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Why I left Google (HN search results)

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Re: Why I left Google (HN search results)

#161

Post by klibertp »

compiler-guy wrote: post #144
TallGuyShort wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Side note with nothing to do with the original discussion: My father decided to be honest and give constructive feedback during his exit interview when leaving a company similar in size and importance to Google. Then most of his peers retired and they asked him to come back and offered pretty massive incentives for a pretty small commitment. When he decided to accept? HR got involved and insisted he not be hired beca…

The reasons one supplies about leaving a company should always be about where you are going, rather than where you are leaving. It almost never makes sense to burn a bridge.

It's really sad when honest, well-meaning criticism/explanation is perceived as "bridge burning"...

Re: Why I left Google (HN search results)

#162

Post by quotemstr »

reificator wrote: post #122
quotemstr wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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/"/>`

Of course the other direction is easy. I'm talking about COME FROM, not GO TO. :-)

Re: Why I left Google (HN search results)

#163

Post by microtonal »

bradyo wrote: post #135
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.

> 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. As another former Googler, this was one of the most concerning things about my experience at Google. The pressure I put on myself and…

As another former Googler, this was one of the most concerning things about my experience at Google. The pressure I put on myself and received from others when I was debating whether to leave was enormous, especially because it was my first job.

This was one of the reasons I decided to bail out after the first phone interview. I had some serious concerns, such as:

- I am not interested in working as an SRE when I just finished a PhD in Computational Linguistics.

- I am not really interested in living in London or Silicon Valley.

But any such question were all waved away with an air of 'such concerns are all irrelevant if you can work for the greatest company in existence'. The interviewer was really a nice person, but there seemed to be an immense groupthink.

(I now also have strong moral objections to working for Google, but that's another story.)

Re: Why I left Google (HN search results)

#164

Post by harlanji »

scottlocklin wrote: post #40
freehunter wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, when you leave Facebook, you're leaving a lot. You're not just stopping using a piece of software, it's more like you're giving up relationships, you're giving up a piece of your social life. For better or worse, you're probably going to miss something when you stop using Facebook, so there is a tradeoff that needs to be made. You're changing your social contract. It's a big deal. Meanwhile when you stop using…

I don't miss a thing from quitting facebook, and despite how addictive the damn thing is, it was easily done and my quality of life increased in obvious ways. Potemkin relationships are not relationships.

Can you (or anyone reading) elaborate on details of how you did it? I'm surgically shrinking it and it's caused a good amount of turbulence... removing without communicating, and communicating removal are both difficult. The latter is probably better. But my ears are open for solutions.

I disabled posting to my wall for example, so on my birthday people struck up conversations instead. I anticipate I'll have it open for a while longer, but I'm removing people as we establish side channels so-far. I never added strangers but I'm not attached to everyone, like single conversation partners (I originally typed friends, haha, deprogramming).

Re: Why I left Google (HN search results)

#165

Post by nugi »

johan_larson wrote: post #147
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.

In fairness, you really should have a good reason for leaving a company like Google. The pluses of working there are substantial. If you're leaving lightly, you are almost certainly making a mistake.

Thats the false narrative being debated here.

Re: Why I left Google (HN search results)

#166

Post by wolco »

TallGuyShort wrote: post #60
utellme wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Some people just can't say personally and openly to their boss that there is some problem in policy or system if they think it exists. So they trying to inform this way. But it's not every case, some experienced specialists can just write story as summary to give some experience to young newcomers, to arouse interest, maybe answer possible questions.

Side note with nothing to do with the original discussion: My father decided to be honest and give constructive feedback during his exit interview when leaving a company similar in size and importance to Google. Then most of his peers retired and they asked him to come back and offered pretty massive incentives for a pretty small commitment. When he decided to accept? HR got involved and insisted he not be hired beca…

Thank you for the post. Makes me reconsider the honest route and go for the pleasant route.

Re: Why I left Google (HN search results)

#168

Post by wolco »

mattgreenrocks wrote: post #138
saalweachter wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 pre…

The whole "work is life" thing is pretty weird, and I'm ambitious. Life has lots of interesting things that have nothing to do with JavaScript, why would you waste your youth on yet another JS framework? I somewhat regret the large amounts of time I put into my side projects when I was young (20s). They definitely produced results in my career, but I'm uncertain if they provided that much of a boost. From my vantage…

When did we stop doing side projects for yourself? If you are not doing side projects for fun of it then something is wrong. No one should feel they have to do a side project.

Re: Why I left Google (HN search results)

#170

Post by baseethrowaway »

rburhum wrote: post #160
mrb wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

With all due respect, it sounds like your article would be full of pre-conceived ideas since you have never worked at Google. At least those who quit have lived it and know for themselves. (And someone else's experience might be quite different if he had been in that person's shoes.)

Well, this is where you are wrong. I have worked in the core team at several multi-billion dollar companies (e.g. Microsoft, NVIDIA, etc) and have received job offers to lead teams from other similar companies (including the one you mention and one of their fiercest competitor). With all due the respect, your assumption that it would be full of pre-concieved ideas is simply wrong. I just have anti-bodies that fully r…

So, you indeed have never worked at Google.
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