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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?

#371

Post by sfblah »

ubertoop wrote: post #295
sfblah wrote: post #278

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nope, but there was a stock increase that made my initial grant worth way more. There was no magic here. I was hired at a fairly established company, got a decent package and then sat around.

I think you're downplaying something here. You got hired as a manger, so at the very least, you must have had a pretty prosperous and impressive background as an engineer for some time. You might be cruising now, but snapshots of one's life are hardly the full story.

Oh sure that’s definitely true. I have a strong resume. At some point I just stopped having to do any work, and instead of trying to “fix” it I just went along with it. Another key element is there’s no way I’ll ever get promoted. I decided I don’t care. The difference between making 500 and 800 or whatever is sort of meaningless after taxes.

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

#372

Post by austenallred »

ChuckNorris89 wrote: post #187
dhuyrv wrote: 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…

It’s really just Google (and similar big cos), not a US/Europe divide

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

#373

Post by sfblah »

polishdude20 wrote: post #313
sweetheart wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This blows my mind. I make 120k as a young person in SWE, and I feel like a fraud often for making that money, and being able to work from basically anywhere I want in the world. How do you justify it to yourself? Do other things fulfill you? I’m already feeling pangs of doubt about my life, and I work more and earn less than you. I’m passing no judgement at all, I’m just curious about how that dynamic effects you an…

Yeah this is crazy to me too. I don't work in software, I teach engineering at a local tech institute and I make like 55k Canadian. I'm fairly autonomous in that as long as I fulfill my class hours and workload I'm free to work from home and all that. I have a great work life balance and I love it but the pay is abysmally if I want to start a family in the future and save for retirement. I've started getting into sof…

As someone pointed out in this thread, a lot of this is strength of resume and where you went to college. Without that you’ll be pushing upstream. I don’t find my advice is very useful to people because they can’t replicate my situation.

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

#374

Post by shantly »

StandardFuture wrote: post #264
angarg12 wrote: post #233

Humblebrag much? I spent the first 7 years of my career in the public sector. Talk about a career killer. If you are concerned about getting a job elsewhere, just study and do online coding exercises like crazy. That should land you a job at most companies with whiteboard interview at your seniority level. If you are concerned about actual learning, most of my professional growth has been on the job. I spent a long w…

> just study and do online coding exercises like crazy Is this really the new go-to for the software industry? Which "online exercises" and "study" tools do you recommend the most? I would love to visualize what this new canonical basis looks like. Since it will apparently define the software of the 2020s.

The FAANG and similar interviews are designed—one hopes, anyway, because if they're trying to do something else they've screwed up—to select for some combination of decent-or-better IQ and having put in enough work to prep for their tests using, yes, online exercises and some books, with the set of things one needs to study being fairly large but also very well-known. There are lists all over the place, including one sort-of famous guide someone put on Github, outlining what you need to study, and where to study it.

Basically they want you to be at least semi-smart in a raw general intelligence sense, and to really want the job and have put in the work to get it. Whatever their reasons for this, it will almost certainly have the effect of making a successful candidate value the offer more and think more highly of their co-workers, for the same reason that e.g. initiation (hazing) rituals or costs tend to improve group cohesion. Perhaps this is why they do it.

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

#375

Post by killjoywashere »

dhuyrv wrote: 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…

> unless you're curing cancer, you shouldn't put any effort into making some billionaires richer

As someone working on that particular problem, I really wonder how I would deal with someone like you in my team. Maybe a bit flips due to the problem and you actually do work? I wonder what I would see if I married your resume with this post.

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

#376

Post by ChuckNorris89 »

apohn wrote: post #365
ChuckNorris89 wrote: post #352

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>but that isn't true at all. I work in the US for a huge European based Multinational That's very specifically anecdotal. Not all cities in Europe are hot markets flooded with big corps like this one. Not that you're wrong, but your experience doesn't apply everywhere.

I was responding to your comment where you said "The behavior of slacker Googlers described here would have gotten them instantly fired in any European company." There are a lot(!!) of European Multinationals, plenty of which are the typical slow moving bureaucratic mess where people who are good at meetings, presentations, and big talk end up moving up faster than people who just work hard. In that sense, there are…

Europe indeed has plenty of slow moving multinationals where one can slack off, the difference is they're slacking off on crap salaries while FAANGers slack off for high six figure salaries. :)

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

#377

Post by chadcmulligan »

liveoneggs wrote: post #291
ec109685 wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You didn’t read his whole post. They’re bored. Their value to google is high enough to keep them employed but the job is beneath their capabilities. The failing for google is not providing this person a path to do more or at least understanding their ambition to do more.

BILL Ooh, uh, yeah. I'm going to have to go ahead and sort of disagree with you there. Yeah. Uh, he's been real flaky lately and I'm not sure that he's the caliber person you want for upper management. He's been having some problems with his TPS reports. BOB PORTER I'll handle this. We feel that the problem isn't with Peter. BOB SLYDELL Um-um. BOB PORTER It's that you haven't challenged him enough to get him really m…

TIL - the bobs had a surname

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

#378

Post by chapium »

agitator wrote: post #228
goatherders wrote: post #50

You don't realize how good you have it: 1. you work for a company that is an excellent resume booster outside of the valley. I'm from central texas and most everyone I know in tech has worked at Dell and once complained how boring it was to work at Dell. The moment they decided to move away from Austin their Dell experience made them very hot commodities to non-Austin tech companies. Every day you stay at Google the…

I think this highlights the fundamental problem with hiring at many large companies. They think they are getting the best, but are they? They sure are overpaying for their employees. I think if OP isn't motivated enough to learn, excel, and build cool things on the side while he has a catered life at google, I don't think she/he will put in much effort elsewhere? That intrinsic motivation isn't there. And it honestly…

You may be right, but intrinsic motivation can be strangled by poorly managed organizations.

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

#379

Post by wayoutthere »

djcapelis wrote: post #321
wayoutthere wrote: post #284

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you want to do this, and you can consistently find interesting work, then go for it! What I mean by "these jobs aren't hard" is that one person is easy to replace, and you are not guaranteed a job in the future just because you have one now. There are always high periods and low periods in a person's career, and you have to mentally / emotionally prepare for those. Tech has a nasty age bias once you hit 40, and I'…

I’ve never had much trouble finding an interesting thing to spend my work time on. The biggest problem is usually deciding when to look for something new and what I want to do next. Getting the opportunity to do that usually comes quickly from there, even if it’s not always the pathway I expected. :) I’ll admit I’ve got advantages that maybe everyone doesn’t have (a deep set of experience from a variety of areas orga…

I mean this in the nicest way possible (I envy your optimism!), but I'm curious how long you've been working as the last 12 years have been an exceptionally good period in tech. My career started in the middle of the dot-com era in the late 90s, so I've been through a few cycles where finding engineering work was hard and people who had crappy jobs were grateful for the income. Those experiences dulled my optimism about the meaningfulness work -- I spent a year in the early 2000s eating ramen and freelancing websites in PHP because I couldn't find a "real" job after the startup I worked for that was going to save the world went bust. Maybe I'm just a cynical old lady at this point, but I do feel emotionally well-prepared for whatever happens next.

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

#380

Post by ChuckNorris89 »

cryptica wrote: post #307
ChuckNorris89 wrote: post #187

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…

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…

Thanks for sharing. Although anecdotal, more posts like these would be very useful to gauge the markets.
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