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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?

#621

Post by w0mbat »

izacus wrote: post #99

This is an amazing post - it describes exactly how bad manager looks like and what kind of expectations does he have from his employees. No emergency PTO (despite being a benefit), ability to just get rid of people who don't suit him, cursing at people, not having a proper work/life balance. It just keeps on giving. And all for what? A mapping application having features which really don't save lives 99% of the time.

A mapping application that frequently diverts traffic off the freeway into narrow residential roads, probably does the opposite of saving lives. In my experience, it doesn't even save time, just gives you a more complicated route

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

#622

Post by Jabbles »

The Android app store treated us as a 3rd party, there was no pre-installation option and no additional distribution. We did have a lot more marketing dollars to spend but had to spend them like any other company, except we were constrained in what we could do and which 3rd parties we could work with due to corporate policies. All of our growth at Waze post acquisition was from work we did, not support from the mothership.

Look for this blogpost to be quoted by Google in one of their antitrust defences.

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

#623

Post by pnathan »

guyzero wrote: post #451
jrockway wrote: post #290

He sounds kind of toxic and out of touch, and didn't really mention why he stayed so long despite that being the title of the article. You know someone is Up To Something when they rant about HR restricting their speech. It's weird to me that he's now a free agent, rants about how people complained that "I used a four letter word, my analogy was not PC, my language was not PG", and yet doesn't indulge in his blog pos…

At the risk of being not politically correct myself, I think there are significant cultural gaps between the west coast American standard and people from Israel (Bardin is Isralei). With the caveat that this is my experience only, Israelis are more blunt, direct and often openly critical vs Americans, especially Californians. They're often right and all the ones I've worked with have been very smart, but the way a me…

East Coast and West Coast too. I've struggled there a fair bit myself, having East Coast parents.

I would love to work with some Israelis or East Coasters sometime. Be refreshing :)

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

#624

Post by dasm »

JohnCarmack wrote: post #586

I can certainly see a lot of parallels with Oculus / Facebook. Perhaps unusually, I actually wanted FB to impress itself more strongly on Oculus post acquisition because, frankly, Oculus was a bit of a mess. Instead, Oculus was given an enormous amount of freedom for many years. Personally, nobody ever told me what to do, even though I was willing to "shut up and soldier" if necessary -- they bought that capability!…

It's surprising to me that your (former) title wouldn't entail more direct leadership, even as a simple messenger for "shut up and soldier."

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

#625

Post by nonameiguess »

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…

This guy is deluded about the meaning of his product. I was a Waze user. It saved me a few minutes here and there getting to work, and that was worth the $0 it cost me. If he ever forced an employee to miss even a single kid's soccer game to save me two minutes getting to work, though, I no longer feel that is worth it.

I spent most of the past five years working on projects for the US geointelligence enterprise where if we failed to meet a deadline, a satellite might not launch. Before that, I was in the Army for 8 years fighting wars. I am perfectly willing to make tremendous sacrifices when it is actually worth it, but it is amazing to see how deluded Silicon Valley types are about the actual importance of what they're doing. Not everything changes the world. Most products are trifling conveniences, nice to haves, and if you miss a deadline here or there, nobody cares. Or at least they really shouldn't care.

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

#626

Post by draw_down »

The entitlement is all over; talking about entitled employees keeps us from turning our attentions elsewhere. Because then we'd have to ask bigger questions and oh boy, our heads may begin to hurt.

Let us not forget that industry heads have colluded to suppress pay for engineers. Let us not forget that in general, executives act as though we should be grateful for our pay, rather than being remunerated for building the systems that pour money into their bank accounts. Their compensation is a fact of life, just the way it is. Ours is a handout from the generous leadership team to the undeserving peons.

Even the "just a job" framing is a form of entitlement; I should not have employees who simply do a job for a wage, they should really care about that job. And if they have moved from a place of really caring to simply "doing a job", that isn't the fault of leadership or a symptom of the organization. Those people are just, you know, entitled.

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

#627

Post by eigenvector »

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.

Wasn't Microsoft widely regarded as a bit of a meat grinder in the Ballmer days due to stack ranking?

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

#628

Post by ZephyrBlu »

thethethethe wrote: post #611
ZephyrBlu wrote: post #603

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"After the acquisition, I was invited to speak on many different Google panels and events and very quickly, I began racking up my HR complaints. I used a four letter word, my analogy was not PC, my language was not PG" Firstly, these came from events he was _invited_ to speak at. If you invite someone to speak and then don't let them speak their mind what was the point in inviting them? Secondly, as a non-american no…

I'm sorry but this makes no sense. So what if he was invited to speak? Can we not hold people accountable for their actions just because they were invited to speak? How do you know whether or not the things he said were worthy of reporting to HR? He didn't say what they were for a reason

It seems like we're at an impasse.

To me, it sounds like people wanted to "hold him accountable" for upsetting them. You clearly think otherwise.

And I don't know, but the article makes me believe he is not out to attack people. Some people have also pointed out cultural differences that are likely at play here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26168899.

Again, you clearly think differently given one of your other comments: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26170030.

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

#629

Post by indeedmug »

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…

Sometimes I find reading HN comment to be a bizarre experience because people seeming read an entirely different article than I did. All the article's author is saying that at large corporates the incentives are about personal promotion as opposed to delivering user experiences. He justifies this by saying that individual contributions get diluted in large organization. To me, this makes a lot of sense and is an interesting and thoughtful conversation.

Somehow the person two comments above me twisted his message into the author being the entitled one. I think this is what the author is referring to by PC and putting on a corporate face.

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

#630

Post by dasm »

Rebelgecko wrote: post #620
JohnCarmack wrote: post #586

I can certainly see a lot of parallels with Oculus / Facebook. Perhaps unusually, I actually wanted FB to impress itself more strongly on Oculus post acquisition because, frankly, Oculus was a bit of a mess. Instead, Oculus was given an enormous amount of freedom for many years. Personally, nobody ever told me what to do, even though I was willing to "shut up and soldier" if necessary -- they bought that capability!…

Just curious, what things did you want/expect FB to be more hands-on about? General things like company organization, or more specific product decisions (I'm thinking of one particularly controversial product decision but I understand if that's a sensitive topic)?

I suspect he won't want to get into thorny PR issues, but probably company organization. It's easy to imagine a disorganized startup scaling poorly, and those within it wanting guidance from highly-scaled FB.
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