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

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

#421

Post by bhandziuk »

asidiali wrote: post #336
kryogen1c wrote: post #325

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> the mental overheard of a software job is not something that is easily turned off during non work hours this is very ignorant. the ability to leave work at work is a personality trait. the job, or type of job, has little to do with it. software development is not some exceptionally difficult thing that tortures and haunts developers.

> the ability to leave work at work is a personality trait. the job, or type of job, has little to do with it. This is very ignorant. There are many outside factors that go into if an employee needs to focus on work after hours, such as accessibility to the working environment, cultural practices at the company, etc. Who said anything about haunting? If my manager hits me up at 11pm asking for something, sure I can i…

Sounds like if you have the potential to be addressing business problems at 11pm you should have an on-call schedule. Your boss just calling people randomly in the night is not a great way to get things done reliably anyway.

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

#422

Post by [deleted] »

JKCalhoun wrote: post #239
serverholic wrote: post #218

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is also part of the argument for basic income. Having a stable source of income allows people to take risks like starting their own business or joining a small startup.

Or just a more lax unemployment policy. I worry that if you give everyone $1000/month: 1) you cannot live on $1000/month so it is an empty gesture 2) rent goes up $1000/month nationwide so it is an even emptier gesture

[deleted]

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

#423

Post by cube2222 »

Regular overtime is nothing else than organisational and management failure to me. It means you have more work than you have people for, and should just hire more of them.

I understand having to work late a day or two because there's an outage, or a feature needs to be done ASAP, but I'm taking those hours back the next day.

Also, not sure about others, but I'm wildly productive when working up to 8 hours daily, and my productivity goes out the window if I work more than that for prolonged periods of time, because I get burned out real quick. (Actually, even with up to 8 hours I need regular vacations)

And being passionate about my work has absolutely nothing to do with that. (I try to work at places where I'm very passionate about it)

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

#424

Post by not2b »

BugWatch wrote: post #163
strken wrote: post #62

There's a pervasive belief by managers that involuntarily working weekends for an extended period of time will increase rather than decrease the total work done, and that engineering output can be measured in "hours", that I find absolutely ridiculous. If I think back over the times when I've been most productive, I've had the kind of trusted flexibility that allows me to work 14 hours one day to get a feature in bef…

I guess you probably heard that classic joke that the (project) manager is the person who thinks that a baby can be produced and delivered in a single month given nine women to do it.

It's from Frederick Brooks' book, "The Mythical Man-Month", the earliest good book on management of software projects. "The bearing of a child takes nine months, no matter how many women are assigned."

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

#425

Post by asidiali »

aerosmile wrote: post #414
asidiali wrote: post #393

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> How often do you get those 11pm requests that will otherwise get rerouted to someone else unless you respond before 8am? Daily? Weekly? Monthly? A few times per year? Multiple times per month. 3/4 weekends per month. How’s that? Not uncommon in many small startups I’ve been a part of as an employee, founder, or advisor. Your point is fine, except for the fact that it totally overlooks if an employee is actually alr…

> many small startups I’ve been a part of as an employee, founder, or advisor As a significant equity holder in an early stage company, you cannot compare yourself to regular employees. We're no longer comparing professions, and instead are comparing approaches to wealth creation: salary vs equity. Again, if you're not a fan of risk, get a job at a bank. To bring it back to your original post - you called someone ign…

> To bring it back to your original post - you called someone ignorant for stating that leaving work at work is a choice.

It was tongue in cheek. I was literally quoting them calling me ignorant - it looks stupid and is not condusive to good discussion, I agree!

> As a significant equity holder in an early stage company, you cannot compare yourself to regular employees.

I was expressing the fact that I've seen this many times at several companies, as opposed to it being "a few bad apples" as you originally stated. Not that there is any similarity in the experiences of those roles.

The choice to leave work at work on the daily, vs the choice to switch jobs when you're unhappy, are not the same choice - just so we clear that up because I feel like there are two separate points being made here vs the original comment I was replying to.

It is a choice to leave, yes, definitely agree with you there and I appreciate your perspective here. We are definitely privileged to be in such a fruitful field.

It is also a choice to leave work at work, however, there can be ramifications at your expense and out of your control if you do so. That doesn't happen when you are unhappy and decide to start looking for another job, unless you tell your employer you're doing so...

