to work in huge company?
2 by thrway12345688 | 3 comments on Hacker News.
I have changed job lately. And this is my first time in really large company with ~300k employees worldwide. So this is my first, first hand, experience in large company. My first impressions is that everyone knows only quite narrow field of the project. And it still surprises me as I'm used to opposite. Next thing that really struck me was how hard is to just approach someone and get to know him. As there are people sitting next to each other that have way different work. So you never know if what the guy next to you actually does, also it is hard to approach someone since most of the people spend large amount of time on online calls. Therefore you really never know if you can approach someone and don't look like an disturbing idiot. And lastly I feel like we are dealing with not that much of complicated technical products, but the complexity of work is created by all the processes (SAP, etc.). I mean the people are actually pretty nice, they are not stupid at all, but everything just seems so dull. And I have feeling like it really does not matter if you are really good or under average. You just learn all the processes that company has and the execute them. I feel like I'm in huge ant colony that's somehow producing results. And suddenly can understand why startups can undercut such behemoths. I mean I read about it plenty of times, but it is very different if you are living it. My question is. Is that really how big companies operate? Or are there exceptions? For me that means that I have to accept to just provide defined outputs to some defined inputs (for decent wage). Or avoid such companies if I'm not able to accept it.

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