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Comment by johan_larson | Hacker News Reader

I left Google after three years as an SDE because I had really really had enough of my bosses, I wasn't promoted when I figured I deserved it, and a project that meant a lot to me wasn't getting the staffing it needed to succeed.

I left for a more senior position at a smaller, less prestigious software company, though I've moved again since. Right now I'm working remotely from Toronto for a Silicon Valley start-up.

Ultimately, I wish I had approached working for Google a bit differently. I thought it was sort of an overgrown startup, and you were supposed to look for something that needed doing and do it. No. Google is a large highly structured company with a distinctly process-oriented culture. It's a place where you do what you are told. That famous proverb about Japanese nails absolutely applies. I eventually figured that out, but by then it was too late.

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My experience with Google has been the opposite, for what it's worth. I've been rewarded for, as an IC SWE, starting conversations with random people across the entire company to make things happen, and then executing on it. I even presented my launch at I/O this past May. I think it helps that I'm on a smaller team. So from my experience, it still very much seems like a "look for something that needs doing and do it" kind of place. Maybe too much freedom is granted, in that a lot of "boring" things are languishing that shouldn't be simply because no one is interested in (or rewarded for) doing them.

It seems to depend a lot on your team and your manager. It's the first place I've worked where the vibe is: "you're clever: find something useful to do" from my very first day.

Yes, it matters a lot. I got some great advice from a friend who was already working at a big-ish tech company (Dropbox) when I joined Google. She said the #1 concern when picking a team was to find a manager I'd get along with -- that that's more important than anything else. And it was good advice. Managers set the tone for the entire team, and I'd rather be on a friendly, collaborative, supportive team doing a meh project than be on a dysfunctional team working on something "important". Studies have shown that the #1 factor causing job dissatisfaction is having a poor relationship with your manager, and then #2 is having a poor relationship with your peers.

Yes, this matches my experience as well. I've been at Google 6 years now in various SWE roles. I can count the number of times I've been directly asked to do something by anyone in my management chain on one hand.

What are examples of things you took initiative on (without violating NDA or revealing personal details?) Are we talking about new major products/features? Did you join with past experience/at a senior level? What org/product area?

It's hard to explain, not because of NDA but because of context specific things. Almost everything I do is open source, but can't fit into a comment.

My only advice to people at BigCo is to make sure you have a good reason for doing whatever it is you're doing. Your boss telling you to do something is not always a good reason to do it.

And make sure you have some kind of metrics that show your work is important. If you're told to do something that you don't think is important, make sure you have metrics showing that your work is more important and do that.

So say my boss assigns me a task of questionable value. Should I really question it having been there for a few months, or would they take it as I don't trust their judgement?

I just started recently and was considering leaving for a startup, but have decided to stay and see if it gets better (I have only been at BigCo for few months). Mainly I feel like I'm not really needed, and it's a long existing and complex system so I can't propose some project of my own that easily. Many changes require multiple teams input etc. Feels slow.

Thanks for the advice, I will definitely keep it in mind.

I am not the OP, but IMO when you have been at the job for only a few months telling the boss that he is wrong can provide some seriously negative return. You may be right but not understood or listened to or you may be wrong (e.g., because you are not aware of something they take for granted, etc.) and reinforce the "fresh kid who needs a lot of handholding" perception.

I would either build credibility at your local team first (seems slow given the setup you describe) or find another group that is more dynamic. Look for energetic team leads that run impactful projects, talk to them (face to face) and ask what would it take to join their team. My 2c. Good luck

If your boss tells you to do something, you should do it. "Make your boss happy" is generally the way to thrive in a hierarchy, whatever the stated principles of the organization or how they formally evaluate employees. If your boss is happy with you, it will all turn out ok; if your boss isn't happy with you, nothing will save you in the end.

I understand the initial project you're assigned may not seem terribly important. But that's because you're new and you don't really know how things work yet, so they can't assign you anything really complicated. Do the initial not-quite-busywork successfully, and more important and interesting work will come along.

If you've only been there for a few months, how do you even know that the task is of questionable value? I'd take it as a very bad sign if someone who's still relatively new to the team thinks they know better than people who've been doing this stuff for years. Trust that your teammates know what they're doing, and if they really truly don't (which is possible), find a better team.

