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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?

#761

Post by strken »

venantius wrote: post #686
danans wrote: post #643

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> people who Really Care about their work with the Just A Job crowd These aren't discrete categories. There are a lot of people who care about their work and also recognize that at the end of the day, it is a job, and the reality is that they can only play a role in shaping the outcome, not dictate it per their vision. Also, depending on the job, the team, the project, and the product, people can go from one of those…

This sounds like a nuanced view, but I think you have missed the point - we're using terminology that allows for us to talk past each other and that's part of the problem. At least in my experience, the Just A Job crowd are generally _very_ vocal about their view that this is Just A Job. Their worldview is not compatible with the worldview of people who Really Care. There is a very healthy middle ground of people who…

Even if you really care, you can be vocal about things that make it sound as if you don't, in order to e.g. make another developer stop stressing and go home when they've reached the point where they're creating more work than they're getting done, or encourage greater levels of risk-taking by pointing out that the only thing at risk is your job. Perhaps I'm misinterpreting what you're saying, though.

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

#762

Post by Clewza313 »

avasylev wrote: post #754
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…

>> “What? Sushi again???” Could that be just someone not liking sushi? As someone who doesn't like sushi and rather eat hotdog form gas station, I could see myself saying that.

These are Google cafes we're talking about, there are literally ten different main courses on offer. The whining is about there being "sushi again" at the Asian station when they wanted ramen, and they don't want to switch to curry, pizza, pasta, bouillabaisse, tacos or the salad bar, or walk across the street to another cafe.

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

#763

Post by panopticon »

pid_0 wrote: post #750
guyzero wrote: post #451

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At the risk of being not politically correct myself, I think there are significant cultural gaps between the west coast American standard and people from Israel (Bardin is Isralei). With the caveat that this is my experience only, Israelis are more blunt, direct and often openly critical vs Americans, especially Californians. They're often right and all the ones I've worked with have been very smart, but the way a me…

Yep this is true. California (and if we are being honest, liberal) types will do anything and everything to avoid any kind of conflict. I can't stand it. Israelis are straight to the point without the typical American BS. I have been on a conference call with Israelis and Americans and every 15 seconds the Israelis would go on mute to complain how stupid the Americans sounded. They were speaking a lot but effectively…

> California (and if we are being honest, liberal) types will do anything and everything to avoid any kind of conflict

Someone hasn't heard of Minnesota nice[0]. The conflict avoidance in the midwest is way more extreme than what I've experienced in California.

[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minnesota_nice

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

#764

Post by stopnamingnuts »

modeless wrote: post #554
dwohnitmok wrote: post #531

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You think that when a company hires you, that should be a commitment to employ you forever regardless of need? Hardly. I can't speak for the original comment I quoted, but I personally view employment as pretty transactional. You pay me this, I give you this. I may or may not have passion, but that should be immaterial to the job at hand. The employer sets a bar. The employee clears it or does not. That bar may cha…

> I may or may not have passion, but that should be immaterial to the job at hand. Perhaps this is our disagreement. Employees with passion often perform better and there is nothing "unfair" about employers desiring passionate employees for that reason. I agree that passion shouldn't be a requirement per se (whatever that means) if job performance is otherwise good, but passion is very highly correlated with job perf…

Fifteen pieces of flair is the minimum.

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

#765

Post by Viliam1234 »

dwohnitmok wrote: post #616
Viliam1234 wrote: post #592

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> passion does not come from a guarantee of continued employment. Then why do founders work harder than hired managers?

I think the answer for most people is perceived control of one's destiny. As long as that holds, I think a lot of people, especially founder types, are happy. The moment that's wrested away, whether by excessive board oversight, or by perceived meddling from investors, or by perceived interference by a manager, passion drops. That's why autonomy was so important for the article writer.

Don't ordinary employees perceive greater control of their destinies when they feel that their jobs are secure? How much passion should they feel working for a company they know will fire them the first moment it becomes convenient?

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

#766

Post by Viliam1234 »

justapassenger wrote: post #690
Viliam1234 wrote: post #597

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A charitable explanation is that he would like to motivate his workers by equity... but in the company as big as Google, equity doesn't work that way anymore, and there is no good substitute.

Motivating by equity in startups is extremely misleading most of the time. You give people paper money that are extremely unlikely to have any value, even if startup has successful exit due to liquidation preferences (excluding really one of cases, of most the time good IPOs).

That in my opinion is morally equivalent to fraud, although the law sees it differently. And yes it seems to happen all the time.

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

#767

Post by strken »

jeffbee wrote: post #657
brandon wrote: post #637

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Nobody at Google has a need to raise a ticket with some ops group in Bengaluru to partition a Kafka topic, renew a certificate, bridge two VPCs, or any of that type of thing. Except when your team wanted to initially onboard with GOOPS and your request sat in Buganizer for 2 weeks waiting for someone to triage. Uh oh — we're turning down this service next quarter, you will need to go start this onboarding process a…

That was some T7-9 whining right there. Do you think it's easier to get unplanned compute capacity at some other company?

Well, yes. I was provisioning a new service last week and it took me half an hour of clicking buttons in AWS. Without knowing anything about Google, I would have assumed they'd overprovison compute capacity to save developer time at least for smallish requests, since they literally run their own data centres.

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

#768

Post by trhway »

JohnCarmack wrote: post #586

I can certainly see a lot of parallels with Oculus / Facebook. Perhaps unusually, I actually wanted FB to impress itself more strongly on Oculus post acquisition because, frankly, Oculus was a bit of a mess. Instead, Oculus was given an enormous amount of freedom for many years. Personally, nobody ever told me what to do, even though I was willing to "shut up and soldier" if necessary -- they bought that capability!…

>Personally, nobody ever told me what to do, even though I was willing to "shut up and soldier" if necessary

i wonder who at FB has the cachet to tell such thing to John Carmack. Zuck probably had the poster of John Carmack on the internal mental wall while going to middle school.

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

#769

Post by ZephyrBlu »

m4x wrote: post #760
ZephyrBlu wrote: post #484

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well this is depressing to read, especially this bit: "The sweet spot is somewhere between "I don't hate it" and "I kind of like it". You can learn to like something if you do it long enough." It seems like a great way to waste 40 hours of your life every week.

> It seems like a great way to waste 40 hours of your life every week. This seems like the more depressing take to me. Most people don't have the good fortune to work in jobs they truly love - yet many of those jobs are still important and not at all a waste of your life. To take an extreme example, most rubbish collectors probably dislike their job. Yet doing it provides an important service to society. I would neve…

I agree that not everyone is fortunate to work in a job that they enjoy, but the OP is saying to purposefully choose not to work a job you really enjoy even when you have the option to do so.

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

#770

Post by teawrecks »

"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."

Their support was not crushing you. How many serious Waze competitors are there these days?

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