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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?

#441

Post by treis »

asdfasgasdgasdg wrote: post #392
treis wrote: post #242

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think this guy missed the memo that Google bought Waze to put them out to pasture. They were the only real competition to Google Maps and were acquired to ensure Google Maps monopoly. Waze shipping features and winning in the marketplace would be a bad thing. I think a lot of his post stems from missing this.

Hard to align that perspective with his acknowledgement that Waze was allowed to operate independently, and the fact that Waze has been launching lots of new features for the last few years.

Straight from the horse's mouth:

>All of our growth at Waze post acquisition was from work we did, not support from the mothership. Looking back, we could have probably grown faster and much more efficiently had we stayed independent.

He also details the constraints and additional burdens imposed by corporate as well the overall lack of support.

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

#442

Post by EricE »

cbushko wrote: post #304

Ooof. I think people are picking and choosing too many points to make it seem like this guy is an asshole and a toxic manager. I read that he wants people to: - Do their work - Provide value for their users - Get stuff done. vs - Work on flashy stuff to only get promotions - Be stuck with BAD employees that do very little - Have employees spend all day doing recreation Work/life is important to stay healthy but at th…

>I read that he wants people to:

Yes! Most insightful post in this entire thread.

Talk about shallow interpretations of what someone wrote from most of the other commenters.

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

#443

Post by freewilly1040 »

Of the author's many entitlements, the funniest one to me is that he feels entitled his employee's drive and passion for his product, the second most important mapping app at his own company.

He couldn't perceive that Google was buying him out to neutralize a competitor? He was surprised that the distribution priority of Waze was lower than Google Maps?

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

#444

Post by jldugger »

throwaway667555 wrote: post #202
Kototama wrote: post #96

"As I had kids, I learned the importance of being at home for them and that's how I understood Work Life balance - its a balance, sometimes you need to work weekends and nights, sometimes you can head out early or work from home - we balance the needs of the employee and the company." sometimes you need to work weekends and nights while your wife take care of the kids alone so that your career progress and her's not.…

Also why doesn't balance mean "now you've earned an extra hour or two mid-day for yoga, 0 judgement"? I call it the "retail-worker mentality" when I point it out in friends. It isn't meant to deride retail workers, but to draw attention to the inhumane people and conditions they live under. The conditions aren't justified at low pay nor high pay, and people need an impolite analogy to have this simple but life-changi…

> Also why doesn't balance mean "now you've earned an extra hour or two mid-day for yoga, 0 judgement"? I call it the "retail-worker mentality" when I point it out in friends.

A 28 hour workweek is fine if consistently applied. The daily 11am absence however, is likely treated with disdain because:

- doing mid-day yoga while I'm attending daily release engineering meetings to accommodate someone else's schedule slip is grating

- for some reason mid-day workouts are okay but leaving the office at 4pm isn't

Both of which is why it strikes many as slacking off.

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

#445

Post by kgog »

> Today, in Silicon Valley, work life balance has become sacrificing Work for Life - not a balance. Young people want it all - they want to get promoted quickly, achieve economic independence, feel fulfilled at Work, be home early, not miss the Yoga class at 11:00am etc.

He lost me here.

Grouping "young people" -- an entirely arbitrary delineation -- and calling them entitled is typical agist bullshit. Just because one person wants to work like a dog, doesn't mean others who don't are entitled.

Check yourself jerk.

> I don't believe long hours are a badge of honor but I also believe that we have to do whatever it takes to win, even if its on a weekend.

This is the reason why I refuse to work for managers who work outside of business hours AND expect others to be available then too. Working like a dog permeates a toxic work environment where everything is a competition and zero-sum.

For the vast majority of people, work is an avenue to a better work. It's just a job. I think generally the people we consider "successful" worked themselves out. However, there is survivor bias here as well that needs to be called out. For every 1 burned out "successful" workers, there's 99 that failed, and many that probably have some form of trauma.

In reality, in large-corp you can cruise and still be in the top Lastly, I'm glad Noam Bardin wrote this post because it's very indicative of the kind of person he is. I will run far and fast away from every working with him.

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

#446

Post by dwohnitmok »

theptip wrote: post #435
the_local_host wrote: post #361

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But he's not strictly talking about "bad employees"; he explicitly mentions firing people for "the basic reason that you don't need this role any more". That's not invalid by itself as long as everyone knows that the game is purely transactional. But it isn't fair to expect employee "passion" when their own continued employment is contingent on whether management thinks they're still necessary.

