48 ms·

What does it feel like to be fired from Google?

85 points by kawera 11y ago

tomrod 11y ago
The first comment (from Grigory Yakushev) makes the process seem really humane.
- Leynos 11y ago
  Bear in mind that Grigory is describing his experience in Switzerland (confirmed in a response to a comment: https://www.quora.com/What-does-it-feel-like-to-be-fired-from-Google/answer/Grigory-Yakushev/comment/13822008 https://www.quora.com/What-does-it-feel-like-to-be-fired-fro...), so this might not be the same as elsewhere.
  - PopeOfNope 11y ago
    I went through almost the exact same thing working full time for a consulting company in the USA. The situation was even worse since we had to log so many hours a week due to billing hourly. The biggest difference with me is that when I was first put on the PIP, it looked like I was going to successfully complete it. So a 4 week process was extended to 12 and then I was given a new PIP that was impossible to fulfill[0] and the micromanagement was increased to ridiculous levels. I didn't even try to improve at that point and was fired a week later. No severance, no benefits, no nothing. They were nice in that they gave a glowing recommendation that didn't mention any of this. They said we parted ways amicably and that it just wasn't a good fit. It seems the recurring theme here is if your employees are slacking, more micromanagement isn't the answer. Either give them a reason to get excited about coming to work or fire them. The PIP process is an orwellian farce. The only saving grace is I bet most companies that use them don't actually know they don't work. Or maybe it's like interviewing; they know it doesn't work, but they don't have anything better? [0]: I won't go into details, but it required getting two or three approvals per day from managers who were already backed up with work.
    - S4M 11y ago
      Your comment reminded me of that blog post I read about PIP, and why you shouldn't sign them: https://michaelochurch.wordpress.com/2012/12/24/never-sign-a-pip-heres-why/ https://michaelochurch.wordpress.com/2012/12/24/never-sign-a...
pen2l 11y ago
So I was formally employed and received salary for another month, although I didn't and couldn't work during it. Google also produced a stellar reference letter for future employers, without mentioning any of this. Woah. That's pretty respectable. Mad props to Google for going the extra mile to not destroy people's careers.
- jzwinck 11y ago
  They do it to reduce their exposure to lawsuits from former employees. And it cheapens all their reference letters, in particular the ones given to employees that actually got along well there.
  - fredkbloggs 11y ago
    Yeah. I can certainly understand avoiding lawsuits, but they don't need to provide positive letters to do that. Just doing/saying nothing at all is sufficient.
  - hiq 11y ago
    He had been working there for five years before his burnout, so I'd say he got along well overall.
- ryandrake 11y ago
  I came to the comments section to post something similar. This is probably the most humane, respectable, and generous firing I've ever read. It's left me with a much more favorable view of Google. I mean, he had the entire PIP period plus a month of salary to go find another job. Incredible! I've seen people find out they were fired when their badge stopped working.
  - djhworld 11y ago
    It's mentioned elsewhere that this guy worked for Google Switzerland, who have different employment laws to say the US.
  - ChuckMcM 11y ago
tomcam 11y ago
The reason I work for myself is that I figured out at an early age that no one cares about your job more than you do. I have been fired from plenty of jobs, so I made sure I had a nest egg as soon as possible. I also make it a point to train for my next job while I'm doing the current one. I have worked at some good jobs (Microsoft was life changing in a completely positive sense) but being so dependent on someone else seems for your livelihood never seemed like a sustainable proposition.
fredkbloggs 11y ago
This seems like a pretty silly question, and the answers reinforce that. Getting fired by Google is like getting fired anywhere else. One of the commenters mentioned that it's harder to explain a short term at Google to prospective employers, but realistically anyone is going to understand that sometimes a particular job or team just doesn't work out regardless of the company's reputation. So really this seems like asking what it's like to be kicked in the face by Linus Torvalds. Sure, he's famous, but it feels pretty much the same as being kicked in the face by anyone else.
- hga 11y ago
  One of the commenters mentioned that it's harder to explain a short term at Google to prospective employers, but realistically anyone is going to understand that sometimes a particular job or team just doesn't work out regardless of the company's reputation. Any employer who doesn't understand that closed allocation will not infrequently result in this is probably to be avoided. Worst story I remember as related on HN, but my search fu is not able to find it, was a hardware engineer who was also good at programming and Python. He was put on a team writing Python hardware testing code, and because he found out, as is related by many others (and at many other companies) that the policy of immediate transfers is often fictional, he had to quit to avoid ending his career.
mahouse 11y ago
>Apparently my manager and director decided that I was somehow gaming the system and just milk the company while not making any effort to do my job. >I think the nasty attitude from manager and director was unnecessary: it sucks when superiors don't trust you, treating me as a liar without saying it explicitly. ... >In private discussions I was asked why don't I leave by myself, to which I answered that I'm happy with my Google salary.
- fao_ 11y ago
  IANAL, but that seems like it should fall under 'Constructive Dismissal'.
  - hackerboos 11y ago
    Different laws in Switzerland.
- berntb 11y ago
