Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

paygo.media

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

751–760 of 840 posts

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

#751

Post by pid_0 »

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…

Echoing what others said about a difference in culture, I find it really ironic that its important to be globalist and "inclusive" except when its inconvenient. Israelis are extremely blunt its just how the culture is. It has nothing to do with being toxic, mean, etc.

Shouldn't we be inclusive and understand that people from other cultures can't be expected to act the way others do? Especially people from California.

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

#752

Post by justapassenger »

deckard1 wrote: post #699
draw_down wrote: post #626

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 t…

There is definitely more to be said about this dichotomy between the Really Care vs. Doing A Job. The large tech companies are looking for young blood that also happens to be incredibly naive. They are the clueless, in the Gervais Principle[1]. Basically, idiot savants. In addition to colluding to suppress pay, here are ways they optimize for youth and naivety: - They call their HQs a "campus". They create an environ…

> It's practically a cult. I've had conversations with senior and director-level Facebook employees and the way they light up when talking about things Zuckerberg says or does is, frankly, creeping me out

I think it's understandable that people can be excited working for one of the most successful businessman of our times (no matter what you think about his business).

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

#753

Post by cbushko »

Arainach wrote: post #667
cbushko wrote: post #304

Ooof. I think people are picking and choosing too many points to make it seem like this guy is an asshole and a toxic manager. I read that he wants people to: - Do their work - Provide value for their users - Get stuff done. vs - Work on flashy stuff to only get promotions - Be stuck with BAD employees that do very little - Have employees spend all day doing recreation Work/life is important to stay healthy but at th…

As the head of Waze, the author was the one responsible for setting the OKRs that people were judged against. He also had final say in promotions. If people were getting promoted for the wrong things, it was directly their fault. >They were fantastic but caused a huge divide between the people that abused them and the people that worked their butts off. Who was forcing these people to "work their butts off"? There ar…

It was 100% toxic environment and a broken culture. My coworkers were fantastic but upper management was horrible. It was almost like highschool drama.

I learned so much, 70 hour weeks will do that, but I also learned about balance and what was important to me. Getting my work done so that I can spend time with my family is more important than free food, yoga classes and beer on tap. It is cool if your priorities are different than mine and good on you for taking advantage of the perks.

I will be at my desk working so that I can go home at 5.

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

#754

Post by avasylev »

gonehome wrote: post #426
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.

Microsoft became almost irrelevant under Ballmer or was at least trending that way. Nadella’s turn around is almost miraculous and is itself probably an interesting story. I wouldn’t bet on that as the norm. I’d expect the norm to be more like IBM, RIM, or Nokia. I agree with most of the article, but one line stuck out to me as particularly wrong: >”After the acquisition, we have an extremely long project that consum…

>> “What? Sushi again???”

Could that be just someone not liking sushi? As someone who doesn't like sushi and rather eat hotdog form gas station, I could see myself saying that.

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

#755

Post by notretarded »

jeffbee wrote: post #657
brandon wrote: post #637

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Nobody at Google has a need to raise a ticket with some ops group in Bengaluru to partition a Kafka topic, renew a certificate, bridge two VPCs, or any of that type of thing. Except when your team wanted to initially onboard with GOOPS and your request sat in Buganizer for 2 weeks waiting for someone to triage. Uh oh — we're turning down this service next quarter, you will need to go start this onboarding process a…

That was some T7-9 whining right there. Do you think it's easier to get unplanned compute capacity at some other company?

Yes. At my place we can click a button and it provisions virtualized infrastructure if you are authorised.

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

#756

Post by jodrellblank »

gonehome wrote: post #426
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.

Microsoft became almost irrelevant under Ballmer or was at least trending that way. Nadella’s turn around is almost miraculous and is itself probably an interesting story. I wouldn’t bet on that as the norm. I’d expect the norm to be more like IBM, RIM, or Nokia. I agree with most of the article, but one line stuck out to me as particularly wrong: >”After the acquisition, we have an extremely long project that consum…

> "+1 on this - I find this behavior really irritating, it makes me roll my eyes to see some of the most coddled employees in human history whining about this kind of thing. The most charitable interpretation is its just a normal way for people to bond over some shared thing by complaining about it, but a lot of the complaining feels like more than that."

