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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?

#931

Post by 0x262d »

wpietri wrote: post #415
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 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…

The latent shallow male entitlement is gross. However, there is a valid point made that if all the single, unhappy men became cool and attractive, many would statistically still be out of luck. So my suggestion is that in addition to becoming interesting, learning about feminism, etc, they should also recognize the statistical disadvantage as the socioeconomic problem it is, and fight those broader socioeconomic conditions that are causing a massive number of career-obsessed dudes to be dropped into a handful of west coast cities. In the short term that could mean taking your nest egg and moving elsewhere. In the long term we should dismantle the system where a couple of companies collect massive, exploitative digital rents from the rest of the world, thereby necessitating the concentrated labor force within an inherently sexist and exploitative system (capitalism). I also recommend banding together to fight against tech companies' firing disproportionately non-male employees who protest against bad things they do. But that's just my two cents.

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

#932

Post by peteretep »

ahs1 wrote: post #483
peteretep wrote: post #403

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Move to South East Asia instead. Burgeoning tech scene, some incredible nature, dating is considerably easier, both with locals and other expats, health care is first-rate and a couple of orders of magnitude cheaper ... "a rural state" sounds like all the worst bits of living in the US.

>Move to South East Asia instead. No thanks, I prefer to live in a free country. >"a rural state" sounds like all the worst bits of living in the US. I don't have the level of contempt for my fellow Americans that you have

> I don't have the level of contempt for my fellow Americans that you have

I was going to ignore this as an obvious troll, but I'll take a stab at it. Rural Americans aren't the problem, America is the problem, but some of that is made up for by the cities.

Rural America has the same terrible public transit, the same grotesque healthcare problems, generally appalling internet and cellphone, the same incredible incarceration rate, the same terrible problem with opioids, the same terrifyingly divisive politics, the same endemic racial divide, the same problem with gun violence as the rest of the US, except that some of the cities have made some headway with these problems.

If y'all lost New York, LA and the Bay Area, GDP would fall by ~25%, and you'd be just another upper-middle-income country. America's greatness comes from the cities.

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

#933

Post by ptr »

cryptica wrote: post #307
ChuckNorris89 wrote: post #187

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This blows my mind that in the US one can make such insane money in tech while still being a slacker and retire early with a dream house bought and paid for while 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, no stock options, without any hope of early retirement or owning a decent home without a 30 year loan or financial…

I worked as a software developer for companies all over the world: Brisbane, Sydney, San Francisco (working remotely from Moscow), The Hague (Netherlands), London then Berlin. The markets are very different in each country. Moscow is the worst for developers but at least cost of living is low. I feel that Australia is similar to the US in terms of income but it's a less liquid market; low supply, low demand. But the…

For Stockholm, ~750 USD/day outside finance is common and easy to get. Baffles me that the rest of Europe seems so much lower, and even London.

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

#934

Post by JohnBooty »

redisman wrote: post #869
JohnBooty wrote: post #753

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've seen one "10x" developer in my career. The way he worked was basically to leave a massive wake of data corruption, technical debt and bugs that other people would spend months fixing. Amen. I've known one real "10x" developer in several decades. He was truly something of a savant. I also worked with another alleged 10x developer. He was quite good, but was also given the bulk of the greenfield work and left a ma…

I've also worked with only one truly "10x" developer and dozens of "10x through technical debt" ones. I've very often had to finalize the famous "last 20%" of their projects which is a fun place to be in. "I thought it was almost done?" There was one guy who worked extremely hard and extremely thoughtfully who was a master at low-level and high-level languages. Kind of a John Carmack type. But these people are like u…

     I've very often had to finalize the famous "last 20%" 
     of their projects which is a fun place to be in. 
     "I thought it was almost done?"
Yeah, and then management thinks you are a mere 0.1x or 1x or 0.01x or whatever because you're moving so much more slowly than the "10x" person.

In a fair world (or a fair workplace) I wouldn't mind doing that kind of work. Ideally, I'd say "I'm willing to do whatever it takes to ship good code! Hell, I'll mop the floors or go fetch sandwiches if that's what the team needs at that moment!"

But at this point, I really try to avoid it. Unless your manager is attentive and technically savvy enough to recognize the hell you're wading through, it's basically just career suicide. The 10x person gets farther and farther ahead of you. At the end of the month he's got 100 commits and has shipped 5 features and 9 fixes. Meanwhile, you've done some fraction of that.

