Why I left Google (HN search results) • Hacker News Board

Re: Why I left Google (HN search results)

#121

Post by drewg123 » Thu, Jan 25, 2018, 6:09 PM UTC

dsacco wrote: post #112

tbranyen wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Most of the large tech companies allow but don’t advertise remote work flexibility for senior staff. I know someone who works remotely at Apple on a team on the other side of the country.

This. A lot of it depends on your VP and management chain. The VP above me at Google was very traditional and believed strongly in "butts in seats", and ironically complained he'd exhausted they bay area talent pool. There was a chance I could have moved to a different team at Google under a more remote-friendly VP, but its future and funding was much less certain, so I left instead.

Re: Why I left Google (HN search results)

#122

Post by reificator » Thu, Jan 25, 2018, 6:15 PM UTC

quotemstr wrote: post #106

shrikant wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Going the other direction is fairly easy, if you retain control over the original page, you can help people/search engines find the new page via the following:

* Meta refresh tags: `http://example.com/" />`

* HTTP Status codes `301` and `302`

* Canonical link tags: ``" rel="nofollow">http://www.example.com/"/>`

Re: Why I left Google (HN search results)

#123

Post by walshemj » Thu, Jan 25, 2018, 6:17 PM UTC

camelCaseOfBeer wrote: post #15

raister wrote: post #3

As if anybody would disclose the actual reason why they have left Google...

I would imagine a company like Google would have the foresight to include clauses in their NDA that forbid former employees from including the kind of specific and substantive reasoning for their departure that the public might actually find interesting. Not to mention a severance package goes a long way as far as taming that salty post-employment flavor. Oh, and there's the small matter of fact that they tend to pay…

If you have to offer a compromise agreement (the legal term for what your suggesting) when people leave the company has major problems.

Forcing companies to publish the number of such agreements made might make an interesting metric to use when evaluating companies.

Re: Why I left Google (HN search results)

#124

Post by scarecrowbob » Thu, Jan 25, 2018, 6:19 PM UTC

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'm not ever wanting to work at Google, but that process resonates loudly with my experience of leaving academia.

From the inside you're dealing with a lot of people who have internalized the job as part of their identity and it's very difficult to just up and leave without formulating a narrative about why it's okay.

Re: Why I left Google (HN search results)

#125

Post by nerfhammer » Thu, Jan 25, 2018, 6:20 PM UTC

havetocharge wrote: post #33

You are focusing on the loud minority and ignoring the silent majority.

silent groups aren't listened to by definition

Re: Why I left Google (HN search results)

#126

Post by drewg123 » Thu, Jan 25, 2018, 6:20 PM UTC

nerfhammer wrote: post #118

tbranyen wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Yeah but once you've spent some time on a team there and are trusted and respected, all that stuff becomes pretty negotiable.

That's what I'd hoped for at Google, and my manager would have been fine with me being remote. However, my VP did not allow remote work. We even lost out on having a fairly famous guy work for our team, because he was unable to transfer a deal he had with his current team where he could work 3 days at home (in Pleasanton, so the commute to Mountain View was terrible).

Re: Why I left Google (HN search results)

#127

Post by debt » Thu, Jan 25, 2018, 6:21 PM UTC

Regardless, I think working at a mega-tech-corp like any in the valley are immensely important. It shows you immediately that software is built by bureaucracy. Many large projects are in fact built that way; you have to collaborate with many teams.

Re: Why I left Google (HN search results)

#128

Post by dpflan » Thu, Jan 25, 2018, 6:21 PM UTC

Would this be useful to analyze the posters' sentiments and reasons while knowing what products / divisions they worked on / for and their position at G?

Re: Why I left Google (HN search results)

#129

Post by walshemj » Thu, Jan 25, 2018, 6:22 PM UTC

kevingadd wrote: post #98

camelCaseOfBeer wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would imagine a company like Google would have the foresight to include clauses in their NDA that forbid former employees from including the kind of specific and substantive reasoning for their departure that the public might actually find interesting. Not to mention a severance package goes a long way as far as taming that salty post-employment flavor. Oh, and there's the small matter of fact that they tend to pay…

Man, I wish they actually offered departing staff severance and an NDA. Maybe if you're a VP. I know VPs who get booted out for sexual harassment get to keep their stock.

Sex harassment cases are hard to prove it's often a case of he said she said and hr (and the employee side) have to be very careful to be scrupulously fair and not jump to conclusions.

So its often easier to settle - this is true for those harassed being brave enough to go public and possibly be cross examined by a £2k a day barrister is a nontrivial thing to do.

Re: Why I left Google (HN search results)

#130

Post by bspn » Thu, Jan 25, 2018, 6:23 PM UTC

electrograv wrote: post #113

kevingadd wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Remote work was a medical requirement for me and even in those circumstances Google refused to consider it. They also insisted part-time work wasn't an option (there were official policies for it that were kept secret!). So likewise, that was really all it took. It baffles me that companies can't be remotely flexible on these things - over 50% of the Google employees I interacted with daily were in other offices (or…

> Remote work was a medical requirement for me and even in those circumstances Google refused to consider it. Certainly that must be illegal under the ADA, or something similar?

IANAL but I don't think it's necessarily illegal by default under the ADA. The first thing the employee has to do is establish that their condition falls under a protected class and then they can request an accommodation. If the employer can demonstrate that there's no way to reasonably accommodate the employee then I believe they're off the hook - that is a much higher burden for a large company to satisfy than say for a small 10 person start-up.