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I quit Google to work for myself (2018)

mtlynch.io

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Re: I quit Google to work for myself (2018)

#191

Post by [deleted] »

ryandrake wrote: post #177
godzillabrennus wrote: post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agreed. Every kid their senior year of high school should be forming an LLC, starting a company around their idea, learning the basic skills to operate one, if they want to graduate.

I sometimes can't even detect sarcasm on HN anymore. What 16-18 year old kid (or their parents) has the capital and time to start and run their own business? Even when they're adults, they likely will not have access to business ownership. Depending on the source you use, somewhere between 5 and 10% of Americans own their own business. I'm not saying basic business skills aren't valuable--they are, but the vast, vast…

[deleted]

Re: I quit Google to work for myself (2018)

#192

Post by adonovan »

solatic wrote: post #134

The conclusion I took away from this piece is just how heartless it is to depend on a promotion committee. I know Google put them in place because they wanted an Engineering-driven culture where people could do great Engineering work and still be recognized, even if their manager didn't. But it sure doesn't sound like these promotion committees are recognizing great Engineering work, especially when that work falls u…

Exactly. There are non-monetary rewards to doing good work: esprit de corps from a team of coworkers you like and respect, satisfaction and pride in your craft, positive responses from users, and so on.

For many, promotion is like winning a pie-eating contest only to find that the prize is: more pies. It’s fine to recognize that your interests and your employer’s are only loosely aligned and to decline to play the game the way they want you to.

Re: I quit Google to work for myself (2018)

#193

Post by egypturnash »

ryandrake wrote: post #177
godzillabrennus wrote: post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agreed. Every kid their senior year of high school should be forming an LLC, starting a company around their idea, learning the basic skills to operate one, if they want to graduate.

I sometimes can't even detect sarcasm on HN anymore. What 16-18 year old kid (or their parents) has the capital and time to start and run their own business? Even when they're adults, they likely will not have access to business ownership. Depending on the source you use, somewhere between 5 and 10% of Americans own their own business. I'm not saying basic business skills aren't valuable--they are, but the vast, vast…

I don't know if this is sarcasm or not but:

You could make it work if this "everyone forms an LLC in school" initiative comes with "everyone gets a chunk of cash to invest into this business". I assume the time would come from restructuring curriculums so that half of your senior year is spent on this project. Maybe add another year onto high school instead that is the Business Year.

This would also require a massive increase in the amount of money going into schools so it's pretty much a non-starter in the US.

As to "optimizing for the 90%", I feel like there's probably a lot of interesting differences in a world where every high school graduate has been in a boss' shoes. Possibly bosses would be able to get away with a lot less shady shit. This probably doesn't help the chances of setting it up either.

Re: I quit Google to work for myself (2018)

#194

Post by avereveard »

amrocha wrote: post #181
avereveard wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Side of the same coin. Salaryman earning millions are still salaryman. You're bounded to the whims of the employer, and can lose it all from the ups and down of the personal relationships that surround you. The American dream is not the rich employee, is moving out to that relationship and build something you own. Building something that is bounded to the marked at large and can weather the individual change of whims…

No they’re not. A “salaryman” earning millions has financial independence in 5 years maximum if they so choose. Most people are forced to work or starve. These are not the same.

> has financial independence

well yeah the dream is not the salaryman lifestile, but the financial independence, thanks for agreeing with me

Re: I quit Google to work for myself (2018)

#195

Post by JKCalhoun »

DeathArrow wrote: post #153
phyzix5761 wrote: post #64

I think you learned the most important lesson of any career: the customer is not your customer. The person/people who control your raise, bonus, and promotion are your real customers. Think about it like this. A customer is the entity that exchanges money for something they value; like a good or service. That's usually your manager. Or in the case of OP the promotion committee. (Many times it's both your manager and…

>I think you learned the most important lesson of any career: the customer is not your customer. The person/people who control your raise, bonus, and promotion are your real customers. Yes and maximizing the value of your business means optimizing for promotion. Students should be teached these things in universities so they don't waste years from their lives after they graduate.

I did not care for the performance review practices at Apple (and it is probably similar in every other big corporation).

We'll give you a 1 to 3 rating in three categories (it's been a while, something like: "Expertise", "Innovation", "Teamwork"). A "1" means you did not meet expectations, a "2" means you met expectations and a "3" means you exceeded expectations.

If we give you a "1" in anything, you should probably start to look for a job elsewhere.

We can't give you a "3" in two of the categories above however. Well, we can but then we have to go up the management chain — perhaps even to the director — because giving someone a "3" in more than one category means we have to raise your "grade". And moving up a grade is a Big Deal. We can only have so many top-tier engineers.