The OP is 100% right here. Sometimes the needs of the company change as the company grows, and people can’t keep up. Or people change and they can’t give what the company needs from them any more. This is one of the hard aspects of being a manager in a startup that’s growing quickly. The easiest example to grok would be if you had hired a VP of sales who is an expert in B2C selling, then you pivot your product to a B…

> That's not invalid by itself as long as everyone knows that the game is purely transactional. But it isn't fair to expect employee "passion" when their own continued employment is contingent on whether management thinks they're still necessary.

This still seems to hold no?

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

#447

Post by PNWChris »

nicoburns wrote: post #389
noisy_boy wrote: post #220

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"so long as my family and I are good" - wealth goes a long way to ensure exactly that.

Sure, but if you're a software developer with a few years experience then pretty much any job is going to cover that.

I generally agree with you here, the sun is shining and we software engineers can make some hay! But...I have words of caution. I grew up in Southeastern Michigan. My dad is a Stanford grad mechanical engineer who worked for a Big 3 auto manufacturer, my wife's parents work in auto, and many of my friends families directly or indirectly worked in automotive.

Everything about that seemed secure and stable until our entire world got rekt in 2008. It took forever for the average automotive worker and their family to recover from that recession, and I've come out of it incredibly cynical about employment and the US economic system. When it matters most, DC will bail themselves and their cronies out first, and will drag their feet and cry deficits when it gets time to help you.

I care about doing great work, but my highest priority is to "secure the bag" as the kids say and ensure a stable life for myself and my family. I keep a big cash savings, save and invest aggressively for retirement, and make no assumptions about my employability in a hypothetical time of crisis. I have a feeling a lot of mid-late-20s and early 30s SWEs share my experience, it's no accident I chose such a lucrative field (though I do love my work!).

Watch out for yourself, don't discount the possibility that software eng is just living in a repeat of the irrationally exuberant 1990s automotive industry.

Side note/PS: It's not all about money: you've got to be politically active, invest in community, and advocate for the kind of world you believe we should live in! Just don't forget to secure yourself financially and make no assumptions if you can afford not to, then you can confidentially support yourself and others in times of crisis.

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

#448

Post by foobarian »

tinyhouse wrote: post #215

I work in big tech. Not Google. This is one of the best blog posts I have read about big tech. I agree with most things. The most important one is the wrong optimization for promotion. People would happily push something complicated and unnecessary to production just because it can help them to get promoted later on (by showing fake impact). The other thing I strongly agree with is working on things that don't add va…

> That's why offloading an employee to another team is usually easier.

At one point I noticed that our team kept getting these incompetent engineers transferred from other parts of the company. At first I was puzzled, especially because my director was completely unphased by this. Then I realized he kept asking a lot of questions in our 1-1s about how X is doing, what X could do to improve, etc. And finally after a few months X would be gone. I think this guy got a reputation as a "cleaner" so our team would get the garbage to get taken out. I always wondered if/what kind of special favors he got in exchange for doing this from his peers...

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

#449

Post by theptip »

dwohnitmok wrote: post #446
theptip wrote: post #435

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The OP is 100% right here. Sometimes the needs of the company change as the company grows, and people can’t keep up. Or people change and they can’t give what the company needs from them any more. This is one of the hard aspects of being a manager in a startup that’s growing quickly. The easiest example to grok would be if you had hired a VP of sales who is an expert in B2C selling, then you pivot your product to a B…

> That's not invalid by itself as long as everyone knows that the game is purely transactional. But it isn't fair to expect employee "passion" when their own continued employment is contingent on whether management thinks they're still necessary. This still seems to hold no?

Maybe to some extent, but I’m not certain. If you are passionate about what you do, then you are probably not enjoying the job which shifted into not being a fit for your skill set, so the need to find someone else can be a mutual/positive conversation. It’s also really fraught with ego and self-worth landmines so it doesn’t always go that way.

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

#450

Post by moreranchplease »

viklove wrote: post #440
tinyhouse wrote: post #347

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you misinterpreting what he's saying. I didn't get the impression that he claims that employees growth doesn't matter. He's saying that most people optimize for promotion rather than building a better product. That's indeed the wrong thing to optimize for, esp for the company. Not being able to fire people is indeed a big disadvantage. Bad employees are much worse than just not contributing. They make the peo…

> He's saying that most people optimize for promotion rather than building a better product. If you want them to optimize for building a better product, give them more equity. Most people don't want to work during the best 40 years of their lives. Give them a way out or they will try to find one themselves.

Exactly! Give people equity if you really want them to care about the product over what's best for their career.
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