  Ugh. I'm not going to defend that. But I'd like to give some background to the attitude. Like most others, I've seen burnout. Both personally and in others. This happens to a lot of people in life, maybe most, try to recognize the situation early and to have economic margins to take a year off. I wasn't as bad as some cases I've seen, but I was not a nice person myself then. Let me give an example about what I learned about practical psychology: When you're really stressed and don't realize you're physically sick, then you project that pain; whatever is a problem becomes bigger. The mental logic seems to be "You feel bad. So the things that are stressful must be really bad." Afterwards you realize you've been a person you can't stand. I really hope I won't experience something as bad again, but it taught me a lot. If nothing else, compassion. (This example might not be relevant for the article, since that guy seems to have broken not from being sick but because of a too large work load after a bunch of years.)
gaius 11y ago
This is what happens when you treat humans as resources.
- reagency 11y ago
  That statement means nothing, without defining what "resources" means and without saying whatever you are trying to insinuate.
  - gaius 11y ago
    He was a human being who was sick and needed help, but they treated him like a malfunctioning machine to be decommissioned. Clear enough?
- gopowerranger 11y ago
  As a business owner, sometimes it can't be helped, and sometimes you have to think that way cause firing someone is never a pleasant task. Sometimes you know it must be done but you know the person is nice enough but just not competent, or can't do the job, or the job has changed and they're getting fired for no fault of their own. There are those times when you fire someone but you feel guilty that, as their manager, maybe you could have done better with them but you didn't have time, were too distracted, too tired. In companies that get big enough, the percentage of people getting fired for cause gets higher. Then firing people becomes part of a routine. If you let your feelings get involved, it will drive you crazy, so you try not to let that happen.
  - mikegioia 11y ago
    Wow what a wonderful answer. This is the most clear and succinct way of explaining the transition in dealing with employee termination from a small to larger company. Regarding the guilt, I think you're right -- a lot of people don't realize that every day spent trying to work with an unproductive employee/coworker is a day lost by the productive one. At a certain point or company-size you can't continue doing it.
- jakejake 11y ago
xkiwi 11y ago
"Quora is a knowledge-sharing community that depends on everyone being able to pitch in when they know something." I just cannot stand with Quora keep asking me to continue with Facebook or google. If majority of users in Quora are based on people who obey dictatorship from Quora, then probably it is not the place for true knowledge.
- austenallred 11y ago
  They want you to sign in with Facebook or Google and that = dictatorship? Please. If you don't want to sign in don't use it. They obviously gain enough value out of having users logged in that it's worth losing those who won't. The vast majority of people outside of HN don't care.
- gopowerranger 11y ago
  And now on to the topic!
- spooningtamarin 11y ago
  You can register with your email.
- gcb0 11y ago
  quora is extremely annoying. i always get a link like this one, read something, then any link i click i get to some crippled page instead of the content and some bad ui that doesn't even make it clear what weird ritual they expect to show the content.
  - mikez302 11y ago
    Adblock seems to block that annoying overlay that covers the page. You can also get rid of it by copying and pasting the following line into your browser's web console or debugger: (function(){var x=document.querySelector("[id$=modal_signup_wrapper]");x.parentNode.removeChild(x)})();
    - gcb0 11y ago
known 11y ago
If the company is making MONEY your job is safe; If not, management will find 101 reasons to SACK you;
markbnj 11y ago
I hope things have worked out for the author, but I can't help thinking he would have been so much better off leaving on his own terms. I understand not being able to walk away from a salary, but when you get to the point where you know your attitude and the job are no longer a fit, and you stay for the money, then I guess you own the outcome on that.
- PieSquared 11y ago
  The author has some commentary on that here: https://www.quora.com/What-does-it-feel-like-to-be-fired-from-Google/answer/Grigory-Yakushev/comment/13822008 https://www.quora.com/What-does-it-feel-like-to-be-fired-fro... I found it pretty interesting.
  - bsimpson 11y ago
    Sounds like Swiss law on both immigration and unemployment gave him a pretty strong incentive to stay for as long as possible.
    - markbnj 11y ago
      That's understandable, but I guess if you're staying for that reason the title of the article might better have been "What it feels like to finally get fired from Google after a couple of years of barely hanging on to my job."
deleted 11y ago
[deleted]
everyone 11y ago
5 commits a week is normal? Im going to assume those are big commits.. I personally would do a commit for every little class or method I write. I did 18 last week for example. Also I'm curious what he means by 'burnout' I'd take that to mean mentally exhausted from too much stress. Sounds like he was more vaguely dissatisfied or unmotivated.
- packetslave 11y ago
  A "commit" at Google tends to be a bit bigger unit of work. To submit a changelist to Piper, you need a code review, your code probably needs unit tests, etc. Probably not 1000 lines of code, but probably not 10 either (unless it's a bug fix) Obvious caveat: there are 20,000+ engineers and hundreds of teams at Google. Things aren't exactly the same everywhere.
- nostrademons 11y ago
  On the high side, actually. In many cases you'll need to get your code reviewed by an external team, and oftentimes their SLA for one round of code review is 24 hours. That a.) incentivizes big commits and b.) sets a floor on the latency of your commit process. My long-term average at Google was 5 commits/week, max was IIRC 24/week, and min was 3 months to get one commit written, reviewed, and approved. By contrast, when I'm coding on my own for my startup, my long-term average is 20 commits/week, max was about 14/day, and min is about 1/day.
