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Comment by nostrademons | Hacker News Reader

This seems to paint the world in overly broad brush strokes.

There are good teams, and there are bad teams, and there's bound to be a bunch of both in any organization. You have the same problem with startups: there are good ones and bad ones, and it's usually not possible to tell one from the other until you join them.

Why not just try, see what you get, and then you can transfer or quit if you end up on a bad team? Hell, it's a lot easier than joining a bad startup, where you have to get a whole different job to escape from it.

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And from what I hear, it's quite easy to move around teams at Google until you find one that suits you.

Just curious, was this a sarcastic remark?

Nope - I've read before that to move teams at Google, all you need do is say so, and you can move to whichever other project you want to - no questions asked. Not sure how any of the less interesting projects get done, but that's just what I've heard.

this is not true. if a team is "hiring" you can transfer in, but the popular ones are full up, and getting in is very competitive. plus many teams are only in a particular office and if are not willing to move to it, then you are out of luck.

that said, transfers are supported by management and there's a nice internal web app for browsing which teams have reqs and for requesting a transfer.

I agree. It seems as if she's taking whatever she's experienced in Microsoft (which is one company) and applying that to any other company with multidisciplinary teams and a large bureaucratic layer.

She should, at least, give working in Google a chance (maybe a couple years or so?) before writing something like this.

Not to mention she's focusing on one experience within Microsoft. Its a big company and not every team is like that but the blog post would lead you to believe that every team is.

Your statement isn't really refuting her argument though. Sure, any sufficiently inexperienced individual might be wrong, but inexperience does not guarantee wrongness.

Generalizing from a single example often does guarantee that you're missing a whole lot, though. It's almost as bad as generalizing from no examples, even when the single example is a good one. Which it wasn't, in this case.

I am struggling with the decision to accept a job offer at the moment, and I keep hearing this: "why don't you just try it (for a couple of years)". And I don't understand it.

Granted, I could quit after 3 months, but it would probably invoke bad feelings. So I assume for employment I would be looking into at least one year. That is HUGE investment of time. It is 3% of my officially remaining time in the work force (provided I stay healthy, until the official retiring age). Is that really an investment you are supposed to make "just to try things"???

So what's your alternative?

Freelancing, selecting projects with shorter durations. Saving enough money to be able to bootstrap a startup and determine one's own working conditions.

Though I might be unique in feeling uneasy about quitting a job after a short amount of time (like a month). Maybe for other people it is not as much of an issue.

You shouldn't feel uneasy about quitting within 90 days. Most employes have the 90 day provision to fire you if you don't work out, so just use the same logic.

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