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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?

#431

Post by freebee16 »

lhorie wrote: post #420
gonehome wrote: post #409

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I recall watching a news report as a teen about how things used to be pretty chill at Microsoft at its heyday. These days it doesn't seem to have a monopoly on much of anything, but it can still crank out interesting projects. It doesn't have to be a black-and-white do-or-die.

that happened after nadella changed course from the balmer years. It is not always the case that a new CEO can turn around the company (for example see GE).

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

#432

Post by knuthsat »

gonehome wrote: post #409
cmrdporcupine wrote: post #363

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.

You're assuming the rest of the world is different but it isn't. There's a massive amount of companies where working pace is very slow. A large percentage of employees do barely anything and these companies exist forever.

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

#433

Post by jldugger »

callmeal wrote: post #123

>minority that was offended by something (words and not content) made it a pain We're not mind readers: Words _are_ content. And if there were people misunderstanding what he was saying, then it's pretty clear that he was either deliberately provoking in his speech or just clueless about the impact words have on people who are not him.

> And if there were people misunderstanding what he was saying, then it's pretty clear that he was either deliberately provoking in his speech or just clueless about the impact words have on people who are not him.

I mean, I've heard stories of someone reported to HR for using the word 'baller' (as in 'That new car is so baller, David.') who clearly did not understand the meaning of the word and I can only speculate as to why they thought it was a vulgarity.

That said we can always strive to communicate more clearly, and someone publicly blogging about how they quit because of it probably doesn't get the same benefit of the doubt.

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

#434

Post by Arainach »

good_sir_ant wrote: post #415

I always enjoy posts like this. When the comments flow in, you can identify the steadfast obliviousness the urbanites have around how the other 99% of the world approaches work. Just the reactions to a different opinion (which more aligns to one formed outside of silicon valley) illustrate a built-in intolerance to anything resembling reality, difficult as it may be.

What "reality" are you referring to? Statistically speaking, just about everyone who isn't self-employed (and many of those who are) are in it for the money. A boss complaining that their employees have no passion for their job and won't work overtime sounds like an out of touch awful boss regardless if those employees' lack of passion is for a software product, making pizzas, teaching, driving a truck, or whatever.

Are there awful bosses in every industry? Probably. That doesn't mean that has to be "reality" - it just means that such opinions need pushback wherever they're found.

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

#435

Post by theptip »

the_local_host wrote: post #361
tinyhouse wrote: post #347

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you misinterpreting what he's saying. I didn't get the impression that he claims that employees growth doesn't matter. He's saying that most people optimize for promotion rather than building a better product. That's indeed the wrong thing to optimize for, esp for the company. Not being able to fire people is indeed a big disadvantage. Bad employees are much worse than just not contributing. They make the peo…

But he's not strictly talking about "bad employees"; he explicitly mentions firing people for "the basic reason that you don't need this role any more". That's not invalid by itself as long as everyone knows that the game is purely transactional. But it isn't fair to expect employee "passion" when their own continued employment is contingent on whether management thinks they're still necessary.

The OP is 100% right here. Sometimes the needs of the company change as the company grows, and people can’t keep up. Or people change and they can’t give what the company needs from them any more. This is one of the hard aspects of being a manager in a startup that’s growing quickly.

The easiest example to grok would be if you had hired a VP of sales who is an expert in B2C selling, then you pivot your product to a B2B offering. Or say you pivot into being a data-heavy product and your CTO has no idea how to build a data pipeline.

In these cases you could say “they will figure it out”, and sometimes that works. But sometimes you need to recognize that through no fault of their own, your employee now does not have the skill set they need to do their job, and find someone that does have those skills.

This is most pronounced in hyper-growth startups because bigger companies seldom pivot dramatically or change their scale rapidly enough that a motivated and smart employee can’t grow with the role.

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

#436

Post by freewilly1040 »

iandanforth wrote: post #108

I think his derision of entitled ladder-climbing employees is valid from the perspective of someone who sees "building something valuable" as the point of employment. There is a whole community however that sees wealth acquisition as the point of employment. Even if it's "merely" joining the ranks of the top 5% this is lauded as success by many. Lawyers, doctors, consultants, stock traders, all the high paying profes…

It’s not the drive that is unshared, it’s the incentives. He seems to vaguely understand that his employee’s incentives at Google are different from his own, and seems resent them for it even though his pay is probably an order of magnitude higher than theirs.

When he talks about perfect alignment between employees and investors in the start up world, he is believing his own sales pitch. In reality the same divide exists there too.

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

#437

Post by bsaul »

knuthsat wrote: post #432
gonehome wrote: post #409

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

You're assuming the rest of the world is different but it isn't. There's a massive amount of companies where working pace is very slow. A large percentage of employees do barely anything and these companies exist forever.

in my personnal experience, the only kind of companies that are really comfortable to employees (in terms of perks) and adopt a slow rythm, are benefiting from some kind of monopolistic, regulatory situation.

Either public sector companies, or banks & insurance whose business model can't be disrupted that easily because of regulatory pressures.

Giant IT companies from the valley that successfully built a way to lock down users are the other example.

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

#438

Post by devchix »

freebee16 wrote: post #431
lhorie wrote: post #420

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I recall watching a news report as a teen about how things used to be pretty chill at Microsoft at its heyday. These days it doesn't seem to have a monopoly on much of anything, but it can still crank out interesting projects. It doesn't have to be a black-and-white do-or-die.

that happened after nadella changed course from the balmer years. It is not always the case that a new CEO can turn around the company (for example see GE).

See also SUNW. McNealy imported the 6Sigma thing from GE, at one time it infected even teams not involved in manufacturing. MSFT had the best outcome for giants of the aughts. It is too bad OpenSolaris was left for dead, otherwise we'd have some choices and competition in *nix OS. AIX, dead. HP-UX, dead. Can't recall the DEC, Ultrix? Who runs that anymore. The last time I saw BSD commercially used was at a telco.

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

#439

Post by apozem »

justapassenger wrote: post #309

While he has valid points of how corp life is different from startup, he seems like a horrible, entitled person to work for. General attitude that comes out of it to me, is that your employees growth doesn’t matter, only his vision of product matters. He complains about people being entitled, and at the same time he complains that as CEO of subsidiary of one of the biggest company in the world, he cannot say offensiv…

Yeah, it shows a lack of self-awareness to complain about employees' entitlement and then wish they'd work more, without any talk of extra compensation. Seems a bit entitled to expect other human beings to sacrifice their weekends and happiness to bump the value of your shares.

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

#440

Post by viklove »

tinyhouse wrote: post #347
justapassenger wrote: post #309

While he has valid points of how corp life is different from startup, he seems like a horrible, entitled person to work for. General attitude that comes out of it to me, is that your employees growth doesn’t matter, only his vision of product matters. He complains about people being entitled, and at the same time he complains that as CEO of subsidiary of one of the biggest company in the world, he cannot say offensiv…

I think you misinterpreting what he's saying. I didn't get the impression that he claims that employees growth doesn't matter. He's saying that most people optimize for promotion rather than building a better product. That's indeed the wrong thing to optimize for, esp for the company. Not being able to fire people is indeed a big disadvantage. Bad employees are much worse than just not contributing. They make the peo…

> He's saying that most people optimize for promotion rather than building a better product.

If you want them to optimize for building a better product, give them more equity. Most people don't want to work during the best 40 years of their lives. Give them a way out or they will try to find one themselves.

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