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Why I Quit Google to Work for Myself

mtlynch.io

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Re: Why I Quit Google to Work for Myself

#21

Post by gorbachev »

Anirudh25 wrote: post #3

As someone who will be entering the industry, I loved your perspective on your job at Google. Also, having read Cal Newport's "So good that they can't ignore you", I couldn't help but notice the hunger for independence in good software developers. Would you recommend newcomers to join smaller unstable( more independence) companies or bigger, more stable( Top 4) companies(lesser independence)?

Join a company that has great mentors.

If you already know what you love, then additionally pick a company that's great at that.

If you don't, then pick a company where you get a chance to be exposed to a wide variety of different things. If you aren't getting that in the company you pick, quit and pick another one.

Re: Why I Quit Google to Work for Myself

#22

Post by mtlynch »

Anirudh25 wrote: post #3

As someone who will be entering the industry, I loved your perspective on your job at Google. Also, having read Cal Newport's "So good that they can't ignore you", I couldn't help but notice the hunger for independence in good software developers. Would you recommend newcomers to join smaller unstable( more independence) companies or bigger, more stable( Top 4) companies(lesser independence)?

>Would you recommend newcomers to join smaller unstable( more independence) companies or bigger, more stable( Top 4) companies(lesser independence)?

I recommend new developers start at large, successful companies where software is a first-class citizen (e.g. Microsoft, Google, Facebook).

My first full-time job ever was a developer at Microsoft, and I'm really thankful for that job. I felt like within a large company, it was much easier to learn effective development practices and why they're important. At successful companies, good practices have a good way of percolating through, whereas at smaller companies, it's easier to fall into "cargo culting" of just doing things because that's how everyone else is doing them.

I think you can see this in things like the Google Python Style Guide (https://google.github.io/styleguide/pyguide.html). It only allows imports at the package or module level, even though most examples online do star imports or imports of particular functions. But when you build large systems that way, it creates ambiguity when you read the code because if you see a function call, it's hard to identify where it came from. There are a lot of things like that where the rule seems arbitrary, but in a large company, you can get context about why it helps you maintain your code and helps others understand it.

Re: Why I Quit Google to Work for Myself

#23

Post by southphillyman »

mtlynch wrote: post #2

Author here. Happy to answer any questions about the post or about my experience at Google.

Is your experience common for rank and file Googlers or specific to your role/department? Lots of unrecognized maintenance work, constant project changes, lack of transparency between employees and management. Sounds like an undesirable situation, are these issues that are so widespread there that transferring to another project isn't a likely solution?

Re: Why I Quit Google to Work for Myself

#25

Post by Retric »

Anirudh25 wrote: post #3

As someone who will be entering the industry, I loved your perspective on your job at Google. Also, having read Cal Newport's "So good that they can't ignore you", I couldn't help but notice the hunger for independence in good software developers. Would you recommend newcomers to join smaller unstable( more independence) companies or bigger, more stable( Top 4) companies(lesser independence)?

I highly recommend optimizing for salary for the first 4 years.

~10k/year * ~40 years of compound interest is significant. Most young people have debt and getting rid of that fast opens up a lot more options and flexibility.

On top of that company's that pay more have more incentive to maximize your value. On the other hand if you make little then they have incentive to burn you out and replace you ASAP.

Re: Why I Quit Google to Work for Myself

#26

Post by autokad »

mtlynch wrote: post #2

Author here. Happy to answer any questions about the post or about my experience at Google.

nice article although its sad you couldn't get recognized for the value you were adding.

I am not good at wording things, but here goes: I didn't see you call it out directly, but I also find employees are discriminated by project. if you are not working on a valued project, any value you provide to the company will be shrank by how unimportant they feel the project is.

Re: Why I Quit Google to Work for Myself

#27

Post by [deleted] »

ocdtrekkie wrote: post #8
kristianc wrote: post #5

This covers a lot of the same ground as Brendan Reid's "Stealing the Corner Office"[1], which gives a playbook for helping stuff like this work in your favour, rather than against you. You fit the profile of what Reid calls the "Smart but Stationary Manager" - a guy who is a lot smarter than a lot of the people who do get promoted, but who doesn't optimize for the right factors. Reid's point is that a lot of these gu…

I guess my question is: Can you get job satisfaction from promotion-focused work? I'm proud of what I've done . When I make someone else's life easier, that makes me feel good/satisfied with my work. I can't fathom satisfaction from impressing a promotion committee and tacking on a bigger title.

[deleted]

Re: Why I Quit Google to Work for Myself

#28

Post by mtlynch »

totalZero wrote: post #17
mtlynch wrote: post #2

Author here. Happy to answer any questions about the post or about my experience at Google.

Nice. Do you think large companies would benefit from a different scheme that rewards employees who "think like an owner"? (pardon the oft-used phrase)

Yeah, but in fairness to Google, it's not an easy problem to solve.

Of course from my perspective, I want them to care about things like bugfixing or supporting my teammates. But then you have to put controls on that so that people can't just never really do anything except bugfixing or riding their teammates' coattails.

I think the right direction is weighing manager feedback more heavily so that if a team member is doing things that benefit the whole team, the promo committee can accept the manager's word that the person had an impact even if they can't quantify it with metrics.

Re: Why I Quit Google to Work for Myself

#29

Post by dahart »

> I drastically reduced the time developers spent repairing those failures, but there were no metrics that tracked developer time.

For several jobs in a row, I've felt that helping others on a team is undervalued and under-recorded. I've been planning to implement the "assist" metric, similar to basketball, on my own team for a while.

The idea would be something along the lines of everyone gets a set of assist points they must distribute to people who help them the most.

While I don't love the idea of gamifying it, all the places I've ever worked have had too strong of a reverse incentive towards individual achievement, especially when it comes to promotion, and not nearly enough support for teamwork in specific and measurable ways.

Anybody have experience with teamwork metrics like this, or others that worked or didn't work?

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