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Ask HN: Is it time to leave Google?

51 点作者 kj65557超过 7 年前
I&#x27;ve been at Google for 2+ years and am pretty happy with the salary&#x2F;benefits, but I&#x27;m really strating to question the overall direction of the company. It&#x27;s not clear to me that Google is still innovative like it used to be. I&#x27;m a bit torn because I don&#x27;t want to be cavalier and forego the opportunity that was given to me, but it seems like a lot of smaller companies are doing much more interesting work. How do I know when it&#x27;s time to leave? What sort of criteria should I be looking for in other companies? I&#x27;ve always been interested in aerospace but most of those companies (SpaceX, etc) seem like a stretch.<p>(Note, I&#x27;m new here, let me know if there&#x27;s anything I can do better when writing textposts)<p>Edit: It seems like maybe my particular role isn&#x27;t that interesting. Which orgs within google are good to work for?

16 条评论

monfrere超过 7 年前
How senior are you? I would first spend some time hunting for innovative teams within Google to transfer to. There are plenty of boring jobs at Google but also plenty of ambitious small teams working on startup-like projects. Even cute experimental features on big established products (search&#x2F;gmail&#x2F;maps&#x2F;drive&#x2F;etc.) often could plausibly be the basis for an entire startup, but there are also some pie-in-the-sky projects people are working on if you look around a bit.
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maxander超过 7 年前
At the risk of stating the obvious- it doesn&#x27;t matter how innovative a company is as a whole, it matters how innovative <i>what you&#x27;re doing</i> is. SpaceX does some really cool stuff, say, but you&#x27;re not a rocket scientist- managing their financial software wouldn&#x27;t be cooler than it would be for anyone else&#x27;s. Conversely, Snapchat is just a goofy app for teenagers, but whoever writes the facial tracking system they use in their photo filters is doing some neat science. I don&#x27;t know what the insides of Google are like, but I would bet that if there&#x27;s anywhere a mid-career programmer can gain some interesting new skills on the job, it&#x27;s probably <i>somewhere</i> in there- and that will get you a more interesting position, whether you stay or go elsewhere in the longer run.
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charleslmunger超过 7 年前
If you&#x27;ve been there for 2+ yeara and you&#x27;re no longer excited about the work you&#x27;re doing, maybe take advantage of Google&#x27;s liberal transfer policy, and join a different team.<p>But it never hurts to interview.
ggm超过 7 年前
I do not work for Google but know people who do, and did. The ones who are happiest have a high degree of personal autonomy and self actualise to work on things which interest them. Some of them took their 20% cool time to real work.<p>Some resented being moved interstate or overseas, and sought a path home to where they like to be.<p>Some say they are burned out and burnt by scale problems but mainly I think it&#x27;s loss of autonomy at root. Being told to do things you don&#x27;t believe in is hard.<p>Only one left in some sense fully vested, and he&#x27;s a bit bored by the outside world. I don&#x27;t think google is a &#x27;chocolate factory&#x27; but be warned after initial enthusiasm wears off, you need to retain some sense of core role in any job, and few may be as accommodating as Google is said to be.
zitterbewegung超过 7 年前
I generally go with decisions like this with my gut. If you feel like that you aren&#x27;t happy with where you are then quit or figure out something new to do either within or without the company. Do you want to be filled with regret or not at the end of the day?
praneshp超过 7 年前
Many Googlers I meet&#x2F;am friends with have no fucking clue about the rest of the industry, especially so if that was their first job. If that applies to you, be careful.<p>I&#x27;d look internally first.
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Scene_Cast2超过 7 年前
So the way you&#x27;re describing the situation is &quot;should people leave google&quot;, not &quot;should <i></i>you<i></i> leave google&quot;.<p>General career advice has been discussed a lot here, but it really depends on your personality and motivation. (E.g. do you want a stable job, can you tolerate a stable job for a long time, are you looking to get into management, can you pull off company hopping every 2 years, are you a SWE and do you have a math background &amp; drive to branch into data science, are you planning to launch a startup and what skills are you still missing to do that, etc)
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jrockway超过 7 年前
I think you probably know the answer already. Given the wealth of forums inside Google where you could ask for this advice, you&#x27;ve decided to post anonymously to Hacker News. That probably means there&#x27;s some underlying issue, like you think your manager is going to punish you if he or she finds out that you aren&#x27;t happy with your position, or you think future teams you may want to work with will look upon you unfavorably if they read the post. As soon as you stop trusting your coworkers, it&#x27;s probably game over. (And I&#x27;m not saying you&#x27;re doing the wrong thing, or that your concerns are unwarranted. They are probably legitimate concerns.)<p>I was extremely happy at Google for many years. I liked my coworkers, I liked my work, I liked my manager. I did get burned out from time to time, but usually there was something interesting to keep me going through the rough patches, and my team, coworkers, and managers were all very supportive of what I needed to do to stay productive and happy (which in a lot of cases was &quot;sleep for 2 days and maybe wake up to have a meeting that would be inconvenient to move&quot;). It was quite wonderful. I had no trouble getting promoted, got &quot;strongly exceeds&quot; performance reviews, and had a lot of fun. Good times.