Yeah.
sips coffee
I'm going to need you to go ahead and come in on Sunday, too.
Why did I leave Google or, why did I stay so long?
221–230 of 840 posts
Re: Why did I leave Google or, why did I stay so long?
#222Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Try managing a team where people take last minute personal days all the time, without having to give advance notice or a reason. Try getting a job where they advertise a benefit, then complain when you use it.
Never heard of benefit called "taking free days last min is no problem"
I have often heard personal days are to be used if say, you can't get to work due to transportation issues or if your child is home from school. If they aren't to be used that way how do they differ from vacation days?
Re: Why did I leave Google or, why did I stay so long?
#223Another "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.
Of course, focus on the one thing he said you don't like. Not to mention he didn't really say he's against work life balance. But for some people words are more important than content like he said.
Re: Why did I leave Google or, why did I stay so long?
#224Another "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.
Work-life balance is always available, but you're not entitled to a top-tier salary if you want to 9-to-5 it.
Re: Why did I leave Google or, why did I stay so long?
#225It's astounding in so far as how unique this conversation is to tech. I've worked as a pipefitter, electrician's apprentice, and general construction hand in the past - I could only imagine how it would go telling my former foreman that I'd like to head off to yoga in the morning for an hour. Big jobs that require overtime to complete get folks to work that overtime - even within a union. If it's not you, it's someone else, and they'll be remembered for stepping up.
Bringing experience in other fields, namely the trades, to the conversation here might make it more clear why these things outlined in the article are seen as extreme entitlement. It's not a lack of work-life balance - something I see and hear about in most industries now - it's about caring deeply about your career, your work, and perhaps the project at hand, while not allowing that work to define your life. Pride and dedication to work can be balanced with family. It's not a zero sum game. What the author is trying to explain, in my mind, is that there is large priority on only one side of the equation (life), while indifference towards the other (work).
We have it AMAZINGLY WELL being in tech, and we have luxuries that are unique to tech and bewildering to folks in other fields.
Re: Why did I leave Google or, why did I stay so long?
#226This is an amazing post - it describes exactly how bad manager looks like and what kind of expectations does he have from his employees. No emergency PTO (despite being a benefit), ability to just get rid of people who don't suit him, cursing at people, not having a proper work/life balance. It just keeps on giving. And all for what? A mapping application having features which really don't save lives 99% of the time.
I agree with all of that except the swearing part. Is swearing in work a big deal in US? I'm Scottish (even worse Glaswegian) so perhaps have a skewed view.
No idea about US (I'd guess - yeah), but it's certainly a big deal here in continental Europe. I've also not seen anyone casually swear in London either.
It's considered quite unprofessional and aggressive.
Re: Why did I leave Google or, why did I stay so long?
#227Earlier quoted context omitted.
Simple question - is there (some kind/means of (extra)) payment involved? If the answer is no, then that's a resounding no (for me, at least). I might love and adore my job (and the workplace), but no way in hell will it be allowed to impinge on my private/personal time: sleeping and "regular" work already essentially takes 2/3 of it ( too much ), and that doesn't even include the time for "context shifting" (mental…
Exactly, you do you buddy. Let's just not act as if it's some God given right that you only work 40 hours for outrageous sums of money. We are not talking about minimum wage workers, and his point is they're not even putting in the 40 hours anyway. All he's asking is that he wants to have a different culture within his team. It's not his intention to force people who don't share his values to work against their will.…
If you are ever in position where you are recruiting people, make sure to put that statement directly into the posting. Not during a phone call or at any later stage.
Re: Why did I leave Google or, why did I stay so long?
#228Earlier 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…
He's giving a few examples for work-life balance and I have completely different feelings about - from the 11 AM Yoga class (pretty ridiculous IMO) to taking a personal day (reasonable, people need their day off, maybe the personal day is for an urgent medical check-up?) to working during the weekend (unless the entire service is down and I'm the oncall, it can wait).
It's almost like different people value different things. I knew a guy that got a massage every day at 2pm but he also was at work until 10pm. This is also why - even with a flexible work schedule - it's useful to have some set of "core hours" everyone should be available.
Re: Why did I leave Google or, why did I stay so long?
#229Earlier 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…
I noticed this when I worked at my first "employee satisfaction" focused company. Half the employees took every perk they could get, seemingly doing as little work as they could under the mantra of "work-life balance". The other half never left their desks. It created a strange dynamic of resentment between the two parties, where one thought the other stupid, and the other thought them lazy. It was hard to know where to stand.
Re: Why did I leave Google or, why did I stay so long?
#230> It is practically impossible to fire someone for the basic reason that you don't need this role any more or there is a better person I found this surprising. I thought this was primarily a problem in union / government positions.
It's both true and not.
It's certainly a lot harder to fire people than at a startup. You need multiple review cycles with poor ratings, a Performance Improvement Plan, more review cycles of bad ratings, etc. But most people don't want to hang on through that, so they leave since it just sucks to be on a team where you are not valued. But you can definitely hang on for 18 months pretty easily with everyone unhappy with your work if you want to.
So it's not really the same as government jobs where you really can't be fired, but it's very different from a startup where everything can be going fine, you lose a big customer and a week later 10% of the company is gone to keep the burn rate low.