Why did I leave Google or, why did I stay so long? • Hacker News Board

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

#191

Post by ramraj07 » Wed, Feb 17, 2021, 2:47 PM UTC

TravHatesMe wrote: post #148

ramraj07 wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A different way of putting it would be whether an employee takes personal responsibility towards their work. It's not incongruent with a balanced life. To me It just means occasdinally you might stay late at work, once in awhile an interesting problem gets you working on the company laptop all Saturday, and if something breaks you're not able to log off until you fix it. Doesn't mean you cant take Friday's off of or…

> whether an employee takes personal responsibility towards their work. This is a good take. Something that's perhaps overlooked: those rare occasions where you need to stay late to deliver are very memorable. Isn't it true that strong bonds are often built from intense experiences? I think those few times that you stay late earn you massive respect from those who stuck around, and builds a relationship beyond your c…

Agreed but also with caveats - I've had talks with coworkers where after helping put out a fire we should do a bit of soul searching on how we can avoid that in the future. As a team and a company we should strive towards creating systems that don't tax its employees as well, that's the company and managers end of the deal with employees who take personal responsibility if you ask me.

And the thing that works absolutely counter to this philosophy is the peer bonus system. It sounds great in principle but seems to incentivize people to continue bad practices that are clearly mostly overworking without proper post mortem on why such out of description help was even needed in the first place. When I was new I used to cherish peer bonuses but now I'm proud that no one in my team has gotten one in a year (because hopefully none of our systems needed such help anymore).

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

#192

Post by xyzelement » Wed, Feb 17, 2021, 2:47 PM UTC

duxup wrote: post #135

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…

It's such a weird dynamic. I remember visiting the valley for the first time for a big company I worked for at another location. The scale of work life balance was unbalanced so many strange ways... The tech support team I worked with was in 'building 3'. Nobody ever left that building through out the day. I went to the big cafeteria and the options were amazing. I managed to get some of my peers to go with me, sever…

A few reactions to that.

First, there's always a self selecting thing there. For some reason folks from building 3 never bothered to go explore, and it sounds like they didn't keep going to the caf even once you showed them. Nothing was holding them at their desk, they just didn't care/bother.

Second, some jobs are different than others. Some jobs you have to "be there" for. Tech support may be like that - you have to pick up the call/email when it comes in. Other jobs may be more like strategy or research where having a few key insights a year generates millions of dollars for the company and if hanging in the cafeteria helps you do that, everyone wins.

Third, at the end of the day you kinda have to trust the system. What I mean is - if the company is successful it's because it's overall people strategy is working. So in the great net of things, having the caf setup be the way it was may be what was needed, even if some individuals abused it (which you then would hope be detected in their overall output)

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

#193

Post by marcus_holmes » Wed, Feb 17, 2021, 2:47 PM UTC

mlthoughts2018 wrote: post #71

vincnetas wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For me it was the opposite, i was thinking, wow, this is the guy i would like to be working with. But i'm not the one who fits this description: You need to be able to answer the "what have you done for our users lately" question with "not much but I got promoted" and be happy with that answer to be successful in Corp-Tech.

“What did I do for the customer today” is often in principle not answerable within megacorps. If you’re the person who fixes a new employee’s password issues, you have to do mental gymnastics like “I helped X fix their password, then X created a new Jira ticket for Y, Y helped scope and plan the ticket in Z’s sprint, Z gathered requirements and assigned it to A, A paired with B and they wrote code that removed extran…

I think you're violently agreeing with the author.

In a startup it's easy to see what value you added for the user every day. In a megacorp it's impossible. In a startup having the managers ask "what did we do for the users today?" helps the whole team stay on track. In a megacorp it's a useless platitude.

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

#194

Post by UncleMeat » Wed, Feb 17, 2021, 2:48 PM UTC

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…

A small number of people did this on the imageboard, which is widely known for collecting and upvoting fringe complaints. It is a company of like 130,000 people. A few of them are going to ask for things that seem unreasonable to others.

Google is somewhat known for being slow to fire. I personally like it. Managers are expected to try to get their reports to survive PIPs rather than using them as a boot out the door.

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

#195

Post by BikiniPrince » Wed, Feb 17, 2021, 2:48 PM UTC

andor wrote: post #165

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.

