Some 20 years ago I started a job at Google in Mountain View, and they were paying for a rental car, so Enterprise sent a driver to pick me up to do the paperwork. On the way I was chatting with him, telling him how amazing life at Google was, all the restaurants and the stocked kitchens and massage rooms on every floor of every building etc etc. He said "Do you know what this campus used to be before Google?" I said "Yeah, they told us at the orientation, it was SGI." The driver said, "Yes, and ten years ago it was exactly like that at SGI, too. I was an engineer there."
In the UK we have a heuristic that by the time a tech giant builds a big UK campus (an imitation of their SV HQ) then you know they are in the decline phase. Some of them decline so fast they don’t even get to fully complete the campus, yet others seems to have beaten this curse… so far.
One of the best stories I have ever heard in here to be really honest. Sounds like a joke but its packed with subtle meaning of how companies rise and fall so quickly.
You have said that the driver worked because he had (enough money?) and he might have wanted to relax with the driving job but still, its an amazing story.
I think the key difference between the old big guns, SGI, IBM and the likes, and today's Google, Microsoft, Amazon, Meta and Apple is the diversification of income streams. Even if any one of these companies just completely fucks up an entire business line or it gets replaced by something better, it doesn't matter because the companies themselves are so utterly large they can and do survive that - or because they can, like Meta, just buy up whatever upstart is trying to dethrone them.
The question that arises is: How can you potentially spot which companies are about/likely to enter a 'golden era' when you interview there? What questions could surface some sort of likelihood? Is it possibly to identify them before they enter the 'golden era'?
It doesn't matter. Most jobs even at those companies were not in the interesting areas you heard about. For every one person at the cool jobs there were thousands elsewhere who had regular deadlines and a regular job. Odds are you wouldn't have had the cool job even if you were born in the right era.
Better advice: when interviewing ask questions when they ask if you have any! Find out what the job is really like.
Ask what hours they normally work - if they give exact times that means they are strict about the times. If they give a lot of hours that means you are expected to work a lot of hours. If they give a range that means they really have flexible times. If they talk about leaving early for their kids third grade events that means they support families.
Ask what they really wear - this is clue to what the dress code is like.
Ask about the perks you care about. I don't play ping-pong so won't mention that perk if I'm interviewing you, but if you ask I can tell you that there are regular tournaments and people do play games here and there, but the tables are empty in the middle of the afternoon: if you care about this perk ask, otherwise focus questions elsewhere.
There are a lot of great jobs. There are a lot of bad jobs. There are jobs that you would hate for reasons that the people who work there don't even care about. There are jobs you will think are great that others will hate.
I don't think it's really possible for the average employee. You'll just do an interview, like the vibes, and get unbelievably lucky.
By the time their golden age is known outside of the company they are very likely near the decline phase; even if they aren't you are going to be competing with the best now.
For actual upper level leadership: they have the ability to make the golden age happen but studying the circumstances that allowed it to happen at other companies and being very selective about employee number 2-49. After that it's out of your hands.
I worked for a 100-year-old Japanese optical equipment manufacturer (household name, but I don't like to mention it in postings). One of the top-Quality manufacturers in the world. I worked as a peer with some of the top engineers and scientists in modern optics (and often wanted to strangle them).
I worked there for almost 27 years.
The pay was mediocre. The structure and process would drive a lot of folks here, into fits.
But they consistently and routinely produced stuff that cost tens of thousands of dollars, and that people would stake their entire careers on. Stuff that some folks would assume was impossible to make. They have thousands and thousands of hard-core patents.
I felt pride for working there. My business card opened a lot of pretty amazing doors.
It's disappointing to see the stuff that folks here post, when I mention it. It almost seems as if people think I'm exaggerating or outright lying or boasting.
I'm not. There are places that foster greatness; simply by being a place that has a long culture of accomplishment. I was just someone that stood on the shoulders of giants, and I was lucky to have the experience.
That said, I think some of their managers made some big mistakes, and they took a drubbing, but I will bet that they are already getting back on their feet. They are really tough. They weathered being bombed in World War II, and multiple depressions and recessions.
You're getting answers in child responses that while accurate are not necessarily answering the spirit of your question. In my personal opinion, you'll find what you're looking for by searching for a high growth Series A - B startup (I would recommend Seed but that's almost a different animal in terms of risk) with a technical product and strong technical founders + eng leadership.
