Extreme compartmentalization prevents the main pain points of working in a large company, in my experience. The standard problems I see with development in large corporations are these:
2+ tiers of management make decision making slow. Large numbers of involved stakeholders encourage horrific design-by-committee. And middle management knowing what other middle managers are working on encourages petty infighting over who does what or who owns the superior product.
Extreme compartmentalization eliminates all 3 issues in one fell swoop.
Extreme compartmentalization basically makes each product like working in a startup again, but with the financial backing of a large corporation and a substantially lower chance of losing your job if your product gets killed. It seems like a win-win to me.
The secrecy aspect doesn't seem too bad to me, either: I could still pow-wow about technical issues pertaining to my product to those on my team, and I could still talk about my non-Apple projects off the job. My drive for self-promotion and e-fame isn't as strong as many coders I know, though - I don't get the urge to blog about every technical hurdle I jump. Maybe that's why I think this environment would be awesome while others don't.
2+ tiers of management make decision making slow. Large numbers of involved stakeholders encourage horrific design-by-committee. And middle management knowing what other middle managers are working on encourages petty infighting over who does what or who owns the superior product.
Extreme compartmentalization eliminates all 3 issues in one fell swoop.
Extreme compartmentalization basically makes each product like working in a startup again, but with the financial backing of a large corporation and a substantially lower chance of losing your job if your product gets killed. It seems like a win-win to me.
The secrecy aspect doesn't seem too bad to me, either: I could still pow-wow about technical issues pertaining to my product to those on my team, and I could still talk about my non-Apple projects off the job. My drive for self-promotion and e-fame isn't as strong as many coders I know, though - I don't get the urge to blog about every technical hurdle I jump. Maybe that's why I think this environment would be awesome while others don't.