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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?

#401

Post by whack »

NeverFade wrote: post #366
cantrevealname wrote: post #358

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> make the most of it by progressing deliberately in your social life Ironically the Bay Area is among the worst places on Earth for improving your social life if you're straight and male. I noticed that you don't live in the Bay Area, you're married, you probably meant a much broader meaning of "social life", so your experiences are likely very different. But the typical clean cut, well-spoken, hard working, respect…

> But the typical clean cut, well-spoken, hard working, respectful, male SWE in the Bay Area making $120K+ a year in his 20s or 30s, who should be a magnet for women, turns out to be living in one of worst places because of male-female ratios among singles (and some other cultural factors). Yes, it's quite simple: there are many more men in the Bay than women, so women have their pick, and they can afford to raise th…

I've been away from the bay for a while, but it's amazing how bad the dating scene is, for exactly the reasons you described. I'm currently engaged to an amazing woman who has only ever lived in working-class suburbs and smaller cities. Her exes and her friends' husbands are shockingly anti-intellectual, didn't attend college, have some substance abuse issues, and/or make well under 6 figures. She keeps telling me how amazing I am as a partner, even though in my mind, I'm just being a decent human being. Engineers in places like SFBA severely underestimate how attractive they would be anywhere else in the country/world.

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

#402

Post by mattm »

sbodevguru wrote: post #134

Something that really helped me when I was younger and in a similar boat, was to grit my teeth and throw myself into the work; by that I mean, force yourself to be first in, last out every day, take on literally every task - no matter how shitty - that is available to you, your team, or anyone you know that needs help. Take some work home with you if you can. And keep doing this for 4-6 months. By that time you will…

While I don't agree with going overboard and burning yourself out, I do agree with the premise.

So many people want to find their passion first and then they think they'll work hard once they find it.

It's actually the other way around.

Give 100% to what you're working on (no more though) and you'll find that you become passionate about it.

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

#403

Post by peteretep »

ahs1 wrote: post #388
cantrevealname wrote: post #358

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> make the most of it by progressing deliberately in your social life Ironically the Bay Area is among the worst places on Earth for improving your social life if you're straight and male. I noticed that you don't live in the Bay Area, you're married, you probably meant a much broader meaning of "social life", so your experiences are likely very different. But the typical clean cut, well-spoken, hard working, respect…

> My advice would be work hard, save your money, travel when you can to better locales to improve your social life, but with the eventual goal of permanently moving out when you've saved enough. If you pick your destination within the USA well, dating prospects will improve greatly, and if you look worldwide (and can overcome the language and immigration issues), it could improve dramatically. The Bay Area will seem…

Move to South East Asia instead. Burgeoning tech scene, some incredible nature, dating is considerably easier, both with locals and other expats, health care is first-rate and a couple of orders of magnitude cheaper ... "a rural state" sounds like all the worst bits of living in the US.

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

#404

Post by Infinitesimus »

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.

You can clear those interviews by focusing heavily on leetcode.com, hackerrank.com questions.

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

#405

Post by jama211 »

JimboOmega wrote: post #367
aphextron wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>I've become a professional slacker who knows all these psychological tricks, knows what body language to use to make the desired impression, what to say and what not to say. My managers think I'm a high performer who also makes valuable social contributions to our team and this is reflected in pay rises. i.e. the Gervais principle [0] [0] https://www.ribbonfarm.com/2009/10/07/the-gervais-principle-...

Real question - is this possible to do as a woman? I often feel like the games of the office, especially the engineering office, are much more naturally suited (and familiar to) men. I've known people who seem to coast to leadership positions (showing no aptitude, and often, even interest in them!), people who are automatically first pick whenever a promotion becomes available almost from the moment they walk in the…

Women definitely have it harder, as they have to work pretty hard just to be seen as contributing.

