Comment by m463
5 years ago
On the other hand, I've worked for companies that are in the press and sometimes the external viewpoint helps counteract the kool-aid.
I've also worked at companies where wikipedia has more accurate and detailed information than the internal wikis.
So maybe some of those insane people have - expertise and perspective.
Now not all. A lot of press is fawning. And nowadays, maybe due to algorithmic feedback, a lot of stuff is sort of fake controversial.
You make a good point and I do agree. Also at any bigger company, no one person's experience is completely representative. It depends on the person, manager, team, org, etc. There's no way any one person could know everything about a company.
But my comment wasn't really about cultural or org issues (which can be much more subjective); it was more about specific facts that are binary. I'll read people say something like "x company is rewriting everything in Go because Rails is slow" when it's not true at all.
One person is enough to change or make new facts about the company too.
That's interesting how an internal wiki could be less accurate than Wikipedia, how big were these discrepancies?
It kind of makes sense - wikipedia has rules about sourcing, and lots of eyes on it. Your company's internal wiki is internal documentation that is probably nobody's job to update and has pages in it last edited 10 years ago by people who have long since quit.
>On the other hand, I've worked for companies that are in the press and sometimes the external viewpoint helps counteract the kool-aid.
The idea that the drones in a company know more about the company than the public is laughable. Unless you have your own office you do not know what the company's goals actually are.