Comment by owyn | Hacker News Reader

Comment by owyn | Hacker News Reader

Parent Full thread

I don't think you can run a 3000 person ~1B/y company like a startup. It's one thing if there are make or break projects at a bigger company that people sign up for explicitly, but it's not scalable. Not everybody can work at that pace and people who can't or won't are just as valuable (perhaps even more so) over the long haul. You have to pace yourself for the long term and put in a reward structure to match that goal. Look at Apple vs a place like Zynga and think about who is more likely to be around in 5 years...

Also, I've seen that 4-5 years is about how much time engineers are willing to put into a startup company before they want some kind of a cash out : liquidity : burn your options in a barrel at burning man situation. If you think about the expected half-life of a silicon valley engineering career, you can probably do 2 or 3 of those before you are burned out entirely or prefer to work at a non insane company. Founders are probably not as aware of this because they naturally are 100% invested, but you have to surround yourself with quality employees who won't put up with your bullshit forever.

"Look at Apple vs a place like Zynga..."

Bad example. The folks I know at Apple are ridiculously overworked. I've got a cousin who works on FileMaker that's been putting in 12+ hour days and weekends for the last year. I've got a friend who works on iMessage for the iPhone, and his roommates never see him at home unless they specifically arrange a social event with him.

I think that if you want a company in Silicon Valley with decent work/life balance, it'd probably be Microsoft, Adobe, Cisco, or one of the other last-generation giants. Google depends on your team; there're parts of Infrastructure, Apps, etc. that work reasonable hours with little deadline pressure, but people on the money teams (Search, Ads, Android, Doodles) are often there at all hours because they set very ambitious and complex goals for themselves. Facebook has a reputation for long hours and weekend hackathons. Yahoo is apparently very variable: some folks are putting in 12-14 hour days and still not getting all their work done, while others work for like 2-3 hours and spend the rest of the day on Facebook. Apple I already mentioned.

Good point, I have no first hand knowledge of working at Apple. I have worked at some smaller companies (and that's where I am now) that do have a good work/life balance but nobody would recognize those names so I just picked one. Definitely appreciate the insight though. I do occasionally contemplate working at a bigger company, and it's good to think about all the trade-offs. It's also interesting to think about the culture of a company, how that grows and evolves, and how that matches your own goals and ideals. It's not just about the money. I do think it's possible to do good work and be happy at a small/medium sized company that has a pretty cool product but isn't going to be the "next xyz".

Apple gets away with it because they have a fantastic brand, and produce widely admired products. If people will tattoo your logo to themselves, you can probably get them to pitch in a few extra hours. If you tell them the product they are contributing to will be a cultural icon for years, they'll work weekends.

Tobacco companies and casinos look after their staff, because they know their staff are in it for the pay and conditions.

I'm not saying that Zygna is a bad company, but it's not a great one, given the money it's making. The people in it are not there to make a difference, they want a fat paycheque, a big exit, or a relaxed working environment.

Doodles?

Y'know those occasionally interactive bits of artwork on the front page?

I think he was referring to the mention that doodles are part of the money team, which sounds strange

Makes some sense - highly visible, probably short and unmovable deadlines. Just a different meaning of "money".

They make money from doodles??

They make happy users from Doodles. With Google's business model, happy users can be trivially converted into money.

(Technically, Google doesn't make money from Search or Android either, but they get happy users from them too, which can be trivially converted into money.)

Sorry I wasn't clear, yes I did mean to ask if Doodles were as high-pressure/high-reward an area as Ads and Android

Generally, yes. The challenges with doodles are:

1.) Absolute hard deadlines. Robert Bunsen's 200th birthday only comes around once; if you miss it, you missed it, and the doodle gets canceled.

2.) Big responsibility. You're the gatekeeper to Google's front door; if you screw up, a billion or so people will know it fairly soon.

3.) Ambitious quality standards, also because it's Google's front door. Some of the doodles are as big as ordinary projects at Google.

And on the plus side, your work is up on perhaps the most visited page on the Internet, and you have something really cool to talk about at parties. Plus the doodle team itself is really fun to work with and you have a lot of artistic latitude. It's probably one of the more startup-like areas in Google.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com