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

Re: Why I Quit Google to Work for Myself

#321

Post by Eridrus » Wed, Feb 28, 2018, 6:29 PM UTC

phamilton wrote: post #296

Eridrus wrote: post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 lo…

Clearly their direct management thought it was worthwhile, otherwise they would not have been doing it. Promo committees are completely separate.

Re: Why I Quit Google to Work for Myself

#322

Post by qdpb » Wed, Feb 28, 2018, 6:29 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…

Yep.

At a certain level promotion is not about just doing something well. Funnily enough, his plans now are to go do other things (presumably well) without a particular sense of direction and hope that it works out.

Re: Why I Quit Google to Work for Myself

#323

Post by emiliobumachar » Wed, Feb 28, 2018, 6:30 PM UTC

MadBohr wrote: post #306

dgreensp wrote: post #283

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If a manager of some kind were to notice the Slack messages and ping someone specific to help, that would be a perfect example of the kind of management that is so sorely lacking at so many companies. Many employees are too burned, or proud, to even put out an SOS... so a cry for help is actually a gift to management. If only it were someone’s job to think for a few minutes each day about each employee and notice if…

Why not both? I cringed when I read OP's comment where he spammed "I'm completely blocked" in the chat without asking for specifics. What a complete lack of individual ownership. Even the best manager can't help somebody who is unwilling to help themselves. Source: am a manager.

Could you please give an example of a message with more ownership? Keep in mind that he didn't know at the time that he was missing some undocumented configuration step.

Re: Why I Quit Google to Work for Myself

#324

Post by debt » Wed, Feb 28, 2018, 6:30 PM UTC

mtlynch wrote: post #2

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

I'm curious, do you feel it took you too long to ship the projects you were working on? Or do you feel you shipped them on time?

Re: Why I Quit Google to Work for Myself

#325

Post by jey » Wed, Feb 28, 2018, 6:31 PM UTC

MadBohr wrote: post #306

dgreensp wrote: post #283

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If a manager of some kind were to notice the Slack messages and ping someone specific to help, that would be a perfect example of the kind of management that is so sorely lacking at so many companies. Many employees are too burned, or proud, to even put out an SOS... so a cry for help is actually a gift to management. If only it were someone’s job to think for a few minutes each day about each employee and notice if…

Why not both? I cringed when I read OP's comment where he spammed "I'm completely blocked" in the chat without asking for specifics. What a complete lack of individual ownership. Even the best manager can't help somebody who is unwilling to help themselves. Source: am a manager.

One of your jobs as a manager is to debug these people issues, right? So when you get a "bug report" like "I'm stuck", you should investigate the bug and look for a solution, which might be something like "Hey Bob, Jim is having trouble getting the Frobnicator running on his machine. Can you please give him a hand with this later today? Thanks". (This assumes that Jim's SOS was issued in the first half of the day; want to make sure the issue gets resolved promptly while also not interrupting Bob's own productivity/flow.)

Re: Why I Quit Google to Work for Myself

#326

Post by newobj » Wed, Feb 28, 2018, 6:32 PM UTC

With 11 years of experience, maintaining a legacy system and writing docs does NOT sound like sr. level promo material to me. At , sr. level promo was tantamount to rearchitecting an existing product, leading a team in multiple-person-years development effort.

I appreciate the message around difficulty in quantifying impact, but just putting this into practical perspective, I think OP's manager may have failed to manage his expectations around what constitutes promo material.

Re: Why I Quit Google to Work for Myself

#327

Post by bomb199 » Wed, Feb 28, 2018, 6:33 PM UTC

SubuSS wrote: post #212

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…

I obviously don't work for Google - so an outsider's opinion: - Expanding on op here, senior software engineer isn't one who is doing more junior work: It is pretty much a different job profile. You are making higher order decisions. - Promotions come with a lot of timing as well: Honestly talent evens out after a bit and luck/timing/inter-personal skills tend to take over. I have seen excellent code bases that nobod…

> This leads to a ton of actual problems too: You get a person really really good at coding / execution but shit in big picture thinking / broad system design choices / cross team work etc. spend a bunch of time in a level. Now you have to either promote him into a spot where s/he will fail OR lose em to attrition. Either choice tends to break.

