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Of Google's First 20 Employees, How Many Are Still There?

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Re: Of Google's First 20 Employees, How Many Are Still There?

#11

Post by nostrademons »

codemac wrote: post #8
nostrademons wrote: post #5

Many of these are very recent departures, eg. Craig Silverstein left in Feb 2012, Amit Patel was within the last year or two, Marissa was last week. I'm kinda amazed that half of the first 20 employees had 10+ year careers there, despite being financially independent since the IPO. I read somewhere that median Silicon Valley job tenure is about 2-3 years.

Tenures are not 2-3 years when you're financially independent. When you have an epic trump card in all conversations about what you should spend your time on, do you think you'd spend more than a minute doing something you didn't want to? I believe the term is "fuck-you money". """ This is an allusion to a Randy/Avi conversation of two years ago wherein Avi actually calculated a specific numerical value for "fuck-you…

Do engineers in SV actually spend time doing things they don't want to do?

You don't need a lifetime supply of cash to have "fuck you money", you only need enough to be reasonably certain that you can find some other way to get more money. In Silicon Valley, that's about 2 days for a skilled engineer. None of my software-engineer friends are doing things they don't want to do.

Re: Of Google's First 20 Employees, How Many Are Still There?

#12

Post by jmillikin »

nostrademons wrote: post #11
codemac wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Tenures are not 2-3 years when you're financially independent. When you have an epic trump card in all conversations about what you should spend your time on, do you think you'd spend more than a minute doing something you didn't want to? I believe the term is "fuck-you money". """ This is an allusion to a Randy/Avi conversation of two years ago wherein Avi actually calculated a specific numerical value for "fuck-you…

Do engineers in SV actually spend time doing things they don't want to do? You don't need a lifetime supply of cash to have "fuck you money", you only need enough to be reasonably certain that you can find some other way to get more money. In Silicon Valley, that's about 2 days for a skilled engineer. None of my software-engineer friends are doing things they don't want to do.

Almost all SV developers, even those at the "perfect job", still have to do things they don't want to. This is a factor in salaries; the more unpleasant a company is to work at, the more they have to spend to hire skilled developers.

And "fuck you money" isn't only enough money to tide you over to your next job, it's enough money to quit working forever, to live completely as you want for as long as you want.

Re: Of Google's First 20 Employees, How Many Are Still There?

#13

Post by notbitter »

nostrademons wrote: post #11
codemac wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Tenures are not 2-3 years when you're financially independent. When you have an epic trump card in all conversations about what you should spend your time on, do you think you'd spend more than a minute doing something you didn't want to? I believe the term is "fuck-you money". """ This is an allusion to a Randy/Avi conversation of two years ago wherein Avi actually calculated a specific numerical value for "fuck-you…

Do engineers in SV actually spend time doing things they don't want to do? You don't need a lifetime supply of cash to have "fuck you money", you only need enough to be reasonably certain that you can find some other way to get more money. In Silicon Valley, that's about 2 days for a skilled engineer. None of my software-engineer friends are doing things they don't want to do.

None of my software-engineer friends are doing things they don't want to do.

Your friends sound young.

Re: Of Google's First 20 Employees, How Many Are Still There?

#16

Post by ChuckMcM »

nostrademons wrote: post #5

Many of these are very recent departures, eg. Craig Silverstein left in Feb 2012, Amit Patel was within the last year or two, Marissa was last week. I'm kinda amazed that half of the first 20 employees had 10+ year careers there, despite being financially independent since the IPO. I read somewhere that median Silicon Valley job tenure is about 2-3 years.

The departures come at a time when Google is in transition, its becoming "old." Having worked there between the time it exited its giddily irresponsible teen years to the start of its midlife crisis, I recognized the symptoms. What was humorous to me was that I lived through that the first time at Sun (at Sun 10 years) from Sun just going public to the point where they were struggling with their identity. And for much of that time Eric Schmidt was either my boss, or my boss' boss. 'one hop' in the food chain as it were. At Google I mentioned to Eric that we'd been in this movie before :-) He pointed out the numbers were a lot bigger in the picture on this go round. From what I hear from friends who have left after I did, the movie is playing out the same way.

