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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

#451

Post by sangnoir »

slezakattack wrote: post #257
Vinnl wrote: post #179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On the one hand it is indeed disappointing that nobody would help you with this. On the other hand, there's a more pro-active role you could have played yourself in this as well. "When everybody is responsible, nobody is" - what often helps is specifically asking people, by name, to sit down with you for a bit and help you get through it. In fact, there are many social group situations in which asking specific people…

This is similar in emergency situations. When you need somebody to call 911, don't ever say "Somebody please call 911!". You have to look at someone, point at them, and tell them "I need you to call 911". Most people will either stand in shock or think that someone else is on it.

> Most people will either stand in shock or think that someone else is on it.

The bystander effect is real, but I wouldn't expect to see it in organisations with explicit hierarchies. Can you imagine this happening in the armed forces? If this happens under your watch as a leader, you're not good at leading.

Re: Why I Quit Google to Work for Myself

#452

Post by cachvico »

bambax wrote: post #411
thrownaway954 wrote: post #273

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"In the first place, nobody "works for themself". You might work for customers, or clients, or whatever, but not "yourself"." nail on the head... so many people don't get this simple fact that if you DO NOT have clients, you DO NOT have a business. You can't ever "pay yourself", some outside entity have to pay you for your product.

Not true! If you're doing b2b, yes admittedly you work for clients, yet a client is still very different from a boss (he can't order you around or give you "performance evaluations", etc.) BUT if you're doing b2c and selling something to many anonymous customers you don't interact with, you're truly working for yourself; that thing can be a piece of software, an object, a novel, etc.

The customers still dictate your work. If you don't build the features they want, you won't have a business. Essentially you're still working for them.

Re: Why I Quit Google to Work for Myself

#453

Post by mike-seekwell »

bambax wrote: post #411
thrownaway954 wrote: post #273

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"In the first place, nobody "works for themself". You might work for customers, or clients, or whatever, but not "yourself"." nail on the head... so many people don't get this simple fact that if you DO NOT have clients, you DO NOT have a business. You can't ever "pay yourself", some outside entity have to pay you for your product.

Not true! If you're doing b2b, yes admittedly you work for clients, yet a client is still very different from a boss (he can't order you around or give you "performance evaluations", etc.) BUT if you're doing b2c and selling something to many anonymous customers you don't interact with, you're truly working for yourself; that thing can be a piece of software, an object, a novel, etc.

You can't fire a boss, but you can fire a customer.

You also can't fire investors. Remember that before you go "work for yourself" and take seed money to do it.

Re: Why I Quit Google to Work for Myself

#454

Post by mrisoli »

martinraag wrote: post #105

The article really resonated with me, as it's eerily similar to my own experience at Microsoft a couple of years back. Constant reorgs, resulting in projects being cancelled, resulting in lack of motivation, as months of your hard work are thrown out due to unclear decisions by the management. I too was hoping for a senior level promotion. The last project I worked on, I was the only non-senior level developer in a t…

Well, the goal of a promotion is to both enable the employee to get more responsibilities and the company to get more out of the employee.

If you're already putting in as much as the senior folk without being one the company has no upside in offering a promotion with the exception of employee retention/reducing employee turnover, so it is fitting that they'd offer it when you are about to leave.

Re: Why I Quit Google to Work for Myself

#455

Post by sssilver »

phamilton wrote: post #252
ravenstine wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The notion that "a junior engineer and a manager who is at least partially paying attention can get that done" is a horseshit excuse that could be applied to 99% of what any given developer does. Moreover, developers find themselves having to write tests and fix bugs because the priorities of upper management didn't allow it or foster it for the last developer.

> developers find themselves having to write tests and fix bugs because the priorities of upper management didn't allow it Well there's your problem. If fixing those bugs isn't aligned with the priorities of upper management then you are either working on unimportant bugs or your org is screwed. You going rogue certainly isn't the solution. I see this a lot. Developers place their priorities and biases over actual bu…

The problem is dishonesty. I've never worked for a company that would at least admit "our primary focus is selling rather than software quality". I know it should be implied, but when work is advertised as "looking for ninja pro engineers dedicated to their craft to help build top notch software", no wonder people get misaligned on values.

Re: Why I Quit Google to Work for Myself

#456

Post by ryandrake »

woolvalley wrote: post #216

This is why people change companies every two years. It's easier to get a promotion by studying for interviews on leetcode than by spending the extra time promo gaming in one's career. "Facebook will give me a sr software engineer position after 5 hours of interviews, here is that offer letter" is a very strong position. Market dynamics are a lot faster than internal promo dynamics at bigco. Once you reach sr althoug…

This has been true everywhere I’ve worked in tech. It is far, far easier and a straighter path to “level up” to a different company than to get promoted internally. Without a single exception, and even in the depths of two tech hiring downturns.

Re: Why I Quit Google to Work for Myself

#457

Post by bambax »

cachvico wrote: post #452
bambax wrote: post #411

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not true! If you're doing b2b, yes admittedly you work for clients, yet a client is still very different from a boss (he can't order you around or give you "performance evaluations", etc.) BUT if you're doing b2c and selling something to many anonymous customers you don't interact with, you're truly working for yourself; that thing can be a piece of software, an object, a novel, etc.

The customers still dictate your work. If you don't build the features they want, you won't have a business. Essentially you're still working for them.

Yes, sure, you're working for them; but it's still better (IMHO) to have clients than bosses. A boss is someone that uses you to look good to his own boss, but doesn't really care about what you do. A client, most of the time, actually needs what you produce.

Re: Why I Quit Google to Work for Myself

#458

Post by taurath »

bob_theslob646 wrote: post #56
stephencanon wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've never tried it, but I suspect you'll run into the same issue that sports does, where "assists" don't accurately reflect the people who are making things happen on the court. 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". It's entirely possible for the person most responsible for…

You're forgetting that you could also track secondhand assist as well. I can't speak for programming but in soccer this is well-known. It's just very hard to Value just like an employer would in terms of having that person on board for morale. Fortunately the better people get it and understand that that person should be value even if they weren't directly involved in making the change but they were definitely a part…

The problem is much more about underperforming teams than well or overperforming teams. In order to dissect the problems of an underperforming team, they need some objective metric (even if it doesn't tell the whole story) to look to, or else you have to deal with people flinging accusations around and poisoning the entire culture.

Re: Why I Quit Google to Work for Myself

#459

Post by ryandrake »

Aqua wrote: post #329

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…

> They offered me a promotion and over 90% raise but I simply did not care anymore

What this should tell you is that they indeed could have easily promoted you and given you a raise but deliberately chose not to because they bet you’d work for below market. Only when they realized they were wrong did they suddenly admit they could treat you fairly. You made the right decision clearly.

Re: Why I Quit Google to Work for Myself

#460

Post by dmayle »

amenod wrote: post #422
lkrubner wrote: post #413

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

You can still collect this data anonymously. Rather than giving people a fixed number of votes, you have them vote for everyone, but use random methods to conceal the source. (This has the effect of hiding single complaints, though)

For example, when downvoting: flip a coin, if it comes up heads, downvote that person. If it comes up tails, only downvote that person if you think they deserve to be downvoted.

Doing it this way, each person can be expected to get roughly 50% of people downvoting them. If the number is enough higher than that, then that person probably deserves the downvotes, but you can't tell who they came from.

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