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Leaving Google

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Re: Leaving Google

#51

Post by typicalrunt »

kohanz wrote: post #12
michaelochurch wrote: post #6

Plus I find the Bay Area congested, racist, incestuous, and overpriced. Isn't Vancouver equally overpriced or worse? It's a beautiful city and seems like an amazing place to live, but I thought Vancouver's house prices were into the millions as well. In what way is the Bay Area racist? I'm not a fan of that region, but I've never had that particular impression (except among upper-tier VCs, who aren't specifically rac…

Yes, Vancouver housing is incredibly overpriced. Perhaps more-so than the Bay Area because wages have kept up even less (supposedly due to Vancouver's desirability as a destination). That doesn't mean there aren't good, well-paying jobs there, but on average, wages in Vancouver are much lower than, say Toronto. As for the racism aspect, I think the choice of word is a bit hyperbolic. That being said, as a Canadian wh…

To put a data point on it, Royal Bank of Canada (RBC) put out a study in Nov 2013 that rated the affordability of housing in Canadian major cities.

For Vancouver, it takes 84-88% of your pre-tax income to afford a detached house (page 7 of the report). "Afford" means mortgage (principal+interest), property taxes, utilities, etc.

Okay, so 88% is high right? Well "pre-tax" means before the government gets their cut. In Canada, a high income earner gets taxed roughly 40% of their income and we all pay our mortgages/rent/utilities with post-tax money, so the affordability figure goes up over 100%. That means your entire paycheque is going towards paying for detached housing [2].

IIRC, in the US, you are allowed to deduct your mortgage interest from your income, meaning you get to pay with pre-tax income. But in Canada that is not allowed and you must pay the piper first.

[1] http://www.rbc.com/newsroom/pdf/HA-1127-2013.pdf

[2] Condos are at 42% affordability in Vancouver, which is still disastrously high since it is also using pre-tax income.

edit: 42% for condos, not 47%.

edit 2: corrected to say mortgage interest is deductible from income, based on reply. Thx!

Re: Leaving Google

#52

Post by trauco »

haberman wrote: post #26
psbp wrote: post #5

"Plus I find the Bay Area congested, racist, incestuous, and overpriced." I like this guy.

I'm a little sad he didn't say anything about Seattle, only a couple hours from Vancouver and with sizable and thriving Google offices. It is also has "greens and greys and unfussily variegated people" -- clearly it's not Canada, but in general it would be a much less drastic transition!

But it's clear the group he was working within is in the Bay Area. And so it seems like even going to Seattle would mean changing groups (and possibly the focus of his work) within the company. Moving countries and changing the work you are doing is pretty disruptive.

Re: Leaving Google

#53

Post by habosa »

rasur wrote: post #43
habosa wrote: post #22

For those who don't know, Tim Bray was one of the original inventors of the XML spec and has been a Developer Advocate at Google for a while. Shame to see him go, I am joining DevRel at Google in the fall and I thought it was awesome to have someone as experience as Tim working kinda-sorta-near me. Hopefully he goes on to do something great.

Implying XML is not great? ;)

I guess I should have said more great things, as Tim has already accomplished a lot.

Re: Leaving Google

#54

Post by nobodysbusiness »

fidotron wrote: post #29
haberman wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm a little sad he didn't say anything about Seattle, only a couple hours from Vancouver and with sizable and thriving Google offices. It is also has "greens and greys and unfussily variegated people" -- clearly it's not Canada, but in general it would be a much less drastic transition!

Google are really consolidating in a few offices, mainly MV, NYC, Zurich, possibly London and Tokyo. MV is a whole different ballgame to the other locations and is a world unto itself.

Google recently announced that they're moving their whole Region of Waterloo office (in Canada) into a larger building to accommodate more growth: http://www.therecord.com/news-story/4368031-google-moving-in...