That's not how I read it. He clearly states that he understands the value of work-life balance, but there are work places where work is just not the #1 priority during business hours anymore. And that's totally fine and I'm happy if it works for people and their employers. But it's not viable for startups that need to find product-market-fit before burning through all their cash. Or companies trying to make best-in-c…

It doesn’t really work long term for large companies either.

Unless you are riding the back of some cash cow you do have to worry about profit. I have watched the complete erosion of our tech leads and the incoming hires bear so little responsibility. Management is also quite aware of what they have done, but half of them are on the way out too.

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

#196

Post by scrose » Wed, Feb 17, 2021, 2:49 PM UTC

If you’re a new engineer reading this article: Startups are talked about as if work-life balance doesn’t or shouldn’t exist. It only doesn’t exist if you (1) choose for that to be the case or (2) Have a manager like this who holds things like firing you if ‘someone better comes along’ over your head.

There are plenty of startups where you can put in your ~8 hours and call it a day 99% of the time and the business will still be thriving. Having seen the work some engineers put into cranking out code nonstop, a bit less time coding and a bit more time thinking would have likely done way more good for the code base and the company anyway.

Managers who don’t value your personal time and are willing to fire you anytime ‘someone better’ comes along are toxic and should be avoided.

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

#197

Post by ThrowawayR2 » Wed, Feb 17, 2021, 2:49 PM UTC

madeofpalk wrote: post #132

ramraj07 wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A different way of putting it would be whether an employee takes personal responsibility towards their work. It's not incongruent with a balanced life. To me It just means occasdinally you might stay late at work, once in awhile an interesting problem gets you working on the company laptop all Saturday, and if something breaks you're not able to log off until you fix it. Doesn't mean you cant take Friday's off of or…

> once in awhile an interesting problem gets you working on the company laptop all Saturday, I will never do this. I havent done this since I was very very young at my first job and i didn't know better. I couldn't think of anything sader or more depressing that giving away my own personal time for someone else. I'm not going to work on the weekend. I've got much better things to do, like play video games or literall…

> "I couldn't think of anything sader or more depressing that giving away my own personal time for someone else"

The original quote was about "an interesting problem". I'm happy to spend some after hours time on technical problems if they're personally interesting to me. The fact that addressing it helps my employer and makes me look good in their eyes is just a nice little bonus.

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

#198

Post by ionwake » Wed, Feb 17, 2021, 2:49 PM UTC

A man who feels he was both needed, and thinks the way forward is to fire members of his team.

The trouble is, the problem is in my life I always see a person getting fired and the solution remaining, the problem being a process and an inability to both see and be able to resolve said issue.

The horror here being both the problem remains and youve been unethical to fire someone who did not deserve it. Which will only create problems down the line.

I believe this is why I feel if I was ever in the position where someone I hire is not right, I continue trying to make it work until I have tried many different solutions. If it still fails, I tell them they are great in they ways they were and explain I want to part ways, and I make sure expectations are made.

My only experience has been with short contracts, but if I wanted to part with someone who I was sure was a problem I would not even consider trying to within a 2 year period, its just unethical.

If I cant make it work within 2 years, well then we all tried. I dont know if this is the right approach but I believe it would both help in giving time to find and fixing the right problem, the right way.

tldr; firing is not cool

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

#199

Post by toyg » Wed, Feb 17, 2021, 2:49 PM UTC

MattGaiser wrote: post #40

Do companies actually find themselves tons of employees that care so deeply about their mission that they sacrifice pay, equity, promotions, life interests, weekends, and benefits for "the cause"? I get having a team of 20 that is like this, but it does not seem like a concept that scales unless you are SpaceX.

> Do companies actually find themselves tons of employees that care so deeply

No, but they find tons of employees who really need a job and hate job-hunting, so once they get in they'll do what it takes to keep the paycheck going. This is particularly common in sectors where the median hire can be young, like... the software industry.

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

#200

Post by matwood » Wed, Feb 17, 2021, 2:49 PM UTC

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.

Agree. My first question would be to ask 'win' what? The reality is, very few are working on things that are so critical if a feature is pushed off a few days because of a weekend, nothing will change.