Controversial opinion here. I know that exaggerating and complaining is a surefire way to get clicks, but it's hard to take the author's criticisms seriously when he complains about so many different things. Some as minor as the noogler orientation. Others as petty as putting down colleagues who haven't worked as designers before.
Regarding the main event in question: I like that Google allows people to party in the evenings with whoever they want to party with. I like that Google allows people to reschedule meetings if they aren't feeling well, for whatever reason. It sucks that the author's grandmother died and that he felt the need to work through the night while that happened, but it's unfair to take that out on your colleagues. Nobody would have blamed him if he asked to reschedule the meeting because of his grandmother's health. Heck, they probably wouldn't even have minded if he asked for a different day/time, just so he wouldn't have to work through the night.
I have no idea who the author is. He might be a fantastic person, and Jim/Greg might be total dicks, for all I know. But just from the volume of different complaints mentioned, and his reaction to a meeting reschedule, I get the impression that he isn't the easiest person to work with, and that there are other sides to this story.
It was a hard lesson for me to learn in the past: if you care wildly more than the people around you -- so much that you work late into the night while your grandmother is dying and your coworkers are pounding drinks with their counterparts at a competitor -- you'll just end up really hurt and frustrated and they'll all think that you are the problem.
The author seems like the kind of person that I'd love to do a 3-person startup with. We'd be in an environment where working late into the night is valuable sometimes, and because all of us would be doing that he'd have no reason to be resentful. Hopefully he gets into a group like that before the corporate life trains him to preserve his sanity by not caring so much.
Seriously. When Jim schedules a meeting for 9am the next day, just tell him that you need more time than that. Instead, this guy goes home and works through the night so he can prove Jim wrong.
Way too much ego tied up in petty disagreements here.
I finally read the story after reading this comment and some of the other ones, and this undersells how nuts it is.
> Anyhow, my wholesale redesign of all of Jim’s work was obviously making him feel bad.
> One day, he came up to me totally flustered in one of the micro-kitchens. He said “People aren’t liking these icons.” I said, “Oh, ok, let me know who and I’ll collect their feedback and we can make them better.”
...
> Me: “OK, no worries man. Would it make you feel better if I put something together that explains my decision making and then you and whomever else can punch holes in it, and give me direct feedback?”
> Jim: “Yeah, ok, sounds good. I’ll put something on the calendar.”
> 9am the next morning. A dick move.
> I went home and got to work.
> In the early evening I got a call from my dad. My grandmother’s health took a turn for the worst. They weren’t sure she’d make it past the evening.
> I couldn’t grieve. I needed to make this happen. These two designers were beloved by Greg. I had to win them over or they’d screw everything up for me. Everything I’d worked for could come crashing down due to their pettiness.
Like, holy hell. Jim is a _peer_. Nobody asked Morgan to do this work, Morgan volunteered to do it. And he decided to work through a major life event in the off hours for something that didn't come from anyone above him in the hierarchy? And then to blow the other guy up when he reschedules the meeting? Wow.
> It sucks that the author's grandmother died and that he felt the need to work through the night while that happened, but it's unfair to take that out on your colleagues.
It's unfair to take that out on your colleagues, but it is fair to blame it on management and the culture they set. Some people are going to be more politically protected than others for reasons that aren't strongly related to the value they add to the business and able to get away with things others aren't, and if you don't counteract that, you'll both get inefficient results (either they're doing something they shouldn't, or other people don't feel empowered to do something they should) and also cause a loss to morale and trust.
Setting clear (if mechanical) rules about things that would otherwise turn into "the politically connected can do this, the rest of you can't" is absolutely the responsibility of management. Saying to people up front that they should always feel free to take time off or cancel meetings for personal emergencies and the company trusts their judgment (if that is in fact the policy) and making sure people act like it's true - or making sure people show up and have extremely good excuses when they don't, if that's the policy - is management's job.
totally agree. Things like "Let’s call him Greg because his real name is just as vanilla." are just petty. Maybe it is because I have a name I hate to explain to everyone but jabs at the name your parents gave you aren't cool.
There is a lot of ascribing negative motives to other people's words and behaviors when other explanations seem possible from the description he gave to the situation.
He wouldn't be the first designer to pick apart everyday things and question them.
