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Why I Quit Google to Work for Myself

mtlynch.io

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Re: Why I Quit Google to Work for Myself

#91

Post by eldavido »

To author: you lost the political game.

I busted my ass at a startup for years and also lost the political game. So I'm speaking from experience here.

You can either get all mad and worked up and pissed off about it, and waste years of your career (as I did) being pissed off, stubborn, and refusing to change. Or figure out how to play. I'd like to think there are places with better politics but I think it's pretty endemic of large organizations. I'd love to be proven wrong.

The thing is, "working for yourself" is so flawed in so many ways. In the first place, nobody "works for themself". You might work for customers, or clients, or whatever, but not "yourself". Second, you're a lot better off working at a good company -- MUCH better off -- unless you have a pretty damn concrete idea of what you're doing. In addition to the income, the big company will provide better networking, more credibility for anything you do subsequently (whether a new job, fundraising, hiring--ANYTHING), it's an all-around better gig.

I'm just trying to save you a lot of wasted years and time here. Take it or leave it.

Re: Why I Quit Google to Work for Myself

#92

Post by nuggien »

otterley wrote: post #80
phamilton wrote: post #64

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…

At many organizations, Senior Engineer is not the end of the IC track, not even close. For example: ... > Senior Engr. > Staff Engr. > Sr. Staff Engr. > Principal Engr. > Sr. Principal Engr. > Distinguished Engr.

I think google itself follows that same path of promotion, ending in a fellow position after distinguished engineer? I wonder how many people at google have the fellow title.

Re: Why I Quit Google to Work for Myself

#93

Post by [deleted] »

Retric wrote: post #25
Anirudh25 wrote: post #3

As someone who will be entering the industry, I loved your perspective on your job at Google. Also, having read Cal Newport's "So good that they can't ignore you", I couldn't help but notice the hunger for independence in good software developers. Would you recommend newcomers to join smaller unstable( more independence) companies or bigger, more stable( Top 4) companies(lesser independence)?

I highly recommend optimizing for salary for the first 4 years. ~10k/year * ~40 years of compound interest is significant. Most young people have debt and getting rid of that fast opens up a lot more options and flexibility. On top of that company's that pay more have more incentive to maximize your value. On the other hand if you make little then they have incentive to burn you out and replace you ASAP.

[deleted]

Re: Why I Quit Google to Work for Myself

#94

Post by wehadfun »

somberi wrote: post #75
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…

I am manager who has a few levels under me (Total team of about 100 people). I find it difficult to buy into your experience, and hear me out. I am arguing in your favor. If you are assisting, and this includes providing support for someone else's code, or doing "invisible" tasks (setting up a redis cluster or writing end-to-end tests), this often finds its way into one email group or another. In fact I remember the…

Yea if a developer helps someone there is no guarantee that there will be an email chain generated as proof. If you truly believe this in all due respect you are out of touch with reality. People still walk up and ask for help. Maybe not in remote teams but in the office all the time. Supposedly making these type of interactions possible is the whole point of open offices

Re: Why I Quit Google to Work for Myself

#95

Post by bryanrasmussen »

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…

maybe I'm being optimistic but a couple days ago I spent basically the whole day helping another developer getting a fix done so they could make a pull request before the deadline, I think that was noticed because we are in an open layout so me telling him do first A, then B, if you do C that won't work. It isn't working in QA because of this reason etc. etc

So anyway I think that was probably valued by our project manager who is also a former techie, because she probably realized if I didn't do it, that PR wasn't going in that release.

Re: Why I Quit Google to Work for Myself

#96

Post by mtlynch »

xoogler_456 wrote: post #79

> I submitted my first promo packet, and the results were what I feared: the promotion committee said that I hadn’t proven I could handle technical complexity, and they couldn’t see the impact I had on Google. Ha! I think the promotion committees have a rubber stamp with that justification. It's so vague and unactionable, yet they tell _everyone_ that on their first go round. The second time around, you get to point…

Yeah, exactly. I only found out after I did my first promo attempt that the committee is expected to grant the promotion if you've fixed the gap the last committee identified. I wish I'd known about that earlier so I could have gotten my gaps defined explicitly.

Re: Why I Quit Google to Work for Myself

#97

Post by mtlynch »

nickjj wrote: post #63

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.

Thanks! And thank you for reading.

Re: Why I Quit Google to Work for Myself

#99

Post by ocdtrekkie »

Quarrelsome wrote: post #83
ocdtrekkie wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I doubt Google cares if the majority of it's people stay or not. Beyond the rock star employees who they absolutely know they need/depend on, they have an unending pipe of software engineers who want to put Google on their resume, in part due to the value of having the resume item and in part due to all of the perks. Assuming the free food and massages will keep a lot of talent there, why would they bother incentiviz…

afaik their "average individual employee" is actually pretty damn good. Anyway that's the point, if they don't care then you shouldn't remain there trying to impress them, especially if that doesn't align with your life goals.

Sure, I didn't mean to suggest otherwise. I just meant, if they have an endless flow of "pretty darn good" employees, they have no particular need to try to retain any given one.

Other companies may have to search hard to find excellent software engineers, but Google does not.

Re: Why I Quit Google to Work for Myself

#100

Post by ravenstine »

phamilton wrote: post #64

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…

The notion that "a junior engineer and a manager who is at least partially paying attention can get that done" is a horseshit excuse that could be applied to 99% of what any given developer does. Moreover, developers find themselves having to write tests and fix bugs because the priorities of upper management didn't allow it or foster it for the last developer.
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