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?

#201

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

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 absolutely agree about the fact that us young CS engineers often forget how lucky we are to exist in this space.

I also support the point that the author is trying to make about work life balance. If you are passionate about building something, you would always want your team to be as passionate. And that would mean sacrificing other stuff in your life since this product is also a large part of your life.

In other words, "work life balance" treats work separate to life. Which often might not be the case. There can definitely be an overlap between work and life.

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

#202

Post by throwaway667555 » Wed, Feb 17, 2021, 2:50 PM UTC

Kototama wrote: post #96

"As I had kids, I learned the importance of being at home for them and that's how I understood Work Life balance - its a balance, sometimes you need to work weekends and nights, sometimes you can head out early or work from home - we balance the needs of the employee and the company." sometimes you need to work weekends and nights while your wife take care of the kids alone so that your career progress and her's not.…

Also why doesn't balance mean "now you've earned an extra hour or two mid-day for yoga, 0 judgement"? I call it the "retail-worker mentality" when I point it out in friends. It isn't meant to deride retail workers, but to draw attention to the inhumane people and conditions they live under. The conditions aren't justified at low pay nor high pay, and people need an impolite analogy to have this simple but life-changing epiphany. Just look at the deathbed surveys of happiness and regrets.

If I do good work for a rich, high-margin company, I'm going to act like it (towards the employer) and reap the rewards. Because if I don't, someone is, and they're up the chain, so let's pull those rewards back down a bit and reclaim our humanity, ok? This isn't entitlement, this is taking the rewards I've had a hand in building rather than leaving them on the table and saying "thank you for letting me leave these extra 20% of rewards to you".

Separate from this, I might vehemently advocate politically for reversing the upwards redistribution of wealth to the tech elites (me), and that's not hypocritical. Hoping for Richard Stallman-level principaledness among the professional working public isn't the answer to political and social problems such as this, so let's not armchair and claim that working half your Saturdays moves the needle towards wealth fairness better than saying no and going home and taking the paycheck. Inconsistencies can coexist without resolution, and most of life is exactly that. If you can't live with it, then the answer is to quit, not routinely work Saturdays.

The company's budget has room for more staff if it's truly needed (it's not); my life budget of personal hours does not have room for more work, nor should it if my employer is among the wealthiest in human history.

Germany's auto-workers union negotiated a 28-hour workweek. Like them, we shouldn't be ashamed to rebalance our lives towards leisure, personal hobbies, personal relationships, etc, now that technology is so productive. In general, why is it wrong to favor broader participation in the fruits of human effort? I'll do my part by going home and taking the paycheck. Now I have more time and financial security to spread my politics if I want.

Elon Musk is right that companies and communities are fully and precisely the human-machine cyborgs of fiction, just at a different scale. Can that apparatus rebalance towards leisure etc? I think yes, so I'm taking my paycheck and going home early. It's not entitlement, it's living my valid and reasonable politics.

If this post seems off topic, then maybe you haven't thought all the way through what "sure, I can give you more hours of my life" means when you offer it to an employer. We might disagree on some or many points, but all of this post is directly relevant to that negotiation of hours.

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

#203

Post by cashewchoo » Wed, Feb 17, 2021, 2:51 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.

Especially when, IME, people are either outright abusers (and blatantly leech until discovered and fired) or people tend to fall into a distribution whose mean centers around a WLB that's slightly tilted in favor of work. Employees in the US are already so guilt-tripped and gaslit and scared of unemployment that you end up doing things for work you feel are unfair even if they don't ask it of you.

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

#204

Post by ramraj07 » Wed, Feb 17, 2021, 2:51 PM UTC

i_haz_rabies wrote: post #180

ramraj07 wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Contrary to popular belief, kids are not some tamagotchi pet that needs constant attention and helicoptering after they're babies. You can perfectly be a good parent and raise independent well minded kids without needing two parents always present every moment of every weekend.

And this is a good enough reason to expect people to work on the weekend? Kids are not some tamagotchi pet that exists as it is for a long time... kids are constantly growing and if you blink, you miss it. Some people would rather spend their weekends with their kids for purposes other than just keeping them alive.

I'm not advocating we work full weekends, but I'm not sure why I would not have a few hours for myself and do things that don't involve my kids. Some weekend's it would be work but other weekend's it might be something else, but it surely doesn't have to be 24/2 just kids kids?

Of course if you blink you miss them, it's not like you're in a cave across the world, you're probably literally in the next room staring at a screen for a couple hours after a heavy lunch while the kids play on their ps5. How's that weird.

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

#205

Post by twox2 » Wed, Feb 17, 2021, 2:51 PM UTC

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.

Seriously, and the next point it's followed up with is "entitlement"....

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

#206

Post by serverholic » Wed, Feb 17, 2021, 2:53 PM UTC

sneak wrote: post #178

serverholic wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If google provides food for employees then that's essentially indirect compensation. Employees can now use the money they would have spent on food to buy other things. So now that they're remote and have to buy their own food they have effectively received a pay decrease. How is it entitled to complain about a decrease in compensation for the same work?

Google has been known to point out the perks, such as catering, when asked by candidates for more salary during negotiation, as well.

Yeah it's interesting that the person I was replying to used the word "privilege" when describing those perks. As if Google was doing this out of the goodness of their heart.

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

#207

Post by UncleMeat » Wed, Feb 17, 2021, 2:53 PM UTC

jpm_sd wrote: post #20

paulcole wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The whole thing is one red flag after another, but the biggest standout to me is the author being annoyed coworkers are taking personal days. That’s what they’re there for! When I don’t want to work, I use the benefit that lets me not work.

Try managing a team where people take last minute personal days all the time, without having to give advance notice or a reason.

Your job as a manager should be to ensure that things don't fall apart if people get sick. If there is a critical process managed by a single person then you failed as a manager.

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

#208

Post by toyg » Wed, Feb 17, 2021, 2:53 PM UTC

watwut wrote: post #179

> online ahead of us was overheard saying “What? Sushi again???” which became our inside joke around entitlement. Yeah, I dont like Sushi either. Not sure why not liking Sushi is entitlement, but as I said, normal food tastes better.

... implying that sushi is abnormal...?

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

#209

Post by cashewchoo » Wed, Feb 17, 2021, 2:54 PM UTC

ghoshbishakh wrote: post #201

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 absolutely agree about the fact that us young CS engineers often forget how lucky we are to exist in this space. I also support the point that the author is trying to make about work life balance. If you are passionate about building something, you would always want your team to be as passionate. And that would mean sacrificing other stuff in your life since this product is also a large part of your life. In other…

Because unless you have significant equity in a company, your work is literally not your life. Your life consists of things you don't lose instantly if you're fired "for any lawful reason including no reason".

The US is potentially one of the worst places to get work and life mixed up without a securitized, legally binding combination of your work and life.

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

#210

Post by cactus2093 » Wed, Feb 17, 2021, 2:54 PM UTC

mmcconnell1618 wrote: post #53

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 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…

Another glaring omission - he’s now sitting on 7 years of savings from his Google manager salary & equity. If you have a few million dollars in the bank it’s much easier to take the pay cut to work at a smaller startup and chase a more high risk/high reward outcome.

It’s completely out of touch to judge anyone for wanting a stable and in the scheme of things ridiculously high paying job with good work life balance, like working at Google.