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Ask HN: I've been slacking off at Google for 6 years. How can I stop this?

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Re: Ask HN: I've been slacking off at Google for 6 years. How can I stop this?

#561

Post by philosopher1234 »

X6S1x6Okd1st wrote: post #512
glangdale wrote: post #494

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I like how a guy earning a fairly unremarkable-when-we-adjust-for-cost-of-living salary with a bunch of fairly unimpressive table-stakes credentials: "clean cut, well-spoken, hard working, respectful" (whaddaya want? a cookie?) is meant to be a Amazing Pussy Magnet. One of the major factors - aside from the gender ratio - behind tech guys not finding partners is this weird expectation that if they shave, clip their f…

Totally agree. Being interesting as a human and working on yourself is so much better than trying to get credit for being "respectful". That's like saying: "look I shower every day!" Be interesting.

What do you personally do to be interesting?

Re: Ask HN: I've been slacking off at Google for 6 years. How can I stop this?

#562

Post by dmoy »

joatmon-snoo wrote: post #306
md5wasp wrote: post #162

Hi there, I did the exact same thing as you (at Google Sydney), before eventually deciding that I must strike out into the wilderness. In the few years since I left; I worked as a solutions architect managing a team, a team lead, a remote dev, and now in a startup. Front-end, back-end, flip-side, all the ends. So I've been deliberately trying different angles of my career to see what suits. I'd describe this process…

Current Googler here; my solution to staving off complacency has been constantly asking myself if there are other problems I can and will work on - and they don't have to be problems on your team. (Although, I will say that at a certain point, if you're growing, I think your responsibilities should be shifting from solving problems to identifying/prioritizing the problems.) Every team has a looonnngggggg list of thin…

Big +1 to this

For a specific idea, come help kythe team build out a new indexer (say, rust or maybe swift).

Re: Ask HN: I've been slacking off at Google for 6 years. How can I stop this?

#563

Post by olalonde »

glangdale wrote: post #494
cantrevealname wrote: post #358

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> make the most of it by progressing deliberately in your social life Ironically the Bay Area is among the worst places on Earth for improving your social life if you're straight and male. I noticed that you don't live in the Bay Area, you're married, you probably meant a much broader meaning of "social life", so your experiences are likely very different. But the typical clean cut, well-spoken, hard working, respect…

I like how a guy earning a fairly unremarkable-when-we-adjust-for-cost-of-living salary with a bunch of fairly unimpressive table-stakes credentials: "clean cut, well-spoken, hard working, respectful" (whaddaya want? a cookie?) is meant to be a Amazing Pussy Magnet. One of the major factors - aside from the gender ratio - behind tech guys not finding partners is this weird expectation that if they shave, clip their f…

> I like how a guy earning a fairly unremarkable-when-we-adjust-for-cost-of-living salary with a bunch of fairly unimpressive table-stakes credentials: "clean cut, well-spoken, hard working, respectful" (whaddaya want? a cookie?) is meant to be a Amazing Pussy Magnet.

It's obviously not the case in the Bay Area, but it is in a lot of places. To be honest, I was a bit shocked with the kind of mismatched couples I saw in San Francisco. Lots of appealing men with less appealing women. Ratios do matter. Also, a SWE salary is not unremarkable in most of the country (look up salary statistics).

Re: Ask HN: I've been slacking off at Google for 6 years. How can I stop this?

#564

Post by mikeymz »

olalonde wrote: post #563
glangdale wrote: post #494

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I like how a guy earning a fairly unremarkable-when-we-adjust-for-cost-of-living salary with a bunch of fairly unimpressive table-stakes credentials: "clean cut, well-spoken, hard working, respectful" (whaddaya want? a cookie?) is meant to be a Amazing Pussy Magnet. One of the major factors - aside from the gender ratio - behind tech guys not finding partners is this weird expectation that if they shave, clip their f…

> I like how a guy earning a fairly unremarkable-when-we-adjust-for-cost-of-living salary with a bunch of fairly unimpressive table-stakes credentials: "clean cut, well-spoken, hard working, respectful" (whaddaya want? a cookie?) is meant to be a Amazing Pussy Magnet. It's obviously not the case in the Bay Area, but it is in a lot of places. To be honest, I was a bit shocked with the kind of mismatched couples I saw…

"so-so women"

Wtf dude.

Re: Ask HN: I've been slacking off at Google for 6 years. How can I stop this?

#565

Post by lostgame »

quartus wrote: post #486
wpietri wrote: post #415

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I guess I've only lived in the bay area 20 years, but this strikes me as quite dramatic. I know literally dozens of men in tech happily raising families in the Bay Area. It's true the male/female ratios are worse (although we should certainly adjust for the large gay male population). But when I talk to friends who are dating, it's the women who seem to be struggling to find anybody decent, not the men. Perhaps the p…

> (although we should certainly adjust for the large gay male population) Just curious, why wouldn't there be an equivalently large lesbian female population?

I dunno if we are just rare, or simply not as vocal or active about being out as gay males, on average - but firsthand I’ve seen a lot more gay guys than I’ve seen fellow lesbians. (Much to my dismay...)

Re: Ask HN: I've been slacking off at Google for 6 years. How can I stop this?

#566

Post by ithkuil »

BuckRogers wrote: post #549
username90 wrote: post #538

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Women find men with more money to be more attractive. It isn't the only factor, but it is a significant factor like for example height. > "A man can move himself two points higher on the attractiveness scale we used if his salary increases by a factor of 10," study author John Speakman told The Times. https://www.newshub.co.nz/home/world/2018/01/women-are-more-...

