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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

#471

Post by ashelmire »

dep_b wrote: post #72
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 worked in a remote team once helping a company in Seattle (that perhaps had a bit of a jock culture problem). I could be stuck for days because following the README in a repo just wasn't enough to get the project to compile and run. Every standup I was telling "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.". To b…

Are you a junior dev or was the work in a domain unfamiliar to you?

If not, you should be able to at least start debugging. You should get some error message (maybe that indicates some env variables not set, something not installed, etc). It seems odd to have not spoken directly to your supervisor or product owner to say "hey, this isn't working because X. What do I need to do / who can I talk to for help?"

Re: Why I Quit Google to Work for Myself

#472

Post by greedo »

ordinaryperson wrote: post #280

After 15 years of doing this my theory on corporate promotions is simple: you need an executive sponsor. VPs don't know who you are by default, they have too many reports. And if you're assigned unsexy work like keeping the trains running, well the better you do your job ironically the more you become like wallpaper. I'm not saying you have to be a kissa*, although that does work at a remarkable number of companies,…

I've heard this referred to as having a 'rabbi' who can help you navigate the political seas of a company.

Re: Why I Quit Google to Work for Myself

#473

Post by madamelic »

gorbachev wrote: post #21
Anirudh25 wrote: post #3

As someone who will be entering the industry, I loved your perspective on your job at Google. Also, having read Cal Newport's "So good that they can't ignore you", I couldn't help but notice the hunger for independence in good software developers. Would you recommend newcomers to join smaller unstable( more independence) companies or bigger, more stable( Top 4) companies(lesser independence)?

Join a company that has great mentors. If you already know what you love, then additionally pick a company that's great at that. If you don't, then pick a company where you get a chance to be exposed to a wide variety of different things. If you aren't getting that in the company you pick, quit and pick another one.

>Join a company that has great mentors.

Why?

I have had people say this to me before but I think it is silly advice for where I am at. No one has really explained what a mentor is supposed to do in regards to a software engineer who is mid-level.

When I think "mentor", I think "hand-holding". I don't need hand-holding. I just need to be on a team with peers who push each other. Is that mentoring? What does "mentoring" look like when someone grows beyond a junior role?

Re: Why I Quit Google to Work for Myself

#474

Post by 111_1_111 »

shatteredvisage wrote: post #4
mtlynch wrote: post #2

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

I'm going to be applying there soon, 4 years into my career. It'll involve a loong move and big changes: what advice can you give someone who wants to spend a couple years (or more?) with the big G? Also, any chance of submitting a referral? :)

How could he possibly refer you if he's never met you and doesn't even work for them any more?

Re: Why I Quit Google to Work for Myself

#475

Post by greggarious »

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…

>What I found most off putting, was when meeting my skip-manager (your managers manager) for the first time during my exit interview, all doors for a senior level promotion were suddenly open, to incentivise me to stay.

Did you meet anyone who had taken that option? I thought it was commonly viewed a bad idea to take a counter offer, since most companies will lay you off or never promote you again due to perceived disloyalty?

Re: Why I Quit Google to Work for Myself

#476

Post by s73v3r_ »

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.

Only the most dense of people would think that isn't a cry for help.

Re: Why I Quit Google to Work for Myself

#477

Post by sah2ed »

exelius wrote: post #81
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…

Nope; the benefit of being a good team player is that it helps you build relationships. Those relationships often turn into opportunities down the line. But it’s hard to drive that behavior at an individual level without creating some conflicts of interest. This is why I generally dislike measuring individuals against specific metrics. I try to set individualized metrics for all of my direct reports — for example, if…

> I think the way you measure teamwork is at the team level by having a consisitent set of team-level metrics the entire team is judged against. This means individual personality and career path variations don’t matter as much.

Interesting management approach. My questions are:

1. How do you account for new team members in a team's metrics? A new junior dev will take some time to become productive so do you add the new member's progress to the team's metrics by making it responsibility of one or two experienced teammates? For instance, you might have internal progress indicators like - by month: 1 the junior should have read access to certain repos that are crucial to a good understanding of the application architecture; by month 2: made a certain number of commits; by month 3: written X number of tests etc.

2. How do you use these team metrics to recommend promotions and raises for individuals?

Re: Why I Quit Google to Work for Myself

#478

Post by iamcasen »

I have had exactly the author's experience at prior jobs. Quite literally the EXACT experience.

I didn't realize it at the time, but I was put on a project that was doomed to fail from day one. I was looking at it optimistically. It was a problematic system, and I knew I could improve it dramatically.

What happened instead? My improvements brought to light a lot of horrible stuff, and the new code was catching and alerting on previously hidden errors. This lead people in high places to believe I was reckless and shipping dangerously bad code, when it reality, it was not any worse off than before.

This led to my downfall. It was a sad lesson to learn, but office politics are everywhere. It's so important to recognize when you're being backed into a corner and given projects that are designed to fail.

Re: Why I Quit Google to Work for Myself

#479

Post by eqdw »

ordinaryperson wrote: post #280

After 15 years of doing this my theory on corporate promotions is simple: you need an executive sponsor. VPs don't know who you are by default, they have too many reports. And if you're assigned unsexy work like keeping the trains running, well the better you do your job ironically the more you become like wallpaper. I'm not saying you have to be a kissa*, although that does work at a remarkable number of companies,…

At first glance I didn't realize that "kissa" was a censored curse word, and I thought that "kissa" was a new slang for "kiss-a*"

So I'd like to propose a new slang term, "kissa"...

Re: Why I Quit Google to Work for Myself

#480

Post by mtlynch »

erichmond wrote: post #440

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, e…

Thanks! Yeah, I recognize that's definitely a possible outcome. Perhaps it's statistically the most likely outcome. But I agree with you that it's worth doing if for nothing else to see what it's like. At worst, I go back to being an employee again somewhere.
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