When I have junior devs tackle a mess like that, I make sure to put extra effort into recognizing the difficult work they are doing in cleaning up somebody else's mess. I make no claims of being a good senior dev or a good manager or anything like that. But I try to do that one thing right at least.

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

#935

Post by user24 »

zellyn wrote: post #815

I was at Google for five years, and by the end of it, I'd reached a similar place as you. Alas, my leaving Google was precipitated by us deciding to move, not a well-thought or self-directed intentional impulse on my part. But it turned out to be the best thing ever. For some reason or other, I had the interview day of my life at Square, and got offered a position where they expected a lot from me. It has been wonder…

> just preparing for and attempting the interviews at [better companies]

This really rings true, I attempted and utterly failed an interview recently and was a real kick up the arse to improve myself - I'm no longer the hot shit I was 10 years ago.

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

#936

Post by YokoZar »

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…

Having spent 7 years working in the Ubuntu community and another 5 now at Google, it's striking to me how Google is internally similar to an open source project.

It's not uncommon to send patches to completely different teams because you need something to work a little bit differently. Or even just because you were there and noticed something fixable and are being a good citizen.

Some parts of the code are nearly abandoned and destaffed, but might still have some users wishing that weren't so. And some parts of the code are only used/improved by a very specific group of people.

Some of this is technology (the monorepo, lots of good infrastructure to base things off of), some of it is management (such as recognizing/rewarding contributions that have "wider impact"), some of it is culture (a lot of Googlers come from or still work in open source).

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

#937

Post by arbol »

brycesbeard wrote: post #609
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’ve been speaking with my girlfriends friends, about the paucity of eligible men in the SFBA. Most of them ask me to introduce them to a nice person. Looks aren’t as important, but having a decent job is. Maybe it’s the age, but I found simply being kind and knowing your target market (women who like kind guys, who are everywhere, and are often smoking hot) works. Late 30s is a good time to date. I had the same issu…

> Not all that attentive, about 50 lbs overweight, fwiw

That's one hell of a dating site opener.

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

#938

Post by marcus_holmes »

at-fates-hands wrote: post #823
marcus_holmes wrote: post #663

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was there. Now in my 50's with an amazing life. I'm grateful every day to my alcoholic, depressed 40-odd-year-old self who didn't kill himself. I could not have seen from there how happy I am now, and I could not have predicted the adventures I went (am going!) through to get here. Hang in there, buddy. Just keep breathing. It will change.

I had the same experience my first few years out of college. Had a long relationship end, started drinking, went through several jobs and within three years found myself alone, severely depressed and an alcoholic. I contemplated suicide frequently, but held out hope my life would change if I could just get to tomorrow. My life started feeling like the movie "Groundhog Day". Eventually things did change, and my 30's h…

Of course, the "just keep breathing, it will change" is just as true for the good times, too.

I try and remember every day to savour and make the most of this happiness, and be grateful for it.

Because it won't last. Nothing does.

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

#939

Post by badpun »

cryptica wrote: post #861
badpun wrote: post #658

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Regarding London, the 600+ GBP per day contracts are definitely not only for insiders. You probably didn't have the right experience in their eyes. Regarding finance specifically, the industry has its quirks so they like to get people who worked in finance before - otherwise, it can be a bit of a culture shock.

>> Regarding finance specifically, the industry has its quirks so they like to get people who worked in finance before I had almost 8 years of experience as a software developer at the time and I did have some experience in the finance sector (but a small startup). My resume looks pretty great, one of my open source projects is quite popular (over 5K stars on GitHub) yet I did not even get asked to an interview.

I haven't worked in finance startups, but big finance is extremely heavy on processes, bureaucracy and security (accomplished via processes and bureaucracy). That's why they like people who worked in big finance before and didn't quit soon after joining (as some do) - it proves that you can deal with this frustrating environment.

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

#940

Post by philosopher1234 »

glangdale wrote: post #872
philosopher1234 wrote: post #693

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why do you need to be “hot shit” in order to date? Why isn’t being able to provide for your SO emotionally/physically/financially sufficient? By your standards I’m not hot shit but my girlfriend loves me so I’m wondering why I should even care what you think?

It's weird you keep cropping up on this thread interpreting me saying "women are not going to flock to you just because you meet some basic criteria so it is foolish to start behaving that you are entitled to this" as "obviously, philosopher1234 cannot possibly have a girlfriend, q.e.d".

I claim that being kind, having a stable job, and capable of love is enough to find a woman with those same qualities. I think it’s weird that you keep running around this thread telling men they’re not good enough in such a vicious tone. It comes across as bitter
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