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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?

#831

Post by themarkn »

waheoo wrote: post #63
themarkn wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mean, there’s an upper bound on how often that can happen (how many personal days people have). Those days are intended to be used at short notice. So if people using them is a problem for the team, imo the team is not correctly matched to the workload. I do think we often undersize our teams by ignoring the impact of vacation and personal time in taking on work ... but that’s not the fault of the people using the…

Sick days are compensation?

They are where I live. The number of sick days required by law is zero.

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

#832

Post by reducesuffering »

Viliam1234 wrote: post #605
PNWChris wrote: post #447

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I generally agree with you here, the sun is shining and we software engineers can make some hay! But...I have words of caution. I grew up in Southeastern Michigan. My dad is a Stanford grad mechanical engineer who worked for a Big 3 auto manufacturer, my wife's parents work in auto, and many of my friends families directly or indirectly worked in automotive. Everything about that seemed secure and stable until our en…

There is also a risk of health problems. If at some moment my spine decides it is no more acceptable for me to spend so much time sitting by the computer, or my eyes decide it is no more acceptable to spend so much time looking at the screen... I won't be able to work as a full-time software developer anymore. I want to make sure that when that happens, my family will be economically okay during the following years.

Insurance can play most of the role for that right now.

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

#833

Post by waheoo »

pyb wrote: post #54
waheoo wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I find the idea that the best paid people in the industry are entitled to be a bit rich. Clearly there is unmet demand for quality engineers or you wouldn't be paying that much and allowing perks to dictate the balance of life equation so royally. Maybe we're not paid enough. It's like you're welcome to pay less, watch the talent dry up and move on. I'm sure you'll be fine? Doesn't Google still make roughly 150x what…

Being an IC is very hard if you want to do the job well. The risks are also underappreciated (massive burnout, etc). It should be compensated fairly.

Agreed, I suspect were massively underpaid but companies get away with it because we're also love what we do and are easily take advantage of when we're young and naive

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

#834

Post by waheoo »

themarkn wrote: post #831
waheoo wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sick days are compensation?

They are where I live. The number of sick days required by law is zero.

Jesus fucking hell. And you guys get your panties in a bunch over orange man bad vs sleepy Joe? Talk about not seeing the forest in the trees.

You guys don't even see it do you?

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

#835

Post by themarkn »

waheoo wrote: post #834
themarkn wrote: post #831

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They are where I live. The number of sick days required by law is zero.

Jesus fucking hell. And you guys get your panties in a bunch over orange man bad vs sleepy Joe? Talk about not seeing the forest in the trees. You guys don't even see it do you?

Uh. I mean. I see it. I’m not from here, I just live here. I came from the EU where 20 vacation days was the minimum to a state in the US where no vacation or personal time is required. I’m still blown away by what companies advertise as “generous”.

Maybe calm down with the assumptions and generalizations too though.

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

#836

Post by kv_hrishikesh »

gonehome wrote: post #409
cmrdporcupine wrote: post #363

9 years @ Google, and I too came from a company acquired by Google. (In my case, Google did not keep our product or tech stack around, so.) And yes, I can say many Googlers are entitled. It's a fair descriptor. And the pace of work is slower than a startup. In general. And I too have many criticisms of Google. But. Google has entirely different revenue constraints. It can afford an entirely different way of working.…

My take would be Google can afford it for now because they have a web ad monopoly and don’t have to compete. If they ever lose that, the culture they’ve built will cause them to be destroyed and irrelevant in not that much time. For now, it’s summer.

How many employees do the FAANGs have ? Must be above 100K spread over the world. Even 5K talented engineers are enough for all the (admittedly superb) software they build and sell. With those profits still up, the rest of the employees can just be coasting along, endlessly arguing about things.

