Google's once happy offices feel the chill of layoffs
nytimes.com
nytimes.com
Side note: it was RTO mandates that killed this.
But I digress. It made me wonder: is this fun, experimenting, creative, flexible environment one that pops up in general when all companies first form and the business realities of non-unlimited funding haven't caught up with the leadership yet? Is it something that hits all companies for a while when the economy is on an upward trend (as I attested to in my own company)? Have people found pockets of this kind of environment, even in the worst of times?
I'm trying to figure out when and where it exists so I can find it again. I'd never experienced it until covid, and now that I have, I want it back, and for the first time, I'm willing to do something major to get it because I know now what it feels like. It feels like Star Trek Generations, where that guy is trying to do whatever he can to get back on the nexus (except I'm not trying to destroy a planet).
Some static size organizations such as militaries or professional partnerships try to escape this trap with an "up or out" policy that systematically terminates the lowest performers at each level every year in order to open up more opportunities for promotion. This works to an extent, but causes other dysfunctions and probably wouldn't work in most tech companies.
And maybe we can be honest with ourselves that Wall Street always wins in the long run.
This isn't to justify the current state of advertising, but rather to express skepticism that dismantling an industry will lead talented individuals to willingly accept a significant reduction in their salary to go work on unlucrative-but-exciting frontiers.
My choices would be very different if I didn't think I was more or less on my own.
Yes, there is really another option, because most people don't even have the option of taking Google-level compensation.
Indeed, it's very likely that working as a software engineer for less than BigCo compensation will still put you ahead financially of most people.
"How is it an option to live like 99% of the people actually do live?" seems like a very strange idea to me.
Medicaid covers the cost of nursing homes, and it's not necessarily an advantage to have money saved just for that, because they'll just take the money anyway. Some people try to give away their assets to their families beforehand so that Medicaid will cover the costs, which is a legal no-no.
> Just because it’s possible
This is an understatement, when the subject is how 99% of the people live.
Of course it can be great to be in the top 1%, but it's not "unreasonable" to be outside the top 1%.
I do not want to end up in a Medicaid paid for nursing home or family home.
Even the stories of her residents coming from other expensive family homes were horrifying.
Elder care is horrifying.
People die in pain all the time from neglect and incompetence. People who came to her were regularly on their way to a painful death and she brought them back by just not being an idiot and putting in some effort.
Broken bones and many other conditions went undiagnosed or improperly diagnosed/treated. Doctors prescribing medication after medication to deal with the side effects of the medications they already prescribed that weren’t needed in the first place. Dosages all over the map that are inappropriate for someone in the given age and condition.
You better hope you keep your brain to manage your own medical care or have someone who can do it for you.
You just made my point for me. The money you've saved won't actually "reduce tail risk".
To the contrary, your best strategy for that is to focus on your family rather than on your job, to ensure that there's someone on the tail end who cares enough about you to take care of you if you can no longer take care of yourself.
You can live just fine -- hell, still be in a top income percentile -- on half of what a well compensated big tech SWE gets in their total comp package. But just as software expands to fill the hardware available, so do lifestyles expand to fit the budget available.
So you might need to move to a cheaper house, apartment. Take fewer vacations. Lower your savings rate. You might even need to -- shudder -- budget and plan your spending in advance.
Even if you come out the other side still comfortable and financially stable and working an interesting, rewarding job, it's still a whole thing, a stressful transformation that takes a large investment of time and energy to achieve.
Unless you're born with a silver spoon in your mouth, I wouldn't call it a "transformation". I would call it "normal". If there's a transformation, it's from a person who has to be concerned about budgets to a person who makes so much money that they don't need to care.
I guess I'm just "lucky" that I've never had BigCo compensation, so I don't have to worry about the stressful transformation.
We're not playing "who has it worse" here; I'm not asking you to shed tears for the poor SWEs going from mid-six-figures to low-six-figures.
I'm telling you that changing jobs is already stressful, and very few people are going to chose even more stress by moving houses or cities, etc, over just getting another soulless corporate job that pays well enough to make everything go back to normal, if they're given the option.
The big tech companies do that too, which is kind of the point of the submitted article.
> We're not playing "who has it worse" here
That wasn't my point. My dispute was with "I also see it as the only logical outcome" and "In a country with not much of a social safety net and runaway medical/elder care costs is there really another option?"
