As a xoogler who interviewed way back in 2004, let me say that this post sums up my feelings exactly. The people I worked with at Google back then weren’t necessarily there for high six figure salaries. We were there to work with other people like us. We were there to be part of something larger than ourselves. In some sense I felt alone most of the time, and when I interviewed I felt as if I had found my tribe. These are people who made me feel dumb, but also astutely aware that I could improve. I learned so much during my tenure there, and I regret none of it. Perhaps I do regret taking so long to realize the sense of purpose and mission died when Emerald Sea started and good projects (reader, google talk, code search) were being canabalized to prop up a pipe dream that was never going to work. That’s the nexus event in Google’s time line… where things went askew and never came back to normal. Now people only care about perf, OKRs, and levels. Being a poor new grad with no savings and intentionally picking projects that would not get you promoted (but were fun) was frequent back then. The courage to do new things is rewarded in ways different than titles and symbols. Perhaps no “one” is more cognizant of that than the anthropomorphic Google of today.
I work at at a large corporation, and that is one balance that I am also constantly fighting and never seem to get it right. Having to provide a "Business justification"/OKRs for every technical feature has been soul draining experience, and while I can still make progress in making the product and drive the business forward, I have a hard time justifying spending the time in the little details that I would consider what makes a product really great.
I feel like the cycle turned one of making power point presentations of how the product has all the required features, but the overarching story and experience does not feel quite right. And I have been looking for advice on how to convey the importance to polish up the product.
Former Googler here, too -- 2011 to 2018. The Google I joined was definitely a different place from the Google I left, and seeing the "phase change" up close was ... interesting.
Your sentence about salaries resonates; the Google I joined had a lot of folks for whom the salaries were a nice side-effect for a job they were intrinsically motivated for, the Google I left seemed to have many unhappy people that were fearful of leaving that salary behind.
> The people I worked with at Google back then weren’t necessarily there for high six figure salaries. We were there to work with other people like us.
I wonder how much this used to apply to the Valley as a whole.
In my experience, one does not need to go to some FANG or other big company to learn, that one has still lots to learn and find areas to improve in. I personally got that from mailing lists, particularly in the free software communities, where sometimes people write stuff, that is waaay over my head and that I have never dealt with, even though I am a professional software developer. I even think, that some of the more theoretical stuff goes beyond most things a normal engineer will hit working for a big company. So at least that bit is available for anyone out there, no need to work for an, in terms of ethics, questionably acting company.
The bit about finding ones "tribe". Yes, it happens for us engineers, when there are many smart people in "the room". I would not value it over finding purpose though. Purpose in technical perspective, as well as ethical perspective. There is a lot of feeling alone for many of us, because most of us cannot be around similar minded people a lot. What makes me feel more alone though is, when I meet bright people, who do not care about the ethical aspects of their work or hobbies. So personally, I do not think I would "find my tribe" in a FANG or similar company. I highly doubt it even, no matter how smart people there are.
I think we need more great people working on real humanity problems. I am glad they probably do not need the money any more and that “the big money” cannot suck their talent anymore.(for profit)
Cheers for all those talented engineers with guts to leave behind the big players
> the sense of purpose and mission died when Emerald Sea started and good projects (reader, google talk, code search) were being canabalized to prop up a pipe dream that was never going to work.
Interesting way of putting it. And it also jives with the fact that Google+ always looked half-baked even from a pure UX perspective, and is now dead altogether. Perhaps with the benefit of hindsight, we can speculate that Google leadership should have tried to move in that direction while still meshing with the existing "sense of mission and purpose", not just suppressing it.
> the sense of purpose and mission died when Emerald Sea started
And when it materialized and they started to shove Google+ down everybody's throats it was a tipping point for many faithful Google users, too - any trust and good faith that was still there was instantly depleted.
After all these years I still miss this, can't explain exactly why. Maybe it is the nostalgia of the 2006-2008 years when everything seemed still open and doable when it came to things on the web.
