Why I Quit Google to Work for Myself • Hacker News Board

Re: Why I Quit Google to Work for Myself

#61

Post by ocdtrekkie » Wed, Feb 28, 2018, 4:01 PM UTC

autokad wrote: post #26

mtlynch wrote: post #2

Author here. Happy to answer any questions about the post or about my experience at Google.

nice article although its sad you couldn't get recognized for the value you were adding. I am not good at wording things, but here goes: I didn't see you call it out directly, but I also find employees are discriminated by project. if you are not working on a valued project, any value you provide to the company will be shrank by how unimportant they feel the project is.

The author did indicate a project involving machine learning likely being a better path to promotion.

Re: Why I Quit Google to Work for Myself

#62

Post by ghostbrainalpha » Wed, Feb 28, 2018, 4:02 PM UTC

mtlynch wrote: post #2

Author here. Happy to answer any questions about the post or about my experience at Google.

I love your Keto Hub idea!

https://ketohub.io/

I'm especially looking at the Keto Queso recipe. If you wanted to monetize that by instantly adding those ingredients + plus low carb chips into an Amazon shopping list, I would be buying through your affiliate link immediately.

Edit: I removed my comment about profiting off of others content being a 'very google' thing to do. OP does a great job linking directly to the recipe source.

Re: Why I Quit Google to Work for Myself

#63

Post by nickjj » Wed, Feb 28, 2018, 4:02 PM UTC

Good luck with your new programming adventures. Just based on reading your article I would say your mindset is in the right spot to be successful on your own.

I've been freelancing as a developer for the last 20 years and have turned down interviews from Google / etc. in the past. It's a fun ride.

> Optimizing for promotion

This is one of many reasons why I'll never work a "regular" job.

Re: Why I Quit Google to Work for Myself

#64

Post by phamilton » Wed, Feb 28, 2018, 4:02 PM UTC

Writing documentation and fixing bugs is in fact not the bar for a senior software engineer. I don't disagree with the promotion committee on that front.

IIRC, Senior Software Engineer is a terminal level. You aren't expected to advance any more once you reach that level. Some do, but you can stay a Senior Engineer for the rest of your career and that's fine.

So certainly "can fix bugs and write docs and tests" isn't sufficient for that promotion. A junior engineer and a manager who is at least partially paying attention can get that done.

I also don't really disagree with the evaluation that 6 months of Senior level work isn't enough for a promotion, especially if nothing actually shipped.

I get that constant reorgs are frustrating. That alone is enough of a reason to not work at Google or another BigCo. That's the real problem here.

Re: Why I Quit Google to Work for Myself

#65

Post by mtlynch » Wed, Feb 28, 2018, 4:02 PM UTC

shepardrtc wrote: post #44

I recognized your username from all your work in the Sia community. Thanks for helping to make it better. While reading your article, I got the distinct impression that Google set up the system that way so they didn't have to give promotions. They get so many applications from the best software engineers in the world that they don't really have to work to retain people, and if they need a manager, there are plenty of…

I think that Google does try to treat their employees fairly. I don't think the promo process is the way it is because of greed.

That said, I do think that the system is biased in Google's favor. It's designed much more strongly to filter out false positives (promote someone underqualified) than false negatives (withhold a promotion from someone qualified). As a result, it lets Google pay people at their lower-level title even though they're doing higher-level work.

Re: Why I Quit Google to Work for Myself

#66

Post by [deleted] » Wed, Feb 28, 2018, 4:03 PM UTC

lrem wrote: post #49

I'm also a Googler. Upon joining I was also given the keys to an ancient data pipeline, due a redesign for at least five years at that time. The person handing me the keys left almost immediately. My task was also keeping the thing adrift and nursing it back to health, whatever it takes. I did get promoted for that. The metric I used was pretty much the amount of developer time that went into supporting it that was s…

[deleted]

Re: Why I Quit Google to Work for Myself

#67

Post by redux13 » Wed, Feb 28, 2018, 4:03 PM UTC

dahart wrote: post #29

> I drastically reduced the time developers spent repairing those failures, but there were no metrics that tracked developer time. For several jobs in a row, I've felt that helping others on a team is undervalued and under-recorded. I've been planning to implement the "assist" metric, similar to basketball, on my own team for a while. The idea would be something along the lines of everyone gets a set of assist points…

The company that I work for employs a system of peer review - where at the end of the year your teammates write reviews for you and your appraisal is based on that. It seems to work pretty well our case and definitely aligns the incentives of the employees with having an impact on the people around them.

Re: Why I Quit Google to Work for Myself

#68

Post by professor_plum » Wed, Feb 28, 2018, 4:03 PM UTC

mtlynch wrote: post #28

totalZero wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nice. Do you think large companies would benefit from a different scheme that rewards employees who "think like an owner"? (pardon the oft-used phrase)

Yeah, but in fairness to Google, it's not an easy problem to solve. Of course from my perspective, I want them to care about things like bugfixing or supporting my teammates. But then you have to put controls on that so that people can't just never really do anything except bugfixing or riding their teammates' coattails. I think the right direction is weighing manager feedback more heavily so that if a team member is…

Unfortunately this begs the question a bit. How does one hire good managers? I mean good as in both competent and not jerks.

Re: Why I Quit Google to Work for Myself

#69

Post by tankenmate » Wed, Feb 28, 2018, 4:05 PM UTC

dahart wrote: post #29

> I drastically reduced the time developers spent repairing those failures, but there were no metrics that tracked developer time. For several jobs in a row, I've felt that helping others on a team is undervalued and under-recorded. I've been planning to implement the "assist" metric, similar to basketball, on my own team for a while. The idea would be something along the lines of everyone gets a set of assist points…

If you are going to hand out points for people to vote with, may I suggest quadratic voting.[0]

[0] http://ericposner.com/quadratic-voting/

Re: Why I Quit Google to Work for Myself

#70

Post by johnrob » Wed, Feb 28, 2018, 4:05 PM UTC

The best thing an employer can do for an employee is assign explicit value to that employee’s work. Otherwise, the burden lies on the employee regardless of the fact that a manager may declare solid performance. If the value of your work isn’t clear, you will suffer in the long run via missed promotions and potential layoffs.

Sadly, if your project’s value is not well understood, you need to get off of it.