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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?

#941

Post by mkohlmyr »

Galanwe wrote: post #739
mkohlmyr wrote: post #684

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know anyone who calls take-home (net) pay gross salary in Europe. I have lived and worked in multiple countries. And the actual gross is definitely displayed on the payslips.

> I don't know anyone who calls take-home (net) pay gross salary in Europe. I have lived and worked in multiple countries. That is not what I am saying... There are basically 3 stages of income in Europe: employer gross -> employee gross -> employee net. Most Europeans refer to employee gross as simply “gross”. There are still the employee contribution part to be deducted before the net, but the whole employer contri…

Yeah fair enough then, that's true - misunderstood your comment.

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

#942

Post by ZuckMuckerberg »

aynyc wrote: post #830
ZuckMuckerberg wrote: post #688

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Datapoint: I'm currently making £145K a year in the British office of a FAANG company as an E4 engineer 2½ years after graduating college. I'm able to work 10–18 most days, but I do have to have some results eventually. I know of people in this office who got dismissed for not having good enough impact.

10-18 hours a week or 10AM - 6PM work schedule?

10am–6pm work schedule. That's ~7 hours of work with ~1 hour of lunch.

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

#943

Post by glangdale »

philosopher1234 wrote: post #940
glangdale wrote: post #872

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

OK, once more: at no point did I ever suggest that people can't find love if they don't have much more than table stakes things like "clean fingernails" and "stable jobs" and "capability for love", only that they should not feel entitled to attention from the appropriate gender.

I'm curious as to what's driving your serial misinterpretation, if anything. I suppose it's possible you're just having difficulty with parsing out arguments and reasoning about them (is English your first language?), but it seems just as likely you're on the insecure side. You keep cropping up and asking complete strangers on the Internet to validate your relationship.

So, ok. Dude, you're probably fine. Although it's not a guarantee; there's still a possibility that your girlfriend runs off with Mick Jagger, or a rock-climber who works in a cafe who has $18.23 in his bank account, or a temperamental chess player with a huge schlong who bathes once a month, whether he needs to or not. Keep your eyes peeled at all times!

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

#944

Post by 2rsf »

m0zg wrote: post #359
snak wrote: post #350

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While I agree with you on some points, the cost of life in European countries is not the same as USA.

The taxes are also much higher in Europe, especially on those compliant "upper middle class" techies we're talking about here. For anyone with basic understanding of arithmetics it's not even a question that EU techies are woefully underpaid, which is why all the good ones work in the US or for EU subsidiaries of US companies which actually respect the engineers.

> arithmetics

true, but you should calculate everything- highly subsidized education, public transportation and medical, generous grants for students, more vacation days, long parental leave etc.

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

#945

Post by henryaj »

cantrevealname wrote: post #358
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…

> 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…

This is the basic premise of Dateonomics [https://www.amazon.com/Date-onomics-Dating-Became-Lopsided-N...] - the author looks at dating through the lens of gender ratios of college-educated people in different cities.

Outside of SF though, the situation is likely reversed - many more women than men are graduating college, and people tend to want to pair off with people of similar educational achievement.

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

#946

Post by CiPHPerCoder »

greenie_beans wrote: post #923
CiPHPerCoder wrote: post #551

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> They've ran a ton of brick and mortar bookstores out of business, which has effectively destroyed community centers. Can you really blame Amazon for destroying community centers because they put bookstores out of business? Bookstores aren't the only viable community center, after all. Most cities and counties have a public library that's supposed to exist for the community's benefit. Additionally, in rural parts of…

I guess it depends on the place, honestly. The best communities I've been a part of -- in my short existence -- revolved around bookstores. Maybe that's subjective, but I can also argue that Signal, WhatsApp, etc aren't the only viable community centers. Also, I'm from rural US, and those places do revolve around churches, but the pockets of enlightenment revolve around bookstores. IMO, a healthy community has a stro…

I never disputed the premise anyway. Just that the conclusion doesn't follow from it.

If communities die when bookstores die, sure, you can blame that on what killed the bookstore. But regardless of blame, whose responsibility is it to ensure communities continue? (This isn't the same thing as blame.)

My point isn't "bookstores are the wrong answer". My point is "bookstores aren't the only correct answer". Diversify.

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

#947

Post by MiroF »

thedaemon wrote: post #841
Bahamut wrote: post #217

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Slacking in Apple? From what I've seen, Apple engineers probably amongst the hardest of the FAANG - probably less so than Amazon if I had to guess, but I know my Google, FB, and Netflix friends do not work nearly as hard.

https://www.faang.org/ Acronyms really need to be phased out, as I highly doubt you mean Functional Annotation of Animal Genomes. I'm guessing it's the 2nd result? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Facebook,_Apple,_Amazon,_Netfl...

you must be new here

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

#948

Post by Bahamut »

JohnBooty wrote: post #749
Bahamut wrote: post #524

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are different ways of making teams more productive than doing just technical work. For my own anecdote, I often can fix a lot of bugs/feature requests that come by in I also spend the most time in meetings of any IC on my team - reducing how many ICs are in meetings frees up their time to learn and grow. I often float ideas to people for approaches to problems and designing apps/systems/features - I’ll also let…

I'm a believer in everything you just said! It takes a very healthy work environment (and attentive management) for this kind of work to be noticed and rewarded. Unfortunately it's not often the case. I have tried to take this approach many times and a lot of companies/managers absolutely do not value it. Broadly speaking, it only works if management is really involved in the day-to-day (more like hour to hour, reall…

I feel your pain there, definitely experienced it at most prior companies. Unfortunately good engineering management is uncommon in our industry :( .

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

#949

Post by MiroF »

HashThis wrote: post #153
throwaway_googl wrote: post #48

I have three friends at Google who are nice, smart people, but terrible employees. All three of them seem to be doing just fine in their Google careers. One is very smart, but he's been telling me literally for years that he has zero motivation, to the point where he sometimes won't actually start working until 6PM. He's moved around within Google trying to find something he's interested in, but it's just the same th…

I know companies that won't hire Google employees because of this reputation.

lmao

god damn this site can be ridiculous at times

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

#950

Post by MiroF »

yaitsyaboi wrote: post #571
HashThis wrote: post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I know companies that won't hire Google employees because of this reputation.

Is this serious? I replied to another person in the thread with a similar take. I agree that large tech companies are not the heavenly place that people depict them to be where everyone is a super genius, but I just don't find what you're saying to be consistent with my experience. I joined Amazon as a new grad and spent 3 years there. I went from a 0% callback rate on cold applications to like 60%. I've been at Goog…

People are extremely defensive about elite institutions like FAANG or the Ivies. Those are generally not the people making the hiring decisions, but they can be.
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