My Own Pirate Radio

I’ve often wondered how well Google’s management structure works, particularly the high engineer-to-manager ratio. I’d always heard it was about 50:1, but this blog post I came across yesterday suggests ratios of 100 to 1 are not uncommon. Now that’s flat. Superflat. If you have the urge to peer into the murky depths of Google or Microsoft, give the post a read. (Yes, it might be a hoax, but personally I think it’s legit. Besides, hoaxes are people too.)

Management structure differences aside, Google really is a great deal like Microsoft was in its earlier days. It’s as if the same parents decided to have another baby 15 years after their first one. Same DNA.

As usual, the comments provide some of the most compelling nuggets. There is a bunch of good meaty stuff once you get past the initial chorus of “why we oughta fire that two-timin- free-breakfast-eatin’- NDA-violatin’- internal-email-leakin’- big-fat-secret-sharin’- son-of-a-!*@# employee!” comments from ’softies. This one particularly resonated with me:

…Many folks at both places seem to harbor a desire to start their own company ‘at some point’, and virtually no one at either place seems to be fully satisfied with the pace of their career growth, but the benefits and continuous train of internal opportunities keep most of those folks happy and entrepreneurially sedated.
…
Both are probably great places to work, especially if you can reconcile yourself to a nice, comfortable, interesting career, and you have the willpower to prioritize family over work and work email. For those who aspire to more, you’ll need to innoculate yourself against the sedating effect of the benefits and ‘industry influence’, get it [sic], build up some experience and a network, and get out.

Amen, brutha!