Leaving Google • Hacker News Board

Re: Leaving Google

#101

Post by DannyBee » Sat, Oct 23, 2021, 4:50 AM UTC

emodendroket wrote: post #80

geodel wrote: post #72

Seems takeaway is if Google didn't cut this person's pay by 10 per cent then all their "shitty behavior" like Project Maven and so on would have been just fine.

Another article on the site expands on this: > I still feel uncertain about everything though. Google approved my remote work application last week, but I haven't gotten a new offer letter yet, and I've been told to expect a pay cut of at least 10% because the market rate for software engineers is supposedly lower in southern California. This feels like a shitty thing to do. My work is not less valuable. It's a remin…

I always find it interesting that lots of tech folks I meet are strongly in favor of more income equality except when it would cause them to earn less money. Then it's a shitty thing to do.

Re: Leaving Google

#102

Post by ashtonkem » Sat, Oct 23, 2021, 4:50 AM UTC

tdfx wrote: post #95

ashtonkem wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s been a while since I’ve considered Google a pinnacle of anything. I think the executives of google might be a bit delusional about how far that propaganda is effective.

It's still a major selling point if you're raising money for your company. "Ex-Google engineer" somehow still makes rich people want to throw money at you, deservedly or not.

I think this speaks to the credulity of VCs more than anything else. Google is huge, a decent chunk of us are ex google pure as a function of the numbers. Never mind how many ex googlers were doing something unique to Google and not something other higher grade tech firms are doing.

Re: Leaving Google

#103

Post by Supermancho » Sat, Oct 23, 2021, 4:50 AM UTC

jeffbee wrote: post #16

Is this just long form "calling in rich"? With an L5 RSU package and the share price tripling, a few hundred thousand turns into a few million and you can afford to leave. Nice problem to have.

> To summarize,

He didn't like working enough to make himself happy, I guess. It's a person who is at a different point in their life than when they started. Notably with enough money that they question their own motivations to continue.

These blog posts seem devoid of anything interesting or actionable.

Re: Leaving Google

#104

Post by ashtonkem » Sat, Oct 23, 2021, 4:50 AM UTC

amha wrote: post #88

ashtonkem wrote: post #38

> Second, management was spread way too thin. My last manager had around 25 reports It would be rude to describe my anatomical response to having 25 reports, but suffice to say it wasn’t good. I generally consider 6-7 the ideal max, and 8-9 the “I’m dropping all the unimportant balls in order to keep juggling” line. 25 is so far beyond the pale I can’t imagine how any manager of managers’s worth their salary would le…

My direct supervisor has 75 direct reports. (Not a tech company––an elite private school in the Bay––but still...)

Fuck that. Nobody is being served by that arrangement. Nobody.

Re: Leaving Google

#105

Post by geodel » Sat, Oct 23, 2021, 4:51 AM UTC

mavelikara wrote: post #83

cube00 wrote: post #2

> PMs made all the decisions. Engineers (at least at my level) had very little influence. This is interesting given Google used to have a reputation for being an "engineer led" organization, I guess that's slowly changing over time.

Product Management, in many orgs, is the old wine of Taylorism in a new bottle, where there is a "thinking class," and there is a separate "doing class." The stereotype of an engineer with poor social skills who can't grasp the "high-level cross functional relationships and strategies" (from nostrebored's sibling comment) is not very different from Taylor's idea of workers: One of the very first requirements for a ma…

I think you have made excellent point here. I absolutely see this behavior at workplaces. The Architects/PMs one side and developers who are mainly Jira/Daily standup chumps on other side.

Re: Leaving Google

#106

Post by pa7ch » Sat, Oct 23, 2021, 4:53 AM UTC

cube00 wrote: post #29

kevingadd wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is absurd. I haven't been asked to file timesheets (other than for days off) as a sweng in over a decade, including when I was at Google. Management on that team has completely lost it.

I read that as the "30 minute increment" tracking is used as a short term punishment for not meeting the deadline.

That mindset towards workers I think should be considered pretty gross in most contexts. Punishment for not meeting a software deadline? This sounds like highschools with conservative leadership.

