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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

#291

Post by debt »

code4tee wrote: post #82

A cacophony of management dissonance, bureaucratic internal processes, your job being outsourced to India and then being asked to clean up the mess created by said India team... So basically Google is like any run of the mill tech department in a boring corporate environment, but with free food and a side project on self driving cars. Got it.

"Google is like any run of the mill tech department in a boring corporate environment, but with free food and a side project on self driving cars. Got it."

This applies to nearly every single tech company in the Valley at this point.

Re: Why I Quit Google to Work for Myself

#292

Post by neerkumar »

mtlynch wrote: post #189
rdtsc wrote: post #103

> Google does a good job of building a sense of community within the organization. That is the true test. You are supposed to pretend only to buy into it but never really believe it. Understanding that things function on two levels is critical. One level is the superficial "we are a family, community, we are not evil, making the world better". But that's the trap to catch all the naive people and extract extra work h…

Thanks for sharing that. That describes feelings I had working there. I think the idea of rules and meta-rules is a good way of explaining it.

The promotion process at google self-selects for a very important skill: you are given a certain goal and you find the optimal way to achieve it, regardless of whether you agree with it or not.

This is a crucial skill for middle managers. Their role is often making sure their team executes on executive vision without questioning the vision (imagine how messy things would become if each middle manager would start questioning executive strategy and push back on projects).

At the end, Google process worked as they designed it for. People like you, who don't like to just do what they are told to do, choose to move on. And people who accept it get promoted and go on to become effective middle managers from a Google executive standpoint.

Re: Why I Quit Google to Work for Myself

#293

Post by mmcconnell1618 »

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.

Working for yourself is no guarantee of higher rewards but it does have the possibility for higher rewards. The key is to focus on opportunities that have the highest potential outcome. I like to think about business opportunities as something that can generate FU money in 10 years or less. If it doesn't meet that level, you might be better off on the slow and steady upper-end corporate gig.

A lot of software engineers fail to realize that at a corporate gig you get to focus on being a programmer. Once you move out on your own, you also take on the job of sales, accounting, HR, etc. Your next step is hiring people to handle those jobs but that moves you from writing software to being a manager. Running a business is a different set of skills from software engineering so be prepared to learn something new.

Re: Why I Quit Google to Work for Myself

#294

Post by tootie »

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…

This is why I love using Slack and always have discussions in as public of a room as possible.

Re: Why I Quit Google to Work for Myself

#295

Post by derefr »

inetknght wrote: post #241
jvagner wrote: post #184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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."

I've often wondered whether this dynamic is exactly the reason tech culture is ageist. If we hired older developers, the culturally-assumed "gravitas" of age would make their relative social status to more-"senior"-but-younger devs illegible. We might actually have to sometimes give them the right-of-way on making the changes they want to make, even though they're new!

Re: Why I Quit Google to Work for Myself

#296

Post by phamilton »

Eridrus wrote: post #170
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 issue with this is that it leads to people choosing projects based on what they think is promotable and doing the bare minimum on anything else. Which is how you get code with no tests or documentation. I think there needs to be some recognition for people who saw that there was a real need for some grunt work, and the business was suffering because of it, and went and did the work. The key part about this that I…

> Which is how you get code with no tests or documentation.

Without knowing this is actually detrimental to the org, I don't find this to be a problem in and of itself.

> there was a real need for some grunt work, and the business was suffering because of it

I would expect a Senior Engineer to be able to advocate and justify this grunt work.

> The key part about this that I would consider "senior" is being able to look at everything that is going on and figure out what is actually critical.

"Actually" is the operating word here. This requires external validation. If you feel you've saved the company but can't convince anyone of it, then you probably didn't save the company.

Re: Why I Quit Google to Work for Myself

#297

Post by xkjkls »

AlexC04 wrote: post #197
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?

I think the author said it in the article: Optimize for promotion. Work from day 1 to game the metrics. If it helps your metrics, do it, if it doesn't approach with caution. If you start that from day 1 you'd be 2 years ahead of the author. Honestly, it sounds like a really shitty way to live. I personally prefer doing great work and having faith that it will work out. It has, a lot slower than that, but I'm proud of…

I mean, there's a balance you can definitely reach. In alot of organizations, depending on the process, playing some Machiavellian game in order to try to get promoted the quickest is going to backfire.

But that doesn't mean you should be consistently selfless all the time. If you think the projects you are working on aren't going to get you promoted, discuss it with your manager. Tell them some of your thoughts, and if they aren't amenable to giving you other work, consider moving to a different part of the organization.

Re: Why I Quit Google to Work for Myself

#298

Post by indemnity »

geofft wrote: post #256
bdhess wrote: post #247

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I generally assume that when someone says "blocked" they're not literally staring out the window, they're just not operating with anywhere close to the efficiency they should be. Also it's not clear to me that learning how to use Process Explorer + using it, when that's not your job, is actually meaningfully more efficient than staring out the window all day.

Sounds harsh but this is my take too.

I’ve generally heard “blocked” from weaker team members when it pertains to working on our stuff.

Sure, you can be blocked due to infrastructure / external dependency, but if you have the source code, unblock yourself, mate.

Programming is going to be a frustrating career for you otherwise.

Re: Why I Quit Google to Work for Myself

#299

Post by dgregd »

rdtsc wrote: post #103

> Google does a good job of building a sense of community within the organization. That is the true test. You are supposed to pretend only to buy into it but never really believe it. Understanding that things function on two levels is critical. One level is the superficial "we are a family, community, we are not evil, making the world better". But that's the trap to catch all the naive people and extract extra work h…

> One level is the superficial "we are a family, community, we are not evil, making the world better". But that's the trap to catch all the naive people and extract extra work hours from them

Wow, your answer also precisely describes right-wing politics. Some naive leftists talk publicly about some of these meta rules and get hated.

Re: Why I Quit Google to Work for Myself

#300

Post by nathan_f77 »

This was an excellent post, and I loved the comics. But the situation sounds like a real nightmare. I recently read a blog post about burnout [1], and "lack of control" was one of the main factors.

The Indie Hackers community is awesome. I've been thinking about starting a tech cooperative along those lines [1], where the members have full control of their own projects and can work on whatever they want. The goal would be to build some small SaaS products or mobile apps, and generate a bit of money. The value of joining a cooperative is that we could try many different ideas in parallel and share a fraction of the winning ideas, similar to a VC who invests in a large number of startups. The other benefit is that we can build a much closer community than Indie Hackers, because everyone has a stake in the company. We'd be independent, but could still work together to help each other succeed.

Anyway, if this sounds like something that appeals to you, feel free to fill out this application form [2]. (I've heard from some really awesome people but will keep the form up for a while.)

[1] https://m.signalvnoise.com/avoiding-the-trap-8df59e718f3e

[2] https://docs.google.com/forms/d/1dnm-SZxbcKuQ7PUU9ArRnlD1LiK...

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