Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

paygo.media

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

561–570 of 840 posts

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

#561

Post by CodeMage »

iandanforth wrote: post #108

I think his derision of entitled ladder-climbing employees is valid from the perspective of someone who sees "building something valuable" as the point of employment. There is a whole community however that sees wealth acquisition as the point of employment. Even if it's "merely" joining the ranks of the top 5% this is lauded as success by many. Lawyers, doctors, consultants, stock traders, all the high paying profes…

> I think his derision of entitled ladder-climbing employees is valid from the perspective of someone who sees "building something valuable" as the point of employment.

Call me cynical and jaded, but I don't believe "building something valuable" is the point of employment.

"Building something valuable" is the point of my vocation. I used to believe that the employment and vocation should align. Over the course of more than 20 years of my professional career, the vast majority of the employers I've had have done their best to disabuse me of that notion.

The way I see it, the point of employment is to ensure you have the money and the benefits you need to live comfortably. If your employment and your vocation align, it's a nice bonus. If they don't, do what you're passionate about in your free time.

> Many hackers want to both provide the best possible life for their families and participate in a grand adventure of changing the world by creating something people want.

If you can get that, it's awesome. But if you can't, then you have to choose. And I know what I'm choosing.

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

#562

Post by ghaff »

sangnoir wrote: post #482
gonehome wrote: post #426

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 consum…

> Microsoft became almost irrelevant under Ballmer or was at least trending that way I'm not Ballmer's biggest fan, but I think he's often sold short (to Nadella's benefit), you'd almost believe Microsoft was tanking, but it grew a lot under Ballmer (mobile failures notwithstanding). As far as I can tell, Nadella just reprioritized projects that Ballmer launched or shepherded in his boring-but-efficient way: what new…

>The "post-pc" world suggested by Apple/Jobs never materialized.

Clearly, it was in Apple's interest to emphasize the ascendance of mobile where they were strong vs. the PC where Microsoft was. I doubt Jobs thought desktops/laptops were going away, just that they'd become a less important part of the landscape--and that's almost certainly true among consumers as a whole.

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

#563

Post by thethethethe »

ZephyrBlu wrote: post #461
justapassenger wrote: post #309

While he has valid points of how corp life is different from startup, he seems like a horrible, entitled person to work for. General attitude that comes out of it to me, is that your employees growth doesn’t matter, only his vision of product matters. He complains about people being entitled, and at the same time he complains that as CEO of subsidiary of one of the biggest company in the world, he cannot say offensiv…

He seems like the kind of CEO I would love to work for. It seems like he tries to care about his users a lot, and wants his team to as well. Also, the "offensive things" in his talks were only offensive to a small vocal minority by his own account.

> offensive to a small vocal minority

I really don't see how this is an excuse. it's like saying "black people are a minority in the US so who cares if they say they are oppressed"

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

#564

Post by throwmeaway_66 »

burntengthrw5 wrote: post #500
throwmeaway_66 wrote: post #475

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is something that was unknown to me until a few years ago and I believe it's unknown to many in the tech industry. I make a close to Google-level salary in my position (say, 85% of it) in a tech company and I barely do any work (or better, I do some work for some hours a week). Little accountability, zero stress. And when I say "I barely do any work", I mean that when I hear start-up people ridiculing the typica…

Honest question from an eng working the last few decades at a FAANG and finding themselves burnt out to the point of panic attacks some mornings (e.g. "can I keep going at this pressure"; which has me laughing at least a little about the "FAANG is easy" sentiment elsewhere in the thread) Where? How do I find jobs like this? I get what the sister comment points out about long-term stagnation, but at the same time, I c…

There are plenty of high-revenue companies looking for people with prestigious backgrounds in a non-explicitly-called-that-way advisory role. It is not difficult to find jobs like those in general, but IMO most FAANG people lack the finesse needed to understand how to position themselves and understand what other people want, which, most of the time, are not the coding skills.

Panic attacks are brutal and getting employees to the point of having panic attacks is part of what is wrong in the tech world. And it happens, in big corps, because some people want to advance at the expense of others.

