Comment by brianx | Hacker News Reader

Comment by brianx | Hacker News Reader

Parent Full thread

I'm not sure that Google is turning into shit. It seems to me it's always been like that. I've been at Google for 4 years and noticed very quickly that turning software engineers into managers could not possibly work. I've switched teams recently and am happier for the time being, but my previous manager sucked ass.

My new project is actually quite interesting. There's very little politics involved too, which is a plus, and I'm glad I'm not writing yet another chat app that we will deprecate in 2 years time.

The worst part about Google for me is the level of incivility. This is what, the 4th time a senior exec has to call people out and tell them to behave on memegen? And it's only getting worse.

Also, considering how mediocre many Google engineers are, I never understood where all that arrogance comes from.

Edit: fix typos.

The level of incivility is more of a side effect of being a large company. Google is also full of professional victims who blow even the minor transgressions (e.g. telling someone they look good at an offsite) completely out of proportion. This makes it seem like there is a lot more incivility than there really is. VPs on memegen is virtue signaling, nothing more, pay no attention.

As to the quality of engineers, I've worked with some AMAZING people at Google, far and away the best I've ever seen in my long career. After a while Google skews your perception as to what it means to be "good", because even the very worst SWEs at Google are well above average in the industry. Google would not be able to function without this, given that it takes a full 3-4 months to just become productive with its internal infra and kinda-sorta figure _some_ things out.

> The worst part about Google for me is the level of incivility. This is what, the 4th time a senior exec has to call people out and tell them to behave on memegen? And it's only getting worse.

What does this mean?

Memegen is actually the best part about Google. It's an internal meme site where people poke fun at the various failings (perceived or real) of Google, each other, and upper management. You can even poke fun at the founders and the CEO, and people often do. Though of course neither the founders nor the CEO actually read it.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com