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Why I left Google (HN search results)

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Re: Why I left Google (HN search results)

#81
post #53
post #6

Tldr politics, glass ceilings, re-orgs, purposeless/abandoned projects. As a former Googler, I can see why people post these: internally Google is hyper-evangelized as the best place to work ever (why would you work anywhere else). When leaving, its a necessary step to form a good argument for yourself as to why you've decided to go against the culture. The personal spin makes it an interesting read.

I always find the "best places to work" type lists a lot of crap. Usually its just a case of biggest and best known companies. I have worked for a real mix of places and the biggest companies haven't been any better than the smaller ones. Usually a good manager makes a far bigger difference.

I don't know the exact dynamics of how those Best Places to Work lists are compiled but I always got the feeling they were a form of vanity publishing used to keep local business journals and newspapers afloat.

Funny story: after a couple years at last big corp I worked for, I guess there was a decision made to join the ranks of the area's Best Places to Work. So memos were circulated, surveys were sent out and lo and behold, a year later the announcement was made: we had made the list of Best Places to Work, Large Company category. There was even a company-wide ceremony with a big cake to celebrate the feat.

So a few weeks later, I come across the actual dead-tree journal touting that year's Best Places to Work laying around in our breakroom. I open it up to find out where we actually ranked. Out of 44 companies in our category, #44.

We improved over the next couple years. Banners appeared around campus celebrating our achievement. The cakes got bigger. Things got worse for me personally at the company.

As you can probably guess, the impression I and others got was that the ranking was actually more important than actual employee sentiment. And I got the distinct sense that HR was motivated even moreso than previously for the sake of their Best Places ranking to push out employees that were critical (even legitimately, perhaps especially legitimately) of the way the company operated than deal constructively with their concerns.

Re: Why I left Google (HN search results)

#82
post #6

Tldr politics, glass ceilings, re-orgs, purposeless/abandoned projects. As a former Googler, I can see why people post these: internally Google is hyper-evangelized as the best place to work ever (why would you work anywhere else). When leaving, its a necessary step to form a good argument for yourself as to why you've decided to go against the culture. The personal spin makes it an interesting read.

e.g. turned 30, realized life was going outside Google's walls and the perks weren't that cool anymore. I remember when I was in my 20s and a foosball table and some worthless stock options were chic. It's all bullshit, the sooner you realize it, the better off you will be in life.

Re: Why I left Google (HN search results)

#84
post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you have to evangelize about how awesome it is to work there, that sounds like a cult and not culture. It also sounds like Microsoft in the 90’s, when they were stepping on necks and didn’t give a shit about anybody else. Because they were better than everybody else and why should you worry about inferior people? Although in MS’s case they took it a step further: we are the best people in the world.

How is that Microsoft "best people in the world" any different from what Google projects to the world?

Maybe not enough to matter.

But MS was known to use a lot of ugly PR tactics to weaken and purchase or obliterate competition. Google may or may not be doing the same thing but they don’t have a reputation of being cold blooded about it.

Re: Why I left Google (HN search results)

#85
post #6

Tldr politics, glass ceilings, re-orgs, purposeless/abandoned projects. As a former Googler, I can see why people post these: internally Google is hyper-evangelized as the best place to work ever (why would you work anywhere else). When leaving, its a necessary step to form a good argument for yourself as to why you've decided to go against the culture. The personal spin makes it an interesting read.

This hearkens very closely to how it is/was working for a provincial government (in Canada). It's stifling.

Re: Why I left Google (HN search results)

#86
post #67
post #54

On a somewhat related note, I have found Algolia to be an effective way to search for popular stories that got flagged. Once or twice a day I go to hn.algolia.com and view popular stories for the last 24 hours. This is also an effective way to review popular stories for the last day, whether they got flagged or not. Since Algolia is using a much simpler ranking than the Hacker News front page, you get a much more sta…

I've been using http://hckrnews.com/ for the last few months. It surprises me how many interesting stories get flagged off the front page. Edit: beaten by softawre

  beaten by softawre
That's going on my tombstone...

Re: Why I left Google (HN search results)

#87
post #16

It's not about leaving google. It's about algolia stupid.

I'm quite happy with algolia. Can you elaborate more?

No, nothing against it. It's my first time with Algolia and I am mightily impressed.

Just blurted out some nonsense seeing the crowd go the other way. Apparently, it has been covered on hacker news many times before already.

Re: Why I left Google (HN search results)

#88

There was a tool at Google called 'percent' that you could run that would tell you what percent of the employees had joined Google after you (some measure of gravitas was associated with people who had been there 'a long time'). It was not surprising that Google hired a lot of people, there were like 50 people in my 'noogler' class. But the number of people reported as working at Google did not go up at a similar rat…

At Amazon it was called the "old fart tool".

Re: Why I left Google (HN search results)

#89
post #6

Tldr politics, glass ceilings, re-orgs, purposeless/abandoned projects. As a former Googler, I can see why people post these: internally Google is hyper-evangelized as the best place to work ever (why would you work anywhere else). When leaving, its a necessary step to form a good argument for yourself as to why you've decided to go against the culture. The personal spin makes it an interesting read.

Yes, one needs a reason for leaving a company. But at the same time, one leaves a company or a religion or a relationship for a reason . The argument and reasoning necessitate the departure; they're not developed post hoc. Of course, additional supporting reasons become clear as one looks for and finds the door, and the understanding for why a person or institution is wrong for you evolves as you separate. I'd be int…

Everyone deals with crap at their workplace. Bad processes, unresponsive third-party dependencies, politics, etc. That happens everywhere, and anyone saying otherwise is either unaware or lying.

Eventually, there's a event that is enough standard deviations larger than the typical crap that the person just breaks. The veil of happiness is irrevocably pierced. And when that happens, all the other crap that they've been putting up with kind of comes crashing down. This is your "additional supporting reasons": they really existed the whole time, but they were at least tolerable before the veil was broken.

In my experience, it's rare that it's more like a dam that eventually breaks under pressure. There's usually that one event that finally breaks the person's will to continue. But then all the stuff that was being held back behind the dam is loosed and there's no coming back from that.

Re: Why I left Google (HN search results)

#90
post #49
post #6

Tldr politics, glass ceilings, re-orgs, purposeless/abandoned projects. As a former Googler, I can see why people post these: internally Google is hyper-evangelized as the best place to work ever (why would you work anywhere else). When leaving, its a necessary step to form a good argument for yourself as to why you've decided to go against the culture. The personal spin makes it an interesting read.

If you have to evangelize about how awesome it is to work there, that sounds like a cult and not culture. It also sounds like Microsoft in the 90’s, when they were stepping on necks and didn’t give a shit about anybody else. Because they were better than everybody else and why should you worry about inferior people? Although in MS’s case they took it a step further: we are the best people in the world.

That sounds a lot like Amazon today
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