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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

#421

Post by newobj »

abvdasker wrote: post #354
newobj wrote: post #326

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 man…

That attitude is pretty illustrative of a larger problem. Maybe the work of bug fixing and maintenance of legacy systems is undervalued, which might explain why those systems get into such sorry shape to begin with at big companies like Google. My main takeaway from this piece is that it's easy for the incentive structure at big tech companies to get all out of whack. The most useful, most necessary work is often tim…

Not disagreeing just saying it sounds like his expectations were mis-managed.

Whole story seems like a CF frankly and representative of the reasons why I've never even considered interviewing at Google.

Re: Why I Quit Google to Work for Myself

#422

Post by amenod »

lkrubner wrote: post #413
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…

One easy way to track this is tell every employee that each month they get 3 upvotes and 3 downvotes. The votes are anonymous. (If you have less than 20 employees, then maybe just 1 upvote and 1 downvote.) They vote for their co-workers. You'll see patterns in the upvotes and downvotes. The upvotes might signal "This person helped me a lot." The downvotes can catch interpersonal problems that might otherwise be hidde…

If you can see this from the data, then the votes are not anonymous. They are just not published to other members of the team.

While I appreciate the goal, I have been put in such situations before and must say I hate such questionaires and ratings. Of course they are not anonymous. And if that is so, do I tell the truth or do I lie? I don't want to lie. But I also don't want to cause trouble for my coworkers because of some misunderstanding.

Admittedly, I don't have a better alternative though.

Re: Why I Quit Google to Work for Myself

#423

Post by nieksand »

ericmcer wrote: post #316

I thought google was supposed to be an industry leader in assessing and managing human assets. This whole thing boils down to making a simple problem complex. The simple solution is that direct superiors and co-workers are the best resources for determining viability. The junior engineer he trained is better informed than the entire promotion committee with their metrics packet. Maybe it works sometimes but for all t…

Under this system, how do you keep a semblance of uniformity in promotion standards in a large organization?

Sounds like this would lead to "easy" teams for getting promoted in while others with higher standards lag. End result would be grade inflation where titles becomes even less meaningful.

Re: Why I Quit Google to Work for Myself

#424

Post by jehlakj »

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…

Any resources on upping my political game before I start at a company?

Re: Why I Quit Google to Work for Myself

#425

Post by mdpopescu »

popcat wrote: post #182
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…

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?

Weird that your own answer below is shadowbanned... I don't see anything wrong with it.

Re: Why I Quit Google to Work for Myself

#426

Post by qaz_plm »

paganel wrote: post #113
GVIrish wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 als…

Have a look into this ESPN article (http://www.espn.com/nba/story/_/id/11744634/explaining-gravi...), it touches on the determining factors and how it's quantified.

Re: Why I Quit Google to Work for Myself

#428

Post by hkmurakami »

dboreham wrote: post #132
blunte wrote: post #90

You're describing knowledge work at many companies. You've also recognized why upper management, particularly execs, are more likely to be sociopaths (or at the very least, admittedly selfish). And fortunately you've come to understand that being the boss/owner is the best way to make your hard work actually pay you accordingly. The downside to being your own boss is that your work ethic and motivation may drive you…

Happy to see this post because reading the thread I was poised to say much the same thing. I would add that people here may tend to have the kind of personality where they naturally assume that : if you are helpful to other people they will be helpful back; being helpful to other people is a rewarding thing in itself; if you are a good person you should be rewarded. If this sounds like you (anyone reading, not the pa…

Could you recommend us some of the most impactful psychology books you read on the subject?

Re: Why I Quit Google to Work for Myself

#429

Post by strangetimes »

jcheng wrote: post #279
AlexC04 wrote: post #197

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

There's another position that's similar but less gross, which is to have some humility about what you think is important vs. what work your manager/manager's manager think is important. Try to work on what they think is important not (just) because of a cynical desire to game the system and get ahead, but because they have probably more experience and (often a lot more) context than you do. Of course, this only works…

Great point. Developers are usually very smart folks, and we like to believe that we know everything. There's no substitute for context.

Re: Why I Quit Google to Work for Myself

#430

Post by epicureanideal »

MadBohr wrote: post #382
BowBun wrote: post #330

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> 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. That is not asking for help. Asking for help would be "Can somebody please help me? ... rest of message here...". Even better is asking an individual (or individuals) directly.

Nonsense, this is asking for help. As a former manager of a tech team, if I had seen this I would've taken action, and as a team player individual contributor I would've taken action even if I were not a manager. I appreciate you sharing your perspective, but in my opinion you're leaning too far to try to find some way to blame this employee for processes that an employee should reasonably expect a competent management team to have solved already.
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