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Comment by emodendroket | Hacker News Reader

It sounds like the generic complaints of everyone who doesn't like their manager ever and frankly I would have thought twice before attaching my name to a broadside that attacks a former manager by name. But hey, what do I know, I never worked at Google.

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While I'd never do that either, I did find it refreshing to read from someone else. It certainly makes this post unique amongst the many "I left Google" diary entries.

Frankly the fact he was willing to include that paragraph probably indicates that there's a few thousand more paragraphs he resisted including...

Even in my “I quit Google” post I was careful to make it impossible for an outsider to determine who I was complaining about, even scrubbing my team info from LinkedIn.

But I think 18 years at Google means the author has plenty of “fuck you” money.

Oh well. Maybe it's about time incompetent people were named and shamed, maybe that would put a stop to failing upwards for people who really shouldn't be there.

Once it becomes acceptable I expect the correlation between people naming and shaming and actual poor performance/bad behaviour to drop drastically.

Proper workers aren't as good at playing politics as those who just focus on politics.

there would at least be some data, probably noisy, gamed, a bad proxy for this signal, but much better than the current empty void littered with courtesy linkedin endorsements

Sign up for Glassdoor, and you will find by-name denunciations of people who work at any company you care to interview for.

It's doubtful.

> But I think 18 years at Google means the author has plenty of “fuck you” money.

And the balls! Dunno whether I read your generic "why I quit Google" essay, but author's post was the first that I liked due to his willingness to throw punches.

You are probably right; I just don't really see what's to be gained by going public with it considering the complaints are pretty inside-baseball and not that interesting to outsiders (I mean, hard to imagine someone thinking "I'm not going to deal with Google because so-and-so's subordinates say they don't understand her strategy").

> I mean, hard to imagine someone thinking "I'm not going to deal with Google because so-and-so's subordinates say they don't understand her strategy"

I'm not quite there, but as a heavy Firebase user who generally loves the product but who has been incredibly frustrated with a lot of the (lack of) direction of new features over the past 4 years or so, reading this post made me think "Ohhh, now it makes sense."

That is, there are basic, presumably easy-to-implement, features that have languished for years in Firebase. Part of me has wanted to go interview with Firebase just so I can get hired to fix some obvious missing feature. Now, granted, it's obviously impossible to pin this directly on this manager, and this is also a Google-wide problem, but I think the author's point is that a lot of this "directionless-ness" is a result of poor middle management.

Once I got inside Google it wasn’t long until I had the “Aha moment” and understood why Google’s new products are in turmoil.

I will certainly not use Dart if a person in charge of its direction doesn't know what they're doing even at a basic level. I can't just blindly hope her team does what's best and doesn't listen to her.

I found myself asking the same questions after reading the post.

You might consider reading the followup post: https://ln.hixie.ch/?start=1700627532&count=1

It suggests that, in spite of his problems with management, the author remains bullish about Flutter (and likely Dart).

It'd be hard to find an org where you couldn't find someone to make similar complaints.

I'm in one. This is a pretty specific dressing down from a senior engineer. It's disturbing, and consistent with Google's output

The Dart team certainly has vision!

The VP above might not, but who cares...

It’s just venting. A person in the author’s position must feel that the mediocre management robbed them of a core part of their identity.

You are implying that every manager is competent and every criticism from a subordinate is baseless.

Not at all. This is a false dichotomy

Keeping quiet about perceived problems is exactly the kind of toxic political lack of transparency that Ian is calling out here.

How much is it really doing if you’re making the criticism after you left?

Infinitely more than never talking about it, at the very least. It definitely will empower others to talk about it by validating their perceptions and concerns.

I would guess he's been advocating for this for years before he left.

I would never name names but I don’t have 18 years of Google equity. I suspect he didn’t have any non-disparagement clauses to sign.

A 18-year veteran like OP shouldn't be complaining about their manager's lack of vision ; they should have realised by now that it's also their job to enact the vision. He was probably paid too much to behave as a passenger.

You have no idea what you are talking about. Hixie has enough vision and is loved by everyone. It's not his job to manage a clueless manager.

Any vision covering firebase, flutter, dart and go, etc. doesn't make sense.

It would take close to a decade to align these products.

My impression is that this is a place to hang these products on the org-tree. IMO the individual teams appear to have LOTS of vision!

The VP in question is unnecessary (IMO).

Who exactly at Google isn't a passenger? Jeff Dean? There aren't many pilots there.

What is a problem with being an IC?

Nothing wrong with being an IC. A senior IC role includes some responsibility for this sort of thing, that's most of what makes it senior...

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