But you have to remember that he was told he'd get to work on Chrome but was then assigned to G+. You have to be extremely laid-back and financially secure to roll with that punch and not put the rest of the company under a microscope (even criticizing petty culture-identity labels like 'nooglers' builds up resentment).
Employees like these quickly wear you down if you are leading then. I am surprised Google is not doing a personality test before recruiting.
When I was a recruiter for ibm I always made sure to check if the potential was an asshole or not before going ahead with tech. Talent can always be learned by those willing. Attitude is permanent.
I find not being able to show up to your job, especially a 9am meeting you scheduled, because you were hungover to be irresponsible and unprofessional.
I agree the writing style, it's not constructive. That said, I think the main point is that his manager and some of his colleagues ganged up on him because they felt threatened, and that resulted in him being let go.
That does indicate a problem for Google if true. This is often the slow death people talk about when big company culture turns like this.
This is made stronger by the fact Google+ failed, and they're shutting it down. If i was an exec at Google I'd totally take this as a retrospective data point, and I'd explore to see how much of this attitude existed within the Plus org, if it was prevalent, it could have had a role in the failure of Plus.
Sounds like conflict management is not handled very well by anyone in these situations.The author certainly could have handled it better, and "Greg" should have handled it way better.
Very disappointing to hear, but at the same time these kinds of conflict are usually local and only affect a few individuals, so it is probably not very fair to describe the whole project and exec team as operating in this fashion.
1) He accepted a salary (115K) lowered than what he thought was fair
2) Design occurred in silos, there was no unity or cohesion
3) His 2nd manager was "political" and "in love with bureaucracy"
4) An exec on a rival team tried to quash his idea
5) Managers often just wanted to slap their name on his work
6) He worked all night to satisfy an angry coworker the night his grandmother died, while coworker partied then rescheduled mtg
For No 1: if you don't think a salary is fair, don't accept it.
Nos 2-5: these happen at almost every medium-large sized company I've ever worked at. If you know a place that isn't political, bureaucratic, siloed and filled with rivals and petty managers, let me know so I can give you my resume.
For No. 6, if you feel a deadline or meeting time is unfair, say so. If you have a sick family member, say so.
He sent this email to his boss:
> "Greg, I had to work most of the night because of Jim, and he canceled our meeting because he was partying with our competitors. In my book, this is totally unacceptable. What am I supposed to do?"
It's never a good idea to send this. It's not going to help you, even if you're in the right. Canceling a meeting is not a gross injustice and if an employee parties afterhours that's his or her business.
I sympathize with the author. Sounds like a good dude. But you have to try to roll with the punches, no workplace will be perfect, I promise you.
The email was definitely a misplay, but the manager response was also pretty rough. Google’s a big place, surely there’s a non-petty solution other than telling someone that they’ve ordained their future manager — in the heated moment with that person.
>>Nos 2-5: these happen at almost every medium-large sized company I've ever worked at. If you know a place that isn't political, bureaucratic, siloed and filled with rivals and petty managers, let me know so I can give you my resume.
This is one of the problems with the way their hiring is marketed. They are depicted to be asking hard CS and algorithm based questions, and a culture of a workplace is being sold which is based on a merit process along the lines of 'programming abilities'.
The reality in every people structure one will every work at, politics is how the world works. People optimize what's best for themselves. The bosses are often stupid, because bosses that exist never want smart people to grow up and become a competition to them. Money is always attached to hot projects, so bulk of the career growth, bonuses and other juice comes when you work there. Regardless of whatever the merits of that project are.
The same applies to projects too. Once a company has 2 - 3 cash cow projects, the executives won't let new set of rivaling products emerge and become a competition to their fiefdom. Most of the times the competition is killed in plain sight, but other times its back room political sabotage. Only a few days back some one mentioned how Google is a place where $100M revenue opportunities pop up and die all the time.
The same case with that 20% extra time projects. Who is going to let this happen? I'm pretty sure anybody who dares to do these projects will be marked to be a trouble maker by the very managers they report too.
In short once you have more than 2 layers of management at your company, politics is how thing will work. And its perfectly, OK. Because that's how world is.
What is problematic is if the people at the top, Larry Page and Sergey Brin don't know are too naive to understand that its happening in their company since years. Inability to deal with everyday politics can kill companies.
> If you know a place that isn't political, bureaucratic, siloed and filled with rivals and petty managers, let me know so I can give you my resume.