> Perhaps I do regret taking so long to realize the sense of purpose and mission died when Emerald Sea started and good projects (reader, google talk, code search) were being canabalized to prop up a pipe dream that was never going to work.
the day google reader was shut down was probably one of the saddest i had ever been for a piece of software.
> The people I worked with at Google back then weren’t necessarily there for high six figure salaries. We were there to work with other people like us.
You were a perfect specimen to get exploited by a big corporations. You had knowledge and you were willing to work for the sake of it. That's why we need laws that would prevent something like this from happening in the future.
It's scary that you don't even realise that.
I worked on the infra team for a TypeScript-based product downstream of the author. His and his team's approach and writings influenced at a lot of my thinking about core development, and I'll always be grateful for having had the opportunity to learn from them by osmosis.
The success or failure with which any companies hires and retains folks like these is a mystery to me. As the evidence shows, Google (and I suspect almost any >100-person company) is far too much an amorphous glob/slime mold to even have a single coherent approach to this problem. But what are the successful strategies here? How important is it even to retain this kind of talent? How do we know how a company is even doing in this regard?
In my meager-in-comparison 6.5 years at Google, while I certainly saw many amazing SWEs come and many go, I'm far from knowing what the real trajectory was. But I can imagine that for many folks, the perceived trajectory would be a major motivating or demotivating factor to stay or to leave themselves.
Retention of very senior people really comes down to those people and their personal reasons. I don't think it's a group of people who all want the same thing, so it's impossible to make a general retention plan.
And realistically, the reason you want them to stay is because they are someone who has figured out how to operate and impact the organization without needing too much guidance
or direction.
But I think it's why there are all the generic lifestyle perks and competition for titles like "Best Place To Work".
Any large corporation needs to eliminate the bus factor of individual contributors (those who don't pay the management and politics game). You can't have an universally respected engineering legend contradict the board of directors; and the CEO it installs and influences.
Thus, you could argue that faceless, kafkaesque, "out of anyone's control" systems for talent management are a feature with trade-offs, not a bug.
While I have not worked at Google, simply being a user of its products for the past two decades has taught me that so much of its company culture and values have changed; and rarely for the better.
> His and his team's approach and writings influenced at a lot of my thinking about core development, and I'll always be grateful for having had the opportunity to learn from them by osmosis.
Would you like to share with the rest of us a few wisdom here?
- pay. These companies may be paying more than average and amazing if you compare to non-technical jobs, but as an engineer committing your best years to become great at what you do, you find yourself still not being able to afford even a small flat in the area where you work. Meanwhile you hear your company boasting about another record year and billions flowing in. Unfortunately they won't share those with you. That's demotivating and you feel being taken advantage of.
- lack of flexibility. For example managers pushing for pairing at all cost and with disregard to neurodivergent people. At the same messaging about equality, support for various social issues and so on. That creates dishonest image of the company and makes you think this is all bs and cheap PR rather than genuine care.
- Exploitation. Some companies expect you to do unpaid overtime or that you'll answer your phone outside of work hours. If you want me to work, you pay - I am not a charity.
- Rules designed to appease insecure managers, like having to be in person in the office so the manager can "watch you" and be "hands-on" with his or hers team. Again, company is boasting how great they are for the environment and at the same time they drag hundreds of people each day to the office for no reason. We have great tools to do work remotely, there is no longer a need to be in the office. Sell the office and give employees a bonus.
- open plan office. I just can't focus in those. There is only so long I can stand wearing noise cancelling headphones and I don't want to hear people behind me chatting loudly what they had for lunch, with occasional bursts of laughter that is piercing my ears. I found that often I actually done the work in the evening at home, whereas the whole time in the office I had to pretend I am busy. One time when I was offered a promotion I asked for private office. The CTO said it's only for him and the board. Well, I quit next month.
> At the time I left, out of ~150k employees, only ~300 had worked there longer than me.
This is why it is insane to accept the "I know the people involved in developing that and they wouldn't let a terrible thing happen." Defense of it being ok for the co. to have massive unchecked power.
