Don't be desperate for big companies.

Don't be desperate for big companies.

Nanyi

After a long delay, the book "Hacker and Painter" is nearing the end.

I estimate that in another two or three weeks, the whole book will be translated and completed. Then, quickly, the end of the year can be listed.

Today, the continuation of the MCC in the book is a refreshing remark.

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Don't be desperate for big companies.

Paul Graham

Translator: Ruan Yi Feng

This article is an excerpt of how-Make wealth

1.

The biggest problem with big companies is the inability to accurately measure the contribution of each employee. It will average everyone's contribution.

In a big company, you can get a predictable salary if you work hard in general. You can't be obviously incompetent or lazy, but no one thinks you're going to put all your energy into work.

You can't tell your boss that I'm going to work 10 times times as hard as I can and ask you to increase my salary by 10 times times. Because the company has assumed that you are working at full capacity, and more importantly, the company is actually unable to measure your contribution.

2.

Suppose a company makes a certain kind of consumer goods, and the engineer makes a variety of functions for it, and the designer designs a nice shell for it, and the marketer makes the customer believe it is worth owning. How would you rate each person's contribution to the sales of this product?

Also, the previous generation of product staff, for the company to establish a reliable quality image, how much of the latest product sales should be attributed to them?

There is no way to break down the contribution of all one by one.

You want to work harder, but your work is mixed up with the work of many other people, which creates problems. In large companies, individual performance cannot be measured alone, and the rest of the company will drag you down.

3.

Salesman is an exception. The income they generate is easy to measure, and their salary is often a percentage of sales. If a salesperson wants to work harder, he can do it right away, and get paid more automatically and proportionally.

In addition, there is a position that can be measured, that is, senior management positions, they are responsible for the performance of the entire company. Senior managers, like salespeople, have to use numbers to prove themselves. A poorly behaved CEO can't dodge that he's done his best. If the company's performance is not good, it is his performance is not good.

Unfortunately, it's impossible for a company to pay for everyone like a salesman. Salespeople work alone, and most employees work collectively.

4.

However, even if it is impossible to measure the contribution of each employee, there is a way to get an approximate value, that is, to measure the contribution of the small team.

The revenue generated by the entire company can be measured, and if the company has only one employee, then it is accurate to know his contribution. So, the smaller the company, the more accurately you can estimate everyone's contribution.

A start-up company may have only 10 employees, so the factor that affects income is only 10. This means that you'd better look for good people to work with because their jobs are calculated with your average.

5.

Big companies are like giant Roman warships, with 1000 rowers rowing together and pushing it forward. However, two factors make it less fast. One factor is that each rower does not see the difference in how much he is trying to paddle, and another factor is that the 1000-person team makes any individual effort much more evenly averaged.

If you pick out 10 people from 1000 and put them in a small boat, they will probably paddle faster. The strong rowing hand, seeing that he personally had a significant impact on the speed of the boat, would be inspired. If someone is lazy, others are easy to find and will complain to him.

If you pick out 10 of the best rowers from a big ship and make them a team, then the advantages of a ten-person boat will really show up. The extra incentives that small teams bring are the most exciting of them all.

The most important thing here is that you pick out the best rowing hands, and everyone is the top 1% of the 1000 people in the front row. For them, the average of their work and the work of other masters is much more satisfying than averaging the work of mediocre people.

6.

This is the real meaning of the start-up company.

Ideally, you'll be working with other people who are willing to work hard together to make a team that is more rewarding (compared to working for a big company). A startup is not just a team of 10 people, but a team of 10 people of the same kind.

Steve Jobs once said that the success of a business depends on the first 10 people who joined the company. I basically agree with this point of view, although I think that the real decision of success or failure is actually the first five people.

The advantage of a small team is not that it is small in itself, but that you can choose members. We do not need the small village of the "small", but the whole star of the first lineup of the kind of "small."

7.

The larger the team, the more each person's contribution will be to the overall average.

So, without considering other factors, a very capable person in a large company may be a bad thing for him, because his performance is dragged down by others who cannot do it. Of course, many factors will have an impact, such as the person may not care about the return, or he prefers the stability of large companies.

However, a very competent and rewarding person, usually in a small group of similar people, will have a better performance, they will feel more satisfied.

Don't be desperate for big companies.