Red Hat. It is siloed and can be (increasingly) bureaucratic, but I have never experienced rivals or petty managers and it's the least political place I've ever worked.
The Googleyness is weak with this one. Inferiority complex. Work-life balance problems (work over xmas break, late night after work). Not being able to stand for oneself (salary, reschedule meeting). Wanting everyone to like him (literally said it). Seems to dismiss other people's jobs and even names as being less important than his.
Nobody's perfect, we all have some bad things in our personalities. But it's impossible to read this and extract the value that he tries to convey that Google as a company didn't accommodate him (dismissing the design of buildings or noogler's orientation) rather than he tried too hard to be liked and perceived as valuable member.
For context the G+ team was viewed add being run in a very ungoogley way during Vic's tenure. It sounds like the OP had the misfortune to be hired into the worst run project at Google at the time.
The big tech companies are really really good at making you feel like you're exceptional and special and destined for greatness because you're good enough to work for them. But then there's the risk that they just say that then dump you in with thousands of others to churn out product.
I'm increasingly convinced that there's a ton of life experience and wisdom to be gained by working for big tech in your early 20s when you have a lot of flexibility. But when you've figured out what kind of life you want to lead, they're probably not the right fit for you.
I think it boils down to: money is easily quantifiable, happiness and freedom aren't. So people make bad life decisions based on an incomplete assessment of what will really suit them best.
It’s just a side note, but this mention of his brief tenure at a “failing startup” rubs me the wrong way:
”In a couple of months I knocked out more work than they could have built in a year with their eng team.”
No startup deserves a designer with this kind of attitude. Your job isn’t to produce pie-in-the-sky concepts for your portfolio but to work on the product together with the engineers.
Some have written about the problems of the piece. I agree with most of the criticisms, but what is useful for the rest of us is not the problems, but figuring out what useful things we can get out of the piece.
The author's biggest work-related mistake was to sit tight when given a managed he had a bad relationship with. In most large organizations (500+ employees), your success and your failure will have a lot to do with a good relationship with your manager. It's not just performance reviews, but your technical influence that will be influenced by this. This matters with sibling teams too, as a political manager (and most bad managers are very political) will not want a report they don't like to have more influence than they do. I have seen people go from being seen as extremely productive to being called very low performers, and vice versa, in 2 months and a manager change. This kind of match, and caring about making teams cohesive, is something that most large valley companies do not really care about, and hurts them greatly, as a lot of talent is underused or downright shoved out the door.
We can learn the some things as managers too: A report we really dislike could really help the company a whole lot if they were in an environment that matches them better, and ultimately that's what we should be caring about, not making people we don't like leave, and helping people we like get promoted. Whether it is by knowing them better, or helping them move somewhere else, is far more work than just undermining them, but its ultimately the right thing to do. What we should foster instead is teamwork, and the minimization of political behavior among reports. The sly report that is always telling me what I like to hear, but playing politics all day is the bad manager of tomorrow. Companies work better when people are aligned with building the best product the company can, not maximizing the credit they get. The more energy is spent on political fights, the worse the product gets.
This isn't a story about Google+, it's a story about a disgruntled employees failing at a job as told through his own glasses filled with illusions of grandjour and sense of superiority.
That said it's still an incredibly interesting story, and I have the feeling that many managers could gain some insight into what's going on in some of those "I am gods gift to development"-type individuals who can be both a huge benefit to a project yet at the same time be toxic to work with.
Wow, on one hand - pretty interesting read in a sense that tabloids are interesting, but boy, you should never do that. It’s not just burning the bridges, it is not a very good signal to your potential employers, partners, acquirers, employees... Imagine public outcry if it went the other way: if managers hung out dirty laundry on employees who were not up to snuff.
Also, about contractors in pivotal roles. The author was relatively new to for-profit industry and it happens way more often than one may think. People who go the contractor route are usually senior and experienced enough to be confident in getting and keeping the gigs, as the barrier to getting rid of a contractor is very low.
Never write in anger. writing in sadness is ok, but writing in anger generally clouds the message. Some of this stuff is about how you work, and how others work. Its not about google, you could "feel" this way in almost any enterprise with more than 1 tier of management.
The writer seems unbalanced and I can't tell if he or the workplace is the problem, or both.
The thing that cought my eye is that he was telling his boss his coworker was home hung over, becouse he worked while his grandma died instead of visiting her. Like, who is being inconsiderate here really?
