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Why did I leave Google or, why did I stay so long?

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Re: Why did I leave Google or, why did I stay so long?

#401

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"so long as my family and I are good" - wealth goes a long way to ensure exactly that.

Sure, but if you're a software developer with a few years experience then pretty much any job is going to cover that.

Really varies on the company and where you live. Where I am, unless you’re at a select few companies, you’ll barely make ends meet or have to choose to live a particularly subpar lifestyle for a professional.

Re: Why did I leave Google or, why did I stay so long?

#402
post #318

People offended here are exactly the bubble of entitled morons in Silicon Valley that this guy is talking about. I totally agree with everything he said, companies where you have to work long hours and don't receive lots of weird benefits like yoga and sushi are the places I want to work. I would much prefer to have my compensation include more equity in the company, and for my performance to actually be related to t…

Go ahead, there are plenty of startups that will gladly own you in exchange for some breadcrumb percentage of the company. The rest of us have balanced lives to tend to.

Re: Why did I leave Google or, why did I stay so long?

#403

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure, but if you're a software developer with a few years experience then pretty much any job is going to cover that.

Really varies on the company and where you live. Where I am, unless you’re at a select few companies, you’ll barely make ends meet or have to choose to live a particularly subpar lifestyle for a professional.

Interesting. I thought software developers were paid better than most other professions almost everywhere. Out of interest, is this because you live somewhere with low wages, or because you live somewhere with high living costs?

Re: Why did I leave Google or, why did I stay so long?

#404

9 years @ Google, and I too came from a company acquired by Google. (In my case, Google did not keep our product or tech stack around, so.) And yes, I can say many Googlers are entitled. It's a fair descriptor. And the pace of work is slower than a startup. In general. And I too have many criticisms of Google. But. Google has entirely different revenue constraints. It can afford an entirely different way of working.…

A lack of any real time pressure may lead to unusual or unjustifiable architecture decisions, or needless complexity. It's true that not every place needs to be a meat grinder, but you should timebox your projects.

There's a difference between time pressure and burning out your employees. I believe the present is referring to the latter.

Re: Why did I leave Google or, why did I stay so long?

#405
post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Same. I can live in a hut in Guatemala if I feel challenged and am enjoying my work. Wealth is fun but so long as my family and I are good, it’s not a motivating factor. Solving problems is.

"so long as my family and I are good" - wealth goes a long way to ensure exactly that.

Yes but there is a threshold. Good to me doesn’t mean everyone drives a Tesla. It means freedom to do what we want and not be prisoners to what we own or want to own.

Re: Why did I leave Google or, why did I stay so long?

#406
post #391

As seen from many comments this posts would be polemic to say the least. Obviously the author is from a different time where tech/SV abundance did not exist and had to be created through huge personal sacrifice. He speaks as such person and is judged as any "nasty uncle on dinner table". But in my view, there's certainly truth in the entitlement he describes. I'm not saying that WBL (as represented as yoga at 11AM) i…

Noam is not one of the Waze founders.

Re: Why did I leave Google or, why did I stay so long?

#407
post #119

I'm aware that, as a founder, he's obviously very interested in the success of his product. His mentality however carried over the acquisition and past inertia. Giving him the benefit of the doubt, I think his problem is that he's passionate. And I don't mean the corporate lingo 'passionate', I mean the actual passionate. I strongly advise any passionate people to not seek to turn their passion into a job. Because it…

Except that this guy IS a boss and he's been demanding that his employees copy his "passion" against their contractual benefits. Or wellbeing.

And he is also demanding that the second those employees burn out (possibly due to too much passion, and too little attention paid to their wellbeing), he be allowed to put them out to pasture.

Re: Why did I leave Google or, why did I stay so long?

#408

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure, but if you're a software developer with a few years experience then pretty much any job is going to cover that.

Really varies on the company and where you live. Where I am, unless you’re at a select few companies, you’ll barely make ends meet or have to choose to live a particularly subpar lifestyle for a professional.

Unless you set a really unusual bar for "subpar lifestyle for a professional" this is a very atypical situation. If you think of "professional" jobs only, developers typically have better than average compensation for around the least barrier to entry. The lack of need for credentials tends to translate to significantly less debt (more so US & maybe Canada specific) and earlier career trajectory entry too.

This may be regional, but certainly seems to hold for US, Canada, much of EU in my limited experience.

Re: Why did I leave Google or, why did I stay so long?

#409

9 years @ Google, and I too came from a company acquired by Google. (In my case, Google did not keep our product or tech stack around, so.) And yes, I can say many Googlers are entitled. It's a fair descriptor. And the pace of work is slower than a startup. In general. And I too have many criticisms of Google. But. Google has entirely different revenue constraints. It can afford an entirely different way of working.…

My take would be Google can afford it for now because they have a web ad monopoly and don’t have to compete.

If they ever lose that, the culture they’ve built will cause them to be destroyed and irrelevant in not that much time.

For now, it’s summer.

Re: Why did I leave Google or, why did I stay so long?

#410
So much discussion about about work life balance and toxic managers, but not enough about exactly what you've accomplished by working all these hours?

Did you write another object relational manager or another functional programming is great, stop using C++ post?

I wish the conversation was more about how technology was moved forward and how it benefited people using the products based on that tech.

Some of this I think is caused by power imbalances in the employee-employer relationship, prevailing attitudes in SV about acceptable limits of speech and the inability to discuss this freely at workplace due to the lack of trust. So it spills over into anonymous HN and Blind.

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