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

Re: Why I Quit Google to Work for Myself

#111

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

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…

There's also the problem of comparing apples and oranges.

The lack of metrics is a problem. But the bigger problem is the interesting non-maintence-mode projects went from 0 to somewhere, or from 7 to 8 and a bit features' and that's a lot 'cooler'/'bottom-line demonstrable' than 'I made the thing break less often and less breakable and more understandable'.

It also says something that Google isn't measuring itself very well, although this is one anecdotal data point, I'm sure it's not the only one with the 'defrag' reference, relocation/churn etc. etc.

I also take issue with your documentation reference. The existing lack of documentation was probably caused by other Senior Software Engineers?

Re: Why I Quit Google to Work for Myself

#112

Post by white-flame » Wed, Feb 28, 2018, 4:28 PM UTC

eldavido wrote: post #91

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 en…

> In the first place, nobody "works for themself". You might work for customers, or clients, or whatever, but not "yourself".

Just to be pedantic, I'd say if you've got enough in savings to live without further work-based income & retire, then you are "working for yourself". You paid yourself via saving that money up to "work" on whatever you want. Even if it's just a tan & cirrhosis. :)

Re: Why I Quit Google to Work for Myself

#113

Post by paganel » Wed, Feb 28, 2018, 4:29 PM UTC

GVIrish wrote: post #85

stephencanon wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've never tried it, but I suspect you'll run into the same issue that sports does, where "assists" don't accurately reflect the people who are making things happen on the court. We miss the perimeter shooter who positions themselves just so to pull two defenders out of position, but give credit to the point guard who makes the now-easy pass for the "assist". It's entirely possible for the person most responsible for…

> We miss the perimeter shooter who positions themselves just so to pull two defenders out of position, but give credit to the point guard who makes the now-easy pass for the "assist". The NBA has an advanced metric for that called gravity. As you could imagine Steph Curry's gravity is through the roof. Another related metric is +/- for when a player is on the floor. That one is more nebulous and error prone but it i…

> The NBA has an advanced metric for that called gravity. As you could imagine Steph Curry's gravity is through the roof.

Happen to have any additional reading on that? (only if it's a handy link for you, otherwise I'll google it). I've re-started watching NBA recently after about 20 years or so, and it's the first time when I hear about this concept, one which sounds very intriguing and interesting. Maybe it was also used 20 years ago, but back then I didn't have access to Internet and as I don't live in the States the local sports newspapers (which care more about football/soccer) weren't mentioning it.

Re: Why I Quit Google to Work for Myself

#114

Post by oblio » Wed, Feb 28, 2018, 4:30 PM UTC

heavenlyblue wrote: post #14

Article’s gist: I an young and idealistic and I went working for Google thinking they’re from another planet. That’s not true.

My first full time job was as IT support for financial auditing/IT auditor. I didn't stay there long, but I learned this quickly: get a paper trail going ASAP. You never know when you'll need it, either to toot your own horn or to fight back, especially against bullshit :)

Re: Why I Quit Google to Work for Myself

#115

Post by jerkstate » Wed, Feb 28, 2018, 4:30 PM UTC

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.

yeah, but responsibilities (and technical complexity) grows with each step, and many people, for whatever reason, stall out at one level for most of their career.

Re: Why I Quit Google to Work for Myself

#116

Post by Jemmeh » Wed, Feb 28, 2018, 4:31 PM UTC

aecorredor wrote: post #71

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…

At my company we use something called bonusly. You get 30 bonusly per month to give out to your teammates, and each bonusly is worth $1. You can buy basically anything with the bonusly you receive (amazon gift cards = anything). On top of being able to buy stuff, it also keeps metrics on which teammates help the most. The only downside is that you must give out all your bonusly at the end of the month (if not it's wa…

In my experience this often just becomes a popularity contest/give to whoever you eat lunch with.

I can have my head down all week neck deep in code but because of this I'm not interacting with people around me as much and basically get punished for focusing on work.

Re: Why I Quit Google to Work for Myself

#117

Post by aruss » Wed, Feb 28, 2018, 4:31 PM UTC

GVIrish wrote: post #85

stephencanon wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've never tried it, but I suspect you'll run into the same issue that sports does, where "assists" don't accurately reflect the people who are making things happen on the court. We miss the perimeter shooter who positions themselves just so to pull two defenders out of position, but give credit to the point guard who makes the now-easy pass for the "assist". It's entirely possible for the person most responsible for…

> We miss the perimeter shooter who positions themselves just so to pull two defenders out of position, but give credit to the point guard who makes the now-easy pass for the "assist". The NBA has an advanced metric for that called gravity. As you could imagine Steph Curry's gravity is through the roof. Another related metric is +/- for when a player is on the floor. That one is more nebulous and error prone but it i…

Gravity isn’t metricized (and it would be hard to do so), the best we can do at the moment is indirectly measure it via +/- or other stats like what SC30’s teammates’ true shooting percentages are with him on and off the floor.

Re: Why I Quit Google to Work for Myself

#118

Post by akvadrako » Wed, Feb 28, 2018, 4:32 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…

I don't have much experience with this, but I find it a very important topic. My opinion is that there are so many different aspects to teamwork and social cognitive biases are so huge, it's an intractable problem to do on an individual level.

The only thing we know matters is the team does well or not. So I suggest trying different methods of building/running a team, and let them go. See which teams succeed and try to copy that success or give them more power.

To give some flavor to my idea - maybe the level of helpfulness you should ideally give is very low. Perhaps it enables weak members to suck up lots of time. We just don't have good data in this area.

Re: Why I Quit Google to Work for Myself

#119

Post by lhorie » Wed, Feb 28, 2018, 4:33 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…

In a previous company, there was a feature in the intranet to give kudos to other people. Everyone in the company could see a kudo as a post in the global intranet "chat" sidebar (not really chat, more like a communal facebook wall of sorts that would bump posts to the top any time anyone commented on them)

You could give as many kudos as you wanted, and it had zero impact on performance appraisal/raises, but it sure gave people the warm and fuzzies reading about random mini-stories of someone going above and beyond here and there.

I think it was pretty effective at fostering a culture of collaboration, and it also helped surface issues-masked-as-heroics, such as people working chronically late on some projects. It also gave greater visibility to the existence and importance of the various departments, which one might not have gotten an appreciation of otherwise.

Re: Why I Quit Google to Work for Myself

#120

Post by KKKKkkkk1 » Wed, Feb 28, 2018, 4:34 PM UTC

dep_b wrote: post #72

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 worked in a remote team once helping a company in Seattle (that perhaps had a bit of a jock culture problem). I could be stuck for days because following the README in a repo just wasn't enough to get the project to compile and run. Every standup I was telling "I'm completely blocked for the last two days because I cannot run the repo, so I cannot run any tests and at the moment I'm doing absolutely nothing.". To b…

What makes my stomach turn is the interpersonal aspect. How can all your teammates see you fail through no fault of your own for days and pretend they don't notice. Unfortunately in my experience, that's not a rare occurrence.