> very few people are going to chose even more stress by moving houses or cities
It should be noted that living in Silicon Valley is obscenely expensive, and you could buy a much bigger and better house for much less money in most other areas of the country. And lately I've heard constant complaints about San Francisco going downhill, yadda yadda. (This is also related to the issue of WFH vs. RTO.)
> over just getting another soulless corporate job that pays well enough to make everything go back to normal
You're conflating two different issues here. One, which you explicitly mention, is changing jobs, but the other, left implicit, is getting the soulless corporate job in the first place.
Of course I'd acknowledge that someone who strove to obtain and took a soulless corporate job is likely to take another one. But I think it says something about their personal values that they voluntarily entered that category of business, knowing what we know about it, and given other options. Did they not already "sell out"?
We use the language of conflict and courage in making moral choices for a reason, it is an acknowledgement of the real costs, the allure of doing the remunerative thing. You won't go to jail or be ostracized for being a coward and building killing machines because it pays well. But you should not lie to yourself about there being a justification other than cowardice.
Almost no one actually gets to choose comfort over the safety of others, most people get neither. The few of us who have this choice and choose their own benefit deserve at least our contempt.
I suspect this is well understood by the forces that shape social structure in the U.S., and that the current state of affairs is largely by design.
Let's be super explicit here: you're arguing that risk reduction is your top priority, above any moral or ethical concerns. (And that risk reduction requires maximizing compensation.)
Can't really fault ya, but yeah, there is another option.
That's why you don't have public health system, or maternity leave, or you have high student debt. To take way your freedom and power where to work.
But a lot of people did not want to work for a big company, like Microsoft, and open source was a much more heralded movement.
Wow was I wrong.
So current tech gens are making a killer salary as early and often as possible are making the wise choice. I do also thing the class of grads who used to go to investment banking and consulting now go to tech, and they were always “mercenaries”.
My experience is that individuals with a passion and aptitude for such work are likely already engaged in those fields, rather than in adtech.
My main takeaway is that voting (and organizing votes) really matters a lot.
The US using global violence to serve its own interests is effective! You may selfishly and amorally support this because of its benefits to you. It's not consistent to claim that this opposes "illiberalism and authoritarianism" when during the last century the US has overthrown more liberal democracies in favor of despots than everyone else combined.
IMHO the issue is that a country's military can be used for good and/or for evil, and people generally are unable to participate when and only when they agree with a mission.
But I also agree about the pay. Even for labs on the DEMO pay scale, the median pay isn't very competitive with the private sector for well-qualified software developers. And there's no possibility of competing with the potential high-end of private sector pay.
For at least the last 30 years there have been times where military leaders wanted to close bases but Congress wouldn’t allow them because of the civilians in their districts who would lose jobs.
Not to mention that military leaders have been preaching for years that the current and growing US debt is an existential risk.
I hope you recognize that many people view it as similar to advertising, a necessary evil of an industry gone too far.
Or they could go the other way. Just like after previous bubbles.
When the real estate bubble burst and took a good chunk of the financial industry with it, plenty of people went into healthcare, or the arts, or started their own small businesses without the goal of taking over the world.
People aren't boolean. They aren't rats trained to only go after the biggest piece of cheese. The vast majority have human-scale goals and families and desires. Very few people, even in the tech sector, are comic book villains.
Didn’t a large amount of those finance people just end up at big tech or in crypto? Plenty of news to be found suggesting as such (that people who previously would’ve gone into finance are going into big tech or crypto instead).
Which, if true, sort of just proves my original point.
Further the list of successful startups from that era aren’t exactly a list of things that people universally consider good for society (lots of gig economy startups, for example).
but also: it depends a LOT on which division/group you're in and especially who your manager is - I know a lot of happy googlers who continue to knock-out kickass stuff.
Yep, that seems to be the takeaway message and applies to any large organization you find yourself in. Applies to not just companies, but country locations and city locations.
This was the 2nd half of the 90's and Apple was at that point in its history when it was circlng the drain. It was another lesson that would be reinforced over and over in my three-decade career as a programmer: if you work very long in this field, know that everything will eventually change.
