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Comment by simmanian | Hacker News Reader

I don't work at Google (and I don't agree with some of the things the company's decided to do) but have many friends who enjoy working there. From what I hear, Google has an organizational structure that is very favorable for regular engineers. Once you're hired and you put in around a year of work in a team, it's almost trivial to find another team. Engineers also directly evaluate managers and I've heard stories of mid to high level managers crying in bathrooms because of poor reviews from their reports. These factors combine to create an environment where teams are actively working to make engineers happy and content. Compared to many companies where managers make a lot of decisions in a room with no feedback given to or received from engineers, it's heck of a lot better.

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>I've heard stories of mid to high level managers crying in bathrooms because of poor reviews from their reports. These factors combine to create an environment where teams are actively working to make engineers happy and content.

Honestly this sounds like a thought experiment.

Do you have any ethical hangups about entering an environment where falling out of your favor can leave someone stress-crying in their place of work and/or about their livelihood.

If so, how much money would it take for you to join the system anyway?

How long would you stay in such a system if you found yourself already in one?

Back in the real world, in a business context, it sounds like an abusive workplace and an untenable system. Like, that obviously can't last forever.

Perhaps using the crying manager example was a bad idea on my part. What I can stand behind is having an org structure that encourages managers and execs to treat their employees well. It sounds like Google has done a better job than most. I'm sure there are managers and engineers crying in private in every big company out there. What I'm trying to say is even though a lot of people like to assume that people work for Google and stay there just for the money, Google probably does some things very well to keep all the talent despite the negative press it gets. And I think a major factor is how empowered a "regular" engineer feels in the company. It sounds like a step up from many other companies in that regard.

There are at least two problems with this:

- "I'm sure there are managers and engineers crying in private in every big company out there": You're not excusing google here, just expanding the range of companies whose apparent behavior is mortifying a couple of people in this thread.

- "Google probably does some things very well to keep all the talent despite the negative press it gets.": probably. They probably do a lot of a/b testing to dial in the compensation/retention ratio they're looking for, or maybe they just heap rewards onto engineers because they can afford it. Be that as it may, some people think that what google's doing is detrimental to society, or at least the problems are bigger than a salary or even a total compensation package should make up for.

I don't see any problem because I agree with what you said. Work shouldn't be so stressful that you cry in private. Google should do more "good" for the world.

I still think Google stands as an attractive workplace for reasons that are not just compensation and resume boost, though.

> some people think that what google's doing is detrimental to society

Is this referring to how they creepily track people, or are they doing worse things which I’m not aware of?

At some other companies it’s the engineers crying in the bathroom, just sayin

That there are even stories about such things makes me want to stay far, far away from there.

> I've heard stories of mid to high level managers crying in bathrooms because of poor reviews from their reports.

Is this your idea of an engineering nirvana? Does engineering happiness have to come at the expense of manager happiness?

It's not quite my idea of an engineering nirvana, no. I'm not sure where you got that impression.

Compared to many companies where managers make a lot of decisions in a room with no feedback given to or received from engineers, it's heck of a lot better.

A very substantial point actually.

Compared to many companies where managers make a lot of decisions in a room with no feedback given to or received from engineers, it's heck of a lot better.

I'm not so sure this is better. I was an individual contributor for over ten years until I became a manager a couple of years ago, so I've seen both sides of this coin. My experience has been that typically engineers aren't interested in understanding all the non-technical things that are necessarily part of the decision making process, or worse think of these things as beneath them, asinine, or "easy". Much of the feedback from engineers is negative, not useful due to an overly narrow focus on specific tech stacks or solutions, or lacking context. Sometimes the context isn't there because of poor management decisions to not be transparent but often it's not there because the engineers' bias results in them not seeking it out. Very few things are black-and-white, and certainly it's better to include engineers' in the decision making process at some level, but that's a two way street--maybe engineers could work a little harder to overcome their own erroneous biases.

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