The company is its people. The people /will/ change. Give a company serious power you cannot expect the staff to keep it reigned in. It's completely unrealistic and also unfair to the staff for them to have that moral responsibility forced on them. Ultimately 99.9% of the time the only thing they can do is resign, which reduces the impediments to bad things happening.
I'm sure this is the sort of person that made google what it is - it's probably a nightmare if they lose enough of these clear-thinking problem solvers with a history of long-term success. When I think "big google salary" I want to think it's going to someone like this, but in reality it's probably going to someone else.
Google used to be one of those companies, like Valve or Blizzard, who could be trusted to always ship a home run. Search, gmail, maps, chrome… I’m not sure what happened, but the contrast of Google then vs Google now is stark.
Even Google search barely works anymore. Google image search is completely broken, and I’ve found recently that I’ve been appending “site:reddit.com” to all of my text search queries to actually get useful results.
I’m not sure what this says about the future of Google, or the web in general. Nothing good.
This so much. 10 years ago, I would have bought every single Blizzard game. Back then, I explained to my parents that Blizzard was like Mercedes ("The best or nothing") for video games. Now all known talents have already left Blizzard and none of their games interest me any longer...
My theory is that two things changed: 1. complexity. As time goes by, systems become more complex, leaving less and less room for people to introduce changes swiftly. It's just like George Martin had a hard time shipping his latest A Song of Ice and Fire because there are just too many threads to figure out; 2. Culture. As times goes by, organizations bloat, and average quality of employees starts to decline. Plus, some people get promoted with controversy. Not everyone is Jeff Dean or Sanjay, after all. So, gradually and then suddenly, people create projects for promotion, and long-term vision goes out of the window. The two factors combined, a company transitions from being great to be mediocre.
I also have to append site:reddit to half of my searches if I'm actually looking for some sort of meaningful feedback or opinion on something. Everything else is blog spam or commercial content trying to sell me something
> At the time I left, out of ~150k employees, only ~300 had worked there longer than me.
This one really stuck out for me, I don't think that stat has ever been public before. This probably means most (if not all) of the folk who built Google's most successful services are no longer with the company. Like a successful open source project where the originators have aged out, and all that's left are hundreds of folk making incremental changes spanning years
"it's also ultimately not something to be anthropomorphized, but rather a faceless machine that makes often bad decisions that I don't have any real influence over."
Best comment in the article.
I feel that this is a very recurrent problem on HN in particular and on the internet in general: people anthropomorphizing companies and assigning them human-like intents ("Google is evil", "Exxon is reckless").
We all forget that:
a) companies are nothing but a bunch of people doing things together within some sort of hierarchical structure.
b) the emergent behavior of said group has got precious little to do with the parts that compose it and certainly can't be assigned things like desire, morals, feelings, ethos.
c) as much as we'd *love* to believe b) above or even try to actually implement it (the whole "company culture" kool-aid), the truth is *no one* can get an org as large as Google to do anything, even its CEO. Once the thing is large enough, it basically becomes autonomous.
Large corps are large doomsday machines with basically no one at the wheel.
Yeah, in Europe your only real options are moving to the US, working remotely in a cheaper location in Europe (perhaps even as a contractor to the US), or working for a company/country with a better work balance and just fitting your life around work. I've done the latter two and it's worked out okay, but I still don't own a home even after 7 years working (and some of that for FAANG).
But I think Americans really don't understand how different Europe is. Programming is barely a white-collar job here vs. Law or Real Estate, etc. and the quality of life is just lower (less car ownership, much smaller homes without swimming pools or air conditioning, tiny kitchens without garbage disposal, American fridge-freezers or dishwashers, etc.)
> ...including the money to buy the home I now live in and even the health insurance responsible for the birth of my son...
Interesting example. Being grateful to your country for giving you the opportunity to work to pay insurance bills to have a child, because there's no universal healthcare?
The fact that a post about leaving Google still makes it HN means that Google still commands attention and respect, especially given that such posts came up once every few months. In contrast, people are not so keen on "Leaving Oracle", "Leaving IBM", or "Leaving Amazon". Sadly, though, every company will eventually get into the latter group, no matter how great it once was.
