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Why did I leave Google or, why did I stay so long?

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Re: Why did I leave Google or, why did I stay so long?

#181

Post by UncleMeat »

adrianb wrote: post #139
mmcconnell1618 wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the author is correct that some big tech companies create a culture where going to 11am yoga is more important that crunching out a few more lines of code. He's correct that if your focus is on building and scaling product, this culture reduces the velocity of change. However, I see a couple of things the author is missing: 1) Work life balance is about employee long term retention and places like Google spen…

He's giving a few examples for work-life balance and I have completely different feelings about - from the 11 AM Yoga class (pretty ridiculous IMO) to taking a personal day (reasonable, people need their day off, maybe the personal day is for an urgent medical check-up?) to working during the weekend (unless the entire service is down and I'm the oncall, it can wait).

Isn't that an indication that he sees these things as equivalent? 11am yoga is just as ridiculous as refusing to work weekends. This is precisely the sort of toxic attitude that keeps a lot of people away from startups.

Re: Why did I leave Google or, why did I stay so long?

#182

Post by andrew_ »

itg wrote: post #24

Another "leader" who complains about employees wanting work life balance and they are extremely entitled. These are the type of managers you want to avoid. I'm sure many Googlers are happy you left.

The point that's missing here is that there will _always_ be a generational divide. Young will always see Old as antiquated, out-of-touch. Old will always see Young as entitled, perhaps flippant, and out-of-touch. Neither perspective is invalid.

Re: Why did I leave Google or, why did I stay so long?

#183

Post by asidiali »

etripe wrote: post #156
asidiali wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agree and disagree. Without pushing a point too hard, I will ask you this - what if your employment contract states you are to receive $X,000 per year in food or food stipend? Would you be in favor of employees pushing for subsidized food while remote? Ok, and there’s a deadline at work. There’s also a deadline at your spouses work, your kid is sick, and they took off work to look after them last time. What do you do…

Roll initiative! On a more serious note, that all depends on the type of contract you've got. If you're salaried and get a constant wage, you're not exactly being compensated for going above and beyond, especially in terms of hours worked. Surely, if the work to be done is important, that means the employer is willing to pay for the privilege of having it done during off hours? If not, I would argue the employer, not…

Totally agree with what you’ve said.

Sure yeah, if you’re getting the equivalent of overtime or time-and-a-half, ok, it may become worth your time and like you said you are getting compensated for the extra effort and sacrifice.

But the author of the article is talking about salaried FTE Google employees. I’m a salaried tech employee, I don’t earn extra comp for working weekends. I assume that is the norm.

Hence why the authors attitude is indeed entitled, and not the employees, as you’ve stated.

Re: Why did I leave Google or, why did I stay so long?

#184

Post by gambiting »

slibhb wrote: post #93
itg wrote: post #24

Another "leader" who complains about employees wanting work life balance and they are extremely entitled. These are the type of managers you want to avoid. I'm sure many Googlers are happy you left.

If they really complained about not getting compensated for buying their own food during lockdown I think "entitled" is a fair descriptor. This is the first time I've read one of these blogs where the author complains about it being "practically impossible to fire someone". To me, that adds an air of authenticity to the complaining. In my experience too, the inability to fire people for reasons other than "this perso…

>>If they really complained about not getting compensated for buying their own food during lockdown I think "entitled" is a fair descriptor.

I very much disagree. If you were getting food at work previously, as in - it was clearly your agreed part of compensation - then I would absolutely complain if suddenly I had to buy my own.

>> But the flipside of that is that, when there's a deadline, I'm very invested in meeting it, even if that means working a lot of hours.

Again, that's fine and if you want to do that yourself, great, everyone would love to have you as an employee. But the second your manager walks in and says "john, I expect you to work this weekend" I'd start looking for a different job. Taking personal responsibility and working harder and more hours to finish something is one thing, being told you have to because your manager demands it is unacceptable.

Re: Why did I leave Google or, why did I stay so long?

#185

Post by system16 »

> The product is a tool to advance the employees career, not a passion, mission or economic game changer.

