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Why I Don’t Work At Google

sarahmei.com

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Re: Why I Don’t Work At Google

#11

Post by ellyagg »

lanstein wrote: post #4

I'm waiting for the part where she explains why she doesn't work at Google.

I believe because the publicly available reports of their interview process don't seem to emphasize "getting stuff done" as much as she prefers, but instead emphasize other attributes. She believes that if it's not emphasized in the interview process, it's likely to be underemphasized in the organization as a whole. Since she believes that attribute to be more important than its proportion of apparent emphasis, the probability of being dissatisfied with her work environment is too high for her tastes. That's how I read it anyway.

Re: Why I Don’t Work At Google

#13

Post by [deleted] »

adityakothadiya wrote: post #3

I think the correct title would have been - "Why I won't work at Microsoft, again.". I don't think it's a valid argument against Google without having any data-points. I've seen many Startups also don't finish their features/products and throw away when they realize this is not the right thing to do. Overall, don't generalize too much. Experiences are different for different people at different places.

[deleted]

Re: Why I Don’t Work At Google

#14

Post by moultano »

antirez wrote: post #9
adityakothadiya wrote: post #3

I think the correct title would have been - "Why I won't work at Microsoft, again.". I don't think it's a valid argument against Google without having any data-points. I've seen many Startups also don't finish their features/products and throw away when they realize this is not the right thing to do. Overall, don't generalize too much. Experiences are different for different people at different places.

Right, but look at google's recent history: more and more people, and in some way, less and less signal generated. This is some truly unavoidable thing I guess, unless you do some radical stuff like splitting apart your company in different pieces, like anti trust itself would do? Also for me is truly disturbing the idea of being able to select people that will do great stuff just using an interview. You can just che…

Google's strategy for most of it's projects for the last few years has been to subtly improve them without anyone noticing. Typically a half-dozen changes a week to search alone: http://www.nytimes.com/2007/06/03/business/yourmoney/03googl...

Re: Why I Don’t Work At Google

#15

Post by nostrademons »

This seems to paint the world in overly broad brush strokes.

There are good teams, and there are bad teams, and there's bound to be a bunch of both in any organization. You have the same problem with startups: there are good ones and bad ones, and it's usually not possible to tell one from the other until you join them.

Why not just try, see what you get, and then you can transfer or quit if you end up on a bad team? Hell, it's a lot easier than joining a bad startup, where you have to get a whole different job to escape from it.

Re: Why I Don’t Work At Google

#17

Post by nostrademons »

Tichy wrote: post #7

Can't you ask questions about the team during the interview, to gauge whether they get things done or not?

Google hiring is done at a company level, so for most hires, you don't actually know what team you'll be working on during the interview. You are typically given some idea at offer time (I was told my manager's name, my manager's manager's name, and the department), and you can talk to people you might know at the company, but if you're remote or don't know many Googlers it can be tough to get more information.

It's also not unusual for teams to change shortly after you start - I switched managers in my second day there, and then what I ended up working on wasn't exactly what I was assigned to work on.

Re: Why I Don’t Work At Google

#20

Post by strlen »

adityakothadiya wrote: post #3

I think the correct title would have been - "Why I won't work at Microsoft, again.". I don't think it's a valid argument against Google without having any data-points. I've seen many Startups also don't finish their features/products and throw away when they realize this is not the right thing to do. Overall, don't generalize too much. Experiences are different for different people at different places.

Google and Microsoft both do a great job shipping certain kinds of products. The teams that work on these products have influence, autonomy and ability (without middle management or PM interference) to ship products.

For Microsoft it's Office tools, development tools and operating systems. We may not like those products, nor wish to work on those teams irrespective (I'm a UNIX hacker, there's no way I'd be happy at Microsoft, lest they bring back Xenix), but I'd imagine those teams are great to work on.

For Google, it's obviously search, infrastructure (incredible competitive advantage for them), advertising system and other things Internet or networking (including Android, Chrome etc...). It's not their office or enterprise offerings (Google docs are useful, but they're popular because they're only game in town so far).

I wouldn't join Microsoft to work on online services or join Google to work on desktop or enterprise products (with exception of Chromium). I would imagine I'd be sidelined by management or technical leadership who is just not used to that particular type of software (e.g., if you make shrink wrap office software you'd be hesitant to adopt methodologies that involve daily pushes of code or see the value of making services highly available and fault tolerant).

Of course, I am open to hear arguments to the contrary (do you work on online services at Microsoft and find that you're able to "get things done" without interference? Ditto for desktop software at Google).

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