Imagine working somewhere for 17 years and then facing this:
> The full story is complex but effectively a bureaucratic mistake led to my position falling into question, despite plenty of support for keeping me around from my immediate management chain.
I’ll just go ahead and admit that had this happened to me, I would certainly act a bit more salty over it.
> but it's also ultimately not something to be anthropomorphized, but rather a faceless machine that makes often bad decisions that I don't have any real influence over.
Shocking how it can take 17 years to realize that. And it's for a smart person! One really has to congratulate early Google execs for creating this super pervasive myth of genius around what's just another corporation.
> a bureaucratic mistake led to my position falling into question, despite plenty of support for keeping me around from my immediate management chain
That's a hell of a way to lose a 17-year veteran. Wish I could say I'm surprised, but having exited FB due also to a short-sighted bureaucratic decision... such are the policies of a FAANG
Really nice to hear from somebody who stuck with a company for the long haul. I'm trying to do the same thing, and in my agency I've gotten about half as far as you with interesting and challenging projects while maintaining a unique personal life. All the best at Figma and I hope that if you enjoy it enough to stick around you get another great 17 year run :)
Evan is one of the best people I’ve had the pleasure of working with at Google. As his coworker on the TypeScript team he taught us all valuable lessons for dealing with the type of large-scale development needed to maintain the monorepo. Truly a treasure and a sad loss for the team. I wish him nothing but the best wherever he ends up!
It's interesting this made the front page but no comments talk about Evan or his many accomplishments, just Google. I suppose that's a reflection of the recent sentiment where old timers leaving Google is a sign of something.
In any case, I had the pleasure of interacting with Evan a couple times while on Chrome, and he was this amazing slice of Google engineering culture. I have a vivid memory of him and some friends discussing how to optimize IO perf on Windows late on a Fri at the office. In my time at Google I learned so much from just sitting and listening in on things like that.
Figma's lucky to have Evan. While it's unfortunate to see old timers leave Google, it's good for the industry for them to be joining the next batch of up and coming companies.
[+] [-] xoogler2004|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Nican|4 years ago|reply
I feel like the cycle turned one of making power point presentations of how the product has all the required features, but the overarching story and experience does not feel quite right. And I have been looking for advice on how to convey the importance to polish up the product.
[+] [-] tdullien|4 years ago|reply
Your sentence about salaries resonates; the Google I joined had a lot of folks for whom the salaries were a nice side-effect for a job they were intrinsically motivated for, the Google I left seemed to have many unhappy people that were fearful of leaving that salary behind.
[+] [-] 1vuio0pswjnm7|4 years ago|reply
This is when a Google employee told Wired the company needed to start focusing more on gathering information about people.
[+] [-] dehrmann|4 years ago|reply
I wonder how much this used to apply to the Valley as a whole.
[+] [-] zelphirkalt|4 years ago|reply
The bit about finding ones "tribe". Yes, it happens for us engineers, when there are many smart people in "the room". I would not value it over finding purpose though. Purpose in technical perspective, as well as ethical perspective. There is a lot of feeling alone for many of us, because most of us cannot be around similar minded people a lot. What makes me feel more alone though is, when I meet bright people, who do not care about the ethical aspects of their work or hobbies. So personally, I do not think I would "find my tribe" in a FANG or similar company. I highly doubt it even, no matter how smart people there are.
[+] [-] quijoteuniv|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] zozbot234|4 years ago|reply
Interesting way of putting it. And it also jives with the fact that Google+ always looked half-baked even from a pure UX perspective, and is now dead altogether. Perhaps with the benefit of hindsight, we can speculate that Google leadership should have tried to move in that direction while still meshing with the existing "sense of mission and purpose", not just suppressing it.
[+] [-] dvfjsdhgfv|4 years ago|reply
And when it materialized and they started to shove Google+ down everybody's throats it was a tipping point for many faithful Google users, too - any trust and good faith that was still there was instantly depleted.
