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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

#551

Post by pyrale »

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…

> 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 like I'm just giving excuses of why my work isn't done.

Honestly, there's not much you can do if you feel like your company is not acknowledging work that you believe is a valuable use of your clock time.

What I notice more senior people do is 1) expose clear SLAs to require their help and 2) get in the habit of producing more artifacts while they concentrate so they can refocus faster after an interruption.

Re: Why I Quit Google to Work for Myself

#552

Post by izacus »

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…

The message you're responding to is literaly saying that you need to play the politics game in small startups as well. Perhaps even more so since you don't have clearly defined process of goals that lead to promotions and pay raises.

Re: Why I Quit Google to Work for Myself

#553

Post by martinraag »

ascendantlogic wrote: post #442
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…

From the company's perspective it's always a game of getting maximum effort/value for minimum price. From the employee's perspective it's the exact opposite: maximum price for minimum effort/value. If they can dangle that carrot in front of you and get you to give 110% at your current pay scale for 1-2 more years then why the hell wouldn't they do it? And how many people grind away on that treadmill after having that…

I can see that now and completely agree, but back then - much like the author of the original post, I was eating up the whole idea of being more than just an employee, of all of us being in it for a larger goal.

In fact, it took me another couple of years, and witnessing that the grass is no greener in the startup world, to finally come to this conclusion.

Even though I have come to terms with this, I have not really been able to completely adapt yet. Which is why, again much like the author, I have currently landed on working for myself. I do miss working on more ambitious projects with bigger teams, that a job like that enables, but for now, I have no interest in playing the game to achieve my career goals.

Re: Why I Quit Google to Work for Myself

#554

Post by smsm42 »

izacus wrote: post #552
smsm42 wrote: post #396

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

The message you're responding to is literaly saying that you need to play the politics game in small startups as well. Perhaps even more so since you don't have clearly defined process of goals that lead to promotions and pay raises.

> Perhaps even more so

Wasn't my experience. Of course, YMMV.

> since you don't have clearly defined process of goals that lead to promotions and pay raises.

Looks like Google does have defined process. Did it help the OP? Doesn't seem so. Defined processes are good if they're defined with your goals in mind. If they are defined explicitly to prevent you from reaching your goals, they'd be only an impediment, and one that you'll fail to overcome, as "this is our defined process, we know it doesn't work in your particular case, but we can't start special-casing people, so you'll have to take one for the team here".

Re: Why I Quit Google to Work for Myself

#555

Post by justherefortart »

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…

Working for yourself is fantastic.

Having one boss that can fire you sucks, having 100 clients that can fire you is fantastic (you can also fire them).

Now it is difficult to get to your necessary X number of clients (I'm 44 and on startup #8). But not having to deal with stupid inane bullshit incessantly while working is like winning the lottery.

My current full time employment is run like a middle school popularity contest. The company is so shittacular I don't think I've been at worse in my ~30 years of working. This is saying a lot as I've also worked in fast food, construction, healthcare, my own shitty startups, a MLM, among many others.

Re: Why I Quit Google to Work for Myself

#556

Post by izacus »

komali2 wrote: post #523
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.

And if you think there's no political games in your company then you're very naive. Your either not seeing it (which is bad for you) or its being hidden from you (which is also bad).

Re: Why I Quit Google to Work for Myself

#557

Post by rantanplan »

MadBohr wrote: post #306
dgreensp wrote: post #283

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If a manager of some kind were to notice the Slack messages and ping someone specific to help, that would be a perfect example of the kind of management that is so sorely lacking at so many companies. Many employees are too burned, or proud, to even put out an SOS... so a cry for help is actually a gift to management. If only it were someone’s job to think for a few minutes each day about each employee and notice if…

Why not both? I cringed when I read OP's comment where he spammed "I'm completely blocked" in the chat without asking for specifics. What a complete lack of individual ownership. Even the best manager can't help somebody who is unwilling to help themselves. Source: am a manager.

You should stop being a manager. Or get training to become a better one. Seriously.

When a member of your team can't perform because he's not given the proper resources(access, help, info, etc), it should be your number 1 job to find out why is that the case and do everything in your power to rectify that.

One could argue that it's your only job actually.

Re: Why I Quit Google to Work for Myself

#558

Post by thereare5lights »

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?"

It takes a certain kind of person to interpret ""I'm blocked" as "I'm blocked, woe is me" instead of "I'm blocked. Can anyone that sees this help me?"

Those people should never be managers.

Re: Why I Quit Google to Work for Myself

#559

Post by rantanplan »

kolpa wrote: post #361
emiliobumachar wrote: post #323

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Could you please give an example of a message with more ownership? Keep in mind that he didn't know at the time that he was missing some undocumented configuration step.

Bad: "I need help with this." Good: "Hi, Sumitra . Can you help me with this or recommend someone who can?" Good: "Hi, $MANAGER. Can you help me with this or recommend someone who can?"

What kind of company or culture is that, when someone asks for help from a group and no one volunteers to even suggest to them a person that would be the best candidate to help them?

I've never been at such a company and I hope I never will.

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