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

Why I Quit Google to Work for Myself

mtlynch.io

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

691–700 of 783 posts

Re: Why I Quit Google to Work for Myself

#691

Post by Vinnl »

hrktb wrote: post #574
Vinnl wrote: post #179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On the one hand it is indeed disappointing that nobody would help you with this. On the other hand, there's a more pro-active role you could have played yourself in this as well. "When everybody is responsible, nobody is" - what often helps is specifically asking people, by name, to sit down with you for a bit and help you get through it. In fact, there are many social group situations in which asking specific people…

I like that the problem is remote specific, and the first image you have is “asking people, by name, to sit down with you”. Your image is nit wrong, but a symptom of how we can be hardwired for physical proximity. Otherwise, a common issue for a team with colocated workers mixed with remote workers is a facility to ignore calls and messages. Central people get easily overworked, interrupted and drown into tsunamis of…

I agree that remote is more difficult than physical, but it's still much easier to ignore a general comment in a chatroom than one that's specifically addressed to you. Most chat applications will even highlight lines mentioning your name.

(Note that being remote in an otherwise physical team makes this significantly more complicated as well.)

Re: Why I Quit Google to Work for Myself

#692

Post by tonyedgecombe »

tytso wrote: post #638
smsm42 wrote: post #396

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Or figure out how to play. There's a third way. Don't go to Google. There are literally thousands of smaller places you can work for/in/with, some of them do pretty cool things. There'd be politics too, probably, but not as much as in Google, and you could control your destiny to a more significant degree. Small(er) companies - if you pick right - tend to have significantly better environment in that regard (not pe…

There are politics no matter where you are. Whenever two or three are gathered together, there is politics. Politics is just what people call interpersonal dynamics when they don't like a particular setup. The bottom line is that people all have their set of goals, and if you are lucky, your goals, their goals, and the goals of the company are well aligned. If they aren't the question is can you find a way of changin…

It's definitely much worse in bigger companies, I see it in my customers all the time. Small organisations can't afford the sort of bullshit that goes on in a big business.

Re: Why I Quit Google to Work for Myself

#693

Post by tonyedgecombe »

izacus wrote: post #556
komali2 wrote: post #523

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As Horowitz writes in "The Hard Thing About Hard Things," if there even is a political game at your company, someone up top has fucked up.

And if you think there's no political games in your company then you're very naive. Your either not seeing it (which is bad for you) or its being hidden from you (which is also bad).

I suspect you are right, especially with the nature of our work.

If I employ a brick layer I can easily judge the quality and rate of their work, it's easy to compare with the guy I hired last week.

Contrast that to programming where there is no physical artefact, it's not like we can measure lines of code or numbers of files and derive some value, in most cases less lines of code is better.

People know this so instead of doing good work they start to play games to get ahead.

That's not to say a good leader can't fight against it but to think it's not there is naive.

Re: Why I Quit Google to Work for Myself

#695

Post by tonyedgecombe »

tclancy wrote: post #366
matthewmacleod wrote: post #253

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That doesn't really follow. As an independent worker, you answer to your clients. As an employee, you answer to your single client. It's basically the same deal.

It's not quite true: places of employment that are ok with you firing a client, while they exist, are rare. When I was an independent contractor, I was loath to fire a client because they can be hard to find, but knowing I could and doing so was a good feeling. I don't know if the positive of that offset the mental stress of generating clients, but it was one of the positives. So was the freedom to work when you want…

I think just knowing you can fire a client makes a huge difference, it alters the relationship and it's probably better for both parties.

It's similar to having FU money as an employee but on steroids.

Re: Why I Quit Google to Work for Myself

#696

Post by mseebach »

gordon_freeman wrote: post #568
mseebach wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The general idea is that the things that would impress a promotion committee are things that you have done, that are good for the company. That, of course, is not the truth everywhere, but anecdotally it's a lot truer than most people complaining about other people sucking up thinks it is.

How come fixing bugs to make data pipeline more robust and data more accurate does not fall under "things that are good for the company"?

The point is that it's on you to articulate the value of what you're doing. Some activities are "batteries included" when it comes to metrics, but a great many aren't.

If fixing bugs in the data pipeline is indeed valuable to the company, you can explain to the promotion panel how (after all, you convinced yourself).

Re: Why I Quit Google to Work for Myself

#697

Post by GeorgeSarkis »

neuronsguy wrote: post #519
HumanDrivenDev wrote: post #502

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just clicking on your profile I see you work in London. From what I can tell most programmers don't get paid 'ludicrous amounts' there. Though maybe you have a rare role, or maybe you just have a very low threshold for what you consider ludicrous.

You are correct about the tech industry here (low salaries relative to US) but developers working in finance in London make comparable money to Bay Area tech firms. People routinely get paid £100k straight out of university to write code in London, just not in the tech scene. Total comp in the financial sector with 5 years experience is commonly £200k. Which is not 'ludicrous' but more than you might imagine from see…

What a load of bollocks! £90k in finance with deep technical expertise is already in the 99% quantile for London.

Re: Why I Quit Google to Work for Myself

#698

Post by dx034 »

tonyedgecombe wrote: post #692
tytso wrote: post #638

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are politics no matter where you are. Whenever two or three are gathered together, there is politics. Politics is just what people call interpersonal dynamics when they don't like a particular setup. The bottom line is that people all have their set of goals, and if you are lucky, your goals, their goals, and the goals of the company are well aligned. If they aren't the question is can you find a way of changin…

It's definitely much worse in bigger companies, I see it in my customers all the time. Small organisations can't afford the sort of bullshit that goes on in a big business.

And probably the other way around, too. You can't have thousands of engineers without those politics and cultures that people will try to game. Google's ideas on how to structure promotions were great (removing manager bias and just judging by achievements). But once your organisation grows it's impossible to keep it in a way that's impossible to game. I've yet to hear of a large corporation where promotions are done fairly and talent is always recognised.

Re: Why I Quit Google to Work for Myself

#699

Post by dx034 »

jorblumesea wrote: post #610
eldavido wrote: post #530

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I thing I wonder is what role lifestyle factors play. If you're making 200k on your own terms vs 250 at Google, I wonder who's better off. At that level of income, things like how stressful your work is, how interested in it you are, the length of your commute, etc. seem to matter more than earning another 50k of income. Obviously everyone has their own circumstances but I think the obsession with earning as much cas…

The difference between Google and others is far more than 25% when you factor in total compensation. At least in my area, the difference between Google and the big players is more like 50-60%. So it is a significant trade off.

I'd choose a $200k job that gives purpose and makes me happy over a $300k job where that's not the case. At those levels where you're well off but still have to work (can't retire after 5-10 years from the salary earned), the increased happiness of 50% is often not that much.

Re: Why I Quit Google to Work for Myself

#700

Post by dx034 »

thrownaway954 wrote: post #516
bthrn wrote: post #381

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I know people who have quit full time jobs to write algo trading software for themselves to use -- the market pays them but I wouldn't call it a customer.

that's not a business... that's investing.

More like speculation. Algo trading usually exploits short-term inefficiencies on the market, not long term valuation opportunities.
Post reply on HN