I found my wife when I was unemployed. I wouldn't have it any other way. As a result, I remind myself to never forget it, and be extra good as a husband. Relationships are hard enough, if you're using your income (I had none, was on unemployment), or inheritance (I have none) as a carrot, you're in for a rude awakening someday. Apologies to Red Green, but while I'm not wealthy, I'm just a run of the mill software dev…

attempts at explaining macro-scale socio-economics with the kind of game-theoretic arguments in this thread assume you can nudge one factor while keeping "all other things equal". It's hard to do this with perdonal anecdotes, yet that's what all of us have direct experience of.

Re: Ask HN: I've been slacking off at Google for 6 years. How can I stop this?

#567

Post by kungtotte »

m0zg wrote: post #343
Galanwe wrote: post #338

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> in Europe devs are slaving away through SCRUM powered meat grinders burning themselves out for a 3% salary increase on a pitiful 40-80k/year There is so much wrong in this sentence. First, there is no more “meat grinders” in the US than in Europe. I worked at Microsoft and Criteo in Europe, and the slacking there seems to be on par with what OP describes. You mention 40/80k per year being pitiful? This kind of remu…

>> You mention 40/80k per year being pitiful? This kind of remuneration puts you in the top 10%/5% of France population easily. That just means the rest of the population is poor, not that you should accept less. This is called a fallacy of relative privation. So what if you have to subsist on ramen and can't afford a place to live with less than an hour and a half of commute. Think of all those starving children in…

I make $42K in Sweden (not in IT), and it's comfortably high middle class. My wife doesn't even work full time and it's still enough for us to live comfortably within our means (own a house, two cars, one kid, etc.)

If I'd been making $60K my wife could stop working. At $80K she wouldn't have to work and we'd still be moving into "new BMW every three years" kind of money.

$80K goes a lot further in Europe than it does in the US.

Re: Ask HN: I've been slacking off at Google for 6 years. How can I stop this?

#568

Post by yaitsyaboi »

agitator wrote: post #228
goatherders wrote: post #50

You don't realize how good you have it: 1. you work for a company that is an excellent resume booster outside of the valley. I'm from central texas and most everyone I know in tech has worked at Dell and once complained how boring it was to work at Dell. The moment they decided to move away from Austin their Dell experience made them very hot commodities to non-Austin tech companies. Every day you stay at Google the…

I think this highlights the fundamental problem with hiring at many large companies. They think they are getting the best, but are they? They sure are overpaying for their employees. I think if OP isn't motivated enough to learn, excel, and build cool things on the side while he has a catered life at google, I don't think she/he will put in much effort elsewhere? That intrinsic motivation isn't there. And it honestly…

So much salt in here, geez.

I have issues with the leetcode hiring process. I think it is unfair to people with performance anxiety and that there is much more bias than people realize, in terms of the demographics of people making hiring decisions.

But I think this reverse circle jerk about FANG is so silly. Its super subjective, but having worked at a couple and having worked at a multitude of non-FANG organizations, it's hard to argue that people there are not pretty impressive. You could say this about any elite institution. Who is to say that Harvard is getting the best?

As far as the overpaying, FANG companies are not even the highest paying. And moreover, they pay a salary that is a function of a market and the value generated by employees. Are NBA players overpaid?

I'll probably get a little downvoted for being a bit defensive, but I really think the backlash is getting a bit out of hand. Yes, large tech companies are not the end all be all. Yes, you often wont work on the coolest thing. But compared to the work that 99.9% of people on the planet have to do every day, it's pretty spectacular.

Re: Ask HN: I've been slacking off at Google for 6 years. How can I stop this?

#569

Post by apatters »

glangdale wrote: post #494
cantrevealname wrote: post #358

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> make the most of it by progressing deliberately in your social life Ironically the Bay Area is among the worst places on Earth for improving your social life if you're straight and male. I noticed that you don't live in the Bay Area, you're married, you probably meant a much broader meaning of "social life", so your experiences are likely very different. But the typical clean cut, well-spoken, hard working, respect…

I like how a guy earning a fairly unremarkable-when-we-adjust-for-cost-of-living salary with a bunch of fairly unimpressive table-stakes credentials: "clean cut, well-spoken, hard working, respectful" (whaddaya want? a cookie?) is meant to be a Amazing Pussy Magnet. One of the major factors - aside from the gender ratio - behind tech guys not finding partners is this weird expectation that if they shave, clip their f…

I suspect most of them were told (by their mothers, continuously for the first 20 years of their lives) that this was in fact the way to land a good woman. Be a nice clean cut guy and earn $120K a year.

If you know so much then what's your prescription for them?

Re: Ask HN: I've been slacking off at Google for 6 years. How can I stop this?

#570

Post by clomond »

philosopher1234 wrote: post #561
X6S1x6Okd1st wrote: post #512

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Totally agree. Being interesting as a human and working on yourself is so much better than trying to get credit for being "respectful". That's like saying: "look I shower every day!" Be interesting.

What do you personally do to be interesting?

Become a multi-deminsional, multi-faceted person.

Starting with exploring genuine interests which have maybe not been 'listened to'. Being a bit adventurous (determine if things you've been curious about you actually care about), and trying new things (discover and identify new areas that exist) which could end up being interesting to you.

From what I've seen, the key to being interesting is weirdly being more of "your true self".

(not sure if any of that is actually helpful)

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