I'm sure Google+ is a dumpster fire, but reading this my only takeaway was... fuck, I hope I never work with anyone this toxic.
The hate, the vitorial, the attacks, the arrogance, the lack of accountability, paranoid, passive aggressive, complaining intensely about event trivial things...
This is the type of person I would leave a project over, no matter how exciting the work.
Yes. Probably why they forced him out of Google... because he was horrible to work with and the entire team was complaining about his lack of social awareness and poor interpersonal skills.
If your team, say on Gmail or Android, was to integrate Google+’s features then your team would be awarded a 1.5-3x multiplier on top of your yearly bonus. Your bonus was already something like 15% of your salary.
Suddenly it makes sense why we can't use + to force a word in google searches anymore.
People are being too hard on this guy here. It's true that big companies are full of politicians and jerks, and that this can be frustrating if you just want to get good work done.
There are some things you can say about the style of writing but... There is stuff here that resonates and accurately describes downsides of SV life. Just because "it's like that everywhere" doesn't mean we shouldn't aspire to better. Just because we don't like some aspect of this guy's communication style doesn't mean we should dismiss him.
If you're reading, Morgan, don't despair at all the people displaying needless aggression in this thread.
I tried reading this, but it is just stream of consciousness writing and littered with unnecessary details. It comes across as petty and the author doesn't seem to be good at communicating what he wants. For instance, he's whining about a 9am meeting with a coworker. If it's such a big deal, why didn't you ask for a later meeting?
Exactly!! If a meeting time is unsuitable I just tell the other person and they almost always agree to move it. Even most manager types (resonable ones anyway) don't schedule non-critical meetings for 9am the next morning.
I think the stream-of-consciousness might be partially the fault of the format. The article is a long series of tweets, Threader is just a website that compiles them into an article.
There’s a special kind of rottenness in big orgs when the only thing they can produce is “like X but by us”.
I understand why it happens, I’ve been on a few projects like that. The problem is that it’s hard to come up with a genuine new idea that a stack of middle managers will agree on and execute.
But if you say: “Let’s make Twitter/facebook/App Store”, then the middle managers can’t really disagree with you since there’s already a successful example of that thing on the market.
There’s also no room for miscommunication, everyone already knows what Facebook looks like, we just have to copy it.
The problem is that this work is dull, uninspired, and likely to be unsuccessful. What’s the point? Why not just kill this shit before spending millions of dollars on it?
He’s a timid and generally kind person (running theme). But also not sure of himself. Not confident in his work. Also understandable considering it wasn’t the best. Often times he seemed anxiety stricken.
This is the point at which you begin to realize the author is a bit of a jerk.
Interesting insight, but I can't help but wonder if this guy is going to regret some of the shots he took in this article.
I also stumbled upon his Twitter at the end of the article and it does more to show really how much this experience has affected him (https://twitter.com/morganknutson). Very sad.
I'm s bit sad at the end of the article. Sounds to me like a great designer, with good ideas and some genuine leadership skills. But the article itself is so full of anger and resentment that I really wonder what it would be like to work with the author.
Looks like nobody has taken the time or given him the opportunity to learn how to navigate trough BS and handle it.
Saying NO, being political, negotiating. . . Not very surprising if he indeed had such bad managers.
Still, feels like wasted time and resources for everybody. I hope he is doing OK now.
Megacorps don't work to make products. They work to keep their top-dog status perpetual. One way to do this is to hire smart people and keep them locked away wasting time.
Two benefits: them not working productively at a competitor's place is one, and them losing the skills and drive to make real-world useful things after a few years is another.
Ive read other post basically making the same claim, Google is happy to create, fund, and hire for projects just to capture/retain talent and remove it from the hiring pool. Is that HN folks reading too much between lines or is it a thing?
Your story is exactly why I see many capable people leaving the Valley putting all that BS behind. FAANG, those are where you find a bunch of incompetent managers, who never got to learn leadership, stealing your ideas to look good in front of their boss, draining your energy with stupid decisions a donkey wouldn't take, and unable to understand how to work with smart people.
Move on and get a new life. And before you get your next gig, go spend 10 days in a vipasanna center.
