181–190 of 227 posts
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> People with 3 kids make do with jobs at Walmart and McD. Very difficult in the Bay Area given the housing costs. I guess it's possible if you lucked into a below market rate apartment and qualify for government assistance like Medicaid and food stamps.
You are saying that all Walmarts and McDs in the Bay Area are staffed with people who have a 3 hour commute?
I'm not saying this with the intent of harshly criticizing the author, but I admit it's surprising to me that someone (who had other options) would work for 14 years at a company they clearly came to believe was making the world a worse place.
I think Google has a culture problem (they're massive, doesn't apply everywhere, etc. etc.). There's a weird sense of internal entitlement where some (likely a small, but still substantial) number of people work there, are well paid, and yet act internally as if it's some terrible place doing terrible things (yet stay working there). Whatever way they rationalize this to themselves - it's odd. I don't have first hand…
So far in my career I've worked for a government contractor, doing basically good things that benefit the government and the public, a large service exclusively serving gambling companies some of whom were committing obvious crimes including automatically gender detecting players and rate limiting anyone with a woman's name (under the assumption that any women on their service are men who've been banned or rate limited themselves using their wive's credit cards), and a supermarket, and honestly, the hardest place to leave was the gambling company that I thought constantly about how I should leave.
It took suddenly being made redundant due to the pandemic for me to really try hard to find another job, I'd applied to plenty but I never really pushed myself properly, or took them seriously enough because stability at the cost of bitterness and feeling like the smallest cog in a meat grinder of human misery is a weird sort of comfortable, it's leaving a splinter in because pulling it out is scary, it's not ripping off a bandaid, a "childish" failure of character, but ultimately relatable and human.
And I _wasn't_ making 6 figures. I _didn't_ spend years of my life building up to getting into that position, it was just the first job out of university paying slightly more than the average, I can't imagine if I had got into Google and realised what these people must've realised about themselves and the system and how they are really no exits that aren't steps down unless you're entrepreneurial and willing to take a big risk, you think Facebook/Apple/Amazon/Netflix/Uber don't make some big moral compromises to sell and produce in China?
I'm not (trying to) justify their decisions, just rather painfully admit that I can relate.
https://goomics.net/17/ > Size of the pool of candidates for a position at Google Yea, no. It's kind of funny that the image of the world is centered at North America. That's how I feel about Google (and a lot of other big tech) hiring practices. I'm not saying you can't work for Google from the UK, Germany, India, or other places, but it gets a lot harder.
Certainly a somewhat limited audience but as a xoogler I found a lot of those hilarious.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
(Opinions are my own) An alternate way of looking at it: When you work at a place you can help influence the culture to move it in the right direction. When you aren't working there you can't .
If you are good, the best thing you can do is go leave and go work for a company doing things a better way. If you are not good the best thing you can do is stay and incrementally dilute their talent pool. If you actually want to have more impact than that as an IC you could try your hand at internal activism, but I'd say you have a dramatically higher chance of damaging your career than creating any real change at a…
Assuming that the new company will displace the old one.
However at a large monopoly like google/facebook/amazon, if you want to change the world, you need to first change the company.
The vague thing about "damaging my career" is a bit nebulous.
I was bought out, so most of my remuneration is in stocks. There is almost no incentive for me to "build out my career" year. So I have no issue with calling out obvious bullshit/stuff that goes against publicly stated principles.
"Don't focus too much on promotion" - A Billionaire Google Exec https://goomics.net/228/
I'm not saying this with the intent of harshly criticizing the author, but I admit it's surprising to me that someone (who had other options) would work for 14 years at a company they clearly came to believe was making the world a worse place.
The comics suffer selection bias because "this thing is great" doesn't have as much humor potential as "this thing is broken". Talking about how awesome Google's main search page is? Not very funny. Making fun of Google's endless list of failed chat apps? Much funnier.
https://rodgersnotes.wordpress.com/2010/10/25/google-and-app...
"Don't focus too much on promotion" - A Billionaire Google Exec https://goomics.net/228/
Counterpoint: At a top company like Google, full of some of the most talented people in the world, there simply won't be enough promotions to go around. And yet, an "average" performer who is happy to build, scale, maintain, and not re-launch a new chat product every 5 years should be rewarded and encouraged to stay and not leave to a competitor. How do you do it? You have to create intrinsic motivation. Twist: You c…
By breaking the bond between responsibility/authority, and remuneration.
Promotions could be increased autonomy (which intrinsically includes responsibility, but it is personal responsibility, not responsibility of others) and/or remuneration without the need for increased responsibility or even seniority.
In yesteryear payrises were to be given on a length of service basis. You got extra bonuses after X years, you were given an (extra, significantly above inflation) raise on your Nth jubilee, Etc.
I think this bond between promotion and "climbing the ladder(s)" is problematic and is a means of wage suppression.