Oh, and regardless of what your manager thinks of you, all managers have to report to their manager for what we call a "leveling session". Here your manager needs to defend their choices when compensating their direct reports in front of all the other managers and of course their boss as well.

Something in particular we're looking to make sure of is that your manager rewards some of their direct-reports with bonuses, a raise, etc. but "punishes" others. Egalitarianism is frowned upon.

Re: I quit Google to work for myself (2018)

#196

Post by safety1st »

sangnoir wrote: post #110
nostrademons wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's an interesting reality check that in 2023, six years into his journey as a bootstrapped founder, Tiny Pilot made $225K in profit on ~$1M on revenue. For 2021 and 2022, it made roughly a $5K profit; the rest was all losses. He quit Google because he couldn't get a promotion presumably from L4 to L5, but $225K is less than what an L4 makes. This might also be a microcosm of why the working class is pissed off in A…

> This might also be a microcosm of why the working class is pissed off in America I know it's topical, but I really don't think the working class on America is pissed because they are struggling to increase their annual income from $350,000 to $500,000 at their Big Tech job. That's an elites-problem; or whatever you choose to call anyone in the top 5% earning bracket.

Maybe not when you put it that way, but small businesses used to be a larger share of the economy and a more viable "rags to riches" path than they are today. The system is undoubtedly rigged to favor large businesses - most people understand that intuitively but the anti-trust cases the government is currently prosecuting and in many cases winning are hard evidence of how the US really punted on protecting the small businesses from the big ones over the last few decades. You aren't going to find many people in the working class who disagree with the idea that big corporations should be cut down to size and we should have an economic system that's friendlier to people who want to be their own boss.

Re: I quit Google to work for myself (2018)

#197

Post by AureliusMA »

mtlynch wrote: post #14

Author here. Cool to see this pop up again! Happy to answer any questions about this post.

Nice to see you on HN :-) Too bad we couldn’t reach a deal on your Keto site, but hopefully the new owner takes care of it well. Can’t wait to see what you will do next! Cheers!

Re: I quit Google to work for myself (2018)

#198

Post by SamvitJ »

nostrademons wrote: post #13
goalonetwo wrote: post #2

Ah, another one of those infamous 2018 blog posts on "why I quit Google". And those blog posts absolutely always start by telling you that the engineers at Google are the smartest in the world. Oh boy are those people indoctrinated.

They were in 2008. It's largely just people's mental models changing slowly, as well as selection bias of people who still believe Google has world-class engineering being overrepresented among people who still work at Google.

What companies would you say have world-class engineering now (2024)?

Re: I quit Google to work for myself (2018)

#199

Post by [deleted] »

nostrademons wrote: post #11
Etheryte wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A good highlight of what quitting your job can look like: > Six years ago, I quit my job as a developer at Google to create my own bootstrapped software company. For the first few years, all of my businesses flopped. The best of them earned a few hundred dollars per month in revenue, but none were profitable. We often hear about the successes, and it is easy to be loud with success, but it's important to keep in mind…

It's an interesting reality check that in 2023, six years into his journey as a bootstrapped founder, Tiny Pilot made $225K in profit on ~$1M on revenue. For 2021 and 2022, it made roughly a $5K profit; the rest was all losses. He quit Google because he couldn't get a promotion presumably from L4 to L5, but $225K is less than what an L4 makes. This might also be a microcosm of why the working class is pissed off in A…

[deleted]

Re: I quit Google to work for myself (2018)

#200

Post by whack »

nostrademons wrote: post #11
Etheryte wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A good highlight of what quitting your job can look like: > Six years ago, I quit my job as a developer at Google to create my own bootstrapped software company. For the first few years, all of my businesses flopped. The best of them earned a few hundred dollars per month in revenue, but none were profitable. We often hear about the successes, and it is easy to be loud with success, but it's important to keep in mind…

It's an interesting reality check that in 2023, six years into his journey as a bootstrapped founder, Tiny Pilot made $225K in profit on ~$1M on revenue. For 2021 and 2022, it made roughly a $5K profit; the rest was all losses. He quit Google because he couldn't get a promotion presumably from L4 to L5, but $225K is less than what an L4 makes. This might also be a microcosm of why the working class is pissed off in A…

> This might also be a microcosm of why the working class is pissed off in America, because looking at this experience, the optimal strategy for revenue is to blow smoke up the ass of a wealthy corporation until they give you a fat stock grant, then claim credit for the work of others so that they give you more.

Here's an alternate take. A competitive free market has squeezed corporate profits so much, that most would-be-capitalists would be better off joining the working class instead. Consider the alternative where anyone who doesn't have the financial means to build their own company, is relegated to a sub-par quality of life.

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