tldr: I interviewed at Google two years ago, I didn't get an offer so now I'm writing a blog post to explain that I didn't really want to work there anyway. Psych.
Why I Don’t Work At Google
51–60 of 76 posts
Re: Why I Don’t Work At Google
#52Completely rational and smart people can form an irrational group. Since you have a network of people, they could form such a group, that everyone's individual talents are cancelled out.
This is why, I don't believe in complete democracy at work. There has to be a clear leader, who is not afraid to make decisions, to see them through, also is accepted by others to make decisions (in most cases at least), and is someone, who finishes stuff.
Last week I read a great way to assemble such a group (at least it sounds like a good way to me). In the book '33 Strategies of War', there was a chapter on how George Marshall, an American military leader trained young proteges, and picked the ones, who were the most like him. After putting these young people to test, he gave them key roles and placed them in key positions. He, then encouraged them to also train their own subordinates.
Basically he 'cloned' himself, and then showed his 'clones', how to 'clone' themselves too. Thus he was able to create a new, more efficient group of leaders, without confronting leader with large egos.
Re: Why I Don’t Work At Google
#53Earlier quoted context omitted.
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…
I disagree on the less signal part of your comment. To me, it looks like more and more signal. Since search, we've seen maps, mail, reader, chrome, android, app engine, big table, google docs, wave, google voice, a google branded phone, google fibre to the home for those lucky enough, prediction api, charts, dns services, @font-face directory, google home page, and others many others. Sure, some of those have been bu…
Some? Only one or two things in that entire list originated at G.
Re: Why I Don’t Work At Google
#54First, it would mean a lot more to explain why you don't want to work somewhere if that company had actually offered you a job. Anyone can say that they don't want to work at Google, but it doesn't have much force if it could just be a sour grapes rationalization. It would at least be good to disclose whether or not you've talked to them about it. Pretending that isn't a problem, though -- where does the claim that G…
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Re: Why I Don’t Work At Google
#55Earlier quoted context omitted.
I don't work for MS, but I must admit I'm impressed with Bing. Is it better than Google? Maybe not, but it's still impressive. And they certainly seem to rev changes to it just as fast as Google is doing nowadays. We'll see how Office online plays out. And don't forget that MS Online Services has like 40million paying customers. They also do something called XBox Live and even Hotmail has gotten a little better over…
> I don't work for MS, but I must admit I'm impressed with Bing. That's not surprising, given the person running Bing is Qi Lu. There's a reason they brought in an outsider: they just couldn't afford to screw this attempt up. I've had the enormous privilege of working in his organization at Yahoo (I still have no idea how I was able to fool my interview panel into hiring me straight out of college and into that group…
So what do you look for when choosing those organizations? (And if possible how to do that, multiple interviews, experience period?)
Being in my second job right now my heuristics are: - Strong and clear team leadership - Fitness to value proposition, besides my work as a developer how well can I contribute to help improving the organization
Would love to hear from you how to be more selective.
Re: Why I Don’t Work At Google
#56As a counterpoint, I'd never work for Microsoft, not because they would make me use Windows, Outlook and Visual Studio, not because I'd have to end lines with semicolons. Neither it would be for a lack of smart people to work with - there are incredibly smart people there, several of them dear friends of mine.
I wouldn't because management has continously engaged in unethical (barely sub-criminal) behaviour I don't want to enable. I don't want my work to be used for that.
The passing mention to the antitrust investigation is telling.
Re: Why I Don’t Work At Google
#57This 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?…
And from what I hear, it's quite easy to move around teams at Google until you find one that suits you.
Just curious, was this a sarcastic remark?
Re: Why I Don’t Work At Google
#58This 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?…
I agree. It seems as if she's taking whatever she's experienced in Microsoft (which is one company) and applying that to any other company with multidisciplinary teams and a large bureaucratic layer. She should, at least, give working in Google a chance (maybe a couple years or so?) before writing something like this.
Your statement isn't really refuting her argument though. Sure, any sufficiently inexperienced individual might be wrong, but inexperience does not guarantee wrongness.
Re: Why I Don’t Work At Google
#59I 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.
Perhaps the more valuable takeaway from this piece is not whether Google or Microsoft have good hiring practices but how academic intelligence might be insufficient for success.
As someone who struggles to attain academic intelligence, I've focused on the other types. I've seen how that has held me back but equally I've seen how people stunning more bright than myself never reach their full potential and sometimes fail entirely.
Re: Why I Don’t Work At Google
#60Earlier quoted context omitted.
And from what I hear, it's quite easy to move around teams at Google until you find one that suits you.
Just curious, was this a sarcastic remark?
Nope - I've read before that to move teams at Google, all you need do is say so, and you can move to whichever other project you want to - no questions asked. Not sure how any of the less interesting projects get done, but that's just what I've heard.