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

#565

Post by campl3r »

raclage wrote: post #517
ZephyrBlu wrote: post #461

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He seems like the kind of CEO I would love to work for. It seems like he tries to care about his users a lot, and wants his team to as well. Also, the "offensive things" in his talks were only offensive to a small vocal minority by his own account.

> Also, the "offensive things" in his talks were only offensive to a small vocal minority by his own account. Is that really something we should take at face value? There are plenty of instances of people getting unreasonably offended but it's also extremely common for people to be shitty to their colleagues and use this as an excuse. He provides no actual examples.

It aligns nearly perfectly with most other reports out of google.

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

#566

Post by Pulcinella »

> 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.

Wow I didn’t think I would ever see anyone openly state in writing that it is too hard to fire people for being old. (Age discrimination against those 40 and older is against federal law. It’s also morally wrong. I would also personally argue that the age cutoff should be a lot lower, but that is directly relevant to this article).

Edit: ahh that makes sense. He likely meant it as “or just plain ol’ ‘you’re not doing a great job.’ “

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

#567

Post by CydeWeys »

ghaff wrote: post #501
CydeWeys wrote: post #362

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For what it's worth, food in the United States is very clearly never a part of your agreed-upon compensation in the way that health/retirement benefits are; it is a "team-building office perk" offered by the employer. If it were actually part of your compensation, then you'd be taxed on it. I know it may be easy to misunderstand this, and to think of it as part of your compensation, because in a way it feels like it,…

>If it were actually part of your compensation, then you'd be taxed on it. Which is a somewhat contentious topic. Not an accountant, but seems to be one of those perks that's right at the very edge of IRS rules. https://www.shrm.org/resourcesandtools/hr-topics/benefits/pa...

To be clear, my statement was descriptive of present circumstances, not normative. As you point out this is in flux and may be changing in the future. If food does become a taxable benefit and part of overall compensation, then I might expect to start seeing some people opting out of it entirely.

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

#568

Post by johncessna »

apozem wrote: post #439
justapassenger wrote: post #309

While he has valid points of how corp life is different from startup, he seems like a horrible, entitled person to work for. General attitude that comes out of it to me, is that your employees growth doesn’t matter, only his vision of product matters. He complains about people being entitled, and at the same time he complains that as CEO of subsidiary of one of the biggest company in the world, he cannot say offensiv…

Yeah, it shows a lack of self-awareness to complain about employees' entitlement and then wish they'd work more, without any talk of extra compensation. Seems a bit entitled to expect other human beings to sacrifice their weekends and happiness to bump the value of your shares.

That's a bit unfair. He's clearly passionate about the product and its customers. The ask to sacrifice for your customers is a reasonable position to take, especially in weird one of situations. It also ties into his risk/reward compensation section.

I didn't get any indications that he expected 80 hour work weeks 52 weeks a year from everyone. To paraphrase, I think he was frustrated with his employees going to the townhall or yoga class in the quad instead of working on the customer outage.

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

#569

Post by caturopath »

0xbadcafebee wrote: post #545
titanomachy wrote: post #512

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Excessive political correctness does that. A good amount of political correctness means that you never have to work for a manager who openly respects you less because of your race or gender.

Worth noting that "political correctness" is a phrase created to lampoon/insult the irrational political groupthink of Communism, and was later converted into an indictment of progressive liberal values. Saying "some political correctness okay" is equivalent to saying either "some irrational groupthink is okay", or "some cultural marxism is okay". What's worse than this general confusion, is then implying that it's t…

Etymology isn't definition.

"Politically correct" has enjoyed non-pejorative use for decades.

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

#570

Post by ZephyrBlu »

thethethethe wrote: post #563
ZephyrBlu wrote: post #461

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He seems like the kind of CEO I would love to work for. It seems like he tries to care about his users a lot, and wants his team to as well. Also, the "offensive things" in his talks were only offensive to a small vocal minority by his own account.

> offensive to a small vocal minority I really don't see how this is an excuse. it's like saying "black people are a minority in the US so who cares if they say they are oppressed"

I think it's reasonable to assume that not everyone is going to like everything that you say. I don't think this is an issue.

If there's a specific demographic that is consistently affected by what you're saying, there might be an issue though.

Post reply on HN