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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

#431

Post by orbitur »

MadBohr wrote: post #368
jey wrote: post #325

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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; wa…

Yes that's true, which is why I said "why not both?" The manager should do more, but so should the employee. Sitting there and saying "I'm blocked, woe is me" is garbage compared to saying "I'm blocked. Can you please help me Mr/Ms XYZ?"

The employee needs to be taught that. If they've entered the workforce without that knowledge, then it's their manager's responsibility.

Re: Why I Quit Google to Work for Myself

#432

Post by nexus2045 »

eldavido wrote: post #185
whataretensors wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 completely agree. My point is opportunity cost. Unless you have a very clear idea of what you want to do/build--which many people do--you're better off with a day job. I see a lot of people essentially rage-quitting (let's be serious, that's what happened here) and then wasting years of their life working bottom-of-the-barrel contracting/crappy startup jobs because they "don't like big companies". I made this mista…

Same here. At some point I was disillusioned with the idea of working in a corporate because I thought I was just "selling my soul out for golden handcuffs" (doesn't help to watch some Mr. Robot, Fight Club, etc.), but in reality I was just a junior dev who didn't fit much into social hierarchies. I tossed away a good 2.5 years at two startup jobs, one that I co-founded and died slowly (even though I had already read Lean Startup et al...), before slowly realizing I just wasn't making any meaningful amount of money nor progressing in my career because I didn't have a senior/mentor/best practices guiding me. Now I'm back at the cubicle but realizing there was so much I missed out on that wasn't obvious to my younger naive self before.

Re: Why I Quit Google to Work for Myself

#433

Post by amenod »

DoreenMichele wrote: post #383
MadBohr wrote: post #378

Earlier quoted context omitted.

OP said slack. DM is as simple as doing "/msg @joe.blow I'm blocked, can you please help me?". If no response, go to @joe.blow's colleagues. If still no response, go to their boss. If still no response, go to their bosses's boss. Repeat until you run out of people to escalate to, at which point you find another job.

If they are willing to pay a blocked remote worker for sitting on their ass doing nothing, why should the worker rock the boat so much that they burn all bridges at the company and finally have to get a different job? Remote jobs seem somewhat hard to come by and can be a sweet deal. The company needs to take at least partial blame here.

No need for worker to do that. But that's then their conscious decision and they shouldn't express their frustrations over it. On the other hand, if they want to make a progress, they should escalate appropriately.

Note that I am not convinced that this is the case here - I simply don't have enough information to make the judgement.

Re: Why I Quit Google to Work for Myself

#434

Post by 0x445442 »

thomaslangston wrote: post #158
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 role of a senior software engineer totally is to handle bugs and produce docs. The difference is that seniors should expect to work on more difficult systems, bugs, and documentation tasks. When we don't value docs and bug fixing, we create undocumented and buggy code. When we don't value it by relegating it to junior developers, we miss opportunities to mentor others by both explaining the system at a high level…

To me a senior software engineer can, with mid and junior engineers at their disposal, design, document, implement, deploy and maintain systems that have a demonstrable ROI for the organization for a long period of time after deployment.

Re: Why I Quit Google to Work for Myself

#436

Post by epicureanideal »

MadBohr wrote: post #368
jey wrote: post #325

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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; wa…

Yes that's true, which is why I said "why not both?" The manager should do more, but so should the employee. Sitting there and saying "I'm blocked, woe is me" is garbage compared to saying "I'm blocked. Can you please help me Mr/Ms XYZ?"

I think your specification of a "correct way to report a problem" is company specific, or your personal preference, or the way that you think an ideal problem report would be stated.

We're humans. Unless there's been a training day or a Readme file explaining HOW to report a bug, I think it's perfectly reasonable to expect this protocol to work:

"I'm blocked!"

"Why?"

"{reason}"

If nobody ACKs the "I'm blocked" message, it's reasonable for someone to think that nobody cares or nobody is listening. This is a normal human protocol, as used in most human environments.

"{problem}!"

"What's happening? How can I help?" (any considerate person nearby responds)

Re: Why I Quit Google to Work for Myself

#437

Post by lhorie »

mpeg wrote: post #313
lhorie wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

At SFDC we bought and used internally a tool called Rypple (later work.com) that was precisely that. As you say, zero impact to people in terms of their performance reviews (which were a topic of discussion in their own, each employee having to write a mini-manifesto for their year ahead) and kinda became a popularity contest where people were giving kudos to their office buddies. And don't get me started on the peop…

Hah, similar thing happened for me. I think the main issue was that departments that relied on creative problem-solving (e.g. business development) ended up being way louder than others that didn't as much (e.g. QA)

Another issue is that tech orgs are extremely political. There was one person who had single-handedly created a viable migration path from the company's aging proprietary framework to .NET MVC5, but no kudos there. Just lots of pushback and skepticism.

Re: Why I Quit Google to Work for Myself

#438

Post by jadbox »

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…

Slavoj owes much of the theory to Hegel (which Stavoj is a follower of). This video is a very light intro to Hegel by Rick Roderick: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2MsNyR-epBM

Re: Why I Quit Google to Work for Myself

#439

Post by DoreenMichele »

amenod wrote: post #433
DoreenMichele wrote: post #383

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If they are willing to pay a blocked remote worker for sitting on their ass doing nothing, why should the worker rock the boat so much that they burn all bridges at the company and finally have to get a different job? Remote jobs seem somewhat hard to come by and can be a sweet deal. The company needs to take at least partial blame here.

No need for worker to do that. But that's then their conscious decision and they shouldn't express their frustrations over it. On the other hand, if they want to make a progress, they should escalate appropriately. Note that I am not convinced that this is the case here - I simply don't have enough information to make the judgement.

So someone wanting the system they are a part of to work appropriately without them having to be an excessively aggressive asshat about it needs to swallow their frustration entirely and not even vent about it on an online forum?

Wat?

Re: Why I Quit Google to Work for Myself

#440

Post by erichmond »

There's so many comments, I'm sure this will get lost. But just so you understand what the grass looks like on the other side.

At Google you got paid a great salary, had great 401k and perks to work on projects that most likely go nowhere.

Working for yourself you're sacrifcing all those perks, to work on projects that will most likely go nowhere.

That said, definitely do it. It will teach you a ton in the process, everyone should go out on their own, mostly to realize how hard it can be.

New perspectives are invaluable, so I applaud your decision and wish you all the luck in the world!

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