After working at Google, I’ll never let myself love a job again

About 7 years ago, I worked at a startup that very close-knit. All the coworkers were friends with everyone, the CEO and CTO were fun to be around, so I would make a point to go to all the team outings and lunches. I really liked it there, felt that they were my &quot;family&quot; in some sense.<p>About 9 months into my job, the company was hit with two lawsuits, and the leaders became very secretive and elusive and started changing rules to save money of questionable legality. For example, a rule was added to state that we had to work 40 <i>billable</i> hours a week.<p>This doesn&#x27;t sound that bad, but because of the lawsuits and attempts to settle them, any work done for the plaintiffs in the aforementioned lawsuits was not counted as &quot;billable&quot;, and most of that work would eat up multiple hours of my day. This meant that in addition to the eight hours I had to work on a billable client, I would also end up spending an extra three to four hours working on non-billable stuff. This went on for multiple months, I started feeling depressed, but I put up with it because I really liked the company.<p>Eventually, the company laid off 2&#x2F;3 of the staff without any notice to any of the workers. I went from &quot;employed&quot; to &quot;unemployed&quot; overnight, and when I managed to get in touch with the CTO, he basically told me &quot;thems the breaks. Sorry&quot;. I felt pretty betrayed, because I had spent two months working 60 hour weeks, all to be laid off because I was working on the wrong projects.<p>After that, I made a bit of a vow to myself to remember that a job is, at its core, a business transaction. You sell your time and expertise for compensation. It&#x27;s great if you really like your boss and your coworkers, that&#x27;ll help avoid depression, but remember at the end of the day, a <i>company</i> is <i>not</i> your family, and if they don&#x27;t think you&#x27;re creating enough value for them, they will end this transaction.

I hate it when people say a job is a job. 10 hours a day is dedicated to my job. I&#x27;m awake for 16 hours and 10 of those I spend at work. This is where my friends are. This is where I meet new people. This is where I spend my time. But the reality is... Well yes, a job is a job, and the quicker you can accept it, the better you will feel.<p>Once, this realization came to me when I worked at a fortune 10. I loved the job and was fascinated by the cool tech we used everyday. One day I came to work only to find out I was fired. My manager was just as surprised to hear it. Obviously it was a mistake, but my team watched as security guards came to escort me out of the building like a criminal.<p>It didn&#x27;t matter that they figured out it was a mistake. My coworkers became distant when I came back. When the story blew up, my employer denied I was ever employed there. An ex-coworker later told me that my position and projects have been completely scrubbed out of existence.<p>A job is a job, if you can focus on your own gains please do. Then spend a little bit of time on this fun Ask HN[1]. We can&#x27;t all get a job that loves us back, so in the meanwhile find something you love outside the job.<p>[1]: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=26721951" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=26721951</a>

Hopefully the author also learned a valuable lesson here - HR is there to protect the interest of the company, not your friend.<p>As someone who worked in RM(Reputation Management), my team have prevented, or mitigated a significant amount of potential reputation risk from would-be whistleblowers and dissatisfied employees.<p>It&#x27;s not a matter of friendship, but of interests.

The takeaway I get from the comments here is, &quot;HR isn&#x27;t your friend.&quot; Okay, so what should she have done about being harassed? She ignored it for a year. If it&#x27;s naive to go to HR then what is the &quot;not naive&quot; option? I see 3 options: (1) Put up with harassment, (2) Quit her job (forgoing her salary and stock) or (3) Go to HR. She tried (1) for a year, then tried (3) which ultimately led to (2). What is the &quot;not naive&quot; way to deal with being harassed?

It&#x27;s possible to love a job without letting that job become a part of your identity. That&#x27;s what it feels like FAANG is to a lot of people, particular this one for whom Google is their first job. It&#x27;s not about love or not loving, it&#x27;s about a healthy sense of boundaries between you and your workplace.

The most surprising element of this article is that the writer was surprised at the outcome. It&#x27;s 2021--who still doesn&#x27;t think Google will act like any other large corporate entity? I know the general aesthetic of the Google offices gives the impression of a fun, futuristic, elementary school, but the MBA&#x27;s managing Human Resources went to the same schools as the ones in every other major corporation. The principals of self-preservation are still the same. No one you work with anywhere is &quot;family&quot;. Everyone who has the position of employee, is an expendable expense attempting to secure their fickle, fleeting position. This may be a little dramatic, but do not depend on the initiative of mercenaries. Most people are scared of everything and will avoid whatever confrontation comes out of supporting you (even when you&#x27;re in the right).

