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I Quit Google to Work for Myself (2018)

mtlynch.io

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Re: I Quit Google to Work for Myself (2018)

#161

Post by jimhi »

mtlynch wrote: post #148
jimhi wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't want to be too harsh on this guy. He should be proud he pushed out 5 projects and he seems really really passionate about Keto. The fact he made even one dollar is impressive, it is always hardest at the start. But some of the things he did make my head explode. He spent more than his total revenue ever on...testing software? He paid hundreds of dollars for every project on logos? He paid a developer thousand…

Thanks for reading! A lot of the feedback I got after my one-year update was that I was overspending. I mostly disagree, though with acknowledgement that my businesses don't earn much money, so I don't have much of a leg to stand on in defying conventional wisdom. The key disconnect is that people seem to be arguing that I should strive for profitability at all times, whereas my goal was to minimize the time to find…

That’s impressive, but I feel like you are avoiding the main criticism in that link. Testing doesn’t matter at your stage. Imagine if you spent a bunch of time perfecting the human resource procedures for your websites, it’s too early to think about that. Maybe that is hard to internalize since it was your job for so long

Re: I Quit Google to Work for Myself (2018)

#162

Post by mtlynch »

jimhi wrote: post #161
mtlynch wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks for reading! A lot of the feedback I got after my one-year update was that I was overspending. I mostly disagree, though with acknowledgement that my businesses don't earn much money, so I don't have much of a leg to stand on in defying conventional wisdom. The key disconnect is that people seem to be arguing that I should strive for profitability at all times, whereas my goal was to minimize the time to find…

That’s impressive, but I feel like you are avoiding the main criticism in that link. Testing doesn’t matter at your stage. Imagine if you spent a bunch of time perfecting the human resource procedures for your websites, it’s too early to think about that. Maybe that is hard to internalize since it was your job for so long

>Testing doesn’t matter at your stage. Imagine if you spent a bunch of time perfecting the human resource procedures for your websites, it’s too early to think about that. Maybe that is hard to internalize since it was your job for so long

Ah, I see what you're saying. I respectfully disagree.

For me, testing earns back time invested very quickly, often before I even commit a changelist. I would write more tests if I were working for a large company or I was maintaining a mature product, but I don't buy the idea that zero is universally the correct number of tests for any early-stage product.

My E2E tests and CI routinely prevent me from breaking major functionality in my websites and APIs. It seems like a no-brainer to spend an extra 20% of my up-front development time writing automated tests to catch those instead of discovering the breaks after the fact, patching it, then testing all the functionality manually.

Re: I Quit Google to Work for Myself (2018)

#163

Post by programmertote »

amznthrowaway5 wrote: post #10
benjaminwootton wrote: post #8

The idea of working to please an anonymous promotion committee is quite depressing. Why do this “pick me” dance when it’s completely within your control to get the job you want within a few weeks? By far the path of least resistance is simply to get a job and the promotion elsewhere. Or do something entrepreneurial like this guy and completely tie your skills and abilities to the rewards. As a talented engineer at Go…

Yeah, if you keep your leetcode skills sharp and study to game the "design" interviews, you can get a job at a competing company instead of playing the depressing political game. As a bonus you'll make significantly more than internal promos.

A bit tangential, but wanted to ask if there's any pointer to learn/study how to best answer "design" interviews? Thank you!

Re: I Quit Google to Work for Myself (2018)

#164

Post by nojvek »

Google is worth almost a trillion dollars. Their ads shit golden billions of dollars. They have more than a 100k employees. Google is a big corp with big corp politics and they can get their cream crop of engineers, use them, abuse them and know that the next batch is waiting in line. It's kind of same with MSFT, AMZN and the others.

If you really value your skills and have the confidence that you can go it alone (or at a smaller company) and make the same-ish, go do that instead.

It is really hard to beat Google's FU compensation but if the smart engineers at Google banded together to do their own thing, they'd have a bigger return than adding to Larry and Sergey's billions.

Re: I Quit Google to Work for Myself (2018)

#165

Post by usaar333 »

programmertote wrote: post #163
amznthrowaway5 wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, if you keep your leetcode skills sharp and study to game the "design" interviews, you can get a job at a competing company instead of playing the depressing political game. As a bonus you'll make significantly more than internal promos.