It took me around two years in to start feeling comfortable setting direction and priorities at a team-wide level. Of course, I was making my opinion heard long before that, but it was just that, an opinion.

At only a few months in you're still an unproven quantity. Don't expect to be getting the most important projects just yet. Take whatever you are given and knock it out of the park.

Previous largeish tasks were found to be of questionable value after they were completed, by other mgrs.

I like my team and manager, I just don't think they have a lot of time for me or time to think about what I'm assigned and whether it's worth doing. Lots of new ppl on the team recently. It's also possible that I'm just not asking enough questions. I think it is a bit of both.

Yes! Don't necessarily question it and get into an argument. But both you and your manager have a different set of context and view on what's really important to the team and organization. Neither of you is necessarily more correct then the other.

If it turns out your manager was right (which is likely given you've only been there a few months), you'll at least get more context to understand why. You can use that context next time

Again, appreciate the time taken to respond. I'll do my best to make this work out, this was my dream job before I joined.

I recently joined a FANG and this is something that causes me a lot of anxiety. Our repos are hundreds of thousands of lines of code; how on earth can I, as a new hire, decide unilaterally that something needs to be added or reworked? I'm not at a startup, and the company's mission is decided at a level far above my paygrade. I need some degree of management to know what to do.

I'm also not a very social person, and randomly chatting with people around the company for project ideas is something that I'm seemingly incapable of doing.

Will this cause me to fail at my job? How do I learn to be more proactive with these kinds of things?

It sounds like you're trying to self-discover initiative. Initiative is not a first-class thing of its own; it's an outcome of, for example, staring at an inefficiency until you can't stop twitching.

But (to use my example) "efficiency" is relative. It requires a good mental model of what fits into what and how. So, to solve for that, you'd focus on absorption, and taking-in as much of the environment you can in as much detail as you can - oh, and focus on the most insignificant things the most. (The idea is to stretch your attention span and make it grow.) Endeavor to absorb at the same rate on day 100 that you do on day 1 (ie, replicating the way you react when things are new/interesting). Not perfectly achievable (I don't think), but that's the approach I've used to get my brain going in the right direction.

As for sociability, that's something that needs to be practiced in its own right to get stronger, like attention span. A bit like learning to use a new tool, you can't immediately be fast at it without some initial purpose-less practice. (Always fun to bootstrap those kinds of things...)

At a very high level you're wanting management, but really you're expecting someone else to solve your problems for you. These companies don't work like that. You have to find a problem and hammer it down.

If necessary (but only as a last resort) spend an hour each day increasing test coverage. That is just something you can do that will probably also yield further ideas.

Second, if you're at google, get a mentor. They probably have an internal tool for that, maybe even something hr-like.

> That famous proverb about Japanese nails absolutely applies.

"The nail that sticks out gets hammered down."

I'm guessing there are some "nail dimensions" that get hammered down, and some that are encouraged. (There are some anomalous characteristics that are accepted or incentivized, and some that are penalized.) I'm curious, could you (or someone in this thread working at google) help me understand which these are? Which weird character traits are ok, and which are not?

I’m going to make a guess here, but based on my experience of this type of culture at other organizations, weird character traits that are okay = anything unusual done by the very senior, generally-accepted-company-success-story people. So if you started a successful spin-off that Google funds and makes a ton of money from, then your penchant for rollerblading around the building is cute and HR smile when describing it to interviewees. However if you are one of the other 99.9% then get those damn things off your feet, your going to hurt someone.

Be transgendered. Works for me.

I love that proverb, but look at the flip side, the nail that sticks out gets pulled out and discarded....

Unless it's a coat hook. The lesson I think is if you're going to stick out, be useful.

The Chinese equivalent: the quacking duck gets shot.

That's brutal.

I was thinking - "Everything looks like to nail to someone who has a hammer"

>>I had really really had enough of my bosses

Its curious how these companies claim they are totally different or even unique but just turn out to be the very same.

