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

Google was founded 25 years ago today

en.wikipedia.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

161–170 of 232 posts

Re: Google was founded 25 years ago today

#161

Post by bluedino »

VirusNewbie wrote: post #123
Retric wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

By 1998 many of the things you mentioned where common in Silicon Valley. So, Google was hardly the first company to pay very well or have great perks. Historically a huge range of perks have been tossed around including some that have gone away like company cars due to tax code changes that eliminated the benefits. There’s long been ebb and flow around what perks are common, and which ones stick around as the company…

I'm curious about this. Was it true that engineers in the Valley made good money before Google and the like? I joined the industry after the dotcom boom, and I got the impression that older companies such as IBM were very very mediocre in pay, nothing like Google. Was that not always true? You see that many people who joined after the IPO were able to retire after 15 years at Google (or Amazon), did that really happe…

Netscape and SGI are two good examples that were making people into millionaires in the 1990's. Not to mention all the "Microsoft millionaires" (stock options, baby)

https://www.zdnet.com/article/secretaries-get-rich-in-the-in...

Re: Google was founded 25 years ago today

#162

Post by adventured »

ghaff wrote: post #131
paxys wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And how were the conditions 25 years ago for these same developers? Just because everyone doesn't get paid the same doesn't mean the overall compensation in the profession hasn't gone up.

I'm not sure how much it has relative to other engineering and arguably comparable professions more broadly. Maybe somewhat? But $100K+ as an entry-level in enterprise IT is probably pretty solid.

There are dramatically more software developers today in the US than 25 years ago. 1.6 million with a median salary (before benefits) of $109,000. So the field got a lot larger in terms of labor (2-3 fold depending on how you want to count it), while simultaneously paying so well - a particularly remarkable thing. Those jobs tend to come with good benefits as well, including nice health insurance (which is obviously extremely expensive in the US).

Granted, this is peak software developer and we're just starting on a downslope for the profession (both in the US and globally).

Re: Google was founded 25 years ago today

#163

Post by groby_b »

asdfman123 wrote: post #148
nailer wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The food is designed to make you work late and law firms and consulting outfits will realise this too if they haven’t already.

Not at Google. The food is there because they have to spend all their money on something, or risk being singled out as a monopoly. That sounds conspiratorial, but it's really the only thing that makes sense to me.

I suggest doing some math. Just back of the napkin.

Re: Google was founded 25 years ago today

#164

Post by gumby »

paxys wrote: post #99

Without commenting on the direction of the company in recent years and where it is today, I'll be forever grateful to Google for setting the standard for how tech companies need to treat their engineers. People who have entered the industry in the last decade or two may not realize it, but the sky high salaries, stock grants, benefits, flexible work hours, free gourmet meals, stocked pantries, gym memberships and lot…

> People who have entered the industry in the last decade or two may not realize it, but the sky high salaries, stock grants, benefits, flexible work hours, free gourmet meals, stocked pantries, gym memberships and lots more that you enjoy every day are all thanks to Sergey and Larry in the early 00s wanting to build a Disneyland for nerds. They were so successful at it that the rest of the industry had no option but to emulate them. Being a software engineer was nowhere near as enticing a job pre-Google.

Were you working in the Valley? Because a decade before Google I co-founded a company and while we didn't have in house chefs (we were a bootstrap) we had the rest. And not because we were special -- the three of us who co-founded the company were used to those things from our own prior employers.

Re: Google was founded 25 years ago today

#166

Post by KerrAvon »

paxys wrote: post #99

Without commenting on the direction of the company in recent years and where it is today, I'll be forever grateful to Google for setting the standard for how tech companies need to treat their engineers. People who have entered the industry in the last decade or two may not realize it, but the sky high salaries, stock grants, benefits, flexible work hours, free gourmet meals, stocked pantries, gym memberships and lot…

You really need to read some mid-90's books like Microserfs or some of the early Mac histories for some historical context. None of this was new or particularly unusual in the valley at the time.

-- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microserfs.

Re: Google was founded 25 years ago today

#167

Post by listmaking »

paxys wrote: post #99

Without commenting on the direction of the company in recent years and where it is today, I'll be forever grateful to Google for setting the standard for how tech companies need to treat their engineers. People who have entered the industry in the last decade or two may not realize it, but the sky high salaries, stock grants, benefits, flexible work hours, free gourmet meals, stocked pantries, gym memberships and lot…

> a Disneyland for nerds

Another side of “for nerds” is that early Google managed to attract employees from academia. I remember the buzz in the academic world when a professor (Matt Welsh) gave up tenure at Harvard to join Google: some others followed. Even more, it attracted top students who otherwise had their heart set on academia: within the (delusional) world of students who consider being a professor as the highest ideal, I remember hearing the opinion that if you can't get a tenure-track job, Google is a pretty good second choice because it's “just like a university”: you had (so the story went) freedom to do whatever you wanted, smart peers, “talks at Google” from the best speakers, … and there were perks (free food, laundry, etc) that appealed to students.

I myself ended up joining Google when my academic path was interrupted, despite thinking I'd never do that. Google employees were already complaining in the early 2010s about the changing culture, but there was still enough of it left, and by all accounts, early Google was a magical place.

Re: Google was founded 25 years ago today

#169

Post by jedberg »

About a year before, in mid-1997, word got around that there was this cool new search engine project that was giving great results. You could get to it only from the Berkeley and Stanford campuses at http://google.stanford.edu

Berkeley and Stanford, despite their sports rivalry, actually work together a lot and at the time had direct connect networks between the two schools (which also made file sharing across dorms at both campuses a lot easier!), which was the only reason we could access it.

We all quickly switched to using it because it gave far better results than the best alternative at the time, AltaVista.

Re: Google was founded 25 years ago today

#170

Post by shepherdjerred »

listmaking wrote: post #167
paxys wrote: post #99

Without commenting on the direction of the company in recent years and where it is today, I'll be forever grateful to Google for setting the standard for how tech companies need to treat their engineers. People who have entered the industry in the last decade or two may not realize it, but the sky high salaries, stock grants, benefits, flexible work hours, free gourmet meals, stocked pantries, gym memberships and lot…

> a Disneyland for nerds Another side of “for nerds” is that early Google managed to attract employees from academia. I remember the buzz in the academic world when a professor (Matt Welsh) gave up tenure at Harvard to join Google: some others followed. Even more, it attracted top students who otherwise had their heart set on academia: within the (delusional) world of students who consider being a professor as the hi…

Do any companies today still have this culture?
Post reply on HN