A bit tangential, but wanted to ask if there's any pointer to learn/study how to best answer "design" interviews? Thank you!

Google around for tips.

I found practice interviews on interviewing.io very useful

Re: I Quit Google to Work for Myself (2018)

#166

Post by 8note »

trentnix wrote: post #79
lotsofpulp wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are vast swaths of the US that are in economic decline, and they most certainly do not allow for mobility irrespective of skill level. They don't even have sufficient economic activity to support a Walmart.

You seem to define mobility different from me. The people in those areas have the legal and opportunistic means of going elsewhere.

people have always had that mobility though; there's nothing special about the current US job market. want to become the king in a feudal society? just raise an army and take over

Re: I Quit Google to Work for Myself (2018)

#167

Post by war1025 »

mathewsanders wrote: post #155

I get the point of being able to measure success by something quantifiable, but the emphasis on individuals needing to prove the impact they’ve made strikes me as an odd setup. I’ve never worked at a FAANG but currently at a F100 in fintech, and as the product manager for our team, part of my role is to make sure our team is doing work that has quantifiable value. But for ICs on the team they’re not penalized if I ma…

Reading this comment and thinking back to my memory of the article from reading it earlier today and when it has been posted in the past, I wonder if the "failed promotion" wasn't so much a matter of "not working on a shiny new project" as not making sure metrics were in place to document how the improvements to the service he was maintaining made it so it could handle more load.

At some point on the ladder it's no longer enough to do good work, you need to show your work and why it matters to the company.

Re: I Quit Google to Work for Myself (2018)

#168

Post by nojvek »

Kudos to you. I wish you the best on the IndieHacker journey and pray that you end up making more than you would at Google, have better fulfillment in life and create more value for everyone else.

We really need more people working on harder problems that create a better future for everyone rather than figuring out how to spam more clickbait ads to people.

Google is great but it seems they’re quite astray of their mission of organizing the world’s knowledge and making it universally accessible. We have a long way to go to truly achieve this.

Re: I Quit Google to Work for Myself (2018)

#169

Post by vonseel »

m0zg wrote: post #113
vonseel wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Those are equally terrifying statements to what the user above said.

Those statements aren't "terrifying" in the least once you consider that your relationship with the employer is a _business_ relationship. If the employer didn't want career games, they wouldn't reward them. As simple as that. If your company's official party line diverges from its reward structure, the best thing you can do for yourself is to follow the reward structure and ignore the exhortations to be doing things…

I will have to take a look at that link. Interesting thoughts, thanks for sharing.

I don’t think the game is limited to the tech industry. What scares me is it seems pretty much all office jobs eventually turn into corporate politics / bs. On one hand, I can see how the politicking and playing the game seems to be in the best interest of the company - look! We’re getting stuff done and it looks awesome! OTOH, I worry that less obvious ideas (and good people) are neglected and like you said, The Game promotes the wrong behavior.

I guess if you get to that top “Fellow” developer level at a comfortable place maybe you don’t have to worry bout it anymore. Or maybe it becomes more important than ever... I hope not!

Re: I Quit Google to Work for Myself (2018)

#170

Post by BossingAround »

heyflyguy wrote: post #130
rb808 wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you're at a corporation you should figure out which game you're playing. Are you there to "benefit the company" or get "promoted and rewarded"? Make a decision but they are different paths leading different directions.

I don't disagree with you, only as a business owner I'd be pretty upset if I even knew that was going on amongst my new hires. If someone can't explain to me our company vision after 90 days, as well as their role in delivering it - I'm not saying they'll be fired but it's not a long term engagement between us.

> If someone can't explain to me our company vision after 90 days, as well as their role in delivering it - I'm not saying they'll be fired but it's not a long term engagement between us

As a business owner, that would be your failure, not the new hire's. This seems like a highly US-centric point of view.

In reality, either you give you new hire resources to learn these things, i.e. give enough time on the clock to dedicate to this, as well as materials to learn from, or the person will not know these things.

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