There is a bunch of sad things in the story. But, not being FAANG engineer, there is something technical&#x2F;financial in there I did not understand.<p>Specifically: &quot;When I didn’t get a promotion, some of my stock grants ran out and so I effectively took a big pay cut.&quot; - I think I roughly get what it means, but not specifically. Could some insider explain this?

&quot;When people ask me how I feel about my new position, I shrug: It’s a job.&quot;<p>Yep, it is always just a job.

I like how people think the import of the article is &quot;corporations gonna corp&quot; when its more like if you&#x27;re not the right kind of male in this industry, you are vulnerable

I think everyone should get fired at least once, preferably early in your career. Business is business.

For anyone interested, apparently the author went on to work at Facebook.<p>I&#x27;d be lying if that said that didn&#x27;t put a bit of a damper on the article for me. Partly because I expect exactly the same behaviour but also because of recent events such as data being leaked and all that.

Assuming the facts are as stated, Google&#x27;s handling of this issue is inept. When there is a substantive conflict between employees, the employer needs to take immediate action, within 24 hours or less.<p>For example, the complainant or the supervisor should have been assigned to work in a different location, or transferred to another project. This can be done with some finesse, so as not make the reason obvious to others. This is the right thing to do if harassment is occurring as described, or even if the complainant is making a false accusation.<p>Given that the complaint was sustained, it would be interesting to know Google&#x27;s experience as to whether supervisors&#x27; behavior changes or continues.

Kind of fascinating how few of the comments here are about sexual harassment and just about general disillusionment with careerism.

It&#x27;s common for people to identify with their job too much, independent of employer. It almost feels like it&#x27;s a rite of passage to pour everything into your first job in your early to mid twenties, especially if you&#x27;re a high performer with something to prove and you&#x27;re lucky enough to work on something that &quot;really matters&quot;. What I&#x27;ve seen is most people go through a period of mild depression &#x2F; burnout, realize that a job can be a fun and rewarding part of life but isn&#x27;t life in it&#x27;s entirely, and then live on more happily after learning to keep some distance.

There are better stories that deserve this headline, stories where people land their dream job only to be disappointed by the role, or the company, not just one individual.<p>Still, the position she was in sucks. You can never have a good working relationship with the harasser again, and the only outcome that would resolve the situation is the harasser getting fired, but that won&#x27;t happen with only hearsay of inappropriate comments; it would need to be something egregious with witnesses. The only move is switching teams and telling HR so it (hopefully) doesn&#x27;t happen again.

I&#x27;ve been doing my job for over 30 years, and I still love it. But I think it&#x27;s very healthy to separate what you love to do and the company that pays money for it. The company can be great, and it can be crappy, and it can start out great and turn into crappy (I&#x27;ve never seen the reverse happen but who knows) but for people working in tech - we have the luxury of having a job that allows us choice from thousands of employers. Everybody needs tech people now - from trillion-dollar corporations to three-people startups.<p>If your workplace sucks - you have an option to do it somewhere else. Yes, maybe it won&#x27;t have an attached gym and free three-course meals - but, as hard as it is to believe, there are ways to get meals and workouts outside Google, and it&#x27;s not even remotely hard. Yes, maybe you&#x27;d not be paid outrageous piles of money, just piles of money which would beyond the dreams of 98% of people in the country, not 99.9%. You can survive it, and you can even keep your love for what you&#x27;re doing, without attaching yourself to a Google.<p>It&#x27;s ok to like your company, especially if it&#x27;s about people you work with and things you&#x27;re doing, but if you find yourself in love with a corporate monster like Google, you&#x27;ve gone off rails. It will hurt you, and it won&#x27;t even know or care. It&#x27;s not built for that.

