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Googler... ex-Googler

nerdy.dev

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Re: Googler... ex-Googler

#831

Post by metaltyphoon »

pton_xd wrote: post #815
basfo wrote: post #776

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I worked for a well-known SaaS company for 4 years. A few months after we were acquired, I decided it was time to move on. I gave a 3 week notice to ensure everything was properly handled before my departure. Two days later, I couldn’t log in to my PC. I was, for all intents and purposes, fired from my actual work. Technically, I was still employed and paid for those remaining days, but I was locked out and never got…

That's standard practice for tech companies. Once you hand in your notice your access is cut and you'll be escorted off the premises that day.

And yet they would like a 2 weeks notice. Screw that

Re: Googler... ex-Googler

#832

Post by JKCalhoun »

pton_xd wrote: post #811
JKCalhoun wrote: post #421

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And while I was still employed as a seasoned developer (before recently retiring) I felt it was my role to pass along some of my cynicism to the new hires and younger devs. Some of them seemed a little surprised to see me call bullshit in a group meeting. (Good luck to you boys and girls.)

Meanwhile, they all roll their eyes at the "jaded greybeard" advice. I know, because many years ago I was doing the eye rolling. I guess some lessons really can only be learned through experience.

I like to think they'll remember some day.

Re: Googler... ex-Googler

#833

Post by beacon294 »

bitbasher wrote: post #684

I was laid off (as a founding engineer) nine years ago from a startup. It __still__ burns to this day. There's a betrayal in there that is hard to let go. It was a catalyst for burnout and an overall vitriol for the entire tech industry that hasn't really let up to this day. Luckily, I created a product that has given me financial freedom with zero employees. I don't think I'd have made it if I kept working for peopl…

Have you written anywhere about your product creation? I would like to create a product and it seems like there's a lot of unique things to get past. I'm looking for resources.

Re: Googler... ex-Googler

#834

Post by rufus_foreman »

ska wrote: post #768
Workaccount2 wrote: post #620

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Twitter was the experiment. Elon showed up and started cutting headcount left and right. People were even encouraged to just walk out. On paper this was supposed to lead to the immanent collapse of it's service. That didn't happen and instead every other tech CEO started to wonder about the amount of fat in their org.

"On paper this was supposed to lead to the immanent collapse of it's service." I don't know anyone who expected this. The typical failure mode is slow degradation and lack of new development, not sudden collapse. Services become flakier, innovation stops. There was probably some fat to cut,as you put it, but the concept of eating your seed corn is also relevant.

>> I don't know anyone who expected this

You can read the HN threads from when this happened. People expected its imminent collapse.

It was done during the 2022 FIFA World Cup and you had people here predicting that it wouldn't last through the weekend due to that.

Re: Googler... ex-Googler

#835

Post by dlandis »

vonneumannstan wrote: post #502
spicyusername wrote: post #468

I really was just a fuckin cog in a mega corp. Yep. One of the most unfortunate realities of modernity. Your managers, or your managers managers, or their managers don't care about you. At all. If you ask them on the weekend, they'll decry that the things they are asked to do are horrible. but they'll still do it. Some gladly. They are themselves cogs in the machine. A machine that goes all the way to the executive c…

>I really was just a fuckin cog in a mega corp. >Yep. One of the most unfortunate realities of modernity. The crazy thing to me is the lack of awareness of these people. Has hiring at Google fallen off that badly? Was there always such a gap between 'smart enough to work at google' and 'smart enough to realize their corpo-we're one big family-speak is total BS' ?

There’s a difference between intellectually understanding it, versus actually seeing yourself tossed aside and cast out, while knowing that all the other cogs are already back in motion and pretty much fully adjusted to your absence.

Re: Googler... ex-Googler

#836

Post by bbqfog »

LPisGood wrote: post #804
bbqfog wrote: post #724

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If they’re upper management, they are tasked with doing the dirty work for capital. That’s their job.

That doesn’t mean they don’t care though. Now this could come from spending time at a company where the executives were only ~3 levels of indirection from devs.

They would lay you off in the blink of an eye or be instantly fired. “Caring” doesn’t really come into play.

Re: Googler... ex-Googler

#837

Post by ThrowawayR2 »

milesrout wrote: post #193
anal_reactor wrote: post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I recommended learning how to separate your value from your employer. This is a very recent development. Through the entirety of human history you'd keep working for the same employer for your entire life, which means it was very much worth it to cultivate that relationship, it's only now that we change jobs every two years. A friend of mine has a company in a very small town, and was complaining about an employee…

For most of human history we were hunter-gatherers. Even assuming you mean post-industrial history this isn't true though.

The person you're replying to is correct in a technical sense I think? The hunter-gatherer phase would be considered prehistory since it pre-dates the development of writing, which is what enabled humans to record history.

Re: Googler... ex-Googler

#838

Post by shuckles »

cab11150904 wrote: post #763
shuckles wrote: post #640

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hard to tell if you’re a GPT account. Obviously you can care about all people; it’s not a zero-sum emotion. Your time is zero sum though, and you seem to be spending a lot of it just hating on people. And there’s many other loser accounts like you on here, moreso than I remember.

Is this the new form of opinion erasure? If you disagree it must be AI?

Actually I’m skeptical because the level of argument you’re producing is comparable to some of the worst Reddit slop. Endless bad faith strawmans.

Re: Googler... ex-Googler

#839

Post by underdeserver »

Tainnor wrote: post #585
palata wrote: post #395

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I didn't say they were better. Just that without Google Translate, I doubt you would have had a much harder time in your recent trip to Japan because you could have used them, and they aren't particularly worse :-).

It's not just about whether you yourself use Google Translate, it's that - much more than anywhere else I've ever travelled - Japanese people will regularly use Google Translate to communicate with you, usually by typing or speaking into their tablet and then showing you the machine translation.

Actually in quite a few places there (mostly in Kyushu) they used a bespoke handheld device or DeepL.

Re: Googler... ex-Googler

#840

Post by strix_varius »

Workaccount2 wrote: post #620
nyarlathotep_ wrote: post #495

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is an important point. Especially overt the last two (three now?) years, it's become pretty apparent many software jobs are superfluous, even those that are ostensibly "skilled" or "difficult." I do wonder what the actual "needed" number of technical staff these companies would have in a perfectly "efficient" environment. Let's hope we don't have to find out.

Twitter was the experiment. Elon showed up and started cutting headcount left and right. People were even encouraged to just walk out. On paper this was supposed to lead to the immanent collapse of it's service. That didn't happen and instead every other tech CEO started to wonder about the amount of fat in their org.

Twitter generated $5bn in revenue in 2021. Since Musk bought it, it's been on a rapid decline. In 2024 it generated $2.5bn in revenue... 50% of its pre-Musk numbers (46% with inflation)!

Worse, it continues to trend downward.

Most sane tech CEOs would prefer to keep their upward trend and $5+ billion revenue rather than saving $1 billion to lose $2.5 billion and invert their slope.

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