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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

#771

Post by ernsheong »

I've been there, done that (quit another MNC, not Google).

Unfortunately in the real world, hardly anyone wants your new product, and people are so accustomed to polished products that work on every platform, that one person can hardly deliver something pay-worthy nowadays. Not to mention it's so difficult to land on an idea that people really want, and that idea itself is something doable by one or two persons at most (bootstrap model)

After 6 months of hardly any income, had to eat humble pie and get back to employment (for now).

Good luck.

Re: Why I Quit Google to Work for Myself

#772

Post by JBlue42 »

pm90 wrote: post #576
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?"

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 a…

That's how I was taught (via managers on reddit actually, not irl).

Dig as far as you can, record it all, then escalate. You also have to gauge how critical it is and how much of your time (esp. if other things are building up) to spend on it as a factor of when to take it up the line.

Tbh, I haven't had any managers lately that have been that great but I'm still holding out hope.

Re: Why I Quit Google to Work for Myself

#773

Post by JBlue42 »

eldavido wrote: post #742
jorblumesea wrote: post #722

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If that works for you, sure. But most would seriously weigh that trade off. With another 70k / year after taxes you could retire way earlier and do whatever you want.

This is a false tradeoff. Early retirement is almost always an option for middle-class or better Americans. It's just a question of how much pain you want to put up with in terms of housing, lifestyle, where you want to live, whether you want great education for your kids, etc. I used to agree with your comment but don't anymore. I have enough money at this point to earn 10s of K/year investing in real estate or doin…

Seems like you already earned your nut. Those that haven't might want to take that Google tradeoff, esp. if young and unencumbered, so that can get to where you're at.

Your middle-class also seems to be a bit different than my middle-class, especially in cities where jobs are.

Re: Why I Quit Google to Work for Myself

#774

Post by JBlue42 »

sixstringtheory wrote: post #566
mrisoli wrote: post #454

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, the goal of a promotion is to both enable the employee to get more responsibilities and the company to get more out of the employee. If you're already putting in as much as the senior folk without being one the company has no upside in offering a promotion with the exception of employee retention/reducing employee turnover, so it is fitting that they'd offer it when you are about to leave.

Wow, this just brought me back to a "career ladder" conversation I had once upon a time, where my manager said that they promote people to positions when they're already operating at that level. Sounded good at the time, I never realized the implications until now.

Isn't that kind of what the Peter principle says?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_principle

Re: Why I Quit Google to Work for Myself

#775

Post by JBlue42 »

greggarious wrote: post #475
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. Did you meet anyone who had taken that option? I thought it was commonly viewed a bad idea to take a counter offer, since most companies will lay you off or never promote you again due to perceived di…

Sometimes they can be caught off-guard with your unhappiness. Usually, you're not announcing that you're interviewing at other places for the same reasons. It's all in the game, I guess.

Re: Why I Quit Google to Work for Myself

#776

Post by astrange »

code_sloth wrote: post #400
MadBohr wrote: post #306

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

When someone under-performs, I always look at who they report to. Nobody wants to perform poorly. Typically the lead / manager has given inadequate guidance, or there is a serious skill set mismatch, both of which are on the lead / manager. Sometimes it's on me. Source: I manage managers

Few days later note - "wanting to perform poorly" is basically what ADHD looks to other people.

Re: Why I Quit Google to Work for Myself

#777

Post by blaketaco »

tomkarlo wrote: post #331
zhausjgzga wrote: post #192

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At my job, we use HeyTaco, a Slack bot. Every day you can give up to five tacos out by @mentioning somebody with a :taco: emoticon. If you answer a question or help somebody out, they will probably give you some tacos. The app keeps track of who gets the most tacos with leaderboards and the like. This has instilled a culture of helping others out on the team, by gamifying it and making it visible.

We use something like this in my org, and Google has "kudos", but I've found that the problem is their usage is highly variable even within a medium-sized or (we're roughly 1,000.) On some teams, the average employee will have hundreds of these kudos, whereas on others, the average might be 1 or 2. This was highlighted to me recently when someone in Slack noted that one person had ~50X the kudos of everyone else and…

Great discussion here! Do you two think a tool like kudos or tacos should be used for evaluating performance?

Is the goal of using something like this to help people show more gratitude or is it for performance feedback?

And can those two things coexist or do they conflict with each other?

Would love to hear your thoughts.

Re: Why I Quit Google to Work for Myself

#778

Post by jldugger »

ordinaryperson wrote: post #766
jldugger wrote: post #761

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I didn't say the committee was numerical, though their reputation is such. OP's challenge is that Google's promotion committee isn't an executive panel, or subject to appeals except from perhaps the highest executives. It's a random panel of experts who you'll likely never have met, because the company is 100k engineers, and working on your small corner of Maps or whatever makes it unlikely you'll have ample opportun…

> Google's promotion committee isn't an executive panel, or subject to appeals except from perhaps the highest executives. It's a random panel of experts At most of the companies I've worked, if a VP or senior exec likes you they make it known to the committee or a key person on it. This just comes from my personal experience working at large companies. It's also true of just getting something done: usually the most…

> At most of the companies I've worked, if a VP or senior exec likes you they make it known to the committee or a key person on it.

Like, half of OP's blog post is about how Google specifically is not most of the companies you've worked for. Your advice would be useful virtually anywhere else, and were the subject anywhere else I would likely agree. However, in this specific case, "Look kids, this is just how the business world works" is poor advice and treats industry as homogeneous, despite your statement to the contrary.

Google's insanely profitable market position allows them to be wronger for longer on many things, ranging from server design to management practices. There was a time in which Larry Page fired all project managers, and I've seen no accounts saying 'This was a triumph -- huge success.' So if the rest of society has converged on a solution where management should be in charge of level promotions, this doesn't mean Google has adopted this (likely efficient) method.

Which is the point of this article: a warning to those that would fill his empty seat, that social norms, rules and processes are vastly different than you expect, and may persist despite not working in anyone's favor.

Re: Why I Quit Google to Work for Myself

#779

Post by adultSwim »

If you had a union, you could have a say in how promotions are handled.

This is how the whole industry works. They will be more than happy to keep you low, doing useful work relatively cheaply, indefinitely.

On the other hand, cry me a river. There are a million and a half families, including 3 million children, in the US living on less than $2/person/day.

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