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Comment by the_black_hand | Hacker News Reader

Listened to the first few mins. Did he say anything controversial in the? The part about Google work-life balance isn't that big a deal. It's no secret that startups grind more.

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Googlers used to regularly work 50-60 hours. You did have the teams that had a decent WLB, but it was generally the non public facing stuff.

Google’s WLB ironically got significantly better after the layoffs. No one cared about the company anymore.

This. I worked hard at Google for years because I was pationate about my projects and my colleagues. Then over the past few years especially starting around dragonfly and maven we started getting more of an us vs them culture pushed down from the top. Layoffs were the end for me. I didn't exactly quiet quit but I toned it down and only worked on what I absolutely felt like.

Then jumped over to a startup where we work hard but in a much more organic and empowering way. People come in when it makes sense.

To me startups just inherently have a bigger carrot at the end of the stick. being an early engineer in a successful startup can bring life-changing money. In a 1T company with 100,000 of engineers it just isn't possible to have that incentive. your best work is often a drop in the ocean that some VP will shelve at the fist sign of trouble. Yeah working weekends can get you that promotion quicker and give a salary bump, but it's not the same as watching the company IPO and becoming an engineer overnight.

Funny that pretty much describes the company I work for. People would work their asses off. Pull all-nighters, work through holidays, etc. Then the rounds of layoffs started happening and now nobody cares at all about the company. Everyone just does the minimum while planning their next thing.

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