[+] [-] whack|7 years ago|reply
Regarding the main event in question: I like that Google allows people to party in the evenings with whoever they want to party with. I like that Google allows people to reschedule meetings if they aren't feeling well, for whatever reason. It sucks that the author's grandmother died and that he felt the need to work through the night while that happened, but it's unfair to take that out on your colleagues. Nobody would have blamed him if he asked to reschedule the meeting because of his grandmother's health. Heck, they probably wouldn't even have minded if he asked for a different day/time, just so he wouldn't have to work through the night.
I have no idea who the author is. He might be a fantastic person, and Jim/Greg might be total dicks, for all I know. But just from the volume of different complaints mentioned, and his reaction to a meeting reschedule, I get the impression that he isn't the easiest person to work with, and that there are other sides to this story.
[+] [-] Meekro|7 years ago|reply
The author seems like the kind of person that I'd love to do a 3-person startup with. We'd be in an environment where working late into the night is valuable sometimes, and because all of us would be doing that he'd have no reason to be resentful. Hopefully he gets into a group like that before the corporate life trains him to preserve his sanity by not caring so much.
[+] [-] brianberns|7 years ago|reply
Way too much ego tied up in petty disagreements here.
[+] [-] cwyers|7 years ago|reply
> Anyhow, my wholesale redesign of all of Jim’s work was obviously making him feel bad.
> One day, he came up to me totally flustered in one of the micro-kitchens. He said “People aren’t liking these icons.” I said, “Oh, ok, let me know who and I’ll collect their feedback and we can make them better.”
...
> Me: “OK, no worries man. Would it make you feel better if I put something together that explains my decision making and then you and whomever else can punch holes in it, and give me direct feedback?”
> Jim: “Yeah, ok, sounds good. I’ll put something on the calendar.”
> 9am the next morning. A dick move.
> I went home and got to work.
> In the early evening I got a call from my dad. My grandmother’s health took a turn for the worst. They weren’t sure she’d make it past the evening.
> I couldn’t grieve. I needed to make this happen. These two designers were beloved by Greg. I had to win them over or they’d screw everything up for me. Everything I’d worked for could come crashing down due to their pettiness.
Like, holy hell. Jim is a _peer_. Nobody asked Morgan to do this work, Morgan volunteered to do it. And he decided to work through a major life event in the off hours for something that didn't come from anyone above him in the hierarchy? And then to blow the other guy up when he reschedules the meeting? Wow.
[+] [-] geofft|7 years ago|reply
It's unfair to take that out on your colleagues, but it is fair to blame it on management and the culture they set. Some people are going to be more politically protected than others for reasons that aren't strongly related to the value they add to the business and able to get away with things others aren't, and if you don't counteract that, you'll both get inefficient results (either they're doing something they shouldn't, or other people don't feel empowered to do something they should) and also cause a loss to morale and trust.
Setting clear (if mechanical) rules about things that would otherwise turn into "the politically connected can do this, the rest of you can't" is absolutely the responsibility of management. Saying to people up front that they should always feel free to take time off or cancel meetings for personal emergencies and the company trusts their judgment (if that is in fact the policy) and making sure people act like it's true - or making sure people show up and have extremely good excuses when they don't, if that's the policy - is management's job.
[+] [-] jccalhoun|7 years ago|reply
There is a lot of ascribing negative motives to other people's words and behaviors when other explanations seem possible from the description he gave to the situation.
[+] [-] Novashi|7 years ago|reply
But you have to remember that he was told he'd get to work on Chrome but was then assigned to G+. You have to be extremely laid-back and financially secure to roll with that punch and not put the rest of the company under a microscope (even criticizing petty culture-identity labels like 'nooglers' builds up resentment).
[+] [-] ganeshkrishnan|7 years ago|reply
When I was a recruiter for ibm I always made sure to check if the potential was an asshole or not before going ahead with tech. Talent can always be learned by those willing. Attitude is permanent.
[+] [-] gedy|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] quest88|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] tyingq|7 years ago|reply
"Let’s call him Greg because his real name is just as vanilla"
[+] [-] throwaway080383|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] paulddraper|7 years ago|reply
- Raylan Givens
[+] [-] didibus|7 years ago|reply
That does indicate a problem for Google if true. This is often the slow death people talk about when big company culture turns like this.
This is made stronger by the fact Google+ failed, and they're shutting it down. If i was an exec at Google I'd totally take this as a retrospective data point, and I'd explore to see how much of this attitude existed within the Plus org, if it was prevalent, it could have had a role in the failure of Plus.
