Why I Quit Google to Work for Myself • Hacker News Board

Re: Why I Quit Google to Work for Myself

#221

Post by austinjp » Wed, Feb 28, 2018, 5:25 PM UTC

gjvc wrote: post #167

mgkimsal wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

relatedly, a friend of mine worked at a place where everyone was on "20% time = bug time". You were expected to spend ~ 20% of your time taking bugs from the bug tracker and fixing them. Bugs closed were part of a metric towards bonuses. People were taking one bug, breaking it in to 3 or 4, then closing all of those. "Add button for X" became * "add button on form" * "add CSS for button" * "update CSS for button" * "…

In my naivety I've never heard nor thought about "what gets measured gets gamed". It's been my intuition for a while, but it explains much of what used to frustrate me -- I wish someone had told me this 15 years ago.

It's worth explicitly considering the two concomitant problems:

What does not get measured gets ignored. It's not necessarily a bad thing to measure stuff. But it's easy to overlook a metric that later turns out to be important.

If you're measuring the wrong stuff, or measuring it in the wrong way, your metrics are again erroneous and your decisions will be based on ghosts.

Lao Tzu was truly onto something when he said "the more I learn the less I understand".

Re: Why I Quit Google to Work for Myself

#222

Post by bob_theslob646 » Wed, Feb 28, 2018, 5:25 PM UTC

freehunter wrote: post #153

bob_theslob646 wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're forgetting that you could also track secondhand assist as well. I can't speak for programming but in soccer this is well-known. It's just very hard to Value just like an employer would in terms of having that person on board for morale. Fortunately the better people get it and understand that that person should be value even if they weren't directly involved in making the change but they were definitely a part…

A person’s projected morale is very under-appreciated. I don’t know if I’m at the point in my career that I boost morale just by being on the team, but I do know there are people who, if they left my company, would have an impact on my morale even though I never ask them for help or work directly with them. Just something about knowing a person is an amazing and knowledgeable resource and he’s choosing to work here o…

I wish I had more than one upvote. This comment is so true it hurts. Thank you for articulating it so well. =)

Re: Why I Quit Google to Work for Myself

#223

Post by chubot » Wed, Feb 28, 2018, 5:25 PM UTC

mtlynch wrote: post #2

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

(former Google engineer here)

No questions, but it was a good read. I'm sad to hear that the gaming of the promo system is still such a large concern. Unfortunately that was also the case way back in 2005, through 2010, and until I left.

What's new to me is the shuffling of projects back and forth to India. That's not something that seemed to be an issue when I was there, and it's sad to hear this new concern for keeping engineering talent.

Re: Why I Quit Google to Work for Myself

#224

Post by ultrasounder » Wed, Feb 28, 2018, 5:26 PM UTC

Wow!. Really inspiring write-up. Thanks for sharing. No. You are not an idiot. When you find time, please pick-up "Anything You want" by Derek Sivers. Essentially, You don't need a business idea. You just make something that "helps" people however vague that might sound. GOod luck with your venture and Indie Hackers is Great and Channing Allen has built a Great community around it with an awesome podcast to boot!. Who knows you could even be back at Google after "successfully" bootstrapping your startup for a few years.

Re: Why I Quit Google to Work for Myself

#225

Post by bdhess » Wed, Feb 28, 2018, 5:27 PM UTC

dep_b wrote: post #72

dahart wrote: post #29

> 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…

I worked in a remote team once helping a company in Seattle (that perhaps had a bit of a jock culture problem). I could be stuck for days because following the README in a repo just wasn't enough to get the project to compile and run. Every standup I was telling "I'm completely blocked for the last two days because I cannot run the repo, so I cannot run any tests and at the moment I'm doing absolutely nothing.". To b…

> I could be stuck for days because following the README in a repo just wasn't enough to get the project to compile and run. Every standup I was telling "I'm completely blocked for the last two days because I cannot run the repo, so I cannot run any tests and at the moment I'm doing absolutely nothing.