The charitable interpretation is that total compensation has just dropped, while the work hasn't. It's Loss Aversion[1], losing something hurts more than gaining the equivalent thing. Google isn't suffering from people staying at home using the internet more, it's not like Google cut manager salaries by 50% to keep the factory lights on and the orphans fed. Google's share price is up at least 50% since Jan 2020, and they've taken away some thousands of dollars of remuneration from staff and saved money on not having to run kitchens, and are demanding that staff feel grateful about this by handwaving at suffering people elsewhere.

> ">”After the acquisition, we have an extremely long project that consumed many of our best engineers to align our data retention policies and tools to Google. I am not saying this is not important BUT this had zero value to our users.”"

Calling legal and privacy efforts "a waste of resources" and saying they provide "zero value" /is/ saying they are not important.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loss_aversion

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

#757

Post by joshuamorton »

cobookman wrote: post #724
joshuamorton wrote: post #714

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is far less true than you make it seem, I think. I can think of executives who are very clear decision makers in particular contexts. But for most engineers, most of the time, you're working well below the level of those executives, and especially if you're engaging with shared infrastructure, the executive who is the final decision maker is Sundar. For example, I am involved in an issue where 3 ICs whose levels…

The executives are still beholden to supporting teams. Want to launch a new feature that depends on GFE. Looks like the current GFE is end-of-life, but the the new one still isn't ready yet. Let's connect with GFE team on if they'll support the older GFE and accept our CL to launch... Next up is the documentation. That requires the doc team's approval. Oh they require IL8n, lets go to that team and see where in their…

> The executives are still beholden to supporting teams. Want to launch a new feature that depends on GFE. Looks like the current GFE is end-of-life, but the the new one still isn't ready yet. Let's connect with GFE team on if they'll support the older GFE and accept our CL to launch...

I don't see how this is distinct from what I said, except perhaps that for many teams, the GFE team reports up to a different SVP than you, so the person who you'd connect up via is the CEO, which like I said, doesn't scale for every launch.

If you want to try and escalate your launch up to the CEO, nothing is stopping you, except perhaps your director or VP. But that is itself a signal that perhaps this isn't worth escalating about and that the status quo is acceptable.

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

#758

Post by pcthrowaway »

DC1350 wrote: post #618
ska wrote: post #408

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 b…

Most Canadian developers don't get paid enough to live in the tech hub cities.

I think this is only true if you have a family and want to live in the tech hub city (instead of a suburb). I'm a Vancouver-based developer who has consistently made about 25-40% less than the national median salary for people with my experience. I agree, the salaries aren't what they are in the U.S., and you certainly won't be buying a house in Vancouver any time soon, but I've made ends meet just fine. In Vancouver, at least, there's a trade-off with work-life balance. You make less than you would in the U.S., but work-life balance tends to skew more towards the "life" end (people taking off early for hikes or beach days is quite common at most companies).

Yes, I could make more if I worked a lot more, or worked in the U.S., but it's not worth it to me (as someone who doesn't want kids). When I'm employed, I still live a much more comfortable life than the majority of people in Vancouver, let alone globally.

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

#759

Post by menomatter »

nonameiguess wrote: post #745
tasuki wrote: post #736

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I was in the Army for 8 years fighting wars. Was that worth it? Do you consider that superior to working on trifling conveniences?

Not really, but I was young and stupid. Whether it ends up being worth it depends on how it works out for you. I ended up with significant and permanent spine injuries and I'm lucky as hell I landed in a knowledge industry where I can work from bed, otherwise I might not be able to work at all. It'd be nice to not spend the last 50 years of my life with a partially non-functional body, though.

Thank you for your service

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

#760

Post by m4x »

ZephyrBlu wrote: post #484
Shaddox wrote: post #107

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…

Well this is depressing to read, especially this bit: "The sweet spot is somewhere between "I don't hate it" and "I kind of like it". You can learn to like something if you do it long enough." It seems like a great way to waste 40 hours of your life every week.

> It seems like a great way to waste 40 hours of your life every week.

This seems like the more depressing take to me. Most people don't have the good fortune to work in jobs they truly love - yet many of those jobs are still important and not at all a waste of your life.

To take an extreme example, most rubbish collectors probably dislike their job. Yet doing it provides an important service to society. I would never tell the person who takes my trash away that their efforts are a waste of their life...

Post reply on HN