The last group I was in at Sun was the Java group that later was the core of JavaSoft. It had been populated with low employee number 'refugees' as one of them put it. A number of folks certainly had enough money to not work if they chose to. But an interesting thing happens.

When you suddenly have enough money in the bank so that you can quit when ever you want, you lose your fear of losing your job and trying to find another. And not having that fear to hold you back, can be tremendously empowering.

This was one of the messages in the movie Office Space which is sometimes expressed as 'Work like you don't need to work.'

The change is both subtle and dramatic. People stand up for things they value rather than things they think they should support. They sometimes stop everything they are doing to spend a couple of months to help a promising new employee get their bearings and become effective. They push back on schedule fantasies with hard nosed realities, they tell upper management when things are borked or when they are making bad calls. When you don't care if you get fired, as long as your a reasonably principled person, you can become immensely more effective.

And you learn is that it isn't that you don't like work, its that you don't like bogus things that get in your way at work. Nearly every single person I know who has 'retired' it really meant they stopped reporting to someone else and instead invested their time and energy into things they were passionate about and could make a big impact on. Sure pretty much everyone takes some time off to just breathe and think three related thoughts in succession, but once decompressed from the demands of that large organization, they engage in their vision with diligence and passion. Because of that I am not at all surprised when people who became financially independent at a company continue to work there for many more years. How they work changes, and sometimes what they work on changes, but making things happen is a powerful drug.

As for the median thing, my experience is that people I've interviewed have short stints with longer stints in the middle, so they go job A -> B -> C then at job D they find someone or something to keep their attention and work there for a longer time 5, 6, 10 years then move on. My cycle time seems to be 5 to 10 years but its really an individual thing.

Re: Of Google's First 20 Employees, How Many Are Still There?

#17

Post by ebun »

ChuckMcM wrote: post #16
nostrademons wrote: post #5

Many of these are very recent departures, eg. Craig Silverstein left in Feb 2012, Amit Patel was within the last year or two, Marissa was last week. I'm kinda amazed that half of the first 20 employees had 10+ year careers there, despite being financially independent since the IPO. I read somewhere that median Silicon Valley job tenure is about 2-3 years.

The departures come at a time when Google is in transition, its becoming "old." Having worked there between the time it exited its giddily irresponsible teen years to the start of its midlife crisis, I recognized the symptoms. What was humorous to me was that I lived through that the first time at Sun (at Sun 10 years) from Sun just going public to the point where they were struggling with their identity. And for muc…

Great response. For the "retired" who stayed on, what sort of impact did their newfound attitudes have on things? Did they play a part in any of the major new products or improvements that came later?

Re: Of Google's First 20 Employees, How Many Are Still There?

#18

Post by nostrademons »

jmillikin wrote: post #12
nostrademons wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do engineers in SV actually spend time doing things they don't want to do? You don't need a lifetime supply of cash to have "fuck you money", you only need enough to be reasonably certain that you can find some other way to get more money. In Silicon Valley, that's about 2 days for a skilled engineer. None of my software-engineer friends are doing things they don't want to do.

Almost all SV developers, even those at the "perfect job", still have to do things they don't want to. This is a factor in salaries; the more unpleasant a company is to work at, the more they have to spend to hire skilled developers. And "fuck you money" isn't only enough money to tide you over to your next job, it's enough money to quit working forever, to live completely as you want for as long as you want.

Anyone who wants to accomplish anything has to do things they don't want to. This is not a function of the money in the bank, it's a function of the difficulty of the task. Someone founding their second startup still has to empty the wastepaper baskets; or perhaps they can hire a cleaning crew, but then, someone on their first startup can do that too, and they don't get quite the same respect from their employees as if they did it themselves.

I define "fuck you money" as "Can you stand up in the middle of an important meeting and say 'fuck you, I quit' to your boss?" You don't need to be set for life for that, only to be sure you can get a job with someone who doesn't give a damn that you just said fuck you to your previous boss. And it's as much a function of reputation and chutzpah as money.

