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MuffinFlavored

> I'm sorry for anyone at that company right now

The average total compensation for an engineer is $250k-$350k/yr+

https://www.glassdoor.com/Salary/Google-Software-Engineer-Sa...

https://www.levels.fyi/?compare=Google,Citrix,UKG,American%2...

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It's hard to describe the pure absolute hell that can be working there, you'd be surprised how quickly the money becomes not worth it.

It all depends on the team, of course, but hell really isn't a good way to describe Google employment. Of the half dozen companies I've worked for, Google consistently offered better life quality than the others, even ignoring the money. (I'd go so far as to say that Google is almost too lax in how it treats employees.)

Right, honestly I shouldn't have posted the 2 sentence version, and we'd need to have a beer and an hour to even begin understanding now that I started from there.

But, what I'd say in another flippant sentence, since I'm tempted again: exactly, and that's the problem.

I had a great time, will be forever proud and grateful, and there's more to life than work. But, it left me with a permanently jaundiced view of a lot of things I used to admire, and I saw the worst, most careless, self-centered, behavior I've seen in my life there.

I went through a progression, where I was first accepted to Google (genuinely one of the most exciting moments of my life), and I gradually fell into a deeper and deeper cynicism as I saw all my fantasies about how the world should work evaporate. Maybe it was just growing up. Even the "best company in the world that does no evil" is really just a bunch of profit-mongering assholes.

That said, so is the rest of the world, at least in my experience. So long as you go into it with open eyes about what it really is, Google is a pretty solid experience. You should never identify with it or sympathize with it, but if you approach it as a parasite hoping to extract as much value from you as it can, it offers a pretty great personal opportunity. You've just got to keep in mind that it is not your friend, it is not looking out for your best interests, and it is definitely not not evil.

> You should never identify with it or sympathize with it, but if you approach it as a parasite hoping to extract as much value from you as it can, it offers a pretty great personal opportunity.

I like you. This is my general perspective, however I try to be a greedy symbiote.

That can make it more acutely painful in a specific situation: you're aware of its limitations, you end up getting the opportunity to do exactly what you've always wanted to, you deliver, but yadda yadda yadda, so you have increasingly full knowledge you'll be roadkill eventually and they'll blame it on you even if you act perfect. Sisyphus.

This feels excessive... ? It's Google, not a coal mine.

coal mines are only hellish while you're down. yeah there is the black lung, but you can wear filters.

the goog tracks you (and everyone) 24-7, and depending on teams and egos, could be ugly. you spend your whole life tryin to get to FAANG tier, and now it's miserable.

Is this sarcasm?

this comment is really something

I suggest checking if you sense self-deprecating humor, then either:

A) Choose to reject the premise entirely because $ is all that matters

B) Faced with a contradiction, check your premises, and interrogate your interlocutors

this comment is really nothing, and provides no real point, nor refutation of anything above.

I work at Google, fuck em. The whole place is toxic. I hope it is at peak larping lord of the flies. But if anything about modern history has taught me anything is that there is always lower.

Those 12k people they fucked over for zero real benefit, represented due to how Google hires, 240K interviews (5% accept rate). Let’s say they only did the screen. Still minimum 2 hrs, interview plus write up. 500k hours. 250 years of FTE time just in interviews flushed down the fucking toilet. And they are blowing the doors off the place hiring in LATAM.

And the bs just keeps coming by the dump truck full.

Bless. People don't grasp how it's gotten much worse than even bad workplaces. So complicated to explain.

I got pushed out, by an overworking bootlicker hiring their friend with 0 domain experience. Ultimate event was them and shiftless PM lying and said design VP had 0 interest in a project they had been asking for three years. They got away with it completely because SWE management closed ranks and pretended that was normal because fuck design, right? And I was very evil for not just being like "oh that totally makes sense that they don't care at all" (i.e. the PM got nuclear pissed because his boss' boss' boss got called in for a 2nd meeting with the design VP)

All that to say, your comment about LATAM reminded me how much it fucking. sucked. having management pull that in December 2022, and realize there wasn't any escape hatch to an anonymous org elsewhere, because all the roles are in Poland / India / etc.

Flashbacks to my 45 year old dad bitterly complaining about mass off-shoring in tech when I was 10. Now I get it. It's not that it doesn't make sense, we all know the $. What's evil is the lying and games.

that is supposed make you not feel sorry, $250k-$350k…? feel sorry for you for posting this…

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