When you're at a company at that stage that's doing well and has a lot of commercial runway ahead of it, the reality can often end up being that the golden age will last long enough for a very pleasant 4-6 year tenure if you so decide to stay at the company through its growth phase (which often takes it from a 50m-100m valuation to $1B+). Some of these companies will also make the leap from $1B+ to $10B+ or beyond (which makes the golden era at least as long as 6-10 years) and although nothing lasts forever, it can last long enough for you to find what you're looking for at least for a decently long period of time. This pertains to what other commenters have mentioned with regards to "making it golden" -- the golden era is what it is because everyone needs to make it golden and the company is too small for anyone who would dilute that for their own gain to do so without anyone noticing.
The challenge to this approach is that it requires being able to assess a company's commercial prospects as well as the quality of the company's founders, leadership and early team well enough to assess whether the company merely looks like a golden era company or whether it is actually the real deal -- something which even professional investors who target these kinds of companies struggle with. It is possible, but in my experience, it definitely took a couple of rounds of trial and error and getting burned a few times before my radar worked.
Yeah, see also: Digital Equipment Corp until the mid 90s (where I did my co-op). Lots of brilliant people there, coasting on their legacy until they fell hopelessly behind from mismanagement and bloat. I was lucky to catch a glimpse of it at the end.
makeset|4 months ago
nickdothutton|4 months ago
adam_hn|4 months ago
Imustaskforhelp|4 months ago
You have said that the driver worked because he had (enough money?) and he might have wanted to relax with the driving job but still, its an amazing story.
mschuster91|4 months ago
CaptainOfCoit|4 months ago
The question that arises is: How can you potentially spot which companies are about/likely to enter a 'golden era' when you interview there? What questions could surface some sort of likelihood? Is it possibly to identify them before they enter the 'golden era'?
bluGill|4 months ago
Better advice: when interviewing ask questions when they ask if you have any! Find out what the job is really like.
Ask what hours they normally work - if they give exact times that means they are strict about the times. If they give a lot of hours that means you are expected to work a lot of hours. If they give a range that means they really have flexible times. If they talk about leaving early for their kids third grade events that means they support families.
Ask what they really wear - this is clue to what the dress code is like.
Ask about the perks you care about. I don't play ping-pong so won't mention that perk if I'm interviewing you, but if you ask I can tell you that there are regular tournaments and people do play games here and there, but the tables are empty in the middle of the afternoon: if you care about this perk ask, otherwise focus questions elsewhere.
There are a lot of great jobs. There are a lot of bad jobs. There are jobs that you would hate for reasons that the people who work there don't even care about. There are jobs you will think are great that others will hate.
Lord-Jobo|4 months ago
By the time their golden age is known outside of the company they are very likely near the decline phase; even if they aren't you are going to be competing with the best now.
For actual upper level leadership: they have the ability to make the golden age happen but studying the circumstances that allowed it to happen at other companies and being very selective about employee number 2-49. After that it's out of your hands.
ChrisMarshallNY|4 months ago
I worked there for almost 27 years.
The pay was mediocre. The structure and process would drive a lot of folks here, into fits.
But they consistently and routinely produced stuff that cost tens of thousands of dollars, and that people would stake their entire careers on. Stuff that some folks would assume was impossible to make. They have thousands and thousands of hard-core patents.
I felt pride for working there. My business card opened a lot of pretty amazing doors.
It's disappointing to see the stuff that folks here post, when I mention it. It almost seems as if people think I'm exaggerating or outright lying or boasting.
I'm not. There are places that foster greatness; simply by being a place that has a long culture of accomplishment. I was just someone that stood on the shoulders of giants, and I was lucky to have the experience.
That said, I think some of their managers made some big mistakes, and they took a drubbing, but I will bet that they are already getting back on their feet. They are really tough. They weathered being bombed in World War II, and multiple depressions and recessions.
yowlingcat|4 months ago
When you're at a company at that stage that's doing well and has a lot of commercial runway ahead of it, the reality can often end up being that the golden age will last long enough for a very pleasant 4-6 year tenure if you so decide to stay at the company through its growth phase (which often takes it from a 50m-100m valuation to $1B+). Some of these companies will also make the leap from $1B+ to $10B+ or beyond (which makes the golden era at least as long as 6-10 years) and although nothing lasts forever, it can last long enough for you to find what you're looking for at least for a decently long period of time. This pertains to what other commenters have mentioned with regards to "making it golden" -- the golden era is what it is because everyone needs to make it golden and the company is too small for anyone who would dilute that for their own gain to do so without anyone noticing.
The challenge to this approach is that it requires being able to assess a company's commercial prospects as well as the quality of the company's founders, leadership and early team well enough to assess whether the company merely looks like a golden era company or whether it is actually the real deal -- something which even professional investors who target these kinds of companies struggle with. It is possible, but in my experience, it definitely took a couple of rounds of trial and error and getting burned a few times before my radar worked.
devnullbrain|4 months ago
mosburger|4 months ago