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

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

#891

Post by svincel » Mon, Jan 06, 2020, 10:51 PM UTC

NeverFade wrote: post #429

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…

> It's true the male/female ratios are worse The fact that there are way more men than women in the Bay is a statistical reality, which you admit yourself. Then you bring an opinion blog-post by a single woman as counter-evidence. Ironically, all these complaints about "guys there that have a disgusting sense of entitlement" just go to show how picky she is, and can afford to be, in San Francisco. Nothing in GP's pos…

I'm shocked at the responses to this comment. It is delusional to claim that if all men collectively work harder, they can succeed in one of the most male skewed metros in the United States. This isn't some oil field in North Dakota either, most of the surplus men here are high earning and well educated.

There is a lot of data showing that even with a balanced gender ratio, women are much more selective picking partners than men are. This is for obvious evolutionary reasons. Now, take that and add in a 50% male surplus, and you have a city where most women openly say they only date 6/6'1+ and high earners. This can be verified on practically any dating app with a few hours of data.

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

#892

Post by iso1210 » Mon, Jan 06, 2020, 10:53 PM UTC

jbms wrote: post #810

iso1210 wrote: post #707

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In the UK, someone on £80k ($105k) will pay £25k ($33k) in tax. That includes healthcare In the US, someone on that amount in Denver will pay $29k in tax. That's not an extraordinary difference, even before you factor in health care costs.

It's an extraordinary difference when you look at what proportion of engineers (outside of London/Finance) earn £80k in the UK vs $105k in Denver.

That isn't a tax thing though - payroll/income taxes are roughly the same.

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

#893

Post by xyzzyz » Mon, Jan 06, 2020, 10:56 PM UTC

ptr wrote: post #824

badpun wrote: post #649

Earlier quoted context omitted.

$80k a year in the US (assuming you live outside of a few of very high cost of living locations) will easily net you a new BMW every three years, esp. given that they're much cheaper than in Sweden.

What’s your source on BMW prices? Afaik, cars are about the same price in Sweden and the US. https://www.numbeo.com/cost-of-living/compare_cities.jsp?cou... Check the VW Golf comparison. I also did a quick search for a BMW i8, the price in Sweden was ~10x in SEK than the price in USD (1 USD = 9.41 SEK), and I don’t know whether taxes were included in the US price, probably not.

In the US, the MSRP for new VW Golf is around $22k, so you can probably get one for $20k or less if you shop around the dealerships. On top of that $20k, you'll pay sales tax, which is 10% in most expensive places, and usually something like 6-8%.

When comparing BMW prices, don't look at some weird cars that nobody buys like i8, look at popular BMWs. For example, 2020 BMW X5 here costs something around $70k, depending on the features.

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

#894

Post by jaynetics » Mon, Jan 06, 2020, 10:57 PM UTC

wazoox wrote: post #776

jaynetics wrote: post #664

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You mention 40/80k per year being pitiful? This kind of remuneration puts you in the top 10%/5% of France population easily. These numbers are surely off. Must be more like 40%/10%. And I'd bet that a double-digit percentage of devs earn less than 40k and only very few earn 80k. Factor in that this is a job that is concentrated in big cities with a high cost of living, and these numbers don't look that great.

Average net salary in France hovers at 2300€/month, median net salary is ~1800€/month. At ~3200€/month you're straight in the high 10% from official statistics.

Anything I found suggested slightly higher values, but maybe official stats can only be found by googling in French?

Either way, I think all the GPs were talking about gross values. So if 1800 net is, say, 2800 gross, that is 35k/yr. In that case 40k is fairly close to the median and probably not in the top 25%.

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

#895

Post by uwuhn » Mon, Jan 06, 2020, 10:57 PM UTC

svincel wrote: post #889

uwuhn wrote: post #860

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Being tall is a huge advantage. Over 6' is tall in the Bay. So is being white. Don't sell yourself short.

The parent commenter doesn't realize just how large of an advantage this is. There's lots of empirical evidence demonstrating that height is one of the strongest preferences women have for men. I have personally made fake dating profiles with the same pictures/bio, but different heights here in the Bay Area. The 5'6 profile did not get a single like in a week. The 6'4 profile had inbound interest from a wide variety…

Right. I don't know why pointing this out without whining or complaining about it seems to make people upset. I'm not tall or white, so it's not like I'm bragging. I'm also not trying to use it as an excuse, or to bring others down for having to try less. It just is what it is.

