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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

#521

Post by bambax »

martin1975 wrote: post #495
bambax wrote: post #457

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Have you ever dealt with clients? I'm gonna take a wild guess and say no.

I've been an independent consultant / contractor for over 20 years. I don't esp. defend clients, they don't know what they want and tend to change their mind often, but they're a million times better than a bad boss. (A good boss, I don't know, I never had one.)

In the last 14 months I switched to making physical products sold to end users (b2c) and it's great, but having clients wasn't that bad.

Re: Why I Quit Google to Work for Myself

#522

Post by joncrane »

derekp7 wrote: post #171
KKKKkkkk1 wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What makes my stomach turn is the interpersonal aspect. How can all your teammates see you fail through no fault of your own for days and pretend they don't notice. Unfortunately in my experience, that's not a rare occurrence.

I can give some insight from my own experience. In my current position, there are a large number of "things" that I've had to figure out, either by reverse engineering, reading code, or intuition. So I get constantly bombarded with helping others get unstuck. Well, when it comes time for a project meeting, those on the meeting are far removed from the other groups that I constantly have to help out. And it sounds lik…

>After 25 years of this

What has your career trajectory been like over the past 25 years?

Re: Why I Quit Google to Work for Myself

#523

Post by komali2 »

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 Horowitz writes in "The Hard Thing About Hard Things," if there even is a political game at your company, someone up top has fucked up.

Re: Why I Quit Google to Work for Myself

#524

Post by taormina »

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)?

Personally, I would recommend a smaller unstable company. At the time, I didn't recognize it as being such (but certainly not Top 4), and I wouldn't have possibly learned as much and as quickly in a less dysfunctional organization. To be fair, that's also why I eventually ended up leaving, but responsibility and opportunity can be very available in understaffed and unstable companies. Definitely find some good mentors wherever you end up.

Re: Why I Quit Google to Work for Myself

#525

Post by acd »

You provide a service write code for the company so that the company makes good profits in exchange you get a salary.

Nobody cares if you work hard over time unless your projects are late.

Lessons learnt spend time with your loved ones.

Re: Why I Quit Google to Work for Myself

#526

Post by komali2 »

>So if Google and I have a business relationship that exists to serve each side’s interests, why was I spending time on all these tasks that served Google’s interests instead of my own? If the promotion committee doesn’t reward bugfixing or team support work, why was I doing that?

That's where the culture failed.

Re: Why I Quit Google to Work for Myself

#527

Post by neuronsguy »

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?

First thing is you need to actually be a good engineer. No point optimising if you suck, just put your head down and learn.

Next thing you need to know is the rules of the game in YOUR organisation. Every company is different and the rules are different. Google is unique, so at other companies the game is very different.

Then you need to move the needle on whatever matters. That might be improving metrics, that might mean becoming drinking buddies with the right people, it might be purposefully going to work for a failing team so you can be given the chance to take it over and prove yourself.

Re: Why I Quit Google to Work for Myself

#528

Post by exelius »

sah2ed wrote: post #477
exelius wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 n…

1. I normally just dedicate sprint points to training up new resources for a few sprints. I’m not so heavy-handed with the internal policies so it’s up to each team how they do it, but most have some form of pull request review / gating process.

2. I don’t! Well, not directly. Team metrics usually have some impact on bonus money and raises, but that’s all based on budget so it’s not consistent year-to-year. Metrics should be used to drive behavior, but behavior should be used to determine promotion. Is the person a team player? Have they developed the skills necessary to be successful at the next level? What does the next level look like for them — is it management or engineering? A lot plays into it, and you have to have career path discussions with folks. Can’t solve this one with metrics :)

Re: Why I Quit Google to Work for Myself

#529

Post by runevault »

icebraining wrote: post #375
runevault wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Once a team is settled in this can be hard to measure. For me personally I was able to show mine by changing teams and helping drastically inflate overall team velocity, not just by the number of points I added, but how much more productive everyone else became. It is hard to do on an established team where you're already part of it, though, and that's a problem I don't know how to solve.

Go on vacation for a decent period of time? In finance, key employees have mandatory two-week leaves, which serve to detect embezzlement. Here we could have the same, but to detect positive influences.

That's an interesting point. Once you've been with my current employer long enough, you actually get a 1 month sabbatical which may work for that.

Re: Why I Quit Google to Work for Myself

#530

Post by eldavido »

smsm42 wrote: post #396
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…

> Or figure out how to play. There's a third way. Don't go to Google. There are literally thousands of smaller places you can work for/in/with, some of them do pretty cool things. There'd be politics too, probably, but not as much as in Google, and you could control your destiny to a more significant degree. Small(er) companies - if you pick right - tend to have significantly better environment in that regard (not pe…

I thing I wonder is what role lifestyle factors play.

If you're making 200k on your own terms vs 250 at Google, I wonder who's better off. At that level of income, things like how stressful your work is, how interested in it you are, the length of your commute, etc. seem to matter more than earning another 50k of income.

Obviously everyone has their own circumstances but I think the obsession with earning as much cash salary as possible seems a little myopic.

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