Of course it is. With the exception of the founders and possibly the first few, other employees rarely reap the benefits of product success, and if they do it's a promotion. I.e. advancing their career.

It's pretty naive and selfish to expect employees to sacrifice and emotionally invest as much in a product as the founders since they will not benefit nearly as much should it succeed.

Re: Why did I leave Google or, why did I stay so long?

#186

Post by asidiali »

throwaway667555 wrote: post #167
asidiali wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agree and disagree. Without pushing a point too hard, I will ask you this - what if your employment contract states you are to receive $X,000 per year in food or food stipend? Would you be in favor of employees pushing for subsidized food while remote? Ok, and there’s a deadline at work. There’s also a deadline at your spouses work, your kid is sick, and they took off work to look after them last time. What do you do…

Any reasonable person understands that "compensation includes food stipend of $8000" in a contract means they get $8000 if they're home. Clearly GP is referring to less cut-and-dry scenarios, i.e., nearly all scenarios in this domain.

Agreed yeah, hence the loose question. I’d assume this is a less formal scenario of oh, we have cafeterias, you’re welcome to eat there, but this isn’t some formal stipend. Makes sense, more curious on if that changes GP’s position on the topic with that added info. I’ve worked for places that did alternatively have a formal stipend amount.

Re: Why did I leave Google or, why did I stay so long?

#187

Post by coding123 »

itg wrote: post #24

Another "leader" who complains about employees wanting work life balance and they are extremely entitled. These are the type of managers you want to avoid. I'm sure many Googlers are happy you left.

> While most "real" people were worried about keeping their jobs or finding one, many employees were complaining about expensing their food on top of their salaries/stocks/bonuses. This entitlement continued everywhere - while Google is BY FAR the most employee centric company giving tremendous hard and soft value to its employees, they keep creating imaginary problems to complain about, instead of appreciating the hand they have been dealt.

I 100% get his position here. I definitely want to be surrounded by people that are grateful.

Re: Why did I leave Google or, why did I stay so long?

#188

Post by a_imho »

madeofpalk wrote: post #74
itg wrote: post #24

Another "leader" who complains about employees wanting work life balance and they are extremely entitled. These are the type of managers you want to avoid. I'm sure many Googlers are happy you left.

"I don't believe long hours are a badge of honor but I also believe that we have to do whatever it takes to win, even if its on a weekend." lmao what a terrible, horrible manager. I would hate working for them, and I would not miss them leaving. Maybe I'm just playing into their "young people don't want to work" stereotype, but if that's what working means, I don't want to do it with them.

Working on the weekend is a management failure.

Re: Why did I leave Google or, why did I stay so long?

#189

Post by toyg »

leroman wrote: post #32

Known Waze practically since inception (I'm from Israel) always carry a grudge for mis-advertise themselves as "open data" and eventually go on to privatize the platform (which was originally built on OSS) and hijack and delete OSM Israel data.

> hijack and delete OSM Israel data

What? How did they do that? I'm not an OpenStreetMap but I thought that sort of "privatization / removal of crowdsourced data" could not be done if not globally...

Re: Why did I leave Google or, why did I stay so long?

#190

Post by matwood »

steveBK123 wrote: post #161
shadowgovt wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's the sprint versus marathon mindset. A small startup has a finite amount of time to either become a big company in their own right or do something so noteworthy that a big company sees the need to acquire them. Nothing else matters. There are minimal incentives to invest in the long-term welfare of your employees because in the long term, the company doesn't exist. You can't even guarantee that an acquisition wil…

Re: It's the sprint versus marathon mindset. As someone who did track in high school, the whole agile nomenclature around "sprint" continues to rub me the wrong way. If you aren't a startup facing a launch-or-fail moment, the approach should be much more that of a marathon. I was joking with my wife that "sprint" to me implies that you go all out and then take a long break before you go again. We should be treating t…

Splits works, but I tend to use iteration. There are benefits to breaking work into chunks and checking in how it's going every 2-4 weeks, but there's no reason to be in perpetual crunch time. There should also be free time at the end of every iteration to do some problem/design/idea exploration.
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