Sunday, May 04, 2008

The Old Spirit

Software professionals are really lucky, that over the course of their careers they get to work across a variety of cultures. There are home-made service based mammoths (Infy, Wipro et al), product based companies (like my current one Symantec) and the craziest of the lot - startups (my previous company AirTight Networks). Well, why lucky? Coz they get to experience variety and get to chose! Whether choice is always a good thing or not is a topic for another post, but here we shall assume that this choice is good.
Why I am enumerating this aspect of the software profession, one may wonder. That is because today I met with with my former teammates at AirTight. The same folks with whom I started my career and with whom I have spent an exciting and fun 18 months. And after this rendezvous, I realized this difference. I realized it because I had changed drastically since I joined Symantec last Feb. My attitude towards the professional aspects of life, the way I think about work, about technology have changed noticeably. I must say that all this change wasn't for the worse. Some of it can also be passed off as a sign of maturity. However, one of the major differences I saw was the ability to be free in thought and words, to be free in ideas, to be free in how you think technology should progress. In a big MNC, there are lots of processes to be followed, there are things you can't do and there are things you mustn't do, there are things which won't be well received until you are at a particular 'experience level'. While in a startup, well its a free world - you are not too young for anything. Ideas from you are heard irrespective of who you are. Your voice counts - it is at least heard! The main change in attitude that this difference causes is the ability to believe that your ideas can be brought to fruition. A startup mindset thinks that the implementation of an idea is always just a few steps away, whereas an MNC mindset thinks about 'whether' and 'if' and about all the various processes involved that make the implementation seem miles away.
I am not blaming the culture of my company, since I agree that the discipline ensured by processes and procedures is necessary to sustain a corporate giant. In a startup, it is easy to think and ponder over ideas from a few of the 100 employees while in a multinational, it is impossible to listen to even a fraction of the tens of thousands of employees! All I am saying is that, I had stopped thinking about big ideas, but when I met my old buddies, even the casual conversation resurrected the old free thinking spirit! And I am glad that happened - a refreshed outlook was badly needed by this battered soul!

P.S. No disrespect to any kind of company here - this post just discusses one (well known) advantage of a startup over an MNC. I have learnt through my varied experiences at each of these two types of companies and gained different things at each place.