Why I Quit Google to Work for Myself • Hacker News Board

Re: Why I Quit Google to Work for Myself

#721

Post by jldugger » Thu, Mar 01, 2018, 4:22 PM UTC

ordinaryperson wrote: post #720

jldugger wrote: post #609

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The OP complains about not having enough metrics in his assignments but do committees promote people based on stone-cold, anonymous metrics? The answer, from what I gather, is yes. The hiring / promotion committees are essentially an anonymous collection of fellow engineers, perhaps a step higher than you, but somewhat random in composition. As such, there is no reliable way to grease hands or build meaningful rela…

You can't befriend everybody, true, which is why you should identify one senior executive you think can help and market yourself to him or her (again, I wish it didn't work this way, but it seems to). You only need that person's recommendation, not that of 15 random fellow engineers. Besides, your data 'proving' your value likely has no context or comparable benchmarks, after 30 seconds of numbers it's straight to yo…

Anywhere else, yea, but at Google specifically, not an option. Executives don't override the committee, except maybe Larry and Sergey. And if your advice is 'be friends with the CEO', I'm sure that'll scale right up.

The good news is that, based on reports from Googlers here, it sounds like the system is changing for the lower promotion tiers.

Re: Why I Quit Google to Work for Myself

#722

Post by jorblumesea » Thu, Mar 01, 2018, 4:28 PM UTC

dx034 wrote: post #699

jorblumesea wrote: post #610

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

If that works for you, sure. But most would seriously weigh that trade off. With another 70k / year after taxes you could retire way earlier and do whatever you want.

Re: Why I Quit Google to Work for Myself

#723

Post by internetman55 » Thu, Mar 01, 2018, 4:39 PM UTC

freehunter wrote: post #153

bob_theslob646 wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're forgetting that you could also track secondhand assist as well. I can't speak for programming but in soccer this is well-known. It's just very hard to Value just like an employer would in terms of having that person on board for morale. Fortunately the better people get it and understand that that person should be value even if they weren't directly involved in making the change but they were definitely a part…

A person’s projected morale is very under-appreciated. I don’t know if I’m at the point in my career that I boost morale just by being on the team, but I do know there are people who, if they left my company, would have an impact on my morale even though I never ask them for help or work directly with them. Just something about knowing a person is an amazing and knowledgeable resource and he’s choosing to work here o…

A family friend (manages a programming group) kept a basically incompetent but calming, friendly programmer on her team for 2-3 years because of his effect on the emotional state of the rest of the team. She his pay was worth it for that reason. Unfortunately the company's owner eventually realized that he was paying the salary of someone who couldn't program and fired him.

Re: Why I Quit Google to Work for Myself

#724

Post by internetman55 » Thu, Mar 01, 2018, 4:47 PM UTC

exelius wrote: post #81

dahart wrote: post #29

> I drastically reduced the time developers spent repairing those failures, but there were no metrics that tracked developer time. For several jobs in a row, I've felt that helping others on a team is undervalued and under-recorded. I've been planning to implement the "assist" metric, similar to basketball, on my own team for a while. The idea would be something along the lines of everyone gets a set of assist points…

Nope; the benefit of being a good team player is that it helps you build relationships. Those relationships often turn into opportunities down the line. But it’s hard to drive that behavior at an individual level without creating some conflicts of interest. This is why I generally dislike measuring individuals against specific metrics. I try to set individualized metrics for all of my direct reports — for example, if…

Tbh that's one of the reasons I always focused on teamwork at my last job, even though I was evaluated only on how fast I closed out my specific tickets. Since everything at the company was dysfunctional, I didn't really care about being employed long-term or getting promotions. Thus the only things relevant to my career beyond doing enough to maintain my salary was to build relationships with my team mates (building out my network) and developing transferrable skills for the future.

So basically the long-term effect of these systems was me to slack on whatever my manager deemed important to get done to whatever extent I could while I did whatever would win me clout points with other developers or let me learn a cool skill.

I also got pretty jacked from sneaking off to the gym etc. Lol it was lit

Re: Why I Quit Google to Work for Myself

#725

Post by dilyevsky » Thu, Mar 01, 2018, 4:57 PM UTC

kristianc wrote: post #20

ocdtrekkie wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I guess my question is: Can you get job satisfaction from promotion-focused work? I'm proud of what I've done . When I make someone else's life easier, that makes me feel good/satisfied with my work. I can't fathom satisfaction from impressing a promotion committee and tacking on a bigger title.

