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0 pointstoomuchtodo3y ago0 comments

Internal fiefdoms could be a component.

Let's Encrypt has a staff of 16. I'm not unsympathetic to sales, marketing, DevRel, etc (ongoing BAU and solid growth are both crucial to an established enterprise) but a gap of low teens to 7000 people for using emails to proof identity and store documents for retention periods? Come onnnnnnn.

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8 comments · 3 top-level

missedthecue3y ago· 3 in thread

An internal fiefdom is something you expect at IBM. Lunacy if DocuSign is allowing that to happen.

lumost3y ago

Why is IBM special in this regard? Fiefdoms appear in any organization larger than a few dozen people.

missedthecue3y ago

IBM is a place where people go and rot in a cubicle for 40 years and then retire. Fiefdoms are a natural consequences. Companies like DocuSign have turnover and growth such that it becomes somewhat more difficult to build fiefdoms.

no_wizard3y ago

They're everywhere at most companies, sometimes in non obvious ways.

For instance, marketing sometimes has its own developer / engineering teams, rather than running their work through the engineering org. Thats an example.

djohnston3y ago· 2 in thread

It's truly insane how much the success of leadership is measured by the size of recursive reports. It's as asinine as the "use it or lose it" budgeting strategy.

spaceman_20203y ago

If one of the criteria for your success as a manager is “managed a team of size X”, it stands to reason that you would want to increase that X as much as possible.

djohnston3y ago

Yep, the existence of the incentive is undeniable, the question is why is this an incentive when it leads to cancerous growth within organisations, and is generally detached from any specific business outcome.

lrem3y ago

Taking into account what Docusign are doing, they probably need legal in retainer for every single of the 180 countries they sell to. How many languages do they need to support in the software? And don't forget sales. Stuff adds add quickly. Then, remember, productivity is sub-linear with headcount.

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