- marssaxman 11y ago
  5 commits a week sounds like a lot, actually. Nothing gets pushed without a code review and it's a rare code review that doesn't require some changes, which therefore require another test run, etc. You'd have to be working steadily and have some very responsive teammates in order to get a commit in every single work day. At least, that's the way it worked when I was there. I sure as hell didn't get 5 commits in a week.
- dcherman 11y ago
  It also depends on what you mean by commit. Are we talking 5 commits in 1 merge request (Git style), or 5 individual pieces of code to be reviewed separately? In any case, I think 5 per week is extremely reasonable; I actually do less these days. I used to commit a dozen or more times per week, but these days I tend to work on the larger and harder components that people require. That means more thought and more design. It's not doing less work, it's just doing harder work. This person may also have had review reponsibilities. Doing a truly thorough code review takes time to complete, and that time is time that you're not coding. It's important though; I may not be coding while I'm reviewing, but I'm sharing knowledge with a dozen other developers who hopefully learn from it (as I learn from others reviewing my own code). In aggregate, I hope that my lack of frequent commits actually helps the company rather than hurts it since hopefully I'm enabling many others to do better work.
Johnny555 11y ago
"Apparently my manager and director decided that I was somehow gaming the system and just milk the company while not making any effort to do my job" "In private discussions I was asked why don't I leave by myself, to which I answered that I'm happy with my Google salary. If Google is not happy with my performance - feel free to fire me, but I'm not going to jump myself." Well, at least the managers read his attitude accurately.
- ido 11y ago
  That's not how I read it. I think the guy wasn't "not making any effort to do [his] job", he was burnt out and tried to make the effort but failed. His reply is not surprising from a Russian perspective (in broad strokes Russian discussion culture is extremely...let's say "honest", to the point of appearing crass or blunt to western ears) & does not mean "I don't give a shit as long as I get money". I read it as "if you want to fire me, do so", and I don't think that's too bad (as in this case the appropriate response really is firing - not asking the guy to quit).
  - wwwater 11y ago
    This is an interesting view on russian discussion culture. How did you come to this conclusion?
    - ido 11y ago
      My mother was born in the former Soviet Union and I have a lot of relatives and friends that immigrated from Russia and nearby countries (Ukraine, Moldova, Belarus) that share some similarities in culture. My hometown was also originally founded by Russian immigrants and has a large minority (~30% I think) of people of Russian descent.
bko 11y ago
I think its really unfair to the rest of the team to have dead weight. I understand that it was in his best interest to ride it out as long as he can and try and claim benefits and I can't say for certain what I would have done, but that behavior is really abusing the safety net. He should have tried and find a different role. > In my particular case (Switzerland), I lose three months of unemployment benefits (80% of salary x3) if I do, and there may be other reasons as well (in my case - work permit). This has nothing to do with responsibility: why should I sacrifice my personal interest and the interests of my family for the interest of the company, as a parting gift? I see no reason to do so. Was generous unemployment really designed for ex-Googlers who were burned out and forced the hand of management to fire them? IMO, it's pretty sleazy and hopefully sends a bad signal to future employers.
- tajen 11y ago
  You must be new to Europe. </sarcasm> I confirm that employment laws in France and in that country (Switzerland), if not other countries, are particularly prone for abuse, and the culture is to fully exert the employee's interest. If you quit a job, you may not be entitled for unemployment at all, whereas being dismissed gives you 2 years of 80% benefits. Most French startups are built on ACCRE: The unemployed asks for a lumpsum instead of monthly benefits at the condition that he creates a company. You can't get it if you quit your last job, so the game for entrepreneurs is to be as disrespectful as legally possible with an employer (e.g. liberally start working on the new company or poaching clients, as long as it's not forbidden), get fired, and create a startup. It makes the ACCRE the #2 source of funding for startups in France (after CIR, another public benefit, but that's a story for another day). Such schemes mean the startup is created months and months after the opening of the market opportunity; after months of being a bad employee; and out of public benefits. To my opinion it's inefficient on all 3 facets. But that's how the old continent runs.
  - bko 11y ago
    I've heard that the system in Europe is very "friendly" to workers, but that seems absurd. To me its not even so much the inefficiency, but the general hostile relationship it creates between employee and employer. It probably contributes to the high level of youth unemployment in some European countries. Worse of all, such perverse incentives result in cultural shifts as to whats acceptable. To think that someone readily admits that he would be willing to sabotage his workplace due to a sense of entitlement of 2 years with 80% benefits is really appalling. This isn't some out of work layman, replaced by technology. This is a highly skilled knowledge worker making probably an income probably in the 95 percentile of his country. Just because you can exploit something doesn't make it okay.

