Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Why I Quit Google to Work for Myself

mtlynch.io

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

601–610 of 783 posts

Re: Why I Quit Google to Work for Myself

#601

Post by grigjd3 »

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.

I've worked at different companies that just culturally have very different approaches. Where I am now, I will basically corner people until they help me or provide a better option on where to seek the help I need. At my previous employer, there were certain mailing lists where you could ask questions and if your questions reflected real effort, you could expect helpful responses.

Re: Why I Quit Google to Work for Myself

#602

Post by tfha »

mtlynch wrote: post #65
shepardrtc wrote: post #44

I recognized your username from all your work in the Sia community. Thanks for helping to make it better. While reading your article, I got the distinct impression that Google set up the system that way so they didn't have to give promotions. They get so many applications from the best software engineers in the world that they don't really have to work to retain people, and if they need a manager, there are plenty of…

I think that Google does try to treat their employees fairly. I don't think the promo process is the way it is because of greed. That said, I do think that the system is biased in Google's favor. It's designed much more strongly to filter out false positives (promote someone underqualified) than false negatives (withhold a promotion from someone qualified). As a result, it lets Google pay people at their lower-level…

I can understand why they do it, having someone incompetent in an important position is way more dangerous for the company than having someone competent stuck in a lower position.

But it's still a risk to lose good employees, talent is very valuable.

Re: Why I Quit Google to Work for Myself

#603

Post by bitcraft »

thereare5lights wrote: post #558
MadBohr wrote: post #368

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I disagree. A manager should be skeptical to ensure everyone is pulling their weight and being truthful.

Re: Why I Quit Google to Work for Myself

#604

Post by arbie »

totalZero wrote: post #36

> If I ever made a mistake at Google that cost the company $10 million, I would suffer no consequences. I’d be asked to write a post-mortem, and everyone would celebrate the learning opportunity. For most of these founders, a $10 million mistake would mean the end of their business and several lifetimes of debt. This is not as insightful as it seems....risk tolerance should be a function of percentages, not square nu…

> This is not as insightful as it seems....risk tolerance should be a function of percentages, not square numbers.

Percentages are hard to calculate in large companies. Is it a multiple of the engineer's salary? A percentage of the team's budget? The org? The company?

Re: Why I Quit Google to Work for Myself

#605

Post by Infernal »

taneq wrote: post #580
rzzzt wrote: post #412

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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."

So I'm asking this not to move the goalposts, but because it's the situation I'm in - what do if your manager is too weak/distracted/uncaring to actually act on this information and/or the projects in wait state on you are not actually within your manager's sphere of influence?

Re: Why I Quit Google to Work for Myself

#606

Post by kevan »

gordon_freeman wrote: post #568
mseebach wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The general idea is that the things that would impress a promotion committee are things that you have done, that are good for the company. That, of course, is not the truth everywhere, but anecdotally it's a lot truer than most people complaining about other people sucking up thinks it is.

How come fixing bugs to make data pipeline more robust and data more accurate does not fall under "things that are good for the company"?

It might be good for the company. But the point is you need dollars and cents metrics that prove it is, not just righteous feelings that less bugs is better. Engineers at ground level are often well insulated from the actual business impact of the work they do. Because they aren't given any insight into the business side they instead optimize for measurable metrics like bug count and data accuracy.

Re: Why I Quit Google to Work for Myself

#607

Post by TheSpiceIsLife »

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?"

> 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.

> I'm blocked, woe is me" is garbage

As a manager, are you prepared to put your real name to these comments?

Re: Why I Quit Google to Work for Myself

#608

Post by smsm42 »

dennis_jeeves wrote: post #565
smsm42 wrote: post #549

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think anybody does puzzles anymore. It's like 2000s thing. Are there still puzzle interview places left?

The last time I was interviewed by phone at Amazon, I was asked to write a binary tree to a file. Time given: 30 minutes. Does that count as a puzzle? Did lot's on exercises on binary trees before but was not prepared for that question.

Nah, that sounds pretty simple - you just need to know how to walk a binary tree (basic knowledge) and how to write a string to a file (even more basic knowledge) - provided binary tree stores strings (and with right serializer, everything stores strings). Unless I am missing something. Don't think this qualifies as a puzzle. Puzzle would be something that requires non-trivial knowledge or exceptional insight to solve.

Re: Why I Quit Google to Work for Myself

#609

Post by jldugger »

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,…

> The OP complains about not having enough metrics in his assignments but do committees promote people based on stone-cold, anonymous metrics?

The answer, from what I gather, is yes. The hiring / promotion committees are essentially an anonymous collection of fellow engineers, perhaps a step higher than you, but somewhat random in composition. As such, there is no reliable way to grease hands or build meaningful relationships with the wide range of people who might be on your committee.

The larger problem OP faces is simple: his senior engineer projects are not being protected by his manager. And possibly sabotaged indirectly by executives above. In that sense, he does need an executive sponsor, simply to protect the project assignments he needs to build his stone cold anonymous metrics case.

Re: Why I Quit Google to Work for Myself

#610

Post by jorblumesea »

eldavido wrote: post #530
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…

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 cas…

The difference between Google and others is far more than 25% when you factor in total compensation. At least in my area, the difference between Google and the big players is more like 50-60%.

So it is a significant trade off.

Post reply on HN