Growth of the company is your growth
It may be common among engineers to hear that the company is growing too fast. You may be familiar with such opinions. “All the leaders are talking about, is growth”. “It is not the same old company as it was before”. Due to growth, “we will become a massive corporation that nobody wants to be”. How should you think about growth as an engineer?
The truth is that growth changes companies and everyone should accept that. One day you will come to the office and find out that there are more people you don’t know than people you know. It means that the processes that were previously excellent, maybe even designed by you, are becoming unbearable. It means that your ideas - which you used to come up in the morning, discussed in the afternoon and implemented in the evening - will be discussed for days or weeks and may eventually just be killed due to other priorities. And most of all, it means that very often there is much more job to be done than people available.
Growth sounds like a very bad thing. Like a cold shower that puts you out of the comfort zone and where the only one who benefits is the cofounder with his or her huge stake in the company. Are you, as an engineer, a loser in this game?
Growth also means that a lot of opportunities will appear. There will be hard scaling problems to solve. There will be a place for dedicated security teams with big requirements about your users data. There will be more money around, which means better equipment and high-end tools. Most of the processes will need to be redesigned which is a great place for creative people. There will be a need for experienced executives that will apply for the job and guide you with these problems. Your skills will become much more valuable. You will be able to build your career in the same company without waiting for the current person on your dream position to leave the job. Most of all, it is always easier to learn from more experienced people when there is plenty of them to choose from - and it’s much easier in bigger companies.
Growing is a journey out of the comfort zone. That’s true. But the growth of the company is your growth.