85 points by kawera 11y ago

tomrod 11y ago

The first comment (from Grigory Yakushev) makes the process seem really humane.

Leynos 11y ago
Bear in mind that Grigory is describing his experience in Switzerland (confirmed in a response to a comment: https://www.quora.com/What-does-it-feel-like-to-be-fired-from-Google/answer/Grigory-Yakushev/comment/13822008 https://www.quora.com/What-does-it-feel-like-to-be-fired-fro...), so this might not be the same as elsewhere.
- PopeOfNope 11y ago
  I went through almost the exact same thing working full time for a consulting company in the USA. The situation was even worse since we had to log so many hours a week due to billing hourly. The biggest difference with me is that when I was first put on the PIP, it looked like I was going to successfully complete it. So a 4 week process was extended to 12 and then I was given a new PIP that was impossible to fulfill[0] and the micromanagement was increased to ridiculous levels. I didn't even try to improve at that point and was fired a week later. No severance, no benefits, no nothing. They were nice in that they gave a glowing recommendation that didn't mention any of this. They said we parted ways amicably and that it just wasn't a good fit. It seems the recurring theme here is if your employees are slacking, more micromanagement isn't the answer. Either give them a reason to get excited about coming to work or fire them. The PIP process is an orwellian farce. The only saving grace is I bet most companies that use them don't actually know they don't work. Or maybe it's like interviewing; they know it doesn't work, but they don't have anything better? [0]: I won't go into details, but it required getting two or three approvals per day from managers who were already backed up with work.
  - S4M 11y ago
    Your comment reminded me of that blog post I read about PIP, and why you shouldn't sign them: https://michaelochurch.wordpress.com/2012/12/24/never-sign-a-pip-heres-why/ https://michaelochurch.wordpress.com/2012/12/24/never-sign-a...

pen2l 11y ago

So I was formally employed and received salary for another month, although I didn't and couldn't work during it. Google also produced a stellar reference letter for future employers, without mentioning any of this. Woah. That's pretty respectable. Mad props to Google for going the extra mile to not destroy people's careers.