It's not necessarily a binary choice: you can do the same work, but be more strategic about how you promote it, before, during and after. Before - make sure 3-5 key people know that you're working on something cool and are bought in During - make sure any potential disrupters know about your work and see it as important (also minimizing the chances of someone crushing the project halfway through) After - making a cas…

Except none of that would matter if some rando on promo committee (at Google) or just your skip-manager elsewhere (that you don't have access to) can't see value for whatever reason. OP doesn't even begin to scratch the surface of all the fuckery that was going on with Google's promo committees which is why they recently moved away from that for <L5 promos.

Re: Why I Quit Google to Work for Myself

#726

Post by dilyevsky » Thu, Mar 01, 2018, 5:00 PM UTC

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"?

Because google has a "technical ladder" document which mentions words "complexity" and "impact" like a dozen times and the word "quality" like once or twice ;-) That document is supposed to be used by promo committees to eval if you are "ready".

Re: Why I Quit Google to Work for Myself

#727

Post by komali2 » Thu, Mar 01, 2018, 5:16 PM UTC

Tsagadai wrote: post #642

komali2 wrote: post #561

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why do you believe there MUST be a political game?

Politics is how people organise and group. There are always ploys for control and expansion. Politics is practically biology, there is a pecking order and it is inescapable. What determines in and out group varies but it is always there if there are three or more people present.

I think what you're describing, I'd describe as "organization," rather than "politics." When I refer to "politics" in this conversation I mean something along the lines of "performing actions that are not company-goal-optimized, or, potentially detrimental to other employees, in order to advance oneself."

Re: Why I Quit Google to Work for Myself

#728

Post by komali2 » Thu, Mar 01, 2018, 5:19 PM UTC

tonyedgecombe wrote: post #693

izacus wrote: post #556

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 inste…

I automatically reject any premise that contains the word "naive" or comes across as if me, by virtue of believing in the greater good or the good in all people, am just being overly optimistic, so I'll do my best to engage at the merit of the arguments here.

I have personally worked at at least 2 companies now that I would describe as "non political." This was achieved by having small, well-defined teams. One company had extremely clear paths for promotion and raises, the other had no framework whatsoever. In each case, the culture was defined every day by a manager - company 1 was the sales division lead, company 2 is the CEO who sits several desks to my right.

I not only think it's possible to have a non-political system, I've lived it twice. I think cynicism is easy, and that's why people call folks like me "naive."

Re: Why I Quit Google to Work for Myself

#729

Post by aqme28 » Thu, Mar 01, 2018, 5:22 PM UTC

komali2 wrote: post #523

eldavido wrote: post #91

To author: you lost the political game. I busted my ass at a startup for years and also lost the political game. So I'm speaking from experience here. You can either get all mad and worked up and pissed off about it, and waste years of your career (as I did) being pissed off, stubborn, and refusing to change. Or figure out how to play. I'd like to think there are places with better politics but I think it's pretty en…

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.

This is obviously true to me, but it doesn't answer the thing I've struggled with -- what exactly did they fuck up?

What can a higher-up do to prevent the political game?

Re: Why I Quit Google to Work for Myself

#730

Post by dilyevsky » Thu, Mar 01, 2018, 5:26 PM UTC

eqdw wrote: post #481

rsp1984 wrote: post #445

I'm glad you put in the work to write down your experiences, and I'm glad that HN is rewarding this. Promotion at Google is a process filled with selfishness and dishonesty and I think hackers need to know about this. The promotion committees are a joke. They typically have no idea about your product, your team, your quality of contribution and whether what you're telling them in the promo package is true or a lie. T…

I used to believe that middle managers were useless shits who wasted my time and got in the way of work. I imagined that the flat organizational model made more sense: since this is what my day to day life is, anyway, at least we get rid of idiots who get paid more than me. Then I worked in a place where I had actually good middle management. They were smart and capable. They supported our team and helped us succeed.…

Exactly! I had the oppsoite tragectory - first worked in a company with decent mid-management, then no management startup then Google. The lack of oversight seemed liberating at first, but man was I not impressed with the outcome by the end of it (including my own performance). In Google's case it was additionally complicated by the fact that most senior people avoid as much as possible to take on leadership roles - lower levels will have no say on their promo packet.