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Ask HN: I've been slacking off at Google for 6 years. How can I stop this?

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Re: Ask HN: I've been slacking off at Google for 6 years. How can I stop this?

#301

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This blows my mind that in the US one can make such insane money in tech while still being a slacker and retire early with a dream house bought and paid for while in Europe devs are slaving away through SCRUM powered meat grinders burning themselves out for a 3% salary increase on a pitiful 40-80k/year, no stock options, without any hope of early retirement or owning a decent home without a 30 year loan or financial…

it’s worth pointing out that large US tech companies hire international applicants and sponsor work visas for these folks. i get that not everyone is willing/able to make the move for various reasons, of course. edit: applications -> applicants

The US would probably get a flood of extremely high quality applicants if they only fixed a few basic social services.

Re: Ask HN: I've been slacking off at Google for 6 years. How can I stop this?

#302

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This blows my mind that in the US one can make such insane money in tech while still being a slacker and retire early with a dream house bought and paid for while in Europe devs are slaving away through SCRUM powered meat grinders burning themselves out for a 3% salary increase on a pitiful 40-80k/year, no stock options, without any hope of early retirement or owning a decent home without a 30 year loan or financial…

Well, if you look at the cost of living in SV the salaries aren't that insane. Buying a house is challenging on a Google salary in that area depending on level. If you get in right out of college and live meagerly, than yes, you might be able to retire early if you leave that area. If you actually want to build a life in the Bay Area and buy property, you will probably have to work at least 20 years to have enough fo…

20 years out of school still puts you retiring in your 40s ...

Re: Ask HN: I've been slacking off at Google for 6 years. How can I stop this?

#304

......I don't know what to say. I know a few people are like this too. On the other hand, I think I do a lot of things for my employer and constantly learn/challenge myself, but don't make anywhere near FAANG SWE. I am trying hard to pass onsite FAANG interviews, and still failing. So I'm still Leetcoding now. But hearing stories like this just kinda demotivates me and confuses me more. Most non FAANG companies have…

Don't read too much into it. You can certainly find soul-crushing stuff in FAANG, but it doesn't mean that it's all that's available there. You might still have to deal with it as a stepping stone towards more interesting things in your career - but when you know that it's merely means to an end, not the thing you're going to be doing for decades to come, it's a very different story.

Re: Ask HN: I've been slacking off at Google for 6 years. How can I stop this?

#305

Earlier quoted context omitted.

E.g.: I'm a jeans & t-shirt kinda guy. However, I now dress a little more formally (business casual) because it leads to better outcomes. I've not gotten around to wearing suits even though that would be even better. A little more strategic: I usually wear at least one item of clothing with my employer's logo visible on it. (Gives off a "corporate citizen" vibe.) A far cry from the recent past when I'd carry a laptop…

Lol... You had to read a book to realize that dressing nicely and repping your company might be a good idea?

I think this is actually pretty foreign in a world where jeans & tshirt is seen as the default.

If you look at how everyone dresses though, you’ll find a clear flow from grunts (tshirts) to managers (shirts & slacks) to leadership (full suit).

Everyone is conditioned to that, so just by dressing differently people now perceive you as something different.

Of course there are exceptions, but it’s generic enough that I think it applies everywhere to some extend.

Re: Ask HN: I've been slacking off at Google for 6 years. How can I stop this?

#306

Hi there, I did the exact same thing as you (at Google Sydney), before eventually deciding that I must strike out into the wilderness. In the few years since I left; I worked as a solutions architect managing a team, a team lead, a remote dev, and now in a startup. Front-end, back-end, flip-side, all the ends. So I've been deliberately trying different angles of my career to see what suits. I'd describe this process…

Current Googler here; my solution to staving off complacency has been constantly asking myself if there are other problems I can and will work on - and they don't have to be problems on your team. (Although, I will say that at a certain point, if you're growing, I think your responsibilities should be shifting from solving problems to identifying/prioritizing the problems.)