It was the supposed "dark times" to be at Apple: whole teams would be suddenly let go (the rest of us that lingered still might go through the abandoned offices of once co-workers looking to pull RAM out of their hardware for our own development machines). Some engineers like Tom, could see the writing on the wall early enough and knew when to switch teams. Tom ended up moving to the QuickTime team where he was able to continue to use his graphics talents. Later he worked on the iTunes visualizer if I recall correctly.
It's possible to join a company at a bad time and still have a good experience there.
(I don't know if everyone is aware how bad things got for Apple back then. IIRC they tried to sell the company to Sony, but Sony turned them down. They only survived due to investment from arch-nemesis Microsoft.)
It's definitely a different experience being in a row of desks with a lot of random people versus being in a cube-farm with your team.
The things I've done I can only really explain well to googlers. So it's been quite challenging finding a role outside that pays me as well.
Good. I mentor early career and nontraditional-background engineers, and among this set, Google has acquired a certain reputation. To paraphrase, if you can just pass the interview bar, you'll find yourself in an organization where the pay is amazing, the oversight is minimal, the visa/greencard policy is generous, and the HR processes rarely fire anyone. I routinely got to see people who I would never want to work with get hired there.
If Google becomes less of a target for barely-qualified people who want to rest and vest, I'm all for it.
Can you expland on this? It doesn't really mesh with the preview sentence for me.
>>If Google becomes less of a target for barely-qualified people who want to rest and vest
It's always been my impression that people who actually manage to get a job at Google are extremely competent(so by definition - qualified) - is that not true?
While we are at it, also spend another year learning technology and design patterns to prep for a design interview.
Listen, nobody gets a job at Google because they studied for coding interview. Coding is a precondition of getting the job, but it is far from enough to secure it.
If there is more of a prerequisite than “learning how to pass coding interviews” to get into Google, how do juniors with no real world experience get in?
That's exactly what my wife did. She solved coding challenges for a few weeks before interviewing at Google. Got an offer but turned it down because of the people she met.
Getting fired where we live (not US) is very hard.
Why though, do you work there?
As an anecdote, right before I left I did my standard self-assessment for performance season. I to my horror I realized that I had accomplished nothing for an entire year. This was largely (I believe...) due to factors outside my control: I did lots of work, but nothing came of it due to delays, procedural slowdown, project cancellations, etc. Instead of reprimanding me for this lack of output, my manager put me up for promotion. I left shortly after this.
I would also tell them to live below their means and save like crazy while they were there and to immediately sell their stock once it is vested and diversify.
FWIW: I didn’t get into BigTech until 46. It served its purpose and I have no desire to go back to any large company. But again, I’m 50.
https://news.ycombinator.com/favorites?id=scarface_74&commen...
Not everyone is motivated by greed.
The reality is that there is a huge difference between what your average CRUD/enterprise developer makes - which describes the vast majority of the 2.7 million developers in the US - and what you can make working at BigTech.
Your average CRUD developer in most major cities in the US is going to top out at $160K - $170K. That’s about what I saw returning interns get as full time offers when I was working at Amazon. Amazon pays less than Google
I bought my 3rd place - a condo in a resort area in Florida 2 years ago and this is the life we live now - thanks to being able to sell our house that doubled in value in six years.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36306966
Good luck with doing any of that now.
But unless you’re working for a non profit, you’re working for a company whose only motivation is profit. Why wouldn’t you work for BigTech and exchange as much money for your labor as possible?
Especially when you’re young and you have the time value of money working for you?
Right now, I’m only making about $30K more than an entry level dev at BigTech makes and I’m 50. But I don’t have kids to put through college or ever have to think about kids or starting a family (we are empty nesters), my own student loans, trying to buy a home in today’s real estate market etc.
But I also wasn’t able to max out my 401K plan and HSA at 22 years old like a 22 year old that I mentored when they were an intern when they came back the next year.
1 man 1 vote does not lead to the wisest or most long term of decision making, however, without it, the natural tendency is for the politician class and the wealthy to coalesce into one, with money reinforcing political power, and vice versa, sucking away any vitality in society.
In the US, as well as in many countries, its been shown again and again that money cannot simply buy the vote of every person. And there mass voting already demonstrates its power.
This principle extends to every facet of society. Company executives are checked by the board, the board checked by the shareholders, the shareholders checked by each other (the US allows shorting stocks for a reason).