>>I wasn't promoted when I figured I deserved it

This is again one of those large company political things. Year long promotion packet building, lobbying your work with promotion committees, getting a willing boss, and doing other routine political ground work to set you up for one.

Another big thing in these companies, every one joining has to go through a very arduous interviewing process, preparation for which can last weeks to months. So you have rockstars full in all teams, or at-least they like of themselves that way.

Ultimately regardless whatever people might say about surrounding yourself with smart people, its never generally a great idea to surround yourself with smart competitors in a pyramid hierarchy.

Big companies are all this way, people don't realize it before they work in one - you are just a cog.

Also, in a big company, culture is not homogeneous. Your direct manager and team will create their culture, with mild influence from the surrounding corporation.

Definitely this. I'm in a large org at a large company and there are drastic differences between groups because of managers. Simply changing groups can completely change your experience from a toxic team to a great one or vice versa.

If a smaller company has a toxic culture or you have a toxic manager you may have no choice but to leave.

Bad managers are everywhere!

Just to add to this, a good manager can insulate a team from problems "outside" that team, but there's a balance. Too much insulation and you'll disappear from everyone else's view (no more funding for you!), not enough and you'll become a dumping ground for people/problems/projects.

> This is again one of those large company political things. Year long promotion packet building, lobbying your work with promotion committees, getting a willing boss, and doing other routine political ground work to set you up for one.

Honestly, I don't care enough about getting promoted to go through that whole rigmarole, nor would I quit a job over having to deal with that in order to get promoted.

Of course, that's also probably why I don't work at a FAANG and never will.

> Honestly, I don't care enough about getting promoted to go through that whole rigmarole, nor would I quit a job over having to deal with that in order to get promoted.

Of course, that's also probably why I don't work at a FAANG and never will.

I don't think you should let that stop you. I work at Google and don't care about promotion. I expect that I will get it sooner or later but really don't care if I do or not. I get paid enough to live a decent life already so I prefer having the freedom to do what I think matters as opposed to what's good for my career since sadly those don't align as much as they should.

Here here, why require a raise if you're earning 250k+ a year? That's more than 99.9% of non-execs in most companies.

that's exactly what i thought -- getting a "promotion packet" is absurd. your promotion packet should be the job you have been doing all year long.

then again, i hate office politics and i cannot see myself getting to close to this kind of big-company.

> that's exactly what i thought -- getting a "promotion packet" is absurd. your promotion packet should be the job you have been doing all year long.

I'm guessing you don't know how the process works? I'd like to give a summary so you have more context. Apologies if that's incorrect.

Your promotion is decided by a promotion committee, who likely do not know you or what you do. This is done in an attempt to make promotions fair and objective across the company.

That being the case, you need a promotion packet to describe what you've done to people who are basically strangers.

Don't get me wrong, the process has many issues but I don't think it's fair to assess them without understanding their purposes and I don't think anyone I've seen who complains about it has been able to come up with something better.

Keep in mind that at many companies the promotion isn't to manager but to the next class of engineering ie engineer I to engineer II. This is how you increase your pay. Also if you don't get promoted within a certain amount of time, some companies will manage you out

> It's a place where you do what you are told

In my career experience, that has more to do with understanding what really needs to be done, and what brings value to the company.

I'm sure I've made some junior engineers feel that way after they tried to pull me into a long argument about brace styles, or after they wanted to refactor years of working code to use their favorite framework.

> I left Google after three years as an SDE

Were you on a 4 year vest schedule for your stock grant at Google? If so, did you leave some money on the table?

Google gives equity refreshes once per year, so you always have unvested stock. They try to design comp to avoid situations where your total pay suddenly drops 4 years after your initial offer package fully vests.

I don't remember, exactly. I think we had a one-year cliff at the time and then quarterly accrual. I definitely took a pay cut when I left, though.

Isn't it standard that grants are renewed yearly? If so you'll always be "leaving money on the table" (but then if you switch company you'd probably get a new grant, right?)

Nothing is "standard". I've never talked to a startup that offered an equity refresh like GOOG does.

Why wouldn't companies offer an equity refresh? I view equity as part of my compensation. So if my compensation dropped after 4 years I'd consider it a paycut and start looking for a new job.

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