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

#837

Post by thaumasiotes »

laurent92 wrote: post #739
choppaface wrote: post #598

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While I totally agree with your Really Care and Just A Job characterization, I think that money does play a significant role in overall picture. People behave very differently after they run into six, seven, eight figures. And that behavior isn’t perfectly correlated with how much they put into the job. There’s a fair place for the “entitled” narrative, and when these people have outsized leverage on the company or p…

“For a million dollars, anything is your passion” Joel on Software used to explain that rich entrepreneurs always sound passionate, but it is useless to try to emulate passion, because a big success can make someone passionate for anything. (...and I confirm – since we make 70k€ a month per cofounder, I became more passionate).

> but it is useless to try to emulate passion, because a big success can make someone passionate for anything. (...and I confirm – since we make 70k€ a month per cofounder, I became more passionate).

I remember reading an article about a Chinese cockroach farmer that incidentally described how his wife said the cockroaches were misunderstood. "Look how shiny they are!"

I imagine it helped the cockroaches' case that, by her standards, she was rich and successful.

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

#838

Post by ragall »

igorstellar wrote: post #733
deckard1 wrote: post #699

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is definitely more to be said about this dichotomy between the Really Care vs. Doing A Job. The large tech companies are looking for young blood that also happens to be incredibly naive. They are the clueless, in the Gervais Principle[1]. Basically, idiot savants. In addition to colluding to suppress pay, here are ways they optimize for youth and naivety: - They call their HQs a "campus". They create an environ…

You're really referring to these generalization structures like Gervais principle which should be considered at least as a sarcasm? There is nothing wrong with people who care to work for companies Google, I know many and I'm one of them. Your comparison with Philip Morris is way off, Google produces so many things at once serving so many people and communities every day. Honestly, your comment reads as if it was wri…

I'm a Googler and I agree with him: most of what Google does is to spy on people under the guise of "organizing the world's information". It's creepy and hopefully user tracking together with behavioral ads will soon be made illegal at least in the EU. Then there's a handful of products that are self-sustaining and don't exist merely to suck data into the Ads models: GSuite, Cloud, and a handful of really minor ones

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

#839

Post by gmadsen »

duxup wrote: post #284
andrew_ wrote: post #225

It's astounding in so far as how unique this conversation is to tech. I've worked as a pipefitter, electrician's apprentice, and general construction hand in the past - I could only imagine how it would go telling my former foreman that I'd like to head off to yoga in the morning for an hour. Big jobs that require overtime to complete get folks to work that overtime - even within a union. If it's not you, it's someon…

Even within the world of tech the contrasts are striking. I worked for a tech company based in the Midwest that was acquired by a company in the valley. I regularly went on visits to HQ. Some of the folks I met complained strongly about things like lunch not being provided... as often. And their lunches were amazing, with drinks, and socialization. I came from a place that maybe once a quarter someone would order a b…

I think its a little disingenuous to say that these people are privileged. Make no mistake, there was plenty of cost/benefit analysis done with things like in house lunch. It attracts people to the company, less people leave for lunch and stay around their coworkers and possibly talk about work more, takes less time so they work longer per day.

google is definitely getting a net gain in profits from providing lunch, they are not doing this out of the kindness of their heart.

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

#840

Post by sevrinsky »

guytv wrote: post #549
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…

Israeli here. cultural gaps are very much alive and kicking During my career I've worked with people around the world, all in the Tech industry. Israeli-Californian cultural gap is huge. It is made worse by the fact that Israelis usually have a good English level, some even have an okay accent - which makes their US counterpart expect them to use the same communication etiquette they are used to. Californians will go…

Born-bred NY-expat Israeli here, working for a West Coast Big Tech company.

New York (probably all US East) and Israeli cultures are fairly analogous. In just 3 extra timezones, West Coast workplace culture is light years away.

Many of my Israeli colleagues have no patience for the soft-pedaled corporate standard double talk (which they would call "PC"), and think that all US workplaces are like this. They have a hard time believing that my NY experience was just like our local Tel Aviv office.

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