Why I Quit Google to Work for Myself • Hacker News Board

Re: Why I Quit Google to Work for Myself

#661

Post by voltagex_ » Thu, Mar 01, 2018, 4:59 AM UTC

darepublic wrote: post #625

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…

I can't say for sure but your mention of 'CSS' makes me guess this is a web application, in which case you should be able to read the source code and figure out how to build it. If people aren't helping you then according to their cost benefit matrix it isn't worth it. Maybe they are supposed to be doing other work and they can't calculate how many hours they would have to spend helping you. Maybe they are just afrai…

>your mention of 'CSS' makes me guess this is a web application, in which case you should be able to read the source code and figure out how to build it

pfft. If it's a web app (from 2015-2018) I have even more sympathy for the OP than on any other platform.

Here's an example from last year-ish:

* Get repo from external contractor (let's ignore the 1+ weeks trying to get an install of Git approved)

* Try to get npm working - can't get through our firewall

* Figure out the right chaining proxy to use

* Spend a non-zero amount of time trying to work out all the right bits to flip to turn off ALL SSL verification from npm because interception proxy

* Hit the Windows MAX_PATH limit and have to spend ages trying to delete files that NPM's created (original developer used Linux)

* After npm starts downloading stuff correctly, suddenly it needs a binary dependency (and thus more build tools)

* Give up and check in said binary dependency from elsewhere

* Finally build all the CSS and minified Javascript and check it all into source control with a warning to other devs not to rebuild it unless absolutely necessary

Re: Why I Quit Google to Work for Myself

#662

Post by voltagex_ » Thu, Mar 01, 2018, 5:00 AM UTC

rantanplan wrote: post #559

kolpa wrote: post #361

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Sometimes the person who knew how to make it all work has left. Such is the plight of the maintenance programmer.

Re: Why I Quit Google to Work for Myself

#663

Post by stanislavb » Thu, Mar 01, 2018, 5:00 AM UTC

Good luck, mate! Really, I believe you've taken the right decision. Even if you fail, that will be much better than continuing the environment you've described!

Re: Why I Quit Google to Work for Myself

#664

Post by kirkules » Thu, Mar 01, 2018, 5:02 AM UTC

mratzloff wrote: post #643

epicureanideal wrote: post #436

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think your specification of a "correct way to report a problem" is company specific, or your personal preference, or the way that you think an ideal problem report would be stated. We're humans. Unless there's been a training day or a Readme file explaining HOW to report a bug, I think it's perfectly reasonable to expect this protocol to work: "I'm blocked!" "Why?" "{reason}" If nobody ACKs the "I'm blocked" messag…

"I'm blocked because on compile I get such-and-such error message and I don't know how to fix it. Who is the right person to ask about this?" I just cut your protocol complexity by half. ;-)

S/he wasn't proposing a protocol, but describing a naturally occurring one.

Re: Why I Quit Google to Work for Myself

#665

Post by projektir » Thu, Mar 01, 2018, 5:13 AM UTC

bobthepanda wrote: post #624

cdelsolar wrote: post #619

Earlier quoted context omitted.

OK then do it on the phone with the interviewer looking at you as you're typing and your brain has suddenly blanked. I've been coding since I was 9 years old, have a massive (relatively) side project with a couple hundred users, have shipped multiple projects in multiple jobs, and I know what a binary tree is and how to traverse one, but I'll be damned if I can figure out how to do it under those conditions. I absolu…

That's not a puzzle , though. A puzzle would be something barely related to computer science, like "How can I find which ball out of 9 is heavier weighing them twice on a two-sided scale?"

I think this is a bit pedant. It's fairly common for developers to call questions like these puzzles.

Re: Why I Quit Google to Work for Myself

#666

Post by tachyoff » Thu, Mar 01, 2018, 5:23 AM UTC

jartelt wrote: post #193

derekp7 wrote: post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

It is also easy to get irked when people are seemingly unwilling to do any digging or reverse engineering on their own and go straight to asking for help. Allowing someone to search for an answer for several hours may seem like a waste of their time, but it also could allow them to learn how to figure out a problem on their own. Of course their is a fine line between being a jerk and not helping someone because you w…

I struggling with this constantly. If I have to fix another VPN issue caused by weird DNS server entries in OS X I’m going to scream. “Anybody else getting this error?” No, figure it out. I’m at a loss to explain how so many people wind up in software dev roles while lacking the most basic of problem-solving skills.

Re: Why I Quit Google to Work for Myself

#667

Post by fladrif » Thu, Mar 01, 2018, 5:27 AM UTC

GVIrish wrote: post #157

aruss wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Gravity isn’t metricized (and it would be hard to do so), the best we can do at the moment is indirectly measure it via +/- or other stats like what SC30’s teammates’ true shooting percentages are with him on and off the floor.

I think it's something that might be quantized through SportVU and the advanced analytics they provide, but not published anywhere to the public.

Second Spectrum has supplanted SportsVU for tracking, and is also the generator for all the advanced metrics that are now provided for the NBA as well as ESPN.

Re: Why I Quit Google to Work for Myself

#668

Post by 1k » Thu, Mar 01, 2018, 5:44 AM UTC

s73v3r_ wrote: post #491

stephencanon wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've never tried it, but I suspect you'll run into the same issue that sports does, where "assists" don't accurately reflect the people who are making things happen on the court. We miss the perimeter shooter who positions themselves just so to pull two defenders out of position, but give credit to the point guard who makes the now-easy pass for the "assist". It's entirely possible for the person most responsible for…

The NHL at least takes into account not only the person who passed to the player who scored, but sometimes also the person to passed to that person as well.

There's also the guy that won the ball to pass the person who passed to the person who scored.

And also the guy who pressured the opponent into attempting a difficult pass so that his team mate could win the ball in the first place.

Re: Why I Quit Google to Work for Myself

#669

Post by mrep » Thu, Mar 01, 2018, 5:49 AM UTC

TheSpiceIsLife wrote: post #607

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?"

> 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?

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

This is an anonymous public forum with a massive audience and great content. Let's keep it civil and not target individuals. Please don't try and start witch hunts to ruin someone's career just because you do not agree with him.

Re: Why I Quit Google to Work for Myself

#670

Post by nojvek » Thu, Mar 01, 2018, 6:09 AM UTC

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 my workplace (Mixpanel), we use youearnedit.com. Everyone gets 2000 points per quarter and you distribute them out to whoever helped make you life easier or reward others for their effort.

It has slack integration so sending /yei @someone is super easy. I probably do it multiple times a day.

I have to say, after it was introduced, there definitely was a slight shift in culture.

I strongly believe your 10x programmers are the ones that help the whole team become 10x by building great tools and showing best practices that makes everyone move faster.