Re: Of Google's First 20 Employees, How Many Are Still There?

#19

Post by plinkplonk »

ChuckMcM wrote: post #16
nostrademons wrote: post #5

Many of these are very recent departures, eg. Craig Silverstein left in Feb 2012, Amit Patel was within the last year or two, Marissa was last week. I'm kinda amazed that half of the first 20 employees had 10+ year careers there, despite being financially independent since the IPO. I read somewhere that median Silicon Valley job tenure is about 2-3 years.

The departures come at a time when Google is in transition, its becoming "old." Having worked there between the time it exited its giddily irresponsible teen years to the start of its midlife crisis, I recognized the symptoms. What was humorous to me was that I lived through that the first time at Sun (at Sun 10 years) from Sun just going public to the point where they were struggling with their identity. And for muc…

This is gold. Not so much for the comments on Google, as for the comments on what being fearless does to you. But I've also experienced that you need to couple being fearless with having some superior or even unique skills to maximise satisfaction.

"When you suddenly have enough money in the bank so that you can quit when ever you want, you lose your fear of losing your job and trying to find another. And not having that fear to hold you back, can be tremendously empowering."

My take on this is that (if you are a good engineer) you can just choose to be fearless anyway and trust you'll get a job whenever you want one. Life is too short to skulk around in fear of what some random middle manager thinks about you. This doesn't mean that you should go around rubbing people the wrong way (you shouldn't) or that you shouldn't be trying to make your FU money (you should).

But I've seen many many talented devs twist themselves in knots, trying to please their managers' unreasonable demands, and otherwise live a life of cringing fear or quiet desperation, just out of fear of being fired/demoted/whatever. This is particularly true in India, where hierarchical power structures are more pronounced than in the USA. and losing a job has more of a social cost.

"Nearly every single person I know who has 'retired' it really meant they stopped reporting to someone else and instead invested their time and energy into things they were passionate about and could make a big impact on."

Gold. I am only semi-"retired" (I have money in the bank, I don't really have FU money. Any day now ;)) and I am nowhere as talented as Google's top 20 employees, but this is true ime.

I was always fairly "fearless", so didn't have to work on that bit. But I did have to consciously choose never to work on uninteresting/boring things or with boring/uninteresting people.

(I am aware that most people in the world don't have that choice - all the more reason that people who do have such a choice should probably exercise it)

After being ground down after a decade of working on outsourced enterprise software -and it did take some grinding, some of us are good at deceiving ourselves - I decided I would never ever work on meaningless (to me) things again or with uninteresting people.

It paid off in spades for me. I now work on interesting machine learning projects, and have more interesting work offered to me than I can complete in a lifetime. I work much harder than in my salaried 'coding body' days, but the work is challenging and feeds my soul.

"making things happen is a powerful drug."

A very very addictive one, and you don't really need to be part of a large organization to partake of it. There are many people working quietly in many areas on very ambitious projects, with little fanfare - there is a large world outside the valley (and outside software). Perhaps the drug is too addictive, but that is the subject of a different post.

Re: Of Google's First 20 Employees, How Many Are Still There?

#20

Post by nostrademons »

notbitter wrote: post #13
nostrademons wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do engineers in SV actually spend time doing things they don't want to do? You don't need a lifetime supply of cash to have "fuck you money", you only need enough to be reasonably certain that you can find some other way to get more money. In Silicon Valley, that's about 2 days for a skilled engineer. None of my software-engineer friends are doing things they don't want to do.

None of my software-engineer friends are doing things they don't want to do. Your friends sound young.

Early 30s, largely working on maintenance & refactoring of a 10-years-old codebase, with some iOS devs mixed in.

(Perhaps I shouldn't speak for them, as people might hide all sorts of unhappiness to avoid rocking the boat. But they seem happy, and when I've offered them jobs on my projects - which I think are much more interesting, but I've learned that what's interesting to me is not necessarily what's interesting to everyone - they've declined.)

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