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

#896

Post by m0zg » Mon, Jan 06, 2020, 11:09 PM UTC

kungtotte wrote: post #729

m0zg wrote: post #682

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you able to buy real estate in a decent location? Because if you can't, you're not "high middle class". Housing is not a luxury.

Yes, we are able to buy real estate in a decent location. We live not far outside Stockholm where prices are really high compared to the rest of the country, and we had no problems buying our house. My salary is ~twice the median income for this area, and by any measure we're at the upper end of middle class by Swedish standards.

On 42K/yr pre (crazy) tax? Tell me more about how that works.

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

#897

Post by Zenbit_UX » Mon, Jan 06, 2020, 11:21 PM UTC

krageon wrote: post #709

Zenbit_UX wrote: post #525

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Of all the women I know, not one of them aspires to be "a millionaire's wife".

To contrast this, I think at least a quarter of the ones I know have this as an ambition. Knowing people that do want something or that do not has nothing to do with averages, unless you happen to know everyone :)

I guess I know better / more ambitious women than you. :)

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

#898

Post by ChrisMarshallNY » Mon, Jan 06, 2020, 11:32 PM UTC

walshemj wrote: post #726

ChrisMarshallNY wrote: post #694

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So, just to be clear, if you are working for any corporation, in any job, the corporation has full rights to all your work, and all your ideas, by law? This explains why Germans always seemed so surprised when I mentioned my extracurricular work to them. Must make moonlighting difficult. Also, I’m almost positive that the reason my company did not have the clause, was because they hired many high-level creative folks…

Its Related works eg if you are a semi pro musician your employer has no claim on any songs you write.

In the case of my company, their side-businesses were often the reason they were hired.

It was a photographic equipment company, and we had some really good photographers all over the place.

One of our lens techs was a well-respected avian photographer, and our Marketing department was filled with top-notch photographers.

You couldn't spit without hitting a first-class artist. Even the administrators and accountants tended to be pretty awesome casual photographers.

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

#899

Post by taurath » Mon, Jan 06, 2020, 11:34 PM UTC

apohn wrote: post #772

joatmon-snoo wrote: post #306

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

It's amazing to me to learn that you can help other teams solve problems at Google. Every big company I've worked for (none of them FAANG), helping another team is a recipe for disaster. You will get your hand slapped, punished, blamed, and basically make your life much worse. Each team is super insulated and tries their best to hide behind their management chain because of this. It's great that you can feel bored an…

Those places are the ones who care primarily about tickets being closed, and you probably won't have much ability to be involved in the feature ideation process, and probably won't even have a real way to prototype things before they're all in JIRA.

My place right now is in the middle where much of the absolutely most useful work in the company is getting done because people behave autonomously, but the formal review process has had trouble recognizing that work as it can be difficult to put a number to it. Not knowing the 2nd and 3rd order effects means you can't say "I went over and cleared up this team's misconceptions and saved them a month of work" isn't something you can say because you have no way to know you saved them a month of work, so you just say "communicated and collaberated" which sounds suspiciously like you did nothing if the process hard numbers to avoid things like favoritism.

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

#900

Post by taurath » Mon, Jan 06, 2020, 11:39 PM UTC

docspace wrote: post #846

joatmon-snoo wrote: post #306

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Current Google-ish company person here, and this can be just as dangerous as it is beneficial. I was on this team, more than once, where I’m complacent and no one is asking for more from me... so I started helping. I thought I was moving towards leadership because I was identifying and solving the right problems for others. I felt successful. None of this work contributed to my career path, although it was developmen…

2 problems that can cause that, the first of which is by far more common:

1. You haven't developed the skillset to both track and evangelize your impact.

2. The company's review process doesn't properly value out-of-band contributions

I find that when I really look into it, #2 is actually rarely a problem if you are good at #1. As I've worked on getting better at #1 I've found I'm far more comfortable at work, it helps my career, and I still get to just do what my instincts tell me and what is best rather than shift that to what will look best.