I hate this issue, and see it occur in so many companies. Why are we so opposed to simply paying more/increasing benefits of people at the same level? Why can't an "regular" Engineer just get a large raise for being an amazing Engineer, because that's what you need! Instead, they need to be come a "Senior" Engineer who also has some kind of other management-type job that they suck at.

Re: Why I Quit Google to Work for Myself

#328

Post by jakelarkin » Wed, Feb 28, 2018, 6:33 PM UTC

googlethrow wrote: post #191

Google is changing the promotion process such that managers have much more power (for all promotions up to level 5 == senior swe). Previously it used to be, as Michael says, very much in the hands of the committee members who never heard about you or even your team. Now the committee will be composed of your manager and some other two managers from a related team. The committee will not see your own promotion rationa…

my co is moving from managers to anon committee, because it gives managers too much unchecked power to favor/punish. the wheel goes round.

Re: Why I Quit Google to Work for Myself

#329

Post by Aqua » Wed, Feb 28, 2018, 6:33 PM UTC

I can understand author’s motives very well.

I also started off in a corporation, it wasn’t google but it was a large organization where politics played a major role in one’s carreer. I had a very good friend, an architect who worked there for over 10 years, he was excellent in corporate politics and taught me a whole lot about it. The bottom line is that unless you have metrics to back up your claims (whatever they are), your claims mean nothing. Unfortunately, corporate culture encourages this kind of selfish attitude, where in order to get promoted you have to lick asses heavily, and the rest is just a background noise, even your performance. If you know the right people and if you have a good realtionship with them (also, if you are ‘famous’ within the company), then you will almost certainly succeed. This is how it works, almost everywhere, not just corporate environments.

It may appear that the author recklessly quit Google without having another job or even idea for a business, and I did the same thing, I had to leave, because I simply couldn’t bear the fact that I was doing better (this, obviously, is subjective) than people 2-3 levels above and my promotion was put on hold just because there were corporate rules that forbid promoting employees that have been already promoted once within 2 years time period. When I informed my manager that I am leaving, he almost panicked, as he did not see that coming and they heavily relied on my experience and skills. They offered me a promotion and over 90% raise but I simply did not care anymore, I could not work there any longer. I also quit without having another job on the horizon. As a consequence my depression and insomnia almost disappeared, I am less nervous and feel generally a lot better. Do not judge the author for leaving Google, he did the right thing for himself, even though it exposes him to a serious risk.

Re: Why I Quit Google to Work for Myself

#330

Post by BowBun » Wed, Feb 28, 2018, 6:35 PM UTC

MadBohr wrote: post #306

dgreensp wrote: post #283

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If a manager of some kind were to notice the Slack messages and ping someone specific to help, that would be a perfect example of the kind of management that is so sorely lacking at so many companies. Many employees are too burned, or proud, to even put out an SOS... so a cry for help is actually a gift to management. If only it were someone’s job to think for a few minutes each day about each employee and notice if…

Why not both? I cringed when I read OP's comment where he spammed "I'm completely blocked" in the chat without asking for specifics. What a complete lack of individual ownership. Even the best manager can't help somebody who is unwilling to help themselves. Source: am a manager.

A new repo, likely a new employee on a new project. I have to disagree with your statement since you don't know the context at all. If all they're given is a repo with inadequate instructions, there's not much more you can do than keep asking for general help.

Comment sounds like typical 'pull yourself up by the bootstraps', meant to put down new talent, ignoring that complex, modern dev environments have many parts that are completely out of reach for newcomers without adequate onboarding.

Like you said, why not both? The employee is already asking for help, that's their part. The manager needs to come in and assist, unless he enjoys churning his dev team.