[+] [-] adverbly|7 years ago|reply
Sounds like conflict management is not handled very well by anyone in these situations.The author certainly could have handled it better, and "Greg" should have handled it way better.
Very disappointing to hear, but at the same time these kinds of conflict are usually local and only affect a few individuals, so it is probably not very fair to describe the whole project and exec team as operating in this fashion.
[+] [-] ordinaryperson|7 years ago|reply
1) He accepted a salary (115K) lowered than what he thought was fair
2) Design occurred in silos, there was no unity or cohesion
3) His 2nd manager was "political" and "in love with bureaucracy"
4) An exec on a rival team tried to quash his idea
5) Managers often just wanted to slap their name on his work
6) He worked all night to satisfy an angry coworker the night his grandmother died, while coworker partied then rescheduled mtg
For No 1: if you don't think a salary is fair, don't accept it.
Nos 2-5: these happen at almost every medium-large sized company I've ever worked at. If you know a place that isn't political, bureaucratic, siloed and filled with rivals and petty managers, let me know so I can give you my resume.
For No. 6, if you feel a deadline or meeting time is unfair, say so. If you have a sick family member, say so.
He sent this email to his boss:
> "Greg, I had to work most of the night because of Jim, and he canceled our meeting because he was partying with our competitors. In my book, this is totally unacceptable. What am I supposed to do?"
It's never a good idea to send this. It's not going to help you, even if you're in the right. Canceling a meeting is not a gross injustice and if an employee parties afterhours that's his or her business.
I sympathize with the author. Sounds like a good dude. But you have to try to roll with the punches, no workplace will be perfect, I promise you.
[+] [-] awinder|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] kamaal|7 years ago|reply
This is one of the problems with the way their hiring is marketed. They are depicted to be asking hard CS and algorithm based questions, and a culture of a workplace is being sold which is based on a merit process along the lines of 'programming abilities'.
The reality in every people structure one will every work at, politics is how the world works. People optimize what's best for themselves. The bosses are often stupid, because bosses that exist never want smart people to grow up and become a competition to them. Money is always attached to hot projects, so bulk of the career growth, bonuses and other juice comes when you work there. Regardless of whatever the merits of that project are.
The same applies to projects too. Once a company has 2 - 3 cash cow projects, the executives won't let new set of rivaling products emerge and become a competition to their fiefdom. Most of the times the competition is killed in plain sight, but other times its back room political sabotage. Only a few days back some one mentioned how Google is a place where $100M revenue opportunities pop up and die all the time.
The same case with that 20% extra time projects. Who is going to let this happen? I'm pretty sure anybody who dares to do these projects will be marked to be a trouble maker by the very managers they report too.
In short once you have more than 2 layers of management at your company, politics is how thing will work. And its perfectly, OK. Because that's how world is.
What is problematic is if the people at the top, Larry Page and Sergey Brin don't know are too naive to understand that its happening in their company since years. Inability to deal with everyday politics can kill companies.
[+] [-] ot8|7 years ago|reply
Red Hat. It is siloed and can be (increasingly) bureaucratic, but I have never experienced rivals or petty managers and it's the least political place I've ever worked.
[+] [-] mmmmmmmmm|7 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] pi-squared|7 years ago|reply
Nobody's perfect, we all have some bad things in our personalities. But it's impossible to read this and extract the value that he tries to convey that Google as a company didn't accommodate him (dismissing the design of buildings or noogler's orientation) rather than he tried too hard to be liked and perceived as valuable member.
[+] [-] zaphar|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ganeshkrishnan|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] rocky1138|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Waterluvian|7 years ago|reply
I'm increasingly convinced that there's a ton of life experience and wisdom to be gained by working for big tech in your early 20s when you have a lot of flexibility. But when you've figured out what kind of life you want to lead, they're probably not the right fit for you.
I think it boils down to: money is easily quantifiable, happiness and freedom aren't. So people make bad life decisions based on an incomplete assessment of what will really suit them best.
[+] [-] pavlov|7 years ago|reply
”In a couple of months I knocked out more work than they could have built in a year with their eng team.”
No startup deserves a designer with this kind of attitude. Your job isn’t to produce pie-in-the-sky concepts for your portfolio but to work on the product together with the engineers.
