41–50 of 245 posts
Meanwhile a smaller tech startup will pay better and give you way more of a hand in shaping the product, and maybe even not work you 80+hours a week. I'm not sure what the appeal of the big names is for devs.
My eyes are hurting from seeing these articles whining about their misery while collecting hundreds of thousands of dollars each year. Most companies have issues, and these issues are not "Company" issues but PEOPLE issues. Once you're large enough, you are going to have people with differing opinions, beliefs and values. These are going to clash. If you happen to be on the losing side and don't learn to accept it, y…
Then there is a vocal minority who leverage that no individual's performance really affects the money printing machine. They blatantly view the company and its resources as a means to further their political goals.
They come across as incredibly entitled and tone-deaf against the actual working class or people actually suffering from oppression (say, women being incarcerated in Iran for decades for taking off their veils, or protesters in HK). No matter how petty and entitled the request, anything denied is interpreted as some larger act of "violence" against them.
What I didn't/don't understand is why management allowed that to happen. Either they actually believe in the political goals themselves, are afraid of the conflict, or believe it just does not matter for the company.
I think what management fails to understand often is that giving in to a demand is not viewed with gratitude but merely as accepting what's naturally right and good. In other words, giving in to demands 1..n does not give you credit when demand n+1 is posed. The ultimate conflict is just delayed.
My eyes are hurting from seeing these articles whining about their misery while collecting hundreds of thousands of dollars each year. Most companies have issues, and these issues are not "Company" issues but PEOPLE issues. Once you're large enough, you are going to have people with differing opinions, beliefs and values. These are going to clash. If you happen to be on the losing side and don't learn to accept it, y…
Notice, this is long article. Around 12 000 words or 30 pages.
May have been better as a series of articles.
This is so sad. You should guys all quit in protest. You deserve better than this. I mean it, goo
My eyes are hurting from seeing these articles whining about their misery while collecting hundreds of thousands of dollars each year. Most companies have issues, and these issues are not "Company" issues but PEOPLE issues. Once you're large enough, you are going to have people with differing opinions, beliefs and values. These are going to clash. If you happen to be on the losing side and don't learn to accept it, y…
It's really sad.
> To invent products like Gmail, Earth, and Translate, you need coddled geniuses free to let their minds run wild. A cute meme that people like to repeat because it 'sounds right', not really accurate. Gmail was someone's pet project, Earth was purchased, and Translate was a boring statistical analysis program for 10 years. I mean, really, how "wild" does your mind have to be to write a crappy CRUD app or design an a…
Gmail and Translate are, indeed, not extremely exciting.
There's algae in the tube feeding the ice machine in my company's break room, multiple wet ceiling tiles all year long, signs telling us to literally not wipe our feces on the walls in the bathroom, shared desks with other shifts, a constant smell of mold and I make 35k a year, no chance of promotion at all without taking on tens of thousands of dollars of debt to get a 4-year degree in literally anything, at a rabid…
Your entire premise is fallacious. It's responding to someone complaining about an injustice by saying there are starving children in Africa. Your situation sounds awful and if you are that miserable I would be happy to help with anyone that I know that has open positions, depending on your concentration. That being said, saying things like: "Sure, sexism and racial discrimination is bad bad bad, but this happens at…
My eyes are hurting from seeing these articles whining about their misery while collecting hundreds of thousands of dollars each year. Most companies have issues, and these issues are not "Company" issues but PEOPLE issues. Once you're large enough, you are going to have people with differing opinions, beliefs and values. These are going to clash. If you happen to be on the losing side and don't learn to accept it, y…
And that is also very unacceptable.
That statement needs to be challenged. The Montessori method might be great at small scale in an educational context, but that doesn't mean it's a great way to run a company worth most of a trillion dollars. Yes, empowering employees is good. Yes, having a few "coddled geniuses" to drive basic science or radical innovation is good too. OTOH, having every single engineer haring off in random directions all the time might not be so great. I believe this boundary-less freedom to focus on whatever's most interesting and ignore everything else is why issues like privacy and social impact have been routinely shortchanged at companies like Google and Facebook. We've seen where that leads. (It leads to some characteristic technical problems too but that's not the topic right now.)
"Don't be evil" and similar promises don't fulfill themselves. At FAANG scale, sticking to such promises requires a certain amount of focus and discipline every working moment, not just a few people spending more time on internal groups/lists than doing technical work. I know that's going to rub most employees at those companies the wrong way, but that doesn't make it untrue.
P.S. I work at one of those companies. I do know how they work, and I'm not criticizing for criticism's sake. I'm trying to get at what I think is necessary for me and my colleagues to better ourselves and do things we can be proud of.