Every team has a looonnngggggg list of things that they want to do but can't because they don't have the people for it (even if they're not keeping track of it). Frankly there's also a non trivial amount of core language work that's done by people who don't actually work on any of those teams. Getting context can be hard sometimes, but I've done it plenty of times.

Am always happy to chat, my username is pretty obvious from my profile.

Re: Ask HN: I've been slacking off at Google for 6 years. How can I stop this?

#307
post #130

You remind me myself a few years ago: a talented, but bored slacker who didn't see any point in investing any energy into that project. Turns out I was right: the project didn't go anywhere after I left and investing any extra time would be a clueless thing to do. So what's changed since then? Have I found meaning in work? No! I've become a professional slacker who knows all these psychological tricks, knows what bod…

This blows my mind that in the US one can make such insane money in tech while still being a slacker and retire early with a dream house bought and paid for while in Europe devs are slaving away through SCRUM powered meat grinders burning themselves out for a 3% salary increase on a pitiful 40-80k/year, no stock options, without any hope of early retirement or owning a decent home without a 30 year loan or financial…

I worked as a software developer for companies all over the world: Brisbane, Sydney, San Francisco (working remotely from Moscow), The Hague (Netherlands), London then Berlin. The markets are very different in each country.

Moscow is the worst for developers but at least cost of living is low. I feel that Australia is similar to the US in terms of income but it's a less liquid market; low supply, low demand. But the low liquidity of market meant that if you were patient and negotiated well, you could score AUD $900 per day contracts (about $620 USD per day). The cost of living in Sydney is much lower than San Francisco though so I had a really good lifestyle and was still saving money.

In The Netherlands, it was difficult to find contracts above EUR 450 per day (about 500 USD). On the plus side, the government offered big tax cuts to foreigners so you ended up paying less tax than the locals. It felt like I had more disposable income.

London market was tough, it was difficult to find good contracts. I did see adverts for 600 GBP per day in software finance sector but it seemed like I needed personal connections to accesss those. Recruiters were always trying hard to pull me away from the contract market to a lower paid full time opportunity and I felt that I had less negotiating power in spite of having more experience than when I was living in Australia and Netherlands.

Berlin for me was not that great but difficult to say. I moved there because I had already agreed with the company and it was a long term career move. I worked there for 2 years and quit recently. The job market is difficult because they don't usually show salaries or rates on the adverts... This means that companies have more negotiating power and don't care that much about attracting top software engineering talent.

From my experience, countries which pay software developers the most have the best software developers and you can see it in the final products - The experience of using online banking in different countries was interesting.

Re: Ask HN: I've been slacking off at Google for 6 years. How can I stop this?

#309

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most tech workers in the US aren't at Google or making Silicon Valley wages. HN's description of what it's like to work in tech sounds likes a fantasy world to me. Yes I make more than a European at $100k living in the US midwest... but I have to work hard every single day, in an open office, with my boss sitting in a desk right behind me. Most jobs are still a grind. This guy is probably a high-performer who wonders…

>everyone else is so incompetent because he doesn't try and still looks good I'd argue against the "talent lottery" idea. Over the last 10 years as a software dev I'd argue that the 10x "rockstar" dev certainly exists, but it's almost always a case of situation/environment matching an already-moderately-talented employee extremely well. I've seen a lot of slackers suddenly explode into a powerhouse when given the rig…

Slacking is also a matter of motivation or the lack of it essentially, whether the "slacking" is a conscious act or not.

A "universal" 10x developer would be fairly rare to mythic even if restricted to a single complete subdomain like say Backend or Embedded development.

Well unless you had a massive skill discrepancy like say a team of a class of middle schoolers and a 10 year veteran software engineer but that would be a pedantic edge case like comparing the foot speed of a centarian and Usain Bolt. Technically a valid measurement of range but not generally useful.

Re: Ask HN: I've been slacking off at Google for 6 years. How can I stop this?

#310

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Facebook hires tons of zero passion 10am-4pm engineers. It might not be deliberate slacking but it’s definitely not hard working.

I'm not sure which team you are talking about because many people here in Ads are working 9-9-6.

Are you? If so, why?
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