[+] [-] paganel|4 years ago|reply
After all these years I still miss this, can't explain exactly why. Maybe it is the nostalgia of the 2006-2008 years when everything seemed still open and doable when it came to things on the web.
[+] [-] jahller|4 years ago|reply
the day google reader was shut down was probably one of the saddest i had ever been for a piece of software.
[+] [-] sakagami0|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] tj-teej|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] felixfbecker|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|4 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] mlvljr|4 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] varispeed|4 years ago|reply
You were a perfect specimen to get exploited by a big corporations. You had knowledge and you were willing to work for the sake of it. That's why we need laws that would prevent something like this from happening in the future. It's scary that you don't even realise that.
[+] [-] cairo140|4 years ago|reply
The success or failure with which any companies hires and retains folks like these is a mystery to me. As the evidence shows, Google (and I suspect almost any >100-person company) is far too much an amorphous glob/slime mold to even have a single coherent approach to this problem. But what are the successful strategies here? How important is it even to retain this kind of talent? How do we know how a company is even doing in this regard?
In my meager-in-comparison 6.5 years at Google, while I certainly saw many amazing SWEs come and many go, I'm far from knowing what the real trajectory was. But I can imagine that for many folks, the perceived trajectory would be a major motivating or demotivating factor to stay or to leave themselves.
[+] [-] bohemian99|4 years ago|reply
And realistically, the reason you want them to stay is because they are someone who has figured out how to operate and impact the organization without needing too much guidance or direction.
But I think it's why there are all the generic lifestyle perks and competition for titles like "Best Place To Work".
[+] [-] HappyTypist|4 years ago|reply
Thus, you could argue that faceless, kafkaesque, "out of anyone's control" systems for talent management are a feature with trade-offs, not a bug.
While I have not worked at Google, simply being a user of its products for the past two decades has taught me that so much of its company culture and values have changed; and rarely for the better.
[+] [-] yla92|4 years ago|reply
Would you like to share with the rest of us a few wisdom here?
[+] [-] varispeed|4 years ago|reply
- pay. These companies may be paying more than average and amazing if you compare to non-technical jobs, but as an engineer committing your best years to become great at what you do, you find yourself still not being able to afford even a small flat in the area where you work. Meanwhile you hear your company boasting about another record year and billions flowing in. Unfortunately they won't share those with you. That's demotivating and you feel being taken advantage of.
- lack of flexibility. For example managers pushing for pairing at all cost and with disregard to neurodivergent people. At the same messaging about equality, support for various social issues and so on. That creates dishonest image of the company and makes you think this is all bs and cheap PR rather than genuine care.
- Exploitation. Some companies expect you to do unpaid overtime or that you'll answer your phone outside of work hours. If you want me to work, you pay - I am not a charity.
- Rules designed to appease insecure managers, like having to be in person in the office so the manager can "watch you" and be "hands-on" with his or hers team. Again, company is boasting how great they are for the environment and at the same time they drag hundreds of people each day to the office for no reason. We have great tools to do work remotely, there is no longer a need to be in the office. Sell the office and give employees a bonus.
- open plan office. I just can't focus in those. There is only so long I can stand wearing noise cancelling headphones and I don't want to hear people behind me chatting loudly what they had for lunch, with occasional bursts of laughter that is piercing my ears. I found that often I actually done the work in the evening at home, whereas the whole time in the office I had to pretend I am busy. One time when I was offered a promotion I asked for private office. The CTO said it's only for him and the board. Well, I quit next month.
[+] [-] harry8|4 years ago|reply
This is why it is insane to accept the "I know the people involved in developing that and they wouldn't let a terrible thing happen." Defense of it being ok for the co. to have massive unchecked power.
The company is its people. The people /will/ change. Give a company serious power you cannot expect the staff to keep it reigned in. It's completely unrealistic and also unfair to the staff for them to have that moral responsibility forced on them. Ultimately 99.9% of the time the only thing they can do is resign, which reduces the impediments to bad things happening.