Re: Leaving Google

#55

Post by typicalrunt »

jayhuang wrote: post #15
michaelochurch wrote: post #6

Plus I find the Bay Area congested, racist, incestuous, and overpriced. Isn't Vancouver equally overpriced or worse? It's a beautiful city and seems like an amazing place to live, but I thought Vancouver's house prices were into the millions as well. In what way is the Bay Area racist? I'm not a fan of that region, but I've never had that particular impression (except among upper-tier VCs, who aren't specifically rac…

For the most part, Vancouver house prices are pretty expensive, it's virtually impossible to find a house for under 1 million in Vancouver. Given these prices, anyone familiar with the wages in Vancouver will tell you we're depressingly behind most cities with similar cost of living. I do feel like rent prices are quite a bit cheaper than the Bay Area though. Recently saw some articles claiming that Vancouver has the…

extensive data

See my comment here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7272429 for the data.

It includes the report from RBC that provides data on Canadian housing. Unfortunately it does not include US housing affordability numbers.

Re: Leaving Google

#56

Post by fidotron »

[deleted] wrote: post #48
fidotron wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not really. If you're in one of those smaller offices you have absolutely no control of your destiny at all, and the glass ceiling is very low.

[deleted]

Easy, above fairly junior level you're either told to be in one of the big offices at the point of joining or they'll hire you then crank up the pressure to move.

Places like the Seattle office exist mainly to get people in the company, then to drag the ones they like further south. Many of the rest will effectively be being paid to not work at MS or Amazon.

There's a good reason I described MV as a world apart.

Re: Leaving Google

#57

Post by outside1234 »

drawkbox wrote: post #32

Google not able to get remote working working? Seems flawed that a system requires everyone to move to one location to work, and a broken system that lives on from the past (why take hours of employees days commuting?). There are times when that is needed, there are other times when that is bad and external insight is easier remotely. Yahoo and possibly Google doing this, leading to more congestion in the Bay Area, a…

Google has no problems recruiting. They will have 100 resumes to fill his shoes in hours. So they get to set the rules still.

It won't always be like this for them but it is right now.

Re: Leaving Google

#58

Post by haberman »

fidotron wrote: post #42
jknightco wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If by "consolidating in a few offices" you mean that growth in MTV, NYC, and ZRH is outpacing growth in places like Boulder, Cambridge, and Kirkland then you're correct; that doesn't mean that the smaller offices aren't growing as well, however.

Not really. If you're in one of those smaller offices you have absolutely no control of your destiny at all, and the glass ceiling is very low.

Neither of those things are true at all, from my experience and from what I have observed working in the Seattle office for five years. Where are you getting this information?

The Seattle/Kirkland offices have over 1,000 employees and are growing. They have people at all different levels including directors and principal engineers and lots of important projects going on. These aren't minor little operations.

Re: Leaving Google

#59

Post by obi-nine »

varelse wrote: post #19
theoh wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It does seem that he left on better terms that Brian Reid, but possibly for similar fundamental reasons...

Brian Reid was kicked out of Google by Urs Holzle ahead of the IPO after helping to build the company (so much for don't be evil and all that). I don't think the issue here is age discrimination - Geoffrey Hinton is in his late 60s - but rather that his skillset is not sufficiently critical to Google's flavor of the week to merit special treatment. But as an ex-googler myself, they have become amazingly rigid and bur…

I was worried for a while that it might be FaceBook but after yesterday's overpriced acquisition of WhatsApp that fear has subsided.

Re: Leaving Google

#60

Post by ebbv »

habosa wrote: post #22

For those who don't know, Tim Bray was one of the original inventors of the XML spec and has been a Developer Advocate at Google for a while. Shame to see him go, I am joining DevRel at Google in the fall and I thought it was awesome to have someone as experience as Tim working kinda-sorta-near me. Hopefully he goes on to do something great.

> Tim Bray was one of the original inventors of the XML spec

That son of a bitch... ;)

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