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I quit Google to work for myself (2018)

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Re: I quit Google to work for myself (2018)

#31

Post by r0ze-at-hn »

cdrini wrote: post #18

I'm not sure I agree with this. The breaking projects before completion is very annoying, but also the author seems like they were only there for a promotion? I mean a promotion is nice, but it was never really explained why that was such a dealbreaker. If the only thing keeping you at your job is the prospect of a better title, that's probably a bad sign. They then made a lifetime's worth of money at Google in four…

> author seems like they were only there for a promotion

It is more the other way around. Internally google taught/teaches engineers that their only goal is promotion. All parts of this used to be very very public. There are whole presentations, decks, docs, and more. What level you are and what level the person you are talking to ~mattered~. The goal isn't to be a good engineer, to make good products, or anything liek that, but to ONLY do what a nameless committee might want to make that magical number go higher. So while they might not have joined Google for that reason eventually they learned what was wanted. There is a whole generation of software engineers that learned this lesson unfortunately.

Re: I quit Google to work for myself (2018)

#32

Post by asdfman123 »

This is also why I'm thinking about leaving Google. I have little to sit through meetings, try to pawn necessary work off to others, and play the game while there's a hundred small tasks that my project desperately needs me to get done.

I can jump ship and make $50-100k/yr more because the next place I work will actually value my experience, even though it's technically much more useful to Google.

Re: I quit Google to work for myself (2018)

#33

Post by shadowgovt »

asdfman123 wrote: post #32

This is also why I'm thinking about leaving Google. I have little to sit through meetings, try to pawn necessary work off to others, and play the game while there's a hundred small tasks that my project desperately needs me to get done. I can jump ship and make $50-100k/yr more because the next place I work will actually value my experience, even though it's technically much more useful to Google.

I did this. Google (at least, the chain of managers I had) didn't know how to manage people like me and I wish I'd realized it sooner.

I make more money now doing more effective work faster at a smaller company with a focused project, not a 100,000-person everything company.

Re: I quit Google to work for myself (2018)

#34

Post by jeffbee »

davidfiala wrote: post #3

> Your manager doesn’t promote you? > No, managers at Google can’t promote their direct reports. They don’t even get a vote. > Instead, promotion decisions come from small committees of upper-level software engineers and managers who have never heard of you until the day they decide on your promotion. AIUI, nowadays in 2022+ the manager gets the only vote.

At all levels?

I know it changes every year so I don't let my own personal experience color my perception of Google 2024, but some years when I was there my manager barely even knew where my desk was. My promo packets for L5 and L6 were judged by peer committees and I am not sure they even saw my manager evaluations. When I sat on an L5 promo committee we did not weigh manager assessments. This made sense at that time because of how hands-off managers were in the realm of the reasons a person could get promoted to L5.

Re: I quit Google to work for myself (2018)

#35

Post by fullshark »

nostrademons wrote: post #11
Etheryte wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A good highlight of what quitting your job can look like: > Six years ago, I quit my job as a developer at Google to create my own bootstrapped software company. For the first few years, all of my businesses flopped. The best of them earned a few hundred dollars per month in revenue, but none were profitable. We often hear about the successes, and it is easy to be loud with success, but it's important to keep in mind…

It's an interesting reality check that in 2023, six years into his journey as a bootstrapped founder, Tiny Pilot made $225K in profit on ~$1M on revenue. For 2021 and 2022, it made roughly a $5K profit; the rest was all losses. He quit Google because he couldn't get a promotion presumably from L4 to L5, but $225K is less than what an L4 makes. This might also be a microcosm of why the working class is pissed off in A…

Same as it ever was. The company man is hardly a new phenomenon.

Re: I quit Google to work for myself (2018)

#36

Post by rockemsockem »

r0ze-at-hn wrote: post #31
cdrini wrote: post #18

I'm not sure I agree with this. The breaking projects before completion is very annoying, but also the author seems like they were only there for a promotion? I mean a promotion is nice, but it was never really explained why that was such a dealbreaker. If the only thing keeping you at your job is the prospect of a better title, that's probably a bad sign. They then made a lifetime's worth of money at Google in four…

> author seems like they were only there for a promotion It is more the other way around. Internally google taught/teaches engineers that their only goal is promotion. All parts of this used to be very very public. There are whole presentations, decks, docs, and more. What level you are and what level the person you are talking to ~mattered~. The goal isn't to be a good engineer, to make good products, or anything li…

This is not true. Google is so large that I'm definitely willing to believe that there are parts where people are like this, but I found that people generally did not care about my level and while there are many docs/slides about how to get promoted it was largely oriented towards helping people advocate effectively for themselves and was not "thou shall be promoted".

There was/is the expectation that eventually everyone can reach a certain level within a certain (very generous) amount of time, but I don't see that as the same thing at all.

Re: I quit Google to work for myself (2018)

#37

Post by throwaway_5753 »

asdfman123 wrote: post #32

This is also why I'm thinking about leaving Google. I have little to sit through meetings, try to pawn necessary work off to others, and play the game while there's a hundred small tasks that my project desperately needs me to get done. I can jump ship and make $50-100k/yr more because the next place I work will actually value my experience, even though it's technically much more useful to Google.

Where will you go that will be a 50k-100k bump over google comp?

Re: I quit Google to work for myself (2018)

#38

Post by azemetre »

r0ze-at-hn wrote: post #31
cdrini wrote: post #18

I'm not sure I agree with this. The breaking projects before completion is very annoying, but also the author seems like they were only there for a promotion? I mean a promotion is nice, but it was never really explained why that was such a dealbreaker. If the only thing keeping you at your job is the prospect of a better title, that's probably a bad sign. They then made a lifetime's worth of money at Google in four…

> author seems like they were only there for a promotion It is more the other way around. Internally google taught/teaches engineers that their only goal is promotion. All parts of this used to be very very public. There are whole presentations, decks, docs, and more. What level you are and what level the person you are talking to ~mattered~. The goal isn't to be a good engineer, to make good products, or anything li…

How long would you say Google has been like this? Around the time when they realized they had an unstoppable monopoly? IPO? Early years? Always?

Re: I quit Google to work for myself (2018)

#39

Post by rockemsockem »

shadowgovt wrote: post #29
cdrini wrote: post #18

I'm not sure I agree with this. The breaking projects before completion is very annoying, but also the author seems like they were only there for a promotion? I mean a promotion is nice, but it was never really explained why that was such a dealbreaker. If the only thing keeping you at your job is the prospect of a better title, that's probably a bad sign. They then made a lifetime's worth of money at Google in four…

It's a little more than that. At the level this engineer was at, they are expected to seek and attain promotion. Sitting at a level below staff becomes a negative and can lead to you being put on a PIP because you aren't meeting the declared expectations when you aren't being promoted. Google eventually removed that language because they learned that in a 100,000-person company, there's simply not enough room in the…

It was senior (L5) that you were expected to reach, not staff. It was revised down to L4. For reference almost all SWE hires start at L3.

Re: I quit Google to work for myself (2018)

#40

Post by nvarsj »

cdrini wrote: post #18

I'm not sure I agree with this. The breaking projects before completion is very annoying, but also the author seems like they were only there for a promotion? I mean a promotion is nice, but it was never really explained why that was such a dealbreaker. If the only thing keeping you at your job is the prospect of a better title, that's probably a bad sign. They then made a lifetime's worth of money at Google in four…

Fairly sure Google has/had a cliff for engineers to reach senior by a certain time frame. That puts immense pressure to get promoted, or you get laid off.
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