Three Years of Misery Inside Google, the Happiest Company in Tech

We have one employee with their own chair, it required a doctor's note, had to meet certain specifications (I thinks he actually had to show what she was going to buy first) and of course be purchased with their own money.

As far as the two sites you linked, I'm not in the United Kingdom and I doubt many employers would pay attention to those things in the United States.

As far as testing for credit, most colleges still require you to take a significant percentage of your courses through them.

The problem with a degree is I'm 34, if I magically had the funds today to pursue a degree I'd probably graduate around 39. Great, I'd be elligible for entry level work at 39 while there are many high school students graduating high school with an Associates degree and well on the way to their Bachelor's degree so I'd be competing for entry level work in whatever field against 20-22 year old applicants that are willing to work for less money and less benefits while I'm 39~.

Money and conditions aside, age discrimination is very real and degrees aren't even worth today what they were 10 years ago. I was browsing indeed.com trying to find a new job so I could cash out my pension and use it for tuition last week and was finding that even Administrative Assistant positions at small doctor/medical offices were wanting a 4-year degree and larger companies/government agencies were requiring them for the same type of job.

Now keep in mind there are millions, tens of millions, of working adults like me in similar (or worse) positions in life.

49~% of workers in the United States make less than 30k [1] yet 33.4 percent of Americans 25 or older said they had completed a bachelor’s degree or higher [2].

When we hear stories like this article, and then a quick search shows us that an average base salary at google might be 81-173k a year [3] with a mountain of benefits/perks and we here about 'years of misery' we just roll our eyes and think "well, if I cancel my gym membership, and don't have any emergencies, I can retire at 70 instead of 80 unless one of those AI companies puts me out of work."

[1] https://howmuch.net/articles/how-much-americans-make-in-wage...

[2] https://thehill.com/homenews/state-watch/326995-census-more-...

[3] https://www.glassdoor.com/Salary/Google-Salaries-E9079.htm

At the end of the day we're all going up Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs, and as you get closer to the top you start freaking out about existential stuff the same way people working the bottom freak out about physical necessities. If you started out fairly close to the top (i.e. born to the upper middle-class, like many Googlers) then that existential stuff is likely the only type of challenge that's ever consistently existed in your life, which gives it even more weight. So you focus on it and don't appreciate the benefits of being a Googler. That's just expected after a while.

It's not all decadence though, in my experience a lot of people who had to rise from humbler origins are actually held back by their relative conservatism; they stop improving at a certain point because they don't prioritize the existential stuff as much. I work with some engineers hailing from blue-collar backgrounds who give me weird looks when I tell them about my side projects, they're shocked I mess around with tech outside of work. Why would I want to do work when I don't have to? How is it fun? It's like I told them I was mining coal in my backyard. As a result I sometimes know things about their work that, despite their fundamental competence, they never learned.

Plus, we need people to agonize about the existential stuff (although perhaps in a more coherent manner than this article). If everyone was satisfied with basic material needs things like sexism and racial discrimination would never get addressed (What do you care you didn't get that job you wanted? You still have a roof over your head and food in your stomach!)

Misery knows no social class, and everything's a trade-off.

Actually, all of you Westerners[1] are rich entitled whiners. You have consistent access to clean water that comes straight to your house, you even have a house, with insulation and carpets no less. You have a cornucopia of diverse and nutritious foods, and your social institutions will even feed you if you're poor! Not only do you have all these necessities, even your poor people have opulent expensive toys like cars, TVs and cell phones!

1. https://www.collinsdictionary.com/us/dictionary/english/west...