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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

#571

Post by kurtisc »

cryptbe wrote: post #365
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…

At Google you can ask your coworkers to write feedback that would be included in your promo package. I wonder why the author didn't ask the developers that they helped to write a few sentences explaining how much time they'd saved thanks to the author's help. The hiring committee wouldn't ask for any metric if there were already a few people testifying that "I saved XX hours". Disclaimer: I work at Google.

>XX hours

Isn't that a metric?

Re: Why I Quit Google to Work for Myself

#572

Post by joeevans1000 »

Heck yeah! It's great to read this. Large companies will bleed you dry and not remember your name. It's better to be the survivor of a failed startup than a star at a huge company. Better than being the survivor of a failed startup is the owner of a successful one. You'll never know that last one if you don't try.

Re: Why I Quit Google to Work for Myself

#574

Post by hrktb »

Vinnl wrote: post #179
dep_b wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

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…

I like that the problem is remote specific, and the first image you have is “asking people, by name, to sit down with you”. Your image is nit wrong, but a symptom of how we can be hardwired for physical proximity.

Otherwise, a common issue for a team with colocated workers mixed with remote workers is a facility to ignore calls and messages.

Central people get easily overworked, interrupted and drown into tsunamis of requests. One of the coping mechanisms in these situations is to just ignore most requests, and only deal with people getting loud enough to be heard. In a mixed environment, the coworker siting 10m away has an easier time grabbing attention than the icon in the chat room with a unread badge.

Even simply knowing when someone is taking breaks can help to time requests to get them at the right moment.

I have remote days every now and then, and it’s interesting to see how the game is completely different, and how often I end up asking someone physically there to go talk to people on my behalf.

Re: Why I Quit Google to Work for Myself

#575

Post by wepple »

cableshaft wrote: post #282
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. Doesn't feel great when negotiations with your employer are comparable to those had with your cable provider. Wow, that's one hell of a way to look at things. Thanks for that perspective.

Yeah that’s a great way to phrase it.

I always got frustrated with counter-offers upon resignation, as it’s the most vivid “yeah we could definitely have paid you this because you’re worth it, but only if we know you’re really mad”

Re: Why I Quit Google to Work for Myself

#576

Post by pm90 »

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?"

You will get a lot of downvotes for making that statement here... but let me just say I agree with you 100%. The people I see that get the most work done aren’t the ones crying publicly for help on a nebulous problem, but asking very specific questions about specific problems. In cases one doesn’t make progress, escalate to the manager giving details about exactly what is going on, how many times you reached out to another team and got no answers. That gives the manager ammunition to talk to their peers on other teams or escalate to higher ups.

It’s rather unrealistic for the manager to be understanding all the time and coax a team member to give all details of every problem...

Re: Why I Quit Google to Work for Myself

#577

Post by wolco »

eikenberry wrote: post #397
MadBohr wrote: post #310

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This to me sounds like a complete lack of self-ownership on your part. You literally sat blocked doing nothing for days, without reaching out to an individual to help with this? Instead you just spammed Slack saying you're blocked? While I agree that it would have been nice if somebody helped you, you are in control of your own destiny. If nobody is helping you, you need to personally escalate it and reach out until…

And even if everyone completely ignored them when they direct messaged their teammates... why do nothing. Why not dig in and figure out how to get it to build and update the Readme? I don't understand why someone would just sit there and do nothing instead of trying to fix the problem.

I did that once and then rewrote the repo. Everything was fine for months on our team until another team merged their exact copy with new changes that broke what I was doing. Everyone senior left my team and it looked like I was doing nothing for 4 months. Communication should come first and the manager needs to step up.

Re: Why I Quit Google to Work for Myself

#578

Post by 6a68 »

I dunno, it seems like the learning process of putting together a series of unsuccessful promo packages might be the exact training you need to become "senior".

If the (good) work you did wasn't reflected in the metrics, then you need to figure out how to change the metrics, or change what you work on.

There's nothing inherently scummy or "political" about influencing the collective direction: identify problems, come up with good ideas for solutions and how to measure (partial) success, and talk it over with your team and manager around the time goals are being set. People are biased, distracted, and fallible, but generally recognize good ideas when they are communicated clearly.

If you're not good at documenting your successes, reflect on what is and isn't getting documented, and find ways to set yourself up for success the next time. Talk to people who've gotten the promotion you want, and figure out what you've missed.

Learning to independently identify problems, devise solutions, measure success, document success, and advocate for your ideas and yourself are essential skills for the human organizational / business part of writing code for a living. This is true whether you work on your own, at a startup, or at a bigco like Google.

Good luck! :-)

Re: Why I Quit Google to Work for Myself

#579

Post by NeoBasilisk »

s73v3r_ wrote: post #535
ascendantlogic wrote: post #442

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

"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?" Cause that's a shitty thing to do. And, as shown, it leads to people leaving.

doesn't matter when there is always a fresh new grad who doesn't know any better waiting to take your place

Re: Why I Quit Google to Work for Myself

#580

Post by taneq »

rzzzt wrote: post #412
johngalt wrote: post #387

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Capability and responsibility become conflated very easily. You start off as the superhero who can fix problems, but that gradually creates dependency. 1st year 'Thanks for your help finding that error that was holding us up.' 2nd year 'We are all finished now. Just sent it over to you for debugging.' 3rd year 'Hey we are all waiting on you to fix. Big deadline for big customer.' CC: management 4th year Management: '…

So... how does one break the cycle?

Start by actually talking to your management instead of just trying to be a rock star. "Hey, I'm spending a lot of time doing Team X's job and it's impacting on my assigned work, if you want me to keep doing this then put me in charge of Team X, otherwise let's all sit down together and clarify who is responsible for what."
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