jzwinck 11y ago
They do it to reduce their exposure to lawsuits from former employees. And it cheapens all their reference letters, in particular the ones given to employees that actually got along well there.
- fredkbloggs 11y ago
  Yeah. I can certainly understand avoiding lawsuits, but they don't need to provide positive letters to do that. Just doing/saying nothing at all is sufficient.
- hiq 11y ago
  He had been working there for five years before his burnout, so I'd say he got along well overall.
ryandrake 11y ago
I came to the comments section to post something similar. This is probably the most humane, respectable, and generous firing I've ever read. It's left me with a much more favorable view of Google. I mean, he had the entire PIP period plus a month of salary to go find another job. Incredible! I've seen people find out they were fired when their badge stopped working.
- djhworld 11y ago
  It's mentioned elsewhere that this guy worked for Google Switzerland, who have different employment laws to say the US.
- ChuckMcM 11y ago

tomcam 11y ago

The reason I work for myself is that I figured out at an early age that no one cares about your job more than you do. I have been fired from plenty of jobs, so I made sure I had a nest egg as soon as possible. I also make it a point to train for my next job while I'm doing the current one. I have worked at some good jobs (Microsoft was life changing in a completely positive sense) but being so dependent on someone else seems for your livelihood never seemed like a sustainable proposition.

fredkbloggs 11y ago

This seems like a pretty silly question, and the answers reinforce that. Getting fired by Google is like getting fired anywhere else. One of the commenters mentioned that it's harder to explain a short term at Google to prospective employers, but realistically anyone is going to understand that sometimes a particular job or team just doesn't work out regardless of the company's reputation. So really this seems like asking what it's like to be kicked in the face by Linus Torvalds. Sure, he's famous, but it feels pretty much the same as being kicked in the face by anyone else.

hga 11y ago
One of the commenters mentioned that it's harder to explain a short term at Google to prospective employers, but realistically anyone is going to understand that sometimes a particular job or team just doesn't work out regardless of the company's reputation. Any employer who doesn't understand that closed allocation will not infrequently result in this is probably to be avoided. Worst story I remember as related on HN, but my search fu is not able to find it, was a hardware engineer who was also good at programming and Python. He was put on a team writing Python hardware testing code, and because he found out, as is related by many others (and at many other companies) that the policy of immediate transfers is often fictional, he had to quit to avoid ending his career.

mahouse 11y ago

>Apparently my manager and director decided that I was somehow gaming the system and just milk the company while not making any effort to do my job. >I think the nasty attitude from manager and director was unnecessary: it sucks when superiors don't trust you, treating me as a liar without saying it explicitly. ... >In private discussions I was asked why don't I leave by myself, to which I answered that I'm happy with my Google salary.

fao_ 11y ago
IANAL, but that seems like it should fall under 'Constructive Dismissal'.
- hackerboos 11y ago
  Different laws in Switzerland.
berntb 11y ago
Ugh. I'm not going to defend that. But I'd like to give some background to the attitude. Like most others, I've seen burnout. Both personally and in others. This happens to a lot of people in life, maybe most, try to recognize the situation early and to have economic margins to take a year off. I wasn't as bad as some cases I've seen, but I was not a nice person myself then. Let me give an example about what I learned about practical psychology: When you're really stressed and don't realize you're physically sick, then you project that pain; whatever is a problem becomes bigger. The mental logic seems to be "You feel bad. So the things that are stressful must be really bad." Afterwards you realize you've been a person you can't stand. I really hope I won't experience something as bad again, but it taught me a lot. If nothing else, compassion. (This example might not be relevant for the article, since that guy seems to have broken not from being sick but because of a too large work load after a bunch of years.)

gaius 11y ago

This is what happens when you treat humans as resources.

