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Comment by rainyMammoth | Hacker News Reader

> Don't get me wrong. Google is still the best workplace with top notch pay, but as it's got big, it's also morphed into a typical big corporation with typical corporate politics.

Sorry but I cannot stand that level of internal koolaid. I guess you also think that Google got the "smartest" people? There are literally thousands of companies working on problems way more interesting and with more stakes and upsides for humanity than Google and the adtech industry. I would qualify all of those companies as "better place to work" than Google. It is maybe the best place to work if you have no sense of ethics, want to take it easy, work 9 to 5 and maximize your money.

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Google throws away obscene amounts of money on non-adtech things. Some of those are pretty interesting and useful for humanity.

You can say, well, those don't count, because Google isn't making money from them! But if you take that route, you also have to exclude all the startups working on "interesting" problems that don't and won't make money. You're left with a very small set of companies. I wouldn't be surprised if it's the null set.

I'd say a fair assessment is a random team at Google is as likely to be doing something interesting and beneficial as a team at a random startup (which is to say, unlikely but possible). At Google, though, you're going to have both better average financial outcomes and lower risk.

Google is an ad company with delusions of grandure.

It's nothing more, until it finds a way to turn a profit on its other ventures. (Just like those startups - realistically, until they turn a profit, they're just in the exploratory stage.)

Bell labs? Xerox PARC?

In some ways, they could be not only a driver of innovation, but profit off of it. For instance, the initial idea of spearheading Waymo makes sense to me: self-driving cars lead to more search queries and YouTube video views when someone is in transit. They didn’t need to own this technology though and should have sold most of the equity last year to GM or Ford as the OEMs moved into the space. Verily makes more sense to me, but it’s goal should be specialized cloud infrastructure for healthcare.

I was under the impression that Youtube, G-suite, Cloud Platform, and hardware were all quite profitable. Not to the same degree as ads maybe, but they would all be considered successful if they were standalone businesses.

Calling google just an ad company is ignoring a large amount of reality.

Youtube is an ads delivery channel.

afaik, hardware is nowhere near close to profitable once you add the costs of Android. Android is an ads delivery channel and a defense against ios usurping an ads delivery channel.

You have a point about gsuite and gcp.

> "At Google, though, you're going to have both better average financial outcomes and lower risk."

this is a classic misaligned incentive problem though. getting more pay for lower risk just makes the google workers risk-averse, so their success rate will be lower than startup founders who put more on the line (and who are therefore incentivized to make tougher decisions faster/earlier). a former founder-turned-googler friend admitted as much to me in casual conversation.

Likely true. The average worker, though, doesn't want exposure to risk. The risk is almost purely downside for the average worker. Even "making tougher decisions faster and earlier" is a pretty shitty deal for a worker, in that they're going to be cast aside on a whim. And startups come with little to no upside risk to compensate for the downside risk (I say this as someone who's been bitten by shitty startup shenanigans).

Probably if Google were broken up we'd see many more and more successful startups, for reasons of funding and talent (and the end of the tendency for Google to make some halting inroad into a niche only to abandon it because of internal politics). That doesn't translate into a better experience for workers though.

> It is maybe the best place to work if you have no sense of ethics, want to take it easy, work 9 to 5 and maximize your money.

Hey, that's me to a t. Google is not actually that great for that. The pay is average and they make too much of a song and dance about helping people, even if you're working on ML used to ferret out dissidents in China.

The good companies for 9 to 5 casual evil are small >50 man shops which require security clearance to work at.

>The good companies for 9 to 5 casual evil are small >50 man shops which require security clearance to work at.

Where do I sign up?

(Edit: this is a serious question.)

(Second edit: Mencius.)

You need to know a guy, I met mine when I was running a 3d printing course for an astronomy group of all things.

I'll be on the lookout, but quite frankly I despair. I've always wanted to be in a spooky line of work. Oh well.

If I were in a spooky business, I'd never hire somebody who's too eager to work in this line of work. Too easy to hire a Snowden this way. And I have no idea how they solve this problem... must be tough to be a spook.

Valid point. To clarify, it was hyperbole, as I got (rightly or wrongly) a more "military" vibe. And in my highly uninformed opinion, I'd feel much less comfortable in close quarters with actual spook-dom than I would around high-end military establishment people. Maybe I'm wrong. I'd probably take upper six figures to warm a seat for either, though. Shake the hand of the devil, sell your soul on the dotted line.

Get in touch?

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LOL at the GPG swarm down below. I hate the Internet, I regret posting my own GPG message, and I'd delete it if I could.

Pay is well above average. Regardless of what HN spews, Google foundationally made search and mobile more accessible around the world. I don't know what "great" company you work for but it's hard to top that for impact.

Yes Google did make search and mobile more accessible while helping itself to a big pile of money. Stop pretending that they did it out of the goodness of their hearts. Hate to break it to you but Google is just like any other business.

Oh so ? What's wrong with earning money ? What's wrong with having good impact while making money. That is what sustains impact and not a flash in the pan. Get off your high horse and respect what they have achieved. Businesses won't survive without money. HN's favorite browser Firefox gets a 300 million donation from Google. Without this Mozilla will slowly die. Of course you wouldn't mention this. Google money is now against your narrative right ? Also Google pulled out of the DoD contracts. Hate to break it to you none of your other businesses had the balls or people to do that.

