MissingMethod

There are plenty of posts telling you to just do it, plenty talking about how wonderful it is to free yourself from a big company, and lots of how-tos once you do, but let’s talk instead about your competition.

Let’s hope you’re competing against big companies. This may seem counterintuitive, but I fear an independent web developer with a sense of mission far more than a skilled developer in a big company, mostly because of this idea:

“You can only live in fear of large corporations if you have never worked in middle management for one of them.”

Now, I don’t want to come off completely dissing big companies. After all, they’re a great place to get experience from. They’re also good filters that teach you what you’re good at and what you’re not. And undoubtedly, there are loads of talented people working for big companies.

They can also be nice places to camp out and earn a nice wage. But beware, your spirit and desire to learn will atrophy. Your life might fill up with all sorts of the stuff (like mine did when I bought a fancy condo with a monthly mortgage payment that tripled my previous monthly rent). You won’t realize at first that you’re just working for the paycheck and then start asking existential questions like: “why did I ever get into programming in the first place? I’m not even sure I like it. Even real estate sounds more fun than my job.” Look, it’s not programming that’s boring, it’s the work, stupid!

God, what was the name of this post again? Oh yeah, why corporations aren’t scary. So, how about some data on why this is true:

“Since 2001, the global economy has added the equivalent of the whole U.S. economy,” Rich said, as he opened his talk with reference to macro trends. But, though the fundamentals are good, experts don’t agree that it’s a good economy, he said. And, when experts differ so much, something is up.

“That something is we’re living in the greatest period of business model change — ever! Companies can come out of nowhere and knock out big players,” Karlgaard said. He referred to what McKinsey & Company calls the “topple rate” of established industry leaders, which tripled over a 20-year period according to their research.

One industry where this is happening is newspapers, with the stock of the New York Times, for example, at half what it was in 2002. Why is the industry in trouble? “Craig’s List is one reason,” he said, “a company with 23 employees.” He noted that McKinsey said the topple rate will triple again, and he gave some reasons why this volatility will stay with us. “The backside of Moore’s Law is the part that’s important. As performance increases, prices drop 30% a year. Suddenly, hundreds of millions more people can afford technology every year.”

“Creative destruction,” “topple rate,” I don’t care what you call it, but I love that shit. Essentially, any big company competitor you can think of stands a really good chance of falling to pieces in the near future. Big companies simply can’t adjust as quickly (especially in anything web related) as you can by yourself or with a couple business partners, regardless of how much they middle manage.

Not only are big companies nothing to fear, and potentially easy competitors, but their deteriorating products and services should signal you to what could be done better.
Chances are your big company competitor is charging an arm and a leg, delivers new releases evermore slowly, and has bet the farm on 5 to 10 year old technology. CFOs will not like the cost of change, and that’s your ticket.

Let big, slow, and evil corporations point your idea-generating brain in the right direction.

Last Modified : November 7th, 2006
Filed under : General
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