reagency 11y ago
That statement means nothing, without defining what "resources" means and without saying whatever you are trying to insinuate.
- gaius 11y ago
  He was a human being who was sick and needed help, but they treated him like a malfunctioning machine to be decommissioned. Clear enough?
gopowerranger 11y ago
As a business owner, sometimes it can't be helped, and sometimes you have to think that way cause firing someone is never a pleasant task. Sometimes you know it must be done but you know the person is nice enough but just not competent, or can't do the job, or the job has changed and they're getting fired for no fault of their own. There are those times when you fire someone but you feel guilty that, as their manager, maybe you could have done better with them but you didn't have time, were too distracted, too tired. In companies that get big enough, the percentage of people getting fired for cause gets higher. Then firing people becomes part of a routine. If you let your feelings get involved, it will drive you crazy, so you try not to let that happen.
- mikegioia 11y ago
  Wow what a wonderful answer. This is the most clear and succinct way of explaining the transition in dealing with employee termination from a small to larger company. Regarding the guilt, I think you're right -- a lot of people don't realize that every day spent trying to work with an unproductive employee/coworker is a day lost by the productive one. At a certain point or company-size you can't continue doing it.
jakejake 11y ago

xkiwi 11y ago

"Quora is a knowledge-sharing community that depends on everyone being able to pitch in when they know something." I just cannot stand with Quora keep asking me to continue with Facebook or google. If majority of users in Quora are based on people who obey dictatorship from Quora, then probably it is not the place for true knowledge.

austenallred 11y ago
They want you to sign in with Facebook or Google and that = dictatorship? Please. If you don't want to sign in don't use it. They obviously gain enough value out of having users logged in that it's worth losing those who won't. The vast majority of people outside of HN don't care.
gopowerranger 11y ago
And now on to the topic!
spooningtamarin 11y ago
You can register with your email.
gcb0 11y ago
quora is extremely annoying. i always get a link like this one, read something, then any link i click i get to some crippled page instead of the content and some bad ui that doesn't even make it clear what weird ritual they expect to show the content.
- mikez302 11y ago
  Adblock seems to block that annoying overlay that covers the page. You can also get rid of it by copying and pasting the following line into your browser's web console or debugger: (function(){var x=document.querySelector("[id$=modal_signup_wrapper]");x.parentNode.removeChild(x)})();
  - gcb0 11y ago

known 11y ago

If the company is making MONEY your job is safe; If not, management will find 101 reasons to SACK you;

markbnj 11y ago

I hope things have worked out for the author, but I can't help thinking he would have been so much better off leaving on his own terms. I understand not being able to walk away from a salary, but when you get to the point where you know your attitude and the job are no longer a fit, and you stay for the money, then I guess you own the outcome on that.

PieSquared 11y ago
The author has some commentary on that here: https://www.quora.com/What-does-it-feel-like-to-be-fired-from-Google/answer/Grigory-Yakushev/comment/13822008 https://www.quora.com/What-does-it-feel-like-to-be-fired-fro... I found it pretty interesting.
- bsimpson 11y ago
  Sounds like Swiss law on both immigration and unemployment gave him a pretty strong incentive to stay for as long as possible.
  - markbnj 11y ago
    That's understandable, but I guess if you're staying for that reason the title of the article might better have been "What it feels like to finally get fired from Google after a couple of years of barely hanging on to my job."

deleted 11y ago

[deleted]

everyone 11y ago

5 commits a week is normal? Im going to assume those are big commits.. I personally would do a commit for every little class or method I write. I did 18 last week for example. Also I'm curious what he means by 'burnout' I'd take that to mean mentally exhausted from too much stress. Sounds like he was more vaguely dissatisfied or unmotivated.

packetslave 11y ago
A "commit" at Google tends to be a bit bigger unit of work. To submit a changelist to Piper, you need a code review, your code probably needs unit tests, etc. Probably not 1000 lines of code, but probably not 10 either (unless it's a bug fix) Obvious caveat: there are 20,000+ engineers and hundreds of teams at Google. Things aren't exactly the same everywhere.
nostrademons 11y ago
On the high side, actually. In many cases you'll need to get your code reviewed by an external team, and oftentimes their SLA for one round of code review is 24 hours. That a.) incentivizes big commits and b.) sets a floor on the latency of your commit process. My long-term average at Google was 5 commits/week, max was IIRC 24/week, and min was 3 months to get one commit written, reviewed, and approved. By contrast, when I'm coding on my own for my startup, my long-term average is 20 commits/week, max was about 14/day, and min is about 1/day.
marssaxman 11y ago
5 commits a week sounds like a lot, actually. Nothing gets pushed without a code review and it's a rare code review that doesn't require some changes, which therefore require another test run, etc. You'd have to be working steadily and have some very responsive teammates in order to get a commit in every single work day. At least, that's the way it worked when I was there. I sure as hell didn't get 5 commits in a week.
dcherman 11y ago
It also depends on what you mean by commit. Are we talking 5 commits in 1 merge request (Git style), or 5 individual pieces of code to be reviewed separately? In any case, I think 5 per week is extremely reasonable; I actually do less these days. I used to commit a dozen or more times per week, but these days I tend to work on the larger and harder components that people require. That means more thought and more design. It's not doing less work, it's just doing harder work. This person may also have had review reponsibilities. Doing a truly thorough code review takes time to complete, and that time is time that you're not coding. It's important though; I may not be coding while I'm reviewing, but I'm sharing knowledge with a dozen other developers who hopefully learn from it (as I learn from others reviewing my own code). In aggregate, I hope that my lack of frequent commits actually helps the company rather than hurts it since hopefully I'm enabling many others to do better work.

