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Why I left Google (HN search results)

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101–110 of 204 posts

Re: Why I left Google (HN search results)

#101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 bee…

Agreed. And seven times out of ten (made up statistic, ymmv) that event is precipitated by one's management chain. Just yesterday someone reposted the article "People don't leave jobs, they leave managers."

Re: Why I left Google (HN search results)

#102
post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> but Netflix would Hmm, where can I find out more about remote roles there? Is it worldwide or US-only?

https://jobs.netflix.com/search?q=remote

Re: Why I left Google (HN search results)

#103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Interesting. Is it just me or shouldn't that be the default functionality? An added benefit is that DDG can then see what result the user picks, compare than to how well (if at all) DDG ranked that link.

!g redirects to google.com, so the results are not displayed or anonymized by DDG. If you want Google results without Google tracking, check out startpage.com. (!sp in DDG)

Re: Why I left Google (HN search results)

#104

When I worked at Aflac, it was the largest civilian employer in Columbus, GA. It had the tallest building in town. If I made small talk while getting a haircut or buying lunch in town, people would ooh and aah that I had a job there. This was a little funny and surreal because I could not get promoted out of my entry level job. I felt like a loser, yet here were people acting like I'm not worthy . When I quit, I left…

I think this is accentuated because for a lot of people, when you move across the country right after college to work at a big company like Google, it becomes your life. Early on, you don't know anyone and you spend way too much time working because that's what you do when you're fresh out of college new hire in a new town. As time goes on, most of the friends you make are friends from work and even if you get a pretty healthy work-life balance, a lot of your free time is spent hanging out with your friends from work.

So when the time comes for you to leave the company, you aren't just leaving the company, you're leaving your entire life. It's the life change of leaving your job, getting divorced, and moving to a new town all rolled into one: it is one of the most significant events in your life, and you can't not think about it and try to understand it and explain it to other people.

Re: Why I left Google (HN search results)

#105

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…

> As a result I'm a bit surprised that there aren't even more of these stories.

I'm not all that surprised. I can see people that stay a relatively short period of time just attributing it to a bad fit, or blaming themselves. Once you've established yourself comfortably and see yourself as an employee (and not a "new hire"), it's much more obvious that the choice is purely because you decided you wanted to change the status quo, and that might be something people feel better about talking about, or even feel compelled to talk about.

Re: Why I left Google (HN search results)

#106

> Why I left Google for a Bitcoin startup - 4 years ago - 0 comments > 404 page not found

It's here now: https://www.digitaldrex.com/single-post/2014/07/08/Why-I-lef...

Wouldn't it be nice if there were some "Previously-Known-By" HTTP header or meta tag? This way, upon seeing an NXDOMAIN or a 404, browsers could ask $SEARCHENGINE, "Hey. Find me any page advertising that it was previously known by $URL", and browsers could then offer to redirect the user to that new location.

Re: Why I left Google (HN search results)

#107
post #102
post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> but Netflix would Hmm, where can I find out more about remote roles there? Is it worldwide or US-only?

https://jobs.netflix.com/search?q=remote

Unfortunately that search includes jobs which say "remote is not available at this time".

Re: Why I left Google (HN search results)

#108
post #102
post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> but Netflix would Hmm, where can I find out more about remote roles there? Is it worldwide or US-only?

https://jobs.netflix.com/search?q=remote

All the results (at least on page 1) are local positions.

Re: Why I left Google (HN search results)

#109
post #99
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.

Microsoft in the 90's was actually a pretty cool place to work.

Depends who you were.

Re: Why I left Google (HN search results)

#110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Guessing not a full time engineer or some kind of niche talent? Never heard of anyone going remote or even being a possibility. Its written into the culture and all job postings.

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