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Comment by pclmulqdq | Hacker News Reader

Is this the onion?

In all seriousness, if my bosses at G wanted me to do work when I was there, I would have had to explain to them that I would love to do work, but there are about 10 other people at G whose job it is to make sure that I don't do any work. The only work that gets done at G is done by virtue of herculean efforts from engineers and frontline managers to convince a mountain of other people that their work is a priority. After that, one offhand comment from a VP or an SVP can get your entire project cancelled.

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This sounds like what it was like to work at a Fortine 500 company that’s in a declining business and hadn’t had profits in a while. I know that’s not the position Google is in but if the work environment is like that and the interview process is ridiculous then stock options has to be the only alluring thing.

Huge companies like that make it really hard to feel like anything you do matters.

I know people currently working at Google and have worked at Google. The internal politics they've described is insane. They all agree that there are many hurdles to prevent you from getting any work done. I don't know if it's always been that way, probably not, but I don't see the allure to working there now.

Is there a company that pays well and has a reasonable work life balance where that's not the case? Asking for a friend.

There are plenty of small-to-medium sized companies that will pay well (albeit not FAANG well). I work for one.

HN has a very strange employment bubble: there's an extreme distribution towards FAANG-tier companies, a decently sized tail for startups, and then virtually no representation of the places where 90% of people are actually doing software research and engineering: consultancies, contractors, teams within non-software companies, and so forth. Not all of them are well playing (and some are downright terrible), but plenty are.

The 90% you refer to do not have time to browse HN at work. By the time they get home, they have more urgent things to do. Like cook, eat, wash-up, sleep, etc.

I'm looking to make the jump from FAANG to exactly what you're describing. How do I find one? They don't seem to be easily found on LinkedIn or hacker news jobs boards.

Yeah, they're definitely harder to discover.

I think the first step is probably identifying what exactly you'd like to do: smaller companies generally mean specialized roles (even if the engineers are themselves generalists). From that, there are probably local meetups and conferences in your area that are hosted or attended by smaller companies, consultancies, etc.

Work in a tech role at a non-tech company. You get, like working conditions.

I moved from a financial software company to a government railway. 40% pay increase, heavily unionised, no expectations of working beyond paid hours, serious policies on bullying and harassment. One of the better parts is that because everything is a safety first mindset and engineering takes months to years to plan and implement projects, it severely limits the ability of managers from blowing up in progress projects with dumb ideas on the latest fad they saw in a tedtalk.

They don't pay like Google (most of the time, I hear ML is wild with salaries) but smaller startups under 20 people have, in my experience, excellent pay with excellent work life balance.

Under 20 people you are half a department, if pay is high dont think there would be wlb. Most of these want you onsite almost everyday even though they might say its hybrid.

I think remote work suits small companies best. There are not too many cooks in the kitchen, and meetings aren't overly crowded. That's to say... my experience does not align with your comment, but maybe I'm just lucky.

That isn't even remotely a universal truth. I've been working remote for 14 years and of the companies I've worked for in that time, 2 were hybrid and the rest fully distributed.

ML as in Machine Learning...?

Indeed

Amazon's pretty reasonable really most of the time. Certain teams work people like dogs, and junior engineers are too-often treated like shit. But if you're Sr. SDE or higher, it's usually quite reasonable.

Yeah they are reasonable until you come under the layoff quote and you manager cannot defend your work.

shopify

Can confirm.

Source: am a Shopify engineer

I wouldn't work for Shopify for ethical reasons. They continue to help far-right sites like Breitbart or Daily Wire make their money.

Quote: https://twitter.com/gvwilson/status/1552090373283090432

>Reminder: every single one of the sources cited by the neo-Nazi responsible for the Christchurch massacre had a store on @Shopify, and the company refused to deplatform any of them.

You want to ban these people from exercising their rights? Yeah, I find them unruly and despicable too. Let us lobby up enough support and pass a bill. Let's convince everyone and rally up the entire country to pass a constitutional amendment. This is democracy. What you're seeking isn't that.

You want to bypass public decisions through proxy of corporations without public approval. That's a totalitarian/authoritarian future where a small group of corporate overlords rule general public.

I'm glad Shopify isn't deplatforming entities that haven't been convicted in a court of law of a crime.

The tweet you linked to is doubly funny, since it was in response to Dan Price, who is under investigation for rape and physical abuse. Should Gravity Payments deplatform itself in today's guilt-by-association world?

I think in this case OP isn't referring to a criminal act nor are they speculating to the possible guilt of a crime so of course there's no need for a a court of law to determine the facts.

Presuming t the facts that OP has concerns about are undisputed they're not alleging a crimes. But crimes have never needed to be the basis for boycotting something. Moral opposite has always been sufficient.

You shouldn't base your ethics on what the law is - lots of unethical things are or were legal.

"Not convicted" is not the gold standard of ethics, you know.

And this is how democracy dies.

If you think Breitbart and Daily Wire are far-right, you live in a serious bubble. If anything, both are middle of the road and a lot of conservatives would call them a tad left.

Funny how extremists see other lesser extremists as on the other side

Wow do educate us what you think is far right or far left.

Please share what you think are some examples of far right and far left. I was under the impression that both of these publications are pretty widely perceived to be right wing propaganda.

The litmus test is “would cloudflare take them as a customer?” If the answer is no then it’s a red-blooded American publication, if it’s yes then it’s a commie rag

That's my favourite scene in Office Space!

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