[+] [-] reedf1|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] evouga|4 years ago|reply
Even Google search barely works anymore. Google image search is completely broken, and I’ve found recently that I’ve been appending “site:reddit.com” to all of my text search queries to actually get useful results.
I’m not sure what this says about the future of Google, or the web in general. Nothing good.
[+] [-] Kelteseth|4 years ago|reply
This so much. 10 years ago, I would have bought every single Blizzard game. Back then, I explained to my parents that Blizzard was like Mercedes ("The best or nothing") for video games. Now all known talents have already left Blizzard and none of their games interest me any longer...
[+] [-] Yajirobe|4 years ago|reply
This is a problem with the web, not with Google. The web has become littered with trash content
[+] [-] hintymad|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] 93po|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] allyourhorses|4 years ago|reply
This one really stuck out for me, I don't think that stat has ever been public before. This probably means most (if not all) of the folk who built Google's most successful services are no longer with the company. Like a successful open source project where the originators have aged out, and all that's left are hundreds of folk making incremental changes spanning years
[+] [-] ur-whale|4 years ago|reply
Best comment in the article.
I feel that this is a very recurrent problem on HN in particular and on the internet in general: people anthropomorphizing companies and assigning them human-like intents ("Google is evil", "Exxon is reckless").
We all forget that:
Large corps are large doomsday machines with basically no one at the wheel.[+] [-] apples_oranges|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] nivenkos|4 years ago|reply
But I think Americans really don't understand how different Europe is. Programming is barely a white-collar job here vs. Law or Real Estate, etc. and the quality of life is just lower (less car ownership, much smaller homes without swimming pools or air conditioning, tiny kitchens without garbage disposal, American fridge-freezers or dishwashers, etc.)
The Tech Bro memes don't apply here.
[+] [-] AndrewDucker|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Proven|4 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] lolive|4 years ago|reply
There you will get a clear view of why you DO NOT want to become a frontend developper at Google. (plus the dilemna of maintaining internal tools).
[+] [-] jakecopp|4 years ago|reply
Interesting example. Being grateful to your country for giving you the opportunity to work to pay insurance bills to have a child, because there's no universal healthcare?
I'm assuming this is sarcasm?
[+] [-] DoreenMichele|4 years ago|reply
Because of the TypeScript work I was also one of ~30 "global approvers", with the access to to approve code changes to any project at the company.
Oof. Google will regret this snafu.
I hope he's happy at his new job.
[+] [-] hintymad|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] josteink|4 years ago|reply
Imagine working somewhere for 17 years and then facing this:
> The full story is complex but effectively a bureaucratic mistake led to my position falling into question, despite plenty of support for keeping me around from my immediate management chain.
I’ll just go ahead and admit that had this happened to me, I would certainly act a bit more salty over it.
[+] [-] H8crilA|4 years ago|reply
Shocking how it can take 17 years to realize that. And it's for a smart person! One really has to congratulate early Google execs for creating this super pervasive myth of genius around what's just another corporation.
Related - Systemantics is not a joke, it's an honest attempt at describing reality: https://mobile.twitter.com/SysQuotes
[+] [-] swiftcoder|4 years ago|reply
That's a hell of a way to lose a 17-year veteran. Wish I could say I'm surprised, but having exited FB due also to a short-sighted bureaucratic decision... such are the policies of a FAANG
[+] [-] kylehotchkiss|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] rdel|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] cyri|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jozvolskyef|4 years ago|reply
[1]: https://github.com/cue-lang/cue
[+] [-] unknown|4 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] donalhunt|4 years ago|reply
Thank you for epitaphs. It was a great resource and ensured relationships were maintained even after people left the company.
[+] [-] esprehn|4 years ago|reply
In any case, I had the pleasure of interacting with Evan a couple times while on Chrome, and he was this amazing slice of Google engineering culture. I have a vivid memory of him and some friends discussing how to optimize IO perf on Windows late on a Fri at the office. In my time at Google I learned so much from just sitting and listening in on things like that.
Figma's lucky to have Evan. While it's unfortunate to see old timers leave Google, it's good for the industry for them to be joining the next batch of up and coming companies.