The golden rule is though, the tricks still work, and doing real work is usually one of the least efficient ways of making yourself seen as contributing. As they say, 'play to the rules they set out'. As a general rule, the metrics that people use within companies to determine performance are hopelessly bad, they will reward easy but visible work far more than hard and important but also not that visible work. As such, optimise your moves to peak the performance figures they're looking for, which almost always have very little to do with what actually needs to be done to keep the company performing well.

The women I have seen succeed have used the exact same tactics, perhaps with a bit of extra assertiveness and extra work put in to look the part as well, for example virtue signalling professionalism via clothing etc, which men don't usually have to do because of the awful patriarchy. Just my thoughts, anyway.

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

#407

Post by Galanwe »

rco8786 wrote: post #398
Galanwe wrote: post #338

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 There is so much wrong in this sentence. First, there is no more “meat grinders” in the US than in Europe. I worked at Microsoft and Criteo in Europe, and the slacking there seems to be on par with what OP describes. You mention 40/80k per year being pitiful? This kind of remu…

> You can expect some hundreds/thousands dollars per year This is not correct. A senior (meaning L5-L6+, nothing crazy) engineer at a big public tech co will get 6 figures yearly in stock compensation in addition to their salary.

Sorry, but this is urban legend to me. No saying it does not happen, but that is definitely a very special case.

I manage a team of quantitative developers in a Hedge Fund and do between 50 and 100 interviews per year, at senior level. I have head hunter compensation report on the candidates. I see regularly candidates from Google, Amazon, and finance industry. I very rarely see 6 digit bonus for big techs. My experience is that they have a high fixed salary and low 5 digit bonus.

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

#408

Post by tomxor »

NeverFade wrote: post #366
cantrevealname wrote: post #358

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> make the most of it by progressing deliberately in your social life Ironically the Bay Area is among the worst places on Earth for improving your social life if you're straight and male. I noticed that you don't live in the Bay Area, you're married, you probably meant a much broader meaning of "social life", so your experiences are likely very different. But the typical clean cut, well-spoken, hard working, respect…

> But the typical clean cut, well-spoken, hard working, respectful, male SWE in the Bay Area making $120K+ a year in his 20s or 30s, who should be a magnet for women, turns out to be living in one of worst places because of male-female ratios among singles (and some other cultural factors). Yes, it's quite simple: there are many more men in the Bay than women, so women have their pick, and they can afford to raise th…

> I know some women in the Bay, working in areas like recruiting and marketing, who are dating VCs and CEOs exclusively and consider dating "plain engineers" to be beneath them.

That sounds more like bullets dodged than a loss (for the engineers that is).

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

#409

Post by djcapelis »

jedberg wrote: post #370
djcapelis wrote: post #312

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For the engineers who want to have an impact on stuff, if you’re skilled and your ideas are good and you can convince others about that, you can be given as much impact as you can eat. There’s a huge spectrum of how much impact people opt to go for. Apple is a good place to come if you want to change something about how a billion people use some technology. And generally Apple is cool with people shipping those ideas…

Right, to be clear what I'm not saying is that all Apple engineers are slackers -- far from it. Just that from what I can tell talking to many FAANG workers (and working with a bunch of them who came from other FAANGS), Apple seems to be the easiest place to get away with slacking if you want to, Google also being an easy place to do it. It's why most of the people I worked with left those places -- they got tired of…

Totally get you weren’t applying the same brush to everyone!

> Apple seems to be the easiest place to get away with slacking if you want to

You are the first person I’ve heard this one from! I’m almost pleased to see some balance? I worry we have the reputation of being too grindy too often!

I think this can be very org dependent. I wonder if most of the people you know are clustered in a specific part.

> I've never met anyone who talks about how ease it is to slack off at Facebook or Amazon.

Weird. I have. We seem to have very different experiences.

Also whenever I’ve talked to people who work inside Facebook I just. I just couldn’t. I’m certain I’d go stark raving depressed so quickly there. The froyo on campus is nice though.

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

#410

Post by jama211 »

ubertoop wrote: post #260
reactspa wrote: post #221

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'm sure that was literally the only thing mentioned in the book...
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