[+] [-] unknown|7 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] hibikir|7 years ago|reply
The author's biggest work-related mistake was to sit tight when given a managed he had a bad relationship with. In most large organizations (500+ employees), your success and your failure will have a lot to do with a good relationship with your manager. It's not just performance reviews, but your technical influence that will be influenced by this. This matters with sibling teams too, as a political manager (and most bad managers are very political) will not want a report they don't like to have more influence than they do. I have seen people go from being seen as extremely productive to being called very low performers, and vice versa, in 2 months and a manager change. This kind of match, and caring about making teams cohesive, is something that most large valley companies do not really care about, and hurts them greatly, as a lot of talent is underused or downright shoved out the door.
We can learn the some things as managers too: A report we really dislike could really help the company a whole lot if they were in an environment that matches them better, and ultimately that's what we should be caring about, not making people we don't like leave, and helping people we like get promoted. Whether it is by knowing them better, or helping them move somewhere else, is far more work than just undermining them, but its ultimately the right thing to do. What we should foster instead is teamwork, and the minimization of political behavior among reports. The sly report that is always telling me what I like to hear, but playing politics all day is the bad manager of tomorrow. Companies work better when people are aligned with building the best product the company can, not maximizing the credit they get. The more energy is spent on political fights, the worse the product gets.
[+] [-] jVinc|7 years ago|reply
That said it's still an incredibly interesting story, and I have the feeling that many managers could gain some insight into what's going on in some of those "I am gods gift to development"-type individuals who can be both a huge benefit to a project yet at the same time be toxic to work with.
[+] [-] mynegation|7 years ago|reply
Also, about contractors in pivotal roles. The author was relatively new to for-profit industry and it happens way more often than one may think. People who go the contractor route are usually senior and experienced enough to be confident in getting and keeping the gigs, as the barrier to getting rid of a contractor is very low.
[+] [-] ggm|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] rightbyte|7 years ago|reply
The thing that cought my eye is that he was telling his boss his coworker was home hung over, becouse he worked while his grandma died instead of visiting her. Like, who is being inconsiderate here really?
[+] [-] wdr1|7 years ago|reply
The hate, the vitorial, the attacks, the arrogance, the lack of accountability, paranoid, passive aggressive, complaining intensely about event trivial things...
This is the type of person I would leave a project over, no matter how exciting the work.
[+] [-] randycupertino|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] tjoff|7 years ago|reply
Suddenly it makes sense why we can't use + to force a word in google searches anymore.
[+] [-] brianberns|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] asveikau|7 years ago|reply
There are some things you can say about the style of writing but... There is stuff here that resonates and accurately describes downsides of SV life. Just because "it's like that everywhere" doesn't mean we shouldn't aspire to better. Just because we don't like some aspect of this guy's communication style doesn't mean we should dismiss him.
If you're reading, Morgan, don't despair at all the people displaying needless aggression in this thread.
[+] [-] allenu|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] raydev|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] bootlooped|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] peatfreak|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] creatonez|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] CoolGuySteve|7 years ago|reply
I understand why it happens, I’ve been on a few projects like that. The problem is that it’s hard to come up with a genuine new idea that a stack of middle managers will agree on and execute.
But if you say: “Let’s make Twitter/facebook/App Store”, then the middle managers can’t really disagree with you since there’s already a successful example of that thing on the market.
There’s also no room for miscommunication, everyone already knows what Facebook looks like, we just have to copy it.
The problem is that this work is dull, uninspired, and likely to be unsuccessful. What’s the point? Why not just kill this shit before spending millions of dollars on it?
[+] [-] BareNakedCoder|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] brown9-2|7 years ago|reply
This is the point at which you begin to realize the author is a bit of a jerk.
[+] [-] brettaaron|7 years ago|reply
I also stumbled upon his Twitter at the end of the article and it does more to show really how much this experience has affected him (https://twitter.com/morganknutson). Very sad.
[+] [-] jlengrand|7 years ago|reply
Saying NO, being political, negotiating. . . Not very surprising if he indeed had such bad managers.
Still, feels like wasted time and resources for everybody. I hope he is doing OK now.
[+] [-] otabdeveloper2|7 years ago|reply
Two benefits: them not working productively at a competitor's place is one, and them losing the skills and drive to make real-world useful things after a few years is another.
[+] [-] goliatone|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] thelastidiot|7 years ago|reply
Move on and get a new life. And before you get your next gig, go spend 10 days in a vipasanna center.