Re: Leaving Google

#107

Post by nfkfjgnfne » Sat, Oct 23, 2021, 4:55 AM UTC

choppaface wrote: post #97

freyir wrote: post #17

“Quite a few activists and researchers were fired for asking Google to be a bit more ethical” In the examples the author cited, those activists and researchers were fired for reasons going beyond “asking Google to be a bit more ethical. And frankly it doesn’t seem ethical for activists, researchers, and the author to deliberately misconstrue facts whenever they believe they’re on the right side of an ethical (and som…

Dr. Gebru was fired for having approached a lawyer about workplace issues. (She told Jeff Dean and others that she was doing so in an email made public). That triggers Legal to retaliate and look for a reason to fire the employee, immediately. Jeff Dean let the conflict drag out 6+ months because he thought he had control of the situation (and he was wrong). Without Jeff Dean’s persistence, Dr. Gebru would probably h…

Why are you lying? Gebru was fired because she gave an ultimatum to reveal the name of an anonymous reviewer, which Google declined.

Re: Leaving Google

#108

Post by joshuamorton » Sat, Oct 23, 2021, 4:55 AM UTC

Jensson wrote: post #100

joshuamorton wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why do we have to take Google's word and not hers? (Especially in light of corroborating witnesses who say that what she did was completely normal)

Because plenty of other researchers working at Google regularly publish papers critical of Google and are just fine? Even Timnit had already done that many times, she just got into trouble this time but all the other papers she published was fine. If Google really cared about these researchers publishing critical pieces then Google would have shut down that entire group rather than just firing her.

Right but the claim is that Google instituted a new policy, and applied it inconsistently without telling people, until it blew up in their faces when she was fired. Only after that did they formalize the policy, and saying that she was fired for circumventing and then questioning a policy that ostensibly didn't exist when she was fired doesn't have the same ring to it.

Re: Leaving Google

#109

Post by DannyBee » Sat, Oct 23, 2021, 4:56 AM UTC

cletus wrote: post #19

Why did he leave? The tl'dr is the L6 glass ceiling and the remote pay cut. I can speak to both of those: First, for those that don't know, new grads get hired at L3, PhDs at L4 (which IMHO is actually a mistake but that's another issue) and there is an expectation of getting promoted to L5 (Senior Software Engineer). There's no set time frame for this. I've known people who stayed L4 for many years and were quite ha…

"The argument for a pay cut" ...

Another argument is that if tech paid everyone the same, everywhere, it would greatly exacerbate income equality issues in a lot of places.

Tech is certainly not altruistic, as you point out, and generally wants to pay market rate rather than output rate or whatever. But it doesn't make less true that it would worsen a whole bunch of social problems by paying people the same everywhere.

Re: Leaving Google

#110

Post by ergocoder » Sat, Oct 23, 2021, 4:57 AM UTC

choppaface wrote: post #97

freyir wrote: post #17

“Quite a few activists and researchers were fired for asking Google to be a bit more ethical” In the examples the author cited, those activists and researchers were fired for reasons going beyond “asking Google to be a bit more ethical. And frankly it doesn’t seem ethical for activists, researchers, and the author to deliberately misconstrue facts whenever they believe they’re on the right side of an ethical (and som…

Dr. Gebru was fired for having approached a lawyer about workplace issues. (She told Jeff Dean and others that she was doing so in an email made public). That triggers Legal to retaliate and look for a reason to fire the employee, immediately. Jeff Dean let the conflict drag out 6+ months because he thought he had control of the situation (and he was wrong). Without Jeff Dean’s persistence, Dr. Gebru would probably h…

> Dr. Gebru was fired for having approached a lawyer about workplace issues.

That is just very dishonest. She gave an ultimatum. Execs accepted the ultimatum. You are gaslighting other people on this topic. At the very least, you should've acknowledged that this is up to an interpretation.

Regardless whether she was fired or quit, she was toxic as hell. She dragged Jeff Dean into an unrelated matter in public and implied Jeff Dean supported personal attack.

https://twitter.com/timnitGebru/status/1278569638532530177 -- this happened a few months before she left or was fired from google

If a direct report did this to me, I would've wanted them to leave. In this case, Gebru wanted to leave (according to her ultimatum). Jeff Dean wanted her to leave (I don't doubt this. nobody wanted to work with a colleage who attacked them on twitter). I see a happy ending for both.

Gebru and her supporters have been dishonest about the whole thing.