11–20 of 73 posts
What are the average work hours per week and days' holiday a year taken by a (US) Googler?
I don't know that there's really that much data on the subject (and if there is, I probably wouldn't be able to disclose it). I will say this though: I've never been asked to work long hours. Nor have I ever been assigned enough work that I've had to work long hours. We tend to not have fixed deadlines, so it's rare that I have to work in crunch mode. Some people love their jobs and work at all hours. Google is more…
Perhaps one of the causes, but in times past I've definitely started to get burned out on projects I did not resent- that were simply truckloads of work, with limited time for sleep/food/unwinding. On the bright side, that was much easier to recover from than the soul-crushing burnout I associate with resentment.
I've definitely gotten burned out doing work I very much wanted to have succeed.
1. I find on the first day that in the nine months before I joined the company, three people who were doing the same stuff I do were fired.
2. I make an expensive move from a different state. Then on the first day get told that the move in contract had changed and was forced to be sign the new one. An interesting contract that tells me even if the company folds for no good reason of mine, that I would have to payback moving expenses.
3. I get to spend a significant amount of my personal free time outside of company hours on company "bonding activities". I don't mind being told to go on company dinner fests but don't make it a habit and make me miss my own personal life. I like you as people I work under but you are not my friends and you are certainly not my life.
4. For a company that makes $2000 plus per engineer, its fun to see how cheap they are. A nice ergonomic chair? Nope. Traveling 50% of time across a few time zones? Make sure you book the cheapest possible flight that you get (irrespective of the number of stops that you have).
Tiny small things that added up gradually and have led to this situation.
I'd agree. Every time I've quit, it's because I felt I was repeatedly getting the short end of the stick, and management was expecting me to roll over every time I brought such things up. I quit my first job at 15 1/2. I worked at a Wal-Mart during the summer to buy a computer. I covered 200% more departments than I was hired for. I never took a day off, despite coworkers just not showing up so they could go to the b…
But I agree 100% with you. Feeling appreciated and valued can make up for a surprising amount of small things (which can quickly become mammoth). All I ask is that you treat me like a human being and give me a fair salary, and in return I will do my absolute best for you.
What are the average work hours per week and days' holiday a year taken by a (US) Googler?
I don't know that there's really that much data on the subject (and if there is, I probably wouldn't be able to disclose it). I will say this though: I've never been asked to work long hours. Nor have I ever been assigned enough work that I've had to work long hours. We tend to not have fixed deadlines, so it's rare that I have to work in crunch mode. Some people love their jobs and work at all hours. Google is more…
stcredzero mentions a laundry list of soul-sapping bad behaviour and in previous jobs I've suffered through (or quit over) probably all of them at one time or another.
There are some subtle yet fundamentally important differences in how Google (from my experience) approaches software development that end up addressing a lot of these.
1. Most (if not all) engineering managers are... engineers. I've seen internal job postings for engineering directors (to put that in perspective, an eng director might have 30-100 engineers under him or her typically with some engineering managers in between although some particularly senior engineers may report directly to their director) that call for "deep knowledge of C++". Some eng directors still submit CLs. This is something Google takes very seriously;
2. As an engineer, I don't have to work for you (where "you" is any particular manager or director). This is incredibly important because it puts strict limits on how much crap you can be given because (assuming you're in good standing) you can request a transfer to any team that will take you (within limits and your existing manager can delay you but can't block you);
3. Internally, Google is extremely open with what's going on in the company. There are a handful of things off-limit but in almost all cases you can view the data and code and announcements for almost every project in Google;
4. The level of meetings and overall bullshit has been, in my experience, incredibly low compared to previous employers;
5. Performance reviews are peer-driven. This system is not perfect and you'll have critics who point to thinks like you need senior people around you to get promoted. Some of these claims have merit but the system while not perfect is still (IMHO) very good; and
6. Gratitude. As Steve Yegge [1] puts it:
> You can't help but want to do your absolute best for Google; you feel like you owe it to them for taking such incredibly good care of you.
I find many of these alleviate burnout by way of mitigating resentment. I'm not sure I fully agree that burnout is solely caused by resentment however. I've known people who have been well-rewarded and respected for what they've done but they just reach a point where they need a break and have to do something else. I'd characterize this as burnout but perhaps definitions vary.
Lastly, I'll touch on a point someone else mentioned: as time goes on my tolerance for bullshit and time-wasting goes down. No I'm not going to your daily standup ("mini performance review") because it's a waste of my time. No I'm not going to work on your shitty project that's made shitty technology choices for political rather than technical reasons. I don't have the time nor inclination to indulge you in this.
[1]: http://steve-yegge.blogspot.com/2006/09/good-agile-bad-agile...