&gt; Playing along felt like the price of inclusion.<p>Wait, what? The author played along for more than a year and then placed a complaint? Maybe it&#x27;s the way the article is written but this seems pretty bad on the author&#x27;s part.<p>The author seemed to be mainly worried about their ruining their &#x27;upward trajectory&#x27; in the company.<p>Aaannnd the author is writing a book.<p>Yes, I am cynical.

&gt; When I joined the company after college<p>Kids: all corporations suck. The bigger they are, the more likely they are to suck. Your corporation is not an exception, you&#x27;re just lucky to work in a non-sucky corner of it, or have not yet glimpsed its suckitude.<p>Ignore perks. Unless they come in the form of things you need that are expensive and rare (health care, child care, 401K match, maternity&#x2F;paternity leave, continuing education fund, remote work).<p>HR is not your friend. Executives don&#x27;t care about employees. Do not tell your boss what&#x27;s really on your mind. Your co-workers are not your friends. Do not expect anything of them. Do not be completely open, honest, and transparent. Do not be vulnerable.<p>Do not compromise, and do not extend yourself. Do what you are required to do. Help when it is convenient, but do not become the &quot;go-to&quot; person, because it only looks like job security. Do not argue or complain. Send e-mails reiterating verbal agreements. Take screenshots of anything that looks fishy, abusive, manipulative.<p>Keep your next job in the back of your head. Prepare for it. Make contacts, network, learn marketable skills. Develop soft skills, be friendly and outgoing, but lay low. Play nice, do not burn bridges.<p>If someone is harassing you, intimidating you, making unreasonable demands, or otherwise disturbing you: slowly document evidence and record eye-witness testimony, first in e-mails, then in screenshots (e-mails and other documents get purged regularly to protect the company when they get sued). Find co-workers to corroborate your story and co-sign a petition with you. Find your harasser&#x27;s corporate enemies and recruit them. People in your company may try to bury your complaints, either to protect The Company (again, HR is not your friend), or to further a manager&#x2F;executive&#x27;s political needs, or because they just don&#x27;t believe you. The company may try to discredit you and will use any ammunition (that they have been silently compiling) against you.<p>Finally, if you feel like your mental or physical well-being is at risk: Quit. Your. Job. It doesn&#x27;t matter if what&#x27;s happening to you is unfair or unjust. You are a very small cog, and the corporation is a very big wheel. If you decide to write a public tell-all like the author&#x27;s here, it will work against you at future employers. It is not worth the fight. There is no prize to win.<p>It&#x27;s just a job.

Archive link: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;archive.is&#x2F;u4I1a" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;archive.is&#x2F;u4I1a</a>

Why the &quot;publicly traded&quot; qualifier? The author should broaden her definition and realize that actually, the only family is in fact a real family. You can have communities outside of that, and indeed even within work. But certainly, a private company is just as much <i>not</i> a family.

First world problems. All this complains about what people on the west call &quot;harassment&quot; is ridiculous. &#x27;Oh my God, he called me &quot;beauty&quot;, my life is over!&quot;... What the heck

Go girl you are a wonder of human nature. You did great dont take any shit from anyone. Came from a pretty shaky background myself to success in tech but as a self employed consultant which has incredible freedom but on the surface less job security perhaps, but over the last twenty years the phone has never stopped ringing. An option for you too with your skills.

Initially it is pride. Once that wears out, it is another Job which you may or may not like.

Meta: the title has an extra &quot;A &quot; at the start.

This is <i>fantastic</i> (unintended?) guerilla marketing for the author&#x27;s current employer.

It&#x27;s strange to me that people love to shit on FAANG life so often.<p>Every perk is scrutinized, as if serving dinner in the office means I MUST stay for dinner (I almost never do), or having a doctor or laundry service on campus is some nefarious thing.<p>At the end of the day, you get paid a huge amount of money to do a moderate amount of work. It&#x27;s the dream, to me.<p>And then every once in a while people burn out and make it seem like it was the free dinner that did it. &quot;I found my own doctor; I cook my own food.&quot; What does that have to do with anything?<p>(Sure, HR is shitty and that&#x27;s something to care about. But that&#x27;s an industry wide issue, not a FAANG specific issue.)

Sometimes, I don&#x27;t blame the xooglers especially when its corporate culture has done an about-face in recent years. However, this person&#x27;s first job out of school was at Google so they obviously don&#x27;t understand 公公私私.