<p>All good things must come to an end eventually, however. I came into work one day and my project was cancelled (and not like &quot;wind it down over the next 6 months&quot;, but literally &quot;might as well delete the CLs you&#x27;re working on&quot;) and I hastily transferred to another interesting-sounding team that, in retrospect, I kind of got the hard-sell to join.<p>As it turned out, I didn&#x27;t really care for the other team that I transferred to, and thought to myself &quot;everyone else on my old team got 6 months to sit at home and research other projects to transfer to, so I&#x27;ll just look for another project.&quot; I did not get that option. I was basically told &quot;you just transferred, so you can&#x27;t leave.&quot; And then told, &quot;you really aren&#x27;t getting enough work done on your own hours, I want you to be here at 9am so I can make sure you&#x27;re working.&quot; That went as well as you&#x27;d imagine. A bunch of people advised me &quot;you&#x27;re depressed, you should take 3 months off and get some antidepressants&quot;. I talked with my doctor and did that. In the end, it had no effect. The third-party company that handles paid leave denied my claim, so it was unpaid leave. I decided to take a vacation right at the end of my leave... which the vacation system decided was invalid and silently discarded. When I was on vacation without cell phone service, Google started calling my parents (I&#x27;m 32 BTW) looking for me. It was quite a production when I finally got cell phone service back. 3 months of de-stressing, instantly erased.<p>I got back and started working on a new project under the supervision of my existing manager. He decided that, based on git commit timestamps, I wasn&#x27;t programming quickly enough. (I got that from another very new manager once, and it was also an App Engine project. I&#x27;m not sure if that says more about me or App Engine, but I digress.) To be brutally honest, I&#x27;m kind of offended that he didn&#x27;t consider me to be capable of forging timestamps on git commits. I thought about it, honestly, but in the end decided that experienced managers knows that some things are easy and some things are hard. But in the end, I thought honesty was the best policy.<p>I was pretty stressed out at this point because my manager and I clearly didn&#x27;t get along, and the project I wanted to work on didn&#x27;t have official headcount so I couldn&#x27;t really get out of a bad situation. At that point I wrote up some email to the relevant concerned parties and realized &quot;I do not want to read the response to this email&quot;, so I didn&#x27;t. Some time passed and someone from HR called me saying &quot;you know if you are gone for 3 days, you&#x27;re voluntarily resigning, right?&quot; I said, &quot;yup.&quot; And that was the end of my experience working for Google. I still have my laptop and badge. They still have a box of my stuff (including my beloved Realforce 87UB keyboard!) Oh well.<p>My point is, there are other places to work. Google is a huge company and some people are happy and some people aren&#x27;t. If you&#x27;re unhappy, maybe you can find happiness elsewhere. I&#x27;ll tell you one thing, though... antidepressants won&#x27;t make you happy about a job you don&#x27;t like.
skybrian超过 7 年前
You did&#x27;t say what office you&#x27;re in, but Google is a big place and there are lots of internal job openings, at least at the larger offices. I&#x27;d suggest looking around both internally and externally to see if there&#x27;s something that interests you more. (There are teams doing good work that has little to do with the larger political issues.)<p>That&#x27;s awfully generic advice, but to do better you&#x27;ll need to get an advisor who can get to know you.
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killjoywashere超过 7 年前
Brain. Verily, calico, look at their venture page: hundreds of amazing projects backed by teams of phds in the prime of their careers. You could bring some of that work in house.
chrismcb超过 7 年前
Nothing has really changed in the world in the last two+ years. Google did some cool innovated stuff then, and it is doing it now. Small companies were doing cool innovated stuff, as well as boring stuff then... As well as how. I&#x27;m not saying you shouldn&#x27;t leave, but I wouldn&#x27;t leave because of the reason you gave. There are advantage and disadvantages to worrying for a small company. Look around, but look around Google as well.
hux_超过 7 年前
Find People and teams you want to work with internally first and interview with them. What is happening in the news has nothing to do with developing your own skills. That fully depends on the people you surround yourself with. And if you haven&#x27;t learnt how to find those people within a place like Google, it&#x27;s not going to be easy to learn outside.
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dingo_bat超过 7 年前
On the whole, Google is still one of the most innovative places to work. Even if their ingenuity is decreasing, that doesn&#x27;t necessarily mean some other place is better. Another thing to consider is what about your job specifically? If that is innovative enough for you, why do you care?
cottonseed超过 7 年前
I found this to be an interesting discussion on the question: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.youtube.com&#x2F;watch?v=k2gidnJyGZA" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.youtube.com&#x2F;watch?v=k2gidnJyGZA</a>
pkaye超过 7 年前
What is your skillset like?
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harlanji超过 7 年前
&quot;Fuck yes or no&quot; lets me see the answer. Nice job using your position to help your name get some bubble. Everything cool is happening outside of silly con valley at this point.
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