I therefore find it questionable that a bunch of unchecked software engineers will lead to very good outcomes. No oversight, no pressure = freedom to pursue creativity and outcomes? Or merely idle hands? When people were proposing working multiple remote jobs during COVID, was that people being smart, or unethical behaviour being tolerated and justified?
Now the pendulum swinging too far back into the other direction would also be bad. See what happens to Boeing when engineers get completely subjugated by MBA management. But software people should not treat the exhortation to work a full 40 hour week as being whipped by slaves.
https://web.archive.org/web/20240205135109/https://www.nytim...
I'd argue there are no "happy offices" as a whole, and won't be for another ~10 years until everything settles and we're on an upwards trajectory (and sugar rush) again.
I do think there's an issue where the Fed is absolutely terrified of asset prices dropping and contagion spreading on all fronts, now that they have found this intervention works, but that's kind of tangential to my point, that the goal actually is to avoid the yo-yo, with the chief metrics of unemployment and inflation to guide them.
I'd like to see Sundar gone too but I don't know who they could find to replace him.
I think a piece of slowly rotting cheese could probably do a better job. You could use the mold growth as a random seed for making decisions, and you’d have about the same hit rate as Sundar.
End of the day the time for Google pushing things forward are is long over and only huge reshuffles, restructures and firings will give it a chance of still being relevant at all 10 years from now.
I mean that top to bottom, Sundar is a joke and just a Ballmer style numbers guy with no vision. Google's AI teams need to start being forced to work towards products that ship and make money not just work towards papers under their names. Rest of the products sometimes the less done the better look how badly Search, Image Search and Maps have regressed since launch.
Image search is now inferior to Yandex, Maps can't even find a store you type the name of when zoomed in on the street it's on, instead it zooms out and shows you a different store across town. YouTube is fighting ad blockers when it should be building to fight the inevitable TikTok long-form attack that will be it's Facebook moment.
Only thing I can say still works pretty well is probably Docs and Android in the sense that it's the only option for building devices above a certain complexity on.
Voice Assistant is a somewhat surprise flop. For a while there, voice assistants were The Big Thing that you had to have. Maybe they saw the metrics and realized everybody eventually gave up in frustration once you realized that outside of setting timers, the interaction model doesn’t scale well.
Reflecting on 18 years at Google (2023)
I saw somewhere that part of the problem at google is how their mono repo code base is so cumbersome that they are more likely and willing to kill services just because of the maintenance overhead of maintaining the code.
Any insight from Xooglers? I feel like I read this somewhere on here or reddit, but can't recall the specifics.
I do not think that this is the primary cause of product turndowns. Messy product design, left-hand/right-hand problems, internal politics, unfunded regulatory mandates, and other organizational complexity seem like much more direct causes. People like to add promotion-focus to this list but I don't actually buy that since there are tons of Googlers who are happy at their current level and want to maintain stuff even we if take it as a given that maintenance can't get people promoted. VPs showing up and changing org priorities so that various products no longer match the priorities and then get their funding cut is way more common.
I do think that there is something to the fact that the monorepo and single-version rule means that sometimes a team says "we are changing how you do X with our system, everybody needs to update by Date Y" and then the bulk of teams upgrade but there's some project with a skeleton crew doing maintenance and it is not possible to fund the upgrade and so the entire project gets deleted instead.
However, I also think that the monorepo is a superpower. What I describe above is a problem but there are so many incredible benefits (under the assumption that you've got tooling as good as Google's) that I feel that the benefits dramatically outweigh the costs. Comparing the code quality of the stuff in google3 vs the stuff in various isolated git repos is night and day.
Yeah that sounds familiar and sort of makes sense.
None when my current company did layoffs last year.
At what point do non-Googlers matter enough to get a New York Times article?
I think it’s because Amazon engineers are seen as lesser/lower class. The people that write for the NYT know their classmates from Yale and Penn that work in non tech and tech roles at Google, but they don’t know any UTenn grads that work at Amazon as SDE3s. Thus, they’re seen as people that don’t matter.
But after that outcry they did reduce the expected level to where basically nobody would get fired unless they were absolutely incompetent, so there really never were any significant amount of people getting fired for being mediocre.