Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Ask HN: Is Google still a cool place to work?

news.ycombinator.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

61–70 of 129 posts

Re: Ask HN: Is Google still a cool place to work?

#61

Post by vagrant »

michaelochurch wrote: post #59
vagrant wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was hired at Google at nearly the same time as a certain famous ex-Googler. Both of us were given difficult intro jobs with legacy systems, the sort of projects that chew up engineers and spit them out. It's a chance to prove your mettle. One of us attacked the problem head on, taking on tasks that would normally be "below" us. In the end, the bad project taught him what he needed to know about Google engineering.…

That's radically inaccurate but I don't have the time to set you right.

Of course you don't. You are too busy writing the shiny new stuff.

Re: Ask HN: Is Google still a cool place to work?

#62

Post by [deleted] »

rachelbythebay wrote: post #58

Sigh. How do I answer this with new content? Let's try this: throw out anything you may have heard about the company prior to 2012. Don't believe any of the marketing. It's all changed, and I'll let you figure out whether that's a good thing or a bad thing. You need current assessments of what it's really like. Then you have to determine whether to believe them. Finding those assessments should not be particularly di…

[deleted]

Re: Ask HN: Is Google still a cool place to work?

#63

Post by offer_today »

michaelochurch wrote: post #18

Google's problem is that most of the work is shitty legacy maintenance. If you can get on one of their machine-learning or research projects and have a good manager, you'll have a fantastic experience (and I say this as a notorious Google detractor). Take the offer seriously but negotiate extremely hard on project allocation because it's really hard to transfer to a good project if you start in the wrong place, so yo…

I had seen your earlier comments and asked Googlers how hard they thought it was to change projects. They said they hadn't ever encountered another company that made it easier to change project than Google does, and wanted to know if you had encountered such a company.

Re: Ask HN: Is Google still a cool place to work?

#64

Post by rachelbythebay »

[deleted] wrote: post #62
rachelbythebay wrote: post #58

Sigh. How do I answer this with new content? Let's try this: throw out anything you may have heard about the company prior to 2012. Don't believe any of the marketing. It's all changed, and I'll let you figure out whether that's a good thing or a bad thing. You need current assessments of what it's really like. Then you have to determine whether to believe them. Finding those assessments should not be particularly di…

[deleted]

I went to lengths to not give an actual judgement here, and you come back at me personally. Awesome job.

Again, do not rely on that which was to judge that which is. Do your homework and don't assume things are the same.

Re: Ask HN: Is Google still a cool place to work?

#65

Post by mvgoogler »

outside1234 wrote: post #35
raldi wrote: post #17

It's a large enough place to have many microcultures. Geo (Maps, Earth) is totally different from, say Android. YouTube's culture is nothing like Search and GMail's. And so on. So after you join, go meet other teams and get to know the big picture. Then, you can seek a transfer to wherever you think you'd best fit in.

This is good advice, but be advised that you won't be able to transfer for 18 months.

In my experience the 18 months 'rule' is much more a guideline than a hard rule. I've personally seen a number of cases where someone transferred much sooner than that for a variety of reasons.

If you approach situations like this in a constructive and professional manner, the company will go to great lengths to find a solution. At least that's been my experience.

Re: Ask HN: Is Google still a cool place to work?

#66

Post by offer_today »

evmar wrote: post #45

(Eight years at Google here.) It's changed a lot over the years and has certainly disappointed me many times, which any xoogler can also tell you. But every time I've considered leaving I've been unable to imagine some other work that gives me the same combination of high freedom and good compensation. I've also seen the occasional person pull a michaelochurch. I've been lucky in that my random fun hacks have been se…

Thanks for your perspective. I should have mentioned this is a software engineering position.

Re: Ask HN: Is Google still a cool place to work?

#67

Post by mvgoogler »

DannyBee wrote: post #51
michaelochurch wrote: post #18

Google's problem is that most of the work is shitty legacy maintenance. If you can get on one of their machine-learning or research projects and have a good manager, you'll have a fantastic experience (and I say this as a notorious Google detractor). Take the offer seriously but negotiate extremely hard on project allocation because it's really hard to transfer to a good project if you start in the wrong place, so yo…

Every time I see you write, i get the picture of a drunk guy in a bar walking around saying "lemmme tell you about the time i worked for google" in slurred speech to anyone who will listen.

Damnit - you're comment made me snarf coffee all over my laptop. :-)

Re: Ask HN: Is Google still a cool place to work?

#68

Post by leh0n »

flatline3 wrote: post #41
encoderer wrote: post #29

I've never worked for Google, but here's some thoughts on your offer. These may all be obvious to you, but for the benefit of everybody.. 0. You have an opportunity of real power to shape your financial future in the small window between when an offer is made and when an offer is finalized. These negotiations commonly take a few days. In those days, your effective hourly rate for your strategizing and execution of th…

> 1. I hope you've taken everybody's boilerplate negotiating advice and not put yourself in a hard position over money. Did you tell them exactly what you're currently making? Or exactly what you want? If so, next time don't do that. Even if somebody tries to button you down, just finesse it a bit. "Dollar amount isn't the most important thing, yadda yadda" and ask them to give you the range they're considering to en…

How does sharing their previous salary benefit the prospective employee?

Re: Ask HN: Is Google still a cool place to work?

#69

Post by sxp »

outside1234 wrote: post #35
raldi wrote: post #17

It's a large enough place to have many microcultures. Geo (Maps, Earth) is totally different from, say Android. YouTube's culture is nothing like Search and GMail's. And so on. So after you join, go meet other teams and get to know the big picture. Then, you can seek a transfer to wherever you think you'd best fit in.

This is good advice, but be advised that you won't be able to transfer for 18 months.

I transferred after ~3 months because my original team wasn't a good fit for me. One of the topics that is mentioned during orientation is that Google is designed to be fault tolerant at multiple levels. If a server goes down, the workload needs to be able to move to a different server. If a Noogler is placed a team that isn't a good fit for their skillset, they need to be able to move to a different team. This happened to the person giving the orientation when he was first hired and it still happens today. Some people end up quitting because they can't adapt, while others successfully recover from the error.

Re: Ask HN: Is Google still a cool place to work?

#70

Post by DannyBee »

peacemaker wrote: post #48
outside1234 wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is good advice, but be advised that you won't be able to transfer for 18 months.

18 months? That's a problem if you have the bad fortune of being put on a project you don't enjoy. I've heard you have little to no say in the project you get assigned when you first join, is this true?

No, while this was once true, this is no longer true at all. You should know exactly what team you will be working on before you ever get an offer.
Post reply on HN