Google only donates to Firefox so Chrome is less obviously a monopoly in the browser space (remember Microsoft and IE)

Google just recently said they're ready to talk business with did again. They said Maven employee upset was just a one time thing.

Lol you guys will never be happy. The Firefox money has been going for a while now. If they help someone "oh this is to divert attention". If they don't help someone "Google is too big and doesn't care ".

How on Earth is that a criticism?

> Pay is well above average

Depends on what you mean by average. When I talked to google I was looking at L5 for just over 300k with stock and bonus. In Evil Inc I was making well over over 500k all cash for the same job description.

Your location / interviews must have not been favorable. Most L5s pull more than that. Also the equity refreshes are far greater than other companies.

I have no idea. The whole process was Kafkaesque. I'd get someone calling me at 10pm asking if I'm available the next day, then telling me someone will call and confirm only for no one to follow up. Then the whole thing starts up the week after again.

300k is average?

That’s more than the ceiling for CEOs of public companies in my country.

Tech salaries in the US really seem out of proportions.

If you value your work little, expect to be paid little.

I see no reason why I should get paid less than a CEO, when most of their job is similar to that of a kindergarten teacher.

It also is much more than most politicians and ministers. Especially the latter are typically way more influential imo.

Kickbacks, future speaking appointments (for decades afterwards), etc probably raise the "official" salary for various politicians and ministers.

That's more like the low end for L5, honestly. And 500k is the high end, for a top performer L5.

What's Evil Inc.?

If I had to guess, Goldman Sachs

There are also huge federal contractors (defense, etc.) that the average consumer can't name because they aren't on anything the public comes in contact with.

Yeah, but their total comp is shit compared to the tech industry.

It depends on whether you restrict "tech" to FAANG/bay area. There are tech companies that pay ~40K for entry level programmer/analyst positions that said contractors pay $80+, or did ~5 years ago.

Well said. I worked at Google on Adtech. I have decades of experience and it was the most meaningless, uninteresting job I ever had. All everyone cared about was perf/promotion and their gsus. I also took a pay cut (total comp, yes) to join, thinking the work would be interesting and people worth it. The last year their was miserable

Sure there are great people and projects but anybody claiming any of them would exist without the drudgery and 90% revenue stream of “adtech” have their blinders on. And fwiw, if all one cares about us pay, Facebook pays MUCH much more.

So somebody likes the workplace they work at. No need to be all up in arms against it. There are certainly places as good or better than google, and there are certainly people that like it at Google anyway. There's tons of ethical work you can do at Google, not everybody works for Project Dragonfly. Before you ask, no, I don't work for Google, don't want work for Google, never interviewed to work for Google, and don't particularly like Google. But that's not the reason to hate all people for whom it works.

If you know names of those better workplaces, I'm all ears.

Over 16 years I've worked at only four companies, but one of them was Google, and it was honestly my least favorite.

Creature comforts: I have an actual cubicle with >2x the space. Excellent meals are still provided, but now lines are <1 min. I can always find a parking space. I can always find a bathroom stall.

Engineering culture: No more promo or perf review nonsense. There's none of the internal competition / pressure that I felt every day at Google. The org and leadership has vastly less churn. The place is dead at 5:15pm. And the people I work with are incredibly smart.

In terms of company: my new employer is not creepy. My grandmother understands what I work on.

Do follow your heart, but I'm so happy I left.

What "pressure" you feel is entirely up to you. Most managers at Google don't micro manage you.

But are you expected to exceed expectations? :)

You do your best on your projects. No one thinks day to day how their perf will be. What a stupid way to live.

Definitely happens at other FAANGs.

I won’t ask what company you’re at, but have you noticed a correlation between size of company and your happiness? Is this new Valhalla a significant smaller organization than Google?

Sounds like Netflix and I think you’re on point that the model might be great but won’t scale to anything resembling google size

Always interesting to hear these counterpoints. I've never worked at Google, but reading internet comments and such you get the impression that most people consider it some ideal workplace (though to be fair, many people selling you this fantasy are also trying to sell you their Google interview prep courses). Yet when I meet Googlers/ex-Googlers in real life, I never got that same impression. Seems like any other corporate job (I'm personally pretty jaded from corporate), just more prestige and maybe more pay. Also it seems like one's experience will vary drastically depending on what team they get placed on (eg. Google X vs. some internal tool).

"The best" is pretty subjective based on what one is looking for in a job. Not everyone gels with all company cultures.

It's great that you like working for Google and have found a good fit.

Some features I like in workplace culture:

- Empowering the "builders" and developers to have autonomy and guide how product development cycles are defined.

- Top cover provided by managers - managing expectations from stake holders

- Overall non-toxic environment

- Quality work and product vision

I automatically replace that with "the best place to work (for me) I know of". Someone who isn't into software or hardware but loves dancing might be very bored at Google, someone who loves animals might be happier as a vet, and people who enjoy organizing information and making it accessible to humans will probably be better off as a librarian, and so on.

Woahhhh there, don't fall off that horse! You might hurt yourself from a height so high.

Your qualification of what makes a company's problems more interesting or beneficial to humanity is certainly debatable, but if you think people at Google are "taking it easy" talentless slobs you are quite objectively wrong

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