Certainly it might've been more efficient if one of your colleagues helped you debug the issue. But in the absence of help, it's not clear why you didn't dive in and start debugging on your own (rather than doing nothing). You'll learn more that way too.

Re: Why I Quit Google to Work for Myself

#226

Post by inetknght » Wed, Feb 28, 2018, 5:28 PM UTC

derekp7 wrote: post #171

KKKKkkkk1 wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What makes my stomach turn is the interpersonal aspect. How can all your teammates see you fail through no fault of your own for days and pretend they don't notice. Unfortunately in my experience, that's not a rare occurrence.

I can give some insight from my own experience. In my current position, there are a large number of "things" that I've had to figure out, either by reverse engineering, reading code, or intuition. So I get constantly bombarded with helping others get unstuck. Well, when it comes time for a project meeting, those on the meeting are far removed from the other groups that I constantly have to help out. And it sounds lik…

That's neither healthy nor sustainable. You're the one that sees a problem; you absolutely need to make your boss aware of that situation and that the company needs to arrange for better utilization of man-hours. If management doesn't fix that to be healthy, consider moving to a healthier position.

Re: Why I Quit Google to Work for Myself

#227

Post by zacherates » Wed, Feb 28, 2018, 5:29 PM UTC

Completely anecdotal but I was talking to a Googler who had basically the opposite experience and recommended working at Google because of the promotion panel. The fact that their manager had no say in the process and that they could put together their promotion packet on their own was a feature in their mind, because their experience included their manager "forgetting" to put them up for promotion repeatedly at other companies.

That being said, promotion processes do seem to be pretty screwed up in general (personal experience with 3 different companies), and fail in various ways. So it's worth keeping in mind that the "external promotion process" (getting another job) is always available.

edit: grammar.

Re: Why I Quit Google to Work for Myself

#228

Post by allsystemsgo » Wed, Feb 28, 2018, 5:29 PM UTC

Well, Google is a big company. Politics are a thing. A lot of younger hires don't know how to navigate that kind of environment. I had a lot of trouble in that area. I joined a smaller firm and things improved dramatically. As the smaller firm grew, I grew into understanding and learning how to navigate politics gradually.

You find this in every single industry. I used to work in public accounting and it was just like this. Google isn't special in this regard.

To author: good luck! If your startup takes off, let us know!

Re: Why I Quit Google to Work for Myself

#229

Post by [deleted] » Wed, Feb 28, 2018, 5:30 PM UTC

eldavido wrote: post #185

whataretensors wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Second, you're a lot better off working at a good company -- MUCH better off I disagree. There is a whole category of people who want high reward for their efforts. There exists no way to get high rewards or royalties outside of starting your own venture. The downside is the risk of course. I do agree that you shouldn't be angry, but there are so many new ways to exist and survive these days.

I completely agree. My point is opportunity cost. Unless you have a very clear idea of what you want to do/build--which many people do--you're better off with a day job. I see a lot of people essentially rage-quitting (let's be serious, that's what happened here) and then wasting years of their life working bottom-of-the-barrel contracting/crappy startup jobs because they "don't like big companies". I made this mista…

[deleted]

Re: Why I Quit Google to Work for Myself

#230

Post by mtlynch » Wed, Feb 28, 2018, 5:30 PM UTC

lrem wrote: post #49

I'm also a Googler. Upon joining I was also given the keys to an ancient data pipeline, due a redesign for at least five years at that time. The person handing me the keys left almost immediately. My task was also keeping the thing adrift and nursing it back to health, whatever it takes. I did get promoted for that. The metric I used was pretty much the amount of developer time that went into supporting it that was s…

Well, glad to hear the system rewards good, unglamorous work sometimes!

I think a piece working against me with the pipeline was that it was kind of an oddball part of the company. The clients of the pipeline were all external researchers and the data was all free, so I couldn't point to increased sales and the clients couldn't write me recommendations for promo.

I think I would have had better chances if my clients were other internal teams who could say, "Yes, this pipeline is much more stable now."