Wandering the halls of Google one day, I came across a load of bullshit.
"Hey, I said. I know a whole lot of other loads of bullshit that I'd like to bring on board and present at the next conference."
The load of bullshit stopped me
"No," said the load of bullshit, "it's important to save some loads of bullshit for later conferences. It's important to the ecosystem. After all, if we concentrate our loads of bullshit in one conference, we won't have any other loads of bullshit to spread around later."
"It's not that I don't love you, it's just that you're such a good guy you need to get out there and share yourself with other women. It'll be better for us both in the long run."
You've been doing fairly well, Ryan, but you're falling into one of the classic 'Wag traps: you, like your predecessor, consistently misinterpret the connection between engineers and execs. This is especially important at Google, where the work experience for engineers is different than the experience in other divisions of the company.
This is not to say that bad execs and good execs have no effect on engineers, because they do -- particularly the bad ones, who can very easily spoil a development environment. But the factors that determine a "good" or "bad" exec from an engineer's point of view are frequently not the same as the factors that cause the business press to draw conclusions about their quality.
So what did GoogNYCers really think of Armstrong or your other gossip targets? It's astonishing that in a company that employees thousands of engineers, you can't find a single decent tipster. They are out there, I am sure.
My old roommate worked for Google, and her complaints were about the following:
- Relentless, robotic corporate culture
- How braindead said culture made her feel
- Higher management pressure to party and be seen with other Googlers
- The fact that so many other Googlers can't understand why a normal person would want to have non-work friends
- Politics and office drama associated with zombie corporate culture and rampant social incest
- How fucking boring it was
Money aside (and it's not an inconsiderable aside), the couple times I've visited friends there (hey, free lunch), it seemed an atrocious place to work. Gave me the creeps.
@pureblarney: I have a friend who worked there as well. After he got married, he asked if he could cut back to 11 hours a day, or if that wasn't possible, to transition into part time or flex time.
His supervisor flipped out and questioned his loyalty (?!!?) and then started screwing with him, changing deadlines, etc until my friend quit.
You know, while it may pay for things like food, rent, alcohol and limousines, money really *isn't* everything. For a lot of people, there is a point where no amount of money can make working in a difficult job bearable. Once you're making enough to live on, a company just offering to throw more money at you in order that you shut up and accept any amount of abuse that they heap on you just is not a very compelling offer anymore.
I don't work at Google and I don't make a lot of money. But I have worked at other places like that, where I could have made a lot of money if I had just agreed to play their little games and given up any semblance of my own life as part of the deal. I chose to leave instead too.
Gimme a break. The IPO was 5 years ago and the company went from 2000 to 20,000 employees since then. If people are leaving, it's because Google is no longer a start up. I'm sure the food and stuff is still wonderful, but the potential to get filthy stinking rich is not what it used to be.
Well, taking turns driving around every city in the world taking picures of every single stretch of street has got to be a horrible way to start a Monday.
12/03/09
12/02/09
"Hey, I said. I know a whole lot of other loads of bullshit that I'd like to bring on board and present at the next conference."
The load of bullshit stopped me
"No," said the load of bullshit, "it's important to save some loads of bullshit for later conferences. It's important to the ecosystem. After all, if we concentrate our loads of bullshit in one conference, we won't have any other loads of bullshit to spread around later."
That's great, I said. Then I killed myself.
12/02/09
12/02/09
12/02/09
12/02/09
12/02/09
12/02/09
(Although it's easy to propound in a total buyer's market, the theory does make some sense.)
12/02/09
12/02/09
12/02/09
12/02/09
12/02/09
12/02/09
11/18/09
This is not to say that bad execs and good execs have no effect on engineers, because they do -- particularly the bad ones, who can very easily spoil a development environment. But the factors that determine a "good" or "bad" exec from an engineer's point of view are frequently not the same as the factors that cause the business press to draw conclusions about their quality.
So what did GoogNYCers really think of Armstrong or your other gossip targets? It's astonishing that in a company that employees thousands of engineers, you can't find a single decent tipster. They are out there, I am sure.
11/18/09
- Relentless, robotic corporate culture
- How braindead said culture made her feel
- Higher management pressure to party and be seen with other Googlers
- The fact that so many other Googlers can't understand why a normal person would want to have non-work friends
- Politics and office drama associated with zombie corporate culture and rampant social incest
- How fucking boring it was
11/18/09
Money aside (and it's not an inconsiderable aside), the couple times I've visited friends there (hey, free lunch), it seemed an atrocious place to work. Gave me the creeps.
11/18/09
His supervisor flipped out and questioned his loyalty (?!!?) and then started screwing with him, changing deadlines, etc until my friend quit.
11/18/09
I don't work at Google and I don't make a lot of money. But I have worked at other places like that, where I could have made a lot of money if I had just agreed to play their little games and given up any semblance of my own life as part of the deal. I chose to leave instead too.
11/18/09
11/18/09