What does it feel like to be fired from Google?

Any employer who doesn't understand that closed allocation will not infrequently result in this is probably to be avoided. Worst story I remember as related on HN, but my search fu is not able to find it, was a hardware engineer who was also good at programming and Python. He was put on a team writing Python hardware testing code, and because he found out, as is related by many others (and at many other companies) that the policy of immediate transfers is often fictional, he had to quit to avoid ending his career.

https://www.quora.com/What-does-it-feel-like-to-be-fired-fro...

I found it pretty interesting.

He basically stopped working, and when asked why stay and take the huge salary from google when he's not working he said he's satisfied with the salary, and he was given plenty of opportunities. No wonder his managers didn't like him. There are tons of other more competent people who make the same salary as him working hard. It's not a matter of whether the company treats people like a "resource" or not. If I had a guy on my team who doesn't work at all and sticks around AND is proud of it for some reason I would be pissed. I'm sure not just his manager but all other colleagues probably would have been super pissed if he acted like he described in the answer.

For some reason everyone on the thread is talking like Google is in the wrong and he's being noble for sharing it non-anonymously, but I don't really get what's so noble about this. If I was that burned out, I would have asked for a hiatus. And even after that if I can't focus, I would still try hard, and when asked why I don't just leave, I would take that as a sign and leave. I would definitely not say "I'm happy with my Google salary". Normal people don't feel OK with taking someone else's money while not doing anything, and "being burned out" is not an excuse.

His reply is not surprising from a Russian perspective (in broad strokes Russian discussion culture is extremely...let's say "honest", to the point of appearing crass or blunt to western ears) & does not mean "I don't give a shit as long as I get money".

I read it as "if you want to fire me, do so", and I don't think that's too bad (as in this case the appropriate response really is firing - not asking the guy to quit).

In many cases you'll need to get your code reviewed by an external team, and oftentimes their SLA for one round of code review is 24 hours. That a.) incentivizes big commits and b.) sets a floor on the latency of your commit process.

My long-term average at Google was 5 commits/week, max was IIRC 24/week, and min was 3 months to get one commit written, reviewed, and approved. By contrast, when I'm coding on my own for my startup, my long-term average is 20 commits/week, max was about 14/day, and min is about 1/day.

Obvious caveat: there are 20,000+ engineers and hundreds of teams at Google. Things aren't exactly the same everywhere.

In any case, I think 5 per week is extremely reasonable; I actually do less these days. I used to commit a dozen or more times per week, but these days I tend to work on the larger and harder components that people require. That means more thought and more design. It's not doing less work, it's just doing harder work.

This person may also have had review reponsibilities. Doing a truly thorough code review takes time to complete, and that time is time that you're not coding. It's important though; I may not be coding while I'm reviewing, but I'm sharing knowledge with a dozen other developers who hopefully learn from it (as I learn from others reviewing my own code). In aggregate, I hope that my lack of frequent commits actually helps the company rather than hurts it since hopefully I'm enabling many others to do better work.

At least, that's the way it worked when I was there. I sure as hell didn't get 5 commits in a week.

Most French startups are built on ACCRE: The unemployed asks for a lumpsum instead of monthly benefits at the condition that he creates a company. You can't get it if you quit your last job, so the game for entrepreneurs is to be as disrespectful as legally possible with an employer (e.g. liberally start working on the new company or poaching clients, as long as it's not forbidden), get fired, and create a startup. It makes the ACCRE the #2 source of funding for startups in France (after CIR, another public benefit, but that's a story for another day).

Such schemes mean the startup is created months and months after the opening of the market opportunity; after months of being a bad employee; and out of public benefits. To my opinion it's inefficient on all 3 facets. But that's how the old continent runs.

It is hard to tell without knowledge of Swiss Labor Law, but if it is anyhow similar to my own country's there most be different procedures for "sacking" and "letting go" people.

You sack people that is either grossly incompetent, in open contempt of workplace discipline or breaking the law. The process is highly confrontational because the former employee will be left with no social security and a big black spot on their record. Government puts the burden of proof on the employer to demonstrate that this is a sacking case.

You may let go anyone at any time whenever business interests are no longer aligned with keeping the employee around. You have to pay severance though, so employers do not like this option. The laws are the way they are because in the past employers would sack anyone on a wimp.

Nowadays, some employers will get rid of people that are marginally undesirable (like underperformers, or pregnant/nursing women, or idealists who express concern for the boss's less than pristine practices) by putting the employee in a frustrating no-win situation and letting them quit on their own.

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So, if Switzerland is anywhere like this, or if Russia is anywhere like this, you can anything but expect that being asked "why don't you just quit" will trigger flight-or-fight mode on an employee. At this point it hardly matters who's right and who's wrong. This is not how I would expect a competent manager to handle a delicate situation like this, though I can see how someone being overly candid could fall in this mess by accident.

For your own sake, I suggest you take a serious look at your worldview. You are saying that people on Quora are "obeying a dictatorship" because Quora chooses to "force" them (on their own property, mind you) to use Facebook or Google, which is something almost everyone uses.

Your point of view is so far from the mainstream, and might I add so insulting to the people who use Quora, not to mention the people who built this amazing, free of charge site that so many people love, that I think you won't be able to hold a meaningful conversation with almost anyone else.

And might I add, talking in this way shows a complete lack of empathy with almost anyone else in the world. If your base assumption is that Quora is a dictatorship that people obey, it really seems like you have never taken more than 2 seconds to think about someone else's point of view in your life.

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/quora-share/

i always get a link like this one, read something, then any link i click i get to some crippled page instead of the content and some bad ui that doesn't even make it clear what weird ritual they expect to show the content.

If you don't want to sign in don't use it. They obviously gain enough value out of having users logged in that it's worth losing those who won't.

The vast majority of people outside of HN don't care.

Obviously no middle manager is feeling that specific stress at Google, but the higher up you go the more your issues and stresses involve keeping the company afloat.

Sometimes you know it must be done but you know the person is nice enough but just not competent, or can't do the job, or the job has changed and they're getting fired for no fault of their own.

There are those times when you fire someone but you feel guilty that, as their manager, maybe you could have done better with them but you didn't have time, were too distracted, too tired.

In companies that get big enough, the percentage of people getting fired for cause gets higher. Then firing people becomes part of a routine. If you let your feelings get involved, it will drive you crazy, so you try not to let that happen.