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Leaving Google

jayconrod.com

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Re: Leaving Google

#251

Post by m0zg »

dekkers wrote: post #243
m0zg wrote: post #200

> I started losing a lot of sleep, and I got a lot of headaches and back pain. I got a lot of "brain fog": inability to concentrate or make decisions. I started forgetting words and names and losing the thread of a conversation mid-sentence. I felt like I had no energy left for anything other than work, and I could barely manage that. Other than back pain these symptoms match mine exactly, except I hadn't worked full…

I don't really want to give anything that seems like medical advice in HN comments. I just want to give a bit of information that might be useful to you or others. Obviously you should do your own research, talk with a doctor about it, etc. Brain fog and headache are also one of the most common symptoms of long covid. Losing consciousness when getting up sounds like POTS[1] and is also common in long covid. Research…

Something I intend to check on with my doctor, thanks for caring enough to provide references. Who knows, maybe I had covid and didn't even know.

Re: Leaving Google

#252

Post by midasuni »

ergocoder wrote: post #193
emodendroket wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I guess people do in the "why would you ever leave such a great job?!" sense, but people can get bored of any job after enough time.

Outsiders also don't grasp how high a lowly senior engineer earns. Compensation in tech is so insane. Other high earning occupation just doesn't even come close. It would take doctors years to earn 250k a year. In tech with stock growth + RSU, you might get that as a junior eng. I earned 450k as a junior per year with pre-ipo company. This is why engineers can just leave and others are surprised.

Get a google job straight of of college and it seems you can retire very comfortably in your mid 30s

Re: Leaving Google

#253

Post by andi999 »

titzer wrote: post #43

I joined in 2010 and left in 2019. The company I joined was very different than the one I left. Every single one of Google's problems can be traced back to scale. Loss of trust, distance to top leadership, tone-deafness, repeated failures, escalating surveillance dystopia, perf management overhead, leaks...all of them are fundamentally due to scale. And scale is simply because greed. Gotta make that 23% YoY revenue g…

Let's pray they don't start to manufacture paperclips.

Re: Leaving Google

#254

Post by jollybean »

burnished wrote: post #218
gerash wrote: post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Exactly, perhaps people read too many comic book with these one dimensional villains to think that an employee asked Google to be more ethical and then they fired them right there and you could hear an evil laugh in the background. I've looked at some of the correspondence between Timnit and others and it's fairly unprofessional on her part if you ask me and it has this self righteousness tone to it too. Another very…

Do you think she got fired for those reasons? Citing her as sounding self righteous or unprofessional seems weak.

She was not fired, she quit.

She was publishing studies critical of Google, Google wanted at least the right to have studies of the company reviewed and to include more updated information etc. which is extremely gracious on the part of Google.

She gave the company an ultimatum i.e. 'Change the Terms or I Quit' so they said 'We're not changing the terms, we accept your resignation'.

It's galling how many people (and their supporters) think that they have a right to be employed by a company and then publicly criticize them with misleading information, unmitigated or reviewed by the company.

Re: Leaving Google

#255

Post by gregorygoc »

nuerow wrote: post #249
mehrdada wrote: post #219

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure, but the stock price would tank (note that the current multiple assumes growth), employees would leave due to poor compensation, and starts a downward spiral. I am not sure if that is called survival. And no, most businesses in the world do not survive that long. Lifetime of businesses are often much shorter than lifetime of humans. Even many of them that look like have survived may share the name only and are e…

> Sure, but the stock price would tank (note that the current multiple assumes growth), employees would leave due to poor compensation, and starts a downward spiral. This assertion presumes that it is impossible to propose any form of compensation that's enticing without involving stock. This is not only baseless but also flies in the face of reality, as other tech companies, including other FAANGs, barely offer any…

> This is not only baseless but also flies in the face of reality, as other tech companies, including other FAANGs, barely offer any stock and still manage to attract top talent.

Which one?

Re: Leaving Google

#256

Post by jollybean »

sillysaurusx wrote: post #176
freyir wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Which makes it more likely to be the truth, not less likely. It would be very foolish to write that if it were demonstrably false, as was claimed above. And I have to assume their lawyers aren’t very foolish. But this is all another deflection. Whether the paper was rejected by a regular process or an irregular process, it doesn’t condone her actions that followed.

> Whether the paper was rejected by a regular process or an irregular process, it doesn’t condone her actions that followed This is where we'll have to agree to disagree. As you can see in this thread, she was treated unfairly. Someone confirmed to you that this is the case, and you're still arguing that her subsequent behavior was unjustifiable. I think her subsequent behavior was a result of the unfair treatment. I…

"As you can see in this thread, she was treated unfairly. S"

This is not true.

The fact that she may or may not have had extra scrutiny than others, within regular policy or not is completely besides the point.

If a company, for whatever reason, wants to have 'another review' of the paper, it's completely within their purview.

"Her paper was anodyne. No one would've blinked if it was published."

Our view of whether it was notable or not is irrelevant. If the company wanted to put the brakes on it, especially because it related to Google, then that's their choice.

It's hugely arrogant for her to make the claims she did - let alone publicly (!) - by all right she should have been fired for that, she was luckily the conditions enabled her to even try to establish the premise of her own resignation.

Re: Leaving Google

#257

Post by jollybean »

Jensson wrote: post #100
joshuamorton wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why do we have to take Google's word and not hers? (Especially in light of corroborating witnesses who say that what she did was completely normal)

Because plenty of other researchers working at Google regularly publish papers critical of Google and are just fine? Even Timnit had already done that many times, she just got into trouble this time but all the other papers she published was fine. If Google really cared about these researchers publishing critical pieces then Google would have shut down that entire group rather than just firing her.

This discussion over whether she was treated differently with respect to review is irrelevant.

If Google, for whatever reason, wanted to have the paper undergo a bit of extra scrutiny, it's entirely within their purview.

Re: Leaving Google

#258

Post by M0r13n »

greatgib wrote: post #204
huma wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When you live long enough it becomes evident that scale in tech is a pandemic. At a certain point greed inevitably takes over. I believe there's some kind of a threshold beyond which a company has no choice, but to turn evil.

It is just my personal opinion, but I think that it is what is going on with gitlab now.

Can you elaborate on that? Why do you think is Gitlab turning evil?

Re: Leaving Google

#259

Post by yla92 »

brap wrote: post #250

I’ve been at Google for a little less than OP, and while I’m also considering leaving, my main reason is sort of the opposite: I’m bored. The whole team is bored. It feels like we’re doing nothing, and have been doing nothing for years. I work under 25 hours a week, and the vast majority of time is spent in useless meetings or reading useless docs. My actual work is maybe 5 hours a week. What are we even getting paid…

Is is not possible for you to transfer to another team/org internally?

Re: Leaving Google

#260

Post by caoilte »

mehrdada wrote: post #219
capableweb wrote: post #207

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, Google would easily survive if they focused on maintaing existing services and making the headcount stable instead of increasing. Most businesses in the world survive with their piece of the pie and remaining having the same profits or slightly lower/higher than previous years. You don't disappear over night, and no market is really a "winner takes it all", it's just what management wants you to believe so you fi…

Sure, but the stock price would tank (note that the current multiple assumes growth), employees would leave due to poor compensation, and starts a downward spiral. I am not sure if that is called survival. And no, most businesses in the world do not survive that long. Lifetime of businesses are often much shorter than lifetime of humans. Even many of them that look like have survived may share the name only and are e…

They could achieve good multiples by paying dividends. The question is whether they're wasting as much money trying to grow as they are saving by keeping their profits offshore (and not paying tax on them). I don't know, but at some point the answer may become obvious.
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