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Why I Quit Google to Work for Myself

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Re: Why I Quit Google to Work for Myself

#241

Post by inetknght »

jvagner wrote: post #184
NTDF9 wrote: post #169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is endemic to our industry. The problem really is short-sighted management. They only value something that shows themselves in good light with their superiors. Managers absolutely don't seem to care about actually building a team and cultivating a culture of success. Engineering managers are way way worse than Soccer managers in this regard. I would put this all on the hiring processes right from how we hire eng…

I'd add another component: The people usually tasked with figuring these things out are new to the team. There can be all kinds of politics and interpersonal baggage with helping the new person with old configuration/ compilation/ deployment stuff. Often, it'll take one of the legacy leads to step in and clean things up. By then, everyone's annoyed at the new person, and the failure of this effort will get saddled on…

Often the non-technical reasons are "management doesn't want to assign the super-lead to the work, but also doesn't want to let the new hire have free reign to rewrite a legacy product. Just fix it."

Re: Why I Quit Google to Work for Myself

#242

Post by lawnchair_larry »

freshfey wrote: post #186
popcat wrote: post #182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a junior engineer, what the best way to learn about and master the political game? I feel like it all goes way over my head. Does anyone have any recommended reading?

The 48 Laws of Power by Robert Greene is an absolute must, regardless of the position.

I’d call it a must not, because then you’d be the type of person who takes life advice from books such as “The 48 Laws of Power.” It’s not a good look for most people, and not a good way to think about the world, IMO.

Re: Why I Quit Google to Work for Myself

#243

Post by cookiecaper »

NTDF9 wrote: post #169
dep_b wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

This is endemic to our industry. The problem really is short-sighted management. They only value something that shows themselves in good light with their superiors. Managers absolutely don't seem to care about actually building a team and cultivating a culture of success. Engineering managers are way way worse than Soccer managers in this regard. I would put this all on the hiring processes right from how we hire eng…

I don't think it's specific to our industry. I think it's specific to the corporate system we have, and that it correlates with the sense of ownership and freedom that we give people. When it's "every man for himself", you're going to see that optimization toward individual metrics and protection of personal reputation, even if it means that a colleague's reputation is deprived.

When you have a recognized long-term leader that doesn't need to constantly re-justify their involvement and existence (something akin to a BDFL), more collaborative group efforts can be fostered, and individual gamification is much less useful, because the people who know your behavior are going to be there for a long time and there is a lot of personal continuity. This system is, of course, not without its own type of flaws, but it doesn't have the same negative feedback incentives for individual contributors.

It's hard to get that long-term involvement in the tech industry specifically because the rapid rate of technical change limits career length and portability. Skills in language/system/framework X rarely retain marketability for more than 3-5 years. Most people don't have the stamina, interest, or whatever it is that's needed to keep up with the constant re-education and re-justification cycle into their 40s and 50s. They look for an out: early retirement, promotions into non-coding management positions, etc.

To the extent that individual metric gamification is higher-than-normal in tech, I would attribute most of it to the effect of shorter career tenures, both overall and at specific companies.

Re: Why I Quit Google to Work for Myself

#244

Post by paulcole »

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 idea would be something along the lines of everyone gets a set of assist points they must distribute to people who help them the most.

Just talk like normal people. The more you talk openly about who's contributing and who's not the easier it becomes.

Re: Why I Quit Google to Work for Myself

#245

Post by [deleted] »

derekp7 wrote: post #171
KKKKkkkk1 wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I can give some insight from my own experience. In my current position, there are a large number of "things" that I've had to figure out, either by reverse engineering, reading code, or intuition. So I get constantly bombarded with helping others get unstuck. Well, when it comes time for a project meeting, those on the meeting are far removed from the other groups that I constantly have to help out. And it sounds lik…

[deleted]

Re: Why I Quit Google to Work for Myself

#246

Post by dep_b »

jvagner wrote: post #184
NTDF9 wrote: post #169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is endemic to our industry. The problem really is short-sighted management. They only value something that shows themselves in good light with their superiors. Managers absolutely don't seem to care about actually building a team and cultivating a culture of success. Engineering managers are way way worse than Soccer managers in this regard. I would put this all on the hiring processes right from how we hire eng…

I'd add another component: The people usually tasked with figuring these things out are new to the team. There can be all kinds of politics and interpersonal baggage with helping the new person with old configuration/ compilation/ deployment stuff. Often, it'll take one of the legacy leads to step in and clean things up. By then, everyone's annoyed at the new person, and the failure of this effort will get saddled on…

That almost sounds like the same company.

Re: Why I Quit Google to Work for Myself

#247

Post by bdhess »

dep_b wrote: post #235
bdhess wrote: post #225

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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. Certainly it might've been more efficient if one of your colleagues helped you debug the issue. But in the absence o…

One example that springs to mind is that I needed some some registry keys with database passwords for a closed source component.

That's not really undebuggable. Process Explorer shows registry calls, and IIRC even marks them in red when the key is missing. Again not arguing that this is efficient, just that doing nothing is less efficient.

Re: Why I Quit Google to Work for Myself

#248

Post by matthewmacleod »

whataretensors wrote: post #125
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…

> Second, you're a lot better off working at a good company -- MUCH better off I disagree. There is a whole category of people who want high reward for their efforts. There exists no way to get high rewards or royalties outside of starting your own venture. The downside is the risk of course. I do agree that you shouldn't be angry, but there are so many new ways to exist and survive these days.

I suppose that depends on what you categorise as 'high reward'.

I basically mess around writing software—something I like doing—for 6 hours a day, attend a few meetings, and every month somebody deposits a ludicrous amount of money into my bank account. And I'm not even working for one of the larger companies with correspondingly better salaries.

I'm certainly not going to become a cash millionaire off the back of it, but I'd wager that in aggregate the amount of investment one makes into a stable job at a large software company pays out more on average.

Re: Why I Quit Google to Work for Myself

#249

Post by sdhgaiojfsa »

jartelt wrote: post #193
derekp7 wrote: post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can give some insight from my own experience. In my current position, there are a large number of "things" that I've had to figure out, either by reverse engineering, reading code, or intuition. So I get constantly bombarded with helping others get unstuck. Well, when it comes time for a project meeting, those on the meeting are far removed from the other groups that I constantly have to help out. And it sounds lik…

It is also easy to get irked when people are seemingly unwilling to do any digging or reverse engineering on their own and go straight to asking for help. Allowing someone to search for an answer for several hours may seem like a waste of their time, but it also could allow them to learn how to figure out a problem on their own. Of course their is a fine line between being a jerk and not helping someone because you w…

Yes. I would never have become the engineer that I am if people had always helped me when I asked.

Re: Why I Quit Google to Work for Myself

#250

Post by googlethrow »

KKKKkkkk1 wrote: post #173

On several occasions, I put my projects on hold for weeks or even months at a time to help a teammate whose launch was at risk. It was the right decision for the team, but it looked unimpressive in a promo packet. To the promotion committee, my teammate’s project was the big, important work that demanded coordination from multiple developers. If they hornswoggled me into helping them, it’s evidence of their strong le…

This sounds harsh. In cases you are a significant contributor to a launch it should be signifiend in the "launch entry" (there's an internal tracking tool for all launches).

You then of course need to sell your contribution:

  - It was nothing less than ciritical for the success of the project
  - It required deep technical knowledge
  - It required communication with other teams
  - It required mastery of several technologies, etc.
The teammate in question should hepefully support these claims.
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