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That must be the most depressing thing I read in quite a while.
Every company will have its flaws. Google has over 20000 staff now so there's always going to be some politicking required if you want to get ahead. It's still probably a lot better than other companies that size.
That must be the most depressing thing I read in quite a while.
Agreed... it's supposedly one of the few remaining companies that actually respect engineers, but this post pretty much comes out and says otherwise in bold, flashing letters. "(Exception: War-room firefighting. Google loves those, and loves heroic performances from people in war-rooms)" The whole "war room" concept in IT has always bothered me -- it's what managers do when they have a crisis that they don't know how…
No you're not tigers. You're a bunch of middle-aged middle-managers in a medium sized IT organization. No-one thinks you look like a helicopter pilot with your stupid Bluetooth headset. Grow the fuck up!
And said crisis is something that was probably caused by their poor decision making in the first place. Umm hello McFly, cutting 50% of the features to save 5% of the budget is not a bargain...
Keep in mind that management wants things that are good for Google. You care about what's good for you
This isn't true either. A manager wants what's good for his or her career 10x more than an engineer does. As I have said before, the only people who become managers are those who want to, which implies they want it more than doing engineering. If they convince you it's "for the good of the company" well that's just a tactic to get you to put their interest ahead of your own.
Not that companies don't need management. But don't get starry-eyed about it.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Google's attitude toward perpetual betas extends to perpetual war rooms. Almost every feature that you'd recognize from the last three years was developed in a war room. The visual redesign was a war room (well, war cubicle). Real-time search was a war room. The search options panel was a war room. SearchWiki was a war room. The bar across the top was a war room. Pac Man wasn't a war room, but almost all the folks in…
What's a war room? Google, ironically, was of no help.
http://www.google.com/search?q=war+room+software+development
From the Joel-on-Software thread:
That must be the most depressing thing I read in quite a while.
Agreed... it's supposedly one of the few remaining companies that actually respect engineers, but this post pretty much comes out and says otherwise in bold, flashing letters. "(Exception: War-room firefighting. Google loves those, and loves heroic performances from people in war-rooms)" The whole "war room" concept in IT has always bothered me -- it's what managers do when they have a crisis that they don't know how…
Some points here:
The key point that starts off #1 is more or less a side effect of any company where you hire folks who have a need for stability in their life. The unpredictability that he refers to is little different than how startups need to pivot. The only difference is that at a big company, it's management's job to hide that from the masses, and there's a limit to how well that can be handled.
Now as startup folks, you may find this abhorrent, or as big-company peons, you may still find this abhorrent, but all the organizations I've seen, from 200-man high school volunteer clubs all the way up to multi-billion dollar corporations, all of them have to deal with this. It's just that a tiny startup where people feel like they're on the same boat and have the emotional fortitude to handle it, then it may be better to be direct and honest.
The no-interviews bit is mildly troubling, but every engineer who's thought about company culture has probably come to this question eventually: if it's not to one's own benefit to interview engineers, then doesn't it seem likely that interviews would devolve into intellectual hazing sessions?
Points #3 and #4 are typical at any company larger than about one or two hundred. My hypothesis is that once you have more than 3 layers of management, the folks at the top who've been there and know what they're doing can't help your direct manager when he needs it. And again, as I see it, this is little different from how startup folks have to go through the process of finding the right company, the right founding team, and so on. People want to go to a big company and think that it will suddenly all be magical but of course there is no shortcut for the biggest challenges in life.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yes. The advice was given to help people move up the ladder, grab the brass ring, and get the big payout. If you want quality of life, that advice is not for you. Then again, if you want quality of life, and money is not that important, I think that a good startup is hard to beat.
If your goal is to get the big payout, what the hell are you working at Google for? Most of the people that got the big payout from Google joined...right around when you did, or a few years before. Your odds of becoming an executive at Google are far lower than they are at succeeding with your own startup and getting bought out for big sums. If you want a big payout, you're much better off working for Google for a co…
For instance, getting the big Android founder's award probably beat being the 10th employee at Aardvark.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Piaw quit Google, and so is biased by that, Having an opinion resulting from direct experience with the matter under discussion is not bias.
Not bias, but rather a prior. If you know someone quit Google, finding out they disliked a lot of things about Google doesn't give you much more information.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Agreed... it's supposedly one of the few remaining companies that actually respect engineers, but this post pretty much comes out and says otherwise in bold, flashing letters. "(Exception: War-room firefighting. Google loves those, and loves heroic performances from people in war-rooms)" The whole "war room" concept in IT has always bothered me -- it's what managers do when they have a crisis that they don't know how…
It doesn't seem that the post paints Google as being disrespectful to engineers. If it is unfriendly to engineers, then it is unfriendly to everyone. Some points here: The key point that starts off #1 is more or less a side effect of any company where you hire folks who have a need for stability in their life. The unpredictability that he refers to is little different than how startups need to pivot. The only differe…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Piaw quit Google, and so is biased by that, Having an opinion resulting from direct experience with the matter under discussion is not bias.
Not bias, but rather a prior. If you know someone quit Google, finding out they disliked a lot of things about Google doesn't give you much more information.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Google's attitude toward perpetual betas extends to perpetual war rooms. Almost every feature that you'd recognize from the last three years was developed in a war room. The visual redesign was a war room (well, war cubicle). Real-time search was a war room. The search options panel was a war room. SearchWiki was a war room. The bar across the top was a war room. Pac Man wasn't a war room, but almost all the folks in…
What's a war room? Google, ironically, was of no help.
It raises the question: if this works, why not do it all the time?
I momentarily misread "Noogler" as "Nuclear". Alas. I had hoped for another nuclear engineer HN reader.