EDIT: I added some hard data points to back up what I was saying. None of the points changed, only added, didn't delete. Apologies if that confused you.

Criticism of capitalism? Lol, you said we should be grateful for all this money we earn in comparison to other industries. I said no duh, we create a ton of wealth - look at the wealthiest people in the world, they come from software - Gates, Musk, Bezos. It makes sense that compensation is higher in an industry where more value is being created.

> so I'll disengage and just hope you'll find peace and appreciation for the good things in life.

Likewise :)

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

#426

Post by gonehome »

lhorie wrote: post #420
gonehome wrote: post #409

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My take would be Google can afford it for now because they have a web ad monopoly and don’t have to compete. If they ever lose that, the culture they’ve built will cause them to be destroyed and irrelevant in not that much time. For now, it’s summer.

I recall watching a news report as a teen about how things used to be pretty chill at Microsoft at its heyday. These days it doesn't seem to have a monopoly on much of anything, but it can still crank out interesting projects. It doesn't have to be a black-and-white do-or-die.

Microsoft became almost irrelevant under Ballmer or was at least trending that way. Nadella’s turn around is almost miraculous and is itself probably an interesting story. I wouldn’t bet on that as the norm. I’d expect the norm to be more like IBM, RIM, or Nokia.

I agree with most of the article, but one line stuck out to me as particularly wrong:

>”After the acquisition, we have an extremely long project that consumed many of our best engineers to align our data retention policies and tools to Google. I am not saying this is not important BUT this had zero value to our users.”

Good retention policy does provide value to users.

--

> "When COVID hit and we moved to work from home - a huge amount of complaints began around why cant employees expense food since they are not in the office. While most "real" people were worried about keeping their jobs or finding one, many employees were complaining about expensing their food on top of their salaries/stocks/bonuses."

+1 on this - I find this behavior really irritating, it makes me roll my eyes to see some of the most coddled employees in human history whining about this kind of thing. The most charitable interpretation is its just a normal way for people to bond over some shared thing by complaining about it, but a lot of the complaining feels like more than that.

> "We had lunch in the cafeteria and a Googler online ahead of us was overheard saying “What? Sushi again???” which became our inside joke around entitlement."

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

#428

Post by mslack616 »

whycombagator wrote: post #370

> 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 out there or just plain old - you are not doing a great job. This neuters managers and does not lead to great teams, driven by mission, pushing each other to do better. > I was the weirdo who wanted to push things fast and expected that some level of personal sacrifice when needed. I…

I was thinking the exact same, obviously a very smart guy but damn I don't really agree/align with most of what he expressed.

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

#429

Post by ghaff »

nicoburns wrote: post #394
ck425 wrote: post #173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Swearing culture is definitely very different in the US compared to Scotland. I've noticed that people from the US have a tendency to say things like "heck" or "frick" because saying "hell" or "fuck" is seen as something that one ought to do. That's definitely not a thing in Scotland, where in my experience you're likely to hear far "worse" even in formal or professional contexts. - An Englishman (England is cultural…

I'm sure it depends on the industry and the circumstances. Way back when, I worked in the US oil industry as an engineer and I remember one rig superintendent in particular who basically couldn't get out a sentence that wasn't punctuated with some cuss word or other. But even in the 90s in tech, some level of cussery was pretty normal. It's definitely true, at least at large companies (and events) these days, anything other than the very occasional f-bomb, especially in public is definitely frowned upon.

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

#430

Post by asidiali »

bhandziuk wrote: post #421
asidiali wrote: post #336

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> the ability to leave work at work is a personality trait. the job, or type of job, has little to do with it. This is very ignorant. There are many outside factors that go into if an employee needs to focus on work after hours, such as accessibility to the working environment, cultural practices at the company, etc. Who said anything about haunting? If my manager hits me up at 11pm asking for something, sure I can i…

Sounds like if you have the potential to be addressing business problems at 11pm you should have an on-call schedule. Your boss just calling people randomly in the night is not a great way to get things done reliably anyway.

Agreed! It's a business problem. It's not a problem of the employee to shift their mentality to suit the demands of their employer. People want to do a good job though. Hence why there is onus on the employer to provide work-life balance. It's not enough to just "not ask" for work on the weekends. You need to proactively discourage it.
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