How To Survive & Thrive In a Big Company

Presented at DevOpsDays Amsterdam, 2019.

This talk will go over what I’ve learned working in large companies from my strange adventure working with a bunch of MBAs in corporate strategy at Dell, to working with large companies as an industry analyst, to working with marketing and product people at large companies.

If you work at a small, cool company, you can skip this talk. The rest of us in large, slow moving companies that rely on meetings, email, and inbox 2,000 to get the daily work done need some therapy and advice for thriving in big, “dumb” companies. I’ve worked in such companies and figured out how to thrive in the “back to back meetings” world we’re taught to avoid. They’re big, slow moving, and seem to use Microsoft Office as their core innovation engine. I’ll tell you my tactics.

If people at your work always talk about “aircraft carriers” this is the talk for you.

For whatever reasons you’re there, why not make the best of it and learn how to get along and even thrive instead of letting your head explode in rage? This talk will go over what I’ve learned working in large companies from my strange adventure working with a bunch of MBAs in corporate strategy at Dell, to working with large companies as an industry analyst, to working with marketing and product people at large companies.

Transcript

1. 1 How To Survive & Thrive In a Big Company cote.io/BigCo Screenshot of Getty clipart.
4. Disclaimer: PIVOTAL IS F’ING AWESOME! 4 (* Come visit our table for all the great propaganda!) (** We’re hiring!) @cote
5. Narrow your mission in toxic environment 5 @cote
6. 6 @cote
7. Mentors are nice, champions are better 7 * This is the image that made start loving corporate clip-art. I saw it everywhere in the 2000’s. It’s called “Woman standing with coworkers in server room (selective focus)” @cote
8. Assign homework to filter vampires 8 @cote
9. Asking questions leads to homework for you 9 @cote
10. To innovate, hide 10 @cote
11. Relax: work as little as possible 11 @cote
12. Extract all your comp to avoid ripping yourself off 12 @cote
13. 13 @cote
14. A corporate presentation is a document printed in landscape 14 @cote
15. Slides titles that state your conclusion perform better 15 @cote
16. Assume you’ll never get past slide 1 16 @cote
17. Always have an “ask” ready to go 17 @cote
18. The Quit Sluice 1. You have a much better job offer 2. The “business” does not care to change – or need to! 3. You’ve talked with your manager multiple times 4. You can’t find a different job in the company 5. You are unhappy, it effects you IRL 6. You have a new job offer 18 @cote
19. More… • “War Stories from the God Pod: Strategies for killing high stakes Executive presentations” - Matt Baker’s tips • Me: “7 + 5 BigCo Anti-patterns : white collars doing it wrong,” cote.io/bigco • Weekly therapy at SoftwareDefinedTalk.com 19 @cote
20. 20 Both free this week: https://cote.io/books @cote