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Leaving Google

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Re: Leaving Google

#331

Post by BurningFrog »

brundolf wrote: post #76
BurningFrog wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was there 2006-2009. Each year a new level of management appeared above me, and things got ever more "political" and perf centric. Just as people are different at age 10, 20 and 40, companies are different in different stages and sizes. Know what you want and look for it. I realized I want to be at small companies, and have not worked at a company larger than 25 people since.

I've found the sweet spot to be around 50-200. I've always worked at smaller companies, and the 10-person company I worked at was the only terrible experience of the bunch. It sounds weird to say, but... I'm really glad to have an HR department again. I'm sure it varies widely. I just feel like a tiny company leaves too much room for unhealthy and unprofessional dynamics, even though I'm sure it can be perfectly fine…

At my craziest startup, the charismatic CEO would occasionally yell "under 50 employees, no one has any rights!". It was a joke, but was it really?

Part of the small startup life is that most job don't last. Both because startups die young, but also because they can be crazy. My first dying startup was a disaster. I adapted my expectations, and now I see them as unplanned vacations.

I quit the crazy company above on my 1 year vesting day.

Re: Leaving Google

#332

Post by DanielVZ »

Aeolun wrote: post #303
DanielVZ wrote: post #264

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wasn't the same true 20-30 years ago? I feel like you can just choose not to sell or IPO, right?

But can you resist if someone throws 4B in cash at you?

Yeah, that's a fair point. It's hard to evaluate such a decision without being in the spot. The only way I see of resisting such tempation would be to be fulfilled with working on your vision and have substantial amounts of money. I haven't done any of those things so it's hard to empathize and answer honestly.

At least we have warning examples such as Notch's situation. After making probably the most successful game of all time and selling it for billions, his life is (or was, has been, idk) reportedly pretty depressing.

I could say that it's better to not have depression than to have billions, but in reality it's not a zero sum game and you can probably have both. In the end, as always, it all depends on the person and their circumstances.

Re: Leaving Google

#333

Post by pbhjpbhj »

lotsofpulp wrote: post #292
lifeformed wrote: post #276

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Call it greed if you want, but this is just the emergent result of the economic system we have in our society. Corporations are optimization algorithms to maximize revenue. Not because they have to, but because its comprised of rational individuals who are incentivized to maximize their own revenue. The natural result is an ever-growing entity, adaptive to dangers and emergently intelligent. It's possible to run a co…

This does not seem too dissimilar to a country or tribe’s leader promising their constituents a better life in the future. And I cannot imagine a country/tribe selecting a leader that does not promise progress and growth over one that does.

I'd far rather live in a country where the rulers choose not to start wars for territory, especially if we were the richest country in the World. I'd have guessed that would be common.

Indeed as one of the richest countries, with global climate change, the responsibility is to lower consumption (which many would see as reduce the standard of living). But maybe the analogy doesn't stretch that far.

Re: Leaving Google

#335

Post by burntoutfire »

capableweb wrote: post #207
lotsofpulp wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> And scale is simply because greed. Is it possible that it is simply because of survival? The general theme of business I see is if you do not keep up with others, you will lose to your competitors. Especially in a winner take all business with network effects and low marginal costs like tech.

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…

> and no market is really a "winner takes it all"

Market for OSes for PCs (not Macs) is a great example. Windows has what, 98% market share there? It got there thanks to the dynamics of this particular market, which is totally a "winner takes all" one. In particular, if Microsoft were more relaxed in 80ties and 90ties, there likely would not be Microsoft or Windows at all today, and everybody'd be using Os/2 Warp or BeOS or something else on our PCs.

Re: Leaving Google

#336

Post by throwawaylinux »

carlivar wrote: post #319
throwawaylinux wrote: post #261

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can a private company not accept a letter of resignation? Would that be a violation of the 13th amendment?

If the terms of the resignation contradict terms in the employment agreement, I would think so. As long as the employment agreement is legal itself.

Duh, yes of course, good point! Not sure what I was thinking.

Re: Leaving Google

#337

Post by bla3 »

> Why I left [...] Burnout [...] I wish I'd done more to fight those things, beyond signing petitions and walkouts. I'm not much of an activist though, especially with burnout.

It's interesting that the author mentions this, but doesn't make a connection between feeling burned out and feeling that they have to be personally responsible for everything the company does.

I don't even disagree with many of the demands of internal "activist", but the strategies they use (walkouts, trying to keep everyone outraged as much as possible) seem ineffectual to me: The main effect seems to be that it makes ordinary employees feel more burned out since they're made aware of many things that they're suppose to be angry about but at the same time they're powerless to change them. That's a recipe for burnout.

I get that the thinking is that ordinary employees are not powerless due to collective action, but for that to work you have to be a lot better at picking your battles. You can affect one to two larger things per year, so getting up in arms over every (comparatively) little thing just has the effect that your activism achieves nothing but burn out the people who want to have on your side.

Re: Leaving Google

#338

Post by candybar »

SOLAR_FIELDS wrote: post #328
lotsofpulp wrote: post #322

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That is not a tax advantage. It is simply paying long term capital gains tax rate on long term capital gains. Companies are not paying with RSUs because of a tax advantage, they are paying because it is cheaper than paying with cash.

While it's unclear whether grandparent was referring to tax advantages for the company vs. the individual, I'm not sure I understand your comment about lack of tax advantage in the context of individual awards. Scenario A: Company X gives me a sign-on bonus of $10,000 and an agreement to bonus me $100 * y%, where y is the increase in value of the company. Scenario B: Company X awards me $10,000 of RSU that vests afte…

This isn't how things work - you pay income taxes on RSUs when they vest, not when you sell, and their cost basis is the price at the time of vesting. So it's entirely irrelevant from a tax perspective whether they come in cash or stock. If you want cash, you can sell the stock and if you want stock, you can buy - the tax consequences are exactly the same.

Re: Leaving Google

#339

Post by burntoutfire »

discordance wrote: post #330
mbesto wrote: post #320

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is what people seem to forget. A company that doesn't grow for all intents and purposes is a dead company. Or in the M&A world we call it "distressed". It doesn't matter how profitable you are if you don't get grow there are serious implications - employee motivation, loss of talent, erosion of customer services, etc.

I don't see how employee motivation, loss of talent, erosion of customer services are related to the need for unyielding year on year growth. There are companies out there, private ones, where their customers are happy, their employees are happy (most of the time) and their retention is high.

Without growth, the only way to get promoted is to get a spot of some higher-up who left the company (or retired/died). Whereas, in growing companies, there are new senior/management positions created all the time, to account for the growth - so, getting promoted is easier.

Ambitious, hard working people like promotions, so they gravitate towards growing companies and not stale companies.

Re: Leaving Google

#340

Post by UncleMeat »

MertsA wrote: post #233
oppositelock wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I worked at Google from 2005 to 2013, seeing it grow from 4,000 to 50,000 employees during this time. In 2005, it was a wonderful, prestigious place to work with many great people and a startup vibe, the place was vibrant. By 2013, Larry and Sergey were put out to pasture, and the company took on a much more bureaucratic, compartmentalized feel. I was working hard, most of my work was fighting bureaucracy and optimiz…

Q: What's the fastest way to go from L4->L5 at Google? A: Get a job at Facebook at E4, get promoted to E5, and get hired back at Google L5. https://youtu.be/8DYje57V_BY

Google is somewhat famous for downleveling so I'm really not sure that this is actually true.
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