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Comment by varelse | Hacker News Reader

I had a bad manager at google too thanks to the wonders of blind allocation. And I have vented about that experience several times on here. It was cathartic, and now it's out of me. But the price of doing so is that I'll probably never be able to get a job there again. Still, there are far worse things that can happen in life.

So as someone who went through something similar after diving headfirst into the Googleplex without a helmet, can I suggest that you really ought to move on for your own good and let karma eventually catch up with these guys?

It's magical what they'll do to themselves in the long run - it just takes time. I already saw one round of comeuppances after the dotcom boom. It really works because eventually they cross the wrong person at the right time and the universe balances the equation all on its own.

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The problem is that the career system (especially in software, which has this hypocritical sense of itself as a meritocracy) is the most elaborate system of victim-shaming ever devised.

I'm almost 30 and my IQ is over 150. I should be an EIR or doing cutting-edge machine learning work, and I'm not, because I was robbed by those fuckers.

Yes, they'll get their comeuppances. I'm sure they'll fall into the wrong fight. But I suffer every day from what those pieces of shit stole from me. I'm years behind where a person at my level of talent should be. Some of it is my fault, some of it is not, but the rest of the world sees it as 100% a reflection on me.

Work is the only society in which being robbed is treated as 100% the victim's fault. If your boss steals from you by giving you shitty work experience and then ruining your career, you are the subhuman piece of shit that deserves to die, not him.

When I was 30, I was making a tenth of what I'm making now and in the middle of destroying my career by exposing faked data in the wonderful world of science. You think Google is bad? Try getting threatened by a prominent member of the National Academy of Science because you caught him red-handed.

Needless to say, I was very successful at destroying my career. But much like the guy who got turned into a newt, I got better.

You're going to live past 100 assuming you don't get hit by a truck or an asteroid, the game's barely started. Go do something amazing that no one else could have done, by hook or by crook, and whatever happened in the past will be forgotten overnight.

But above all, don't be a victim. Even if you are a victim, don't be one.

> You're going to live past 100 assuming you don't get hit by a truck or an asteroid, the game's barely started. Go do something amazing that no one else could have done, by hook or by crook, and whatever happened in the past will be forgotten overnight.

As I recall, he was given almost exactly this advice when he was having his meltdown at Google, except s/live past 100/become a productive employee/ . It didn't seem to help.

You're not even 30 and you're speaking as though your career is over and your chances of ever doing cutting edge stuff are gone. Your life is to a certain extent what you make it. Stop looking back at the crap times with regret otherwise you'll end up a bitter old man.

And stop thinking that your IQ entitles you to anything. I scored 175 on an IQ test (Cattell III B - probably equivalent to 147 on the test you took) and I work doing CRUD apps for an insurance broker for $40000. I'll never work for Google or a company like that much as I'd love to. Your IQ test score is nice - and great for showing off - but it doesn't entitle you to anything. You need to earn your career.

A company that deliberately allows them to thrive for supposed project expediency gains has no right to use the motto: Don't Be Evil.

"Don't Be Evil" is such a conflated concept at Google. It sounds that you were fooled by it. Get real. Google's primary goal is to benefit itself. Good news [for users] is that benefiting the user is usually what benefits Google the most. Righting wrongs in HR issues that would expose Google as an employer to potential lawsuit liabilities and negative PR is not. Don't be so fucking idealistic.

Does shit happens deliberately? No, it's just the law of large numbers at Google's size today. However, covering up the shit is sometimes rational and evolutionary. How many start-ups die because they don't deal with HR issues the "right" way?

You were unlucky, but you also lack the tact to deal with your situation. Your years of experience and your 150 IQ didn't help, so what makes you think you would fare better as an EIR?

I'm not sure the law of large numbers means what you think it means.

You worked at Google for five months. How did that possibly destroy your career?

I've known plenty of smart people who didn't get anywhere in their career. Why? Lots of different reasons, ranging from personality, lack of communication skills, entitlement issues, lack of self control, etc. Sometimes all of those reasons.

If you are in a tough spot in your career, try to be honest with yourself about how/where you can improve, and make an effort to improve. At 30, it sounds like you are looking for instant gratification.

My recommendation: stop getting on these boards talking negatively and using profanity. It's not helping. Start bringing relevant insight and commentary that highlights your skills. Be open to constructive feedback from friends and colleagues. Work to improve. It may take a few years to rebuild - but think of it this way: 5 years is an eternity in the tech world. If you do things right for 5 years you may have an entirely different outlook.

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