Things I don't Miss

I spent the weekend down in Austin with some girlfriends catching up, running a half marathon, and eating our body weight in a combination of mexican food, ice cream, and pizza. All in all a good weekend!

As usually happens though, especially since we all met in business school, talk turned to how everyone is doing in their current work positions. While my friends have some pretty impressive work projects with some pretty impressive companies, at one point they did go off on the mind-numbing beaurocracy of their respective business environments that simply drives them nuts. For example, the fact that for any single project or question, an email is sent out to a complete email list and every single person on it feels the need to add something but no one can step up and make a hard and fast decision. This inevitably leads to long long long email chains that simply reiterate points with no one actually taking a stand. That's just one example of many.

And it's stuff like that which I certainly don't miss. Of course it helps that the dogs can't type which in turn curtails their emailing ability severely! But all that other beauocratic craziness that simply has everyone running to meetings and no one actually making a decision. It's what drove me absolutely nuts in my last corporate position and it's definitely something I don't miss now.

Of course an interesting question to ponder is, assuming the company grows, how does one create a culture that doesn't let itself be mired in such a deep level of ineffeciancy. I don't yet have an answer to that but it is something I think about as I inch ever closer to that first hire.