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What does it take to make Google work at scale?

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Re: What does it take to make Google work at scale?

#71

Post by cmrdporcupine »

vidarh wrote: post #64
MattCruikshank wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Every review I hear about working at Google makes me want to stay away" I loved working there. Sure, who your boss is has a huge impact on your happiness. I ended up with a boss I enjoyed working for. Does that review make you want to stay away, too?

What makes me want to stay away, apart from the ridiculous recruitment process, is the insane staff turnover. No amount of positive reviews will overcome that for me.

Staff turnover at the Google office I work in is very very low.

Re: What does it take to make Google work at scale?

#72

Post by cmrdporcupine »

tikhonj wrote: post #16
MattCruikshank wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Every review I hear about working at Google makes me want to stay away" I loved working there. Sure, who your boss is has a huge impact on your happiness. I ended up with a boss I enjoyed working for. Does that review make you want to stay away, too?

It does for me, at least. I'd absolutely hate having my job satisfaction determined so much by a manager and team that I was assigned . (Ideally I wouldn't want it impacting much at all , but truly flat companies are still hard to find, despite the rhetoric.) It works for some people, but it won't work for me.

Transferring within Google is easy. Yes, you would be expected to stay on your first project for a reasonable chunk of time, but transfers after that are not only possible but expected.

Re: What does it take to make Google work at scale?

#73

Post by ridiculous_fish »

cmrdporcupine wrote: post #72
tikhonj wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It does for me, at least. I'd absolutely hate having my job satisfaction determined so much by a manager and team that I was assigned . (Ideally I wouldn't want it impacting much at all , but truly flat companies are still hard to find, despite the rhetoric.) It works for some people, but it won't work for me.

Transferring within Google is easy. Yes, you would be expected to stay on your first project for a reasonable chunk of time, but transfers after that are not only possible but expected.

How do you reconcile that with your claim elsewhere that "staff turnover is very very low?"

I worked in the Mountain View office. Transferring is indeed easy, and people did transfer frequently. As a result turnover was high, and it was hard to build friendships, or gel as a team.

Re: What does it take to make Google work at scale?

#74

Post by bwillard »

selectodude wrote: post #53
lg wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

there's a chicago office, fwiw...

Google Chicago is almost all salespeople. Not much technology going on there.

It's true the sales people do out number us here in Chicago, but we do have O(100) engineers in the office. We are working on lots of cool stuff: Ads, Search, and Privacy to name a couple.

Re: What does it take to make Google work at scale?

#75

Post by cmrdporcupine »

ridiculous_fish wrote: post #73
cmrdporcupine wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Transferring within Google is easy. Yes, you would be expected to stay on your first project for a reasonable chunk of time, but transfers after that are not only possible but expected.

How do you reconcile that with your claim elsewhere that "staff turnover is very very low?" I worked in the Mountain View office. Transferring is indeed easy, and people did transfer frequently. As a result turnover was high, and it was hard to build friendships, or gel as a team.

I thought turnover in this context was the usual use of turnover as in, people leaving the company and new ones being hired.

Re: What does it take to make Google work at scale?

#76

Post by aiiane »

davis_m wrote: post #37
munificent wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Every review I hear about working at Google makes me want to stay away Google was Fortune Magazine's #1 best place to work for six years in a row. The reason you occasionally hear a story about how Google isn't perfect to work at is because those are news . In general, it's a fantastic workplace.

Reading it back, my comment was harsher than I intended, especially with the reference to Amazon, but most of my aversion to working at a place like Google is just the shear size as well as where most of the offices are located. I grew up in a tiny midwest town and I love it here. I would not enjoy living on either one of the coasts. Many of my classmates in college couldn't wait to get out of the midwest. I have fri…

I've worked with teams that are based in the Google office in Boulder, CO and visited them a few times - it's a nice office.

Re: What does it take to make Google work at scale?

#77

Post by aiiane »

ridiculous_fish wrote: post #73
cmrdporcupine wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Transferring within Google is easy. Yes, you would be expected to stay on your first project for a reasonable chunk of time, but transfers after that are not only possible but expected.

How do you reconcile that with your claim elsewhere that "staff turnover is very very low?" I worked in the Mountain View office. Transferring is indeed easy, and people did transfer frequently. As a result turnover was high, and it was hard to build friendships, or gel as a team.

Team turnover vs. company turnover. It's one thing to learn a new project, another to learn the entire ecosystem.

Re: What does it take to make Google work at scale?

#78

Post by ridiculous_fish »

cmrdporcupine wrote: post #75
ridiculous_fish wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How do you reconcile that with your claim elsewhere that "staff turnover is very very low?" I worked in the Mountain View office. Transferring is indeed easy, and people did transfer frequently. As a result turnover was high, and it was hard to build friendships, or gel as a team.

I thought turnover in this context was the usual use of turnover as in, people leaving the company and new ones being hired.

Ok. I'm not sure the distinction is that important when it comes to team camaraderie though.

Re: What does it take to make Google work at scale?

#79

Post by jjwiseman »

tikhonj wrote: post #16
MattCruikshank wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Every review I hear about working at Google makes me want to stay away" I loved working there. Sure, who your boss is has a huge impact on your happiness. I ended up with a boss I enjoyed working for. Does that review make you want to stay away, too?

It does for me, at least. I'd absolutely hate having my job satisfaction determined so much by a manager and team that I was assigned . (Ideally I wouldn't want it impacting much at all , but truly flat companies are still hard to find, despite the rhetoric.) It works for some people, but it won't work for me.

Two months after I was hired, I realized I hated my assigned project and talked to my manager. He talked to the site director, and passed back his response to me: "We don't care." Policy is to stay on your first team for 18 months. Exceptions to that are exceptions.
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