Why I left Google (HN search results)

Post by jdmichal » Thu, Jan 25, 2018, 5:37 PM UTC

utellme wrote: post #24

y3sh wrote: 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 think such situation exists in almost all high-salary sectors. Financial - why I left Golman/Merrill Lynch/Wall Street stories, etc. People will try to explain everything from moral side. It's permanent dilemma.

Post by slap_shot » Thu, Jan 25, 2018, 5:38 PM UTC

godshatter wrote: post #77

epaga wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A coworker uses DDG and each time we are talking about a problem at work (software development) and need to search something, I am disappointed by the lack of good results and make him use Google instead. It is currently 5 - 0 for Google if I recall correctly. I would switch in a heartbeat if the results were comparable. Every time I’ve given it (or Bing) a shot for a few weeks, Google was simply better.

Use "!g" to have DDG send the query to google. You get the results you want without the tracking.

Post by zerr » Thu, Jan 25, 2018, 5:38 PM UTC

drewg123 wrote: post #76

y3sh wrote: 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.

For me, it was easy. In 2015, we really wanted to move back to our east coast flyover-city home from the Bay Area. Google would not let me work remotely, but Netflix would. So it was a no-brainer. It turned out to be a great move. In my experience, just about everything is better about Netflix as compared to Google: impact, pay, freedom, culture. The only thing that's worse is that I really miss the on-campus food at…

Post by nitrogen » Thu, Jan 25, 2018, 5:40 PM UTC

ChuckMcM wrote: post #75

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…

Post by alexeiz » Thu, Jan 25, 2018, 5:42 PM UTC

hinkley wrote: post #49

y3sh wrote: 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.