Johnny555 11y ago

"Apparently my manager and director decided that I was somehow gaming the system and just milk the company while not making any effort to do my job" "In private discussions I was asked why don't I leave by myself, to which I answered that I'm happy with my Google salary. If Google is not happy with my performance - feel free to fire me, but I'm not going to jump myself." Well, at least the managers read his attitude accurately.

ido 11y ago
That's not how I read it. I think the guy wasn't "not making any effort to do [his] job", he was burnt out and tried to make the effort but failed. His reply is not surprising from a Russian perspective (in broad strokes Russian discussion culture is extremely...let's say "honest", to the point of appearing crass or blunt to western ears) & does not mean "I don't give a shit as long as I get money". I read it as "if you want to fire me, do so", and I don't think that's too bad (as in this case the appropriate response really is firing - not asking the guy to quit).
- wwwater 11y ago
  This is an interesting view on russian discussion culture. How did you come to this conclusion?
  - ido 11y ago
    My mother was born in the former Soviet Union and I have a lot of relatives and friends that immigrated from Russia and nearby countries (Ukraine, Moldova, Belarus) that share some similarities in culture. My hometown was also originally founded by Russian immigrants and has a large minority (~30% I think) of people of Russian descent.

bko 11y ago

I think its really unfair to the rest of the team to have dead weight. I understand that it was in his best interest to ride it out as long as he can and try and claim benefits and I can't say for certain what I would have done, but that behavior is really abusing the safety net. He should have tried and find a different role. > In my particular case (Switzerland), I lose three months of unemployment benefits (80% of salary x3) if I do, and there may be other reasons as well (in my case - work permit). This has nothing to do with responsibility: why should I sacrifice my personal interest and the interests of my family for the interest of the company, as a parting gift? I see no reason to do so. Was generous unemployment really designed for ex-Googlers who were burned out and forced the hand of management to fire them? IMO, it's pretty sleazy and hopefully sends a bad signal to future employers.

tajen 11y ago
You must be new to Europe. </sarcasm> I confirm that employment laws in France and in that country (Switzerland), if not other countries, are particularly prone for abuse, and the culture is to fully exert the employee's interest. If you quit a job, you may not be entitled for unemployment at all, whereas being dismissed gives you 2 years of 80% benefits. Most French startups are built on ACCRE: The unemployed asks for a lumpsum instead of monthly benefits at the condition that he creates a company. You can't get it if you quit your last job, so the game for entrepreneurs is to be as disrespectful as legally possible with an employer (e.g. liberally start working on the new company or poaching clients, as long as it's not forbidden), get fired, and create a startup. It makes the ACCRE the #2 source of funding for startups in France (after CIR, another public benefit, but that's a story for another day). Such schemes mean the startup is created months and months after the opening of the market opportunity; after months of being a bad employee; and out of public benefits. To my opinion it's inefficient on all 3 facets. But that's how the old continent runs.
- bko 11y ago
  I've heard that the system in Europe is very "friendly" to workers, but that seems absurd. To me its not even so much the inefficiency, but the general hostile relationship it creates between employee and employer. It probably contributes to the high level of youth unemployment in some European countries. Worse of all, such perverse incentives result in cultural shifts as to whats acceptable. To think that someone readily admits that he would be willing to sabotage his workplace due to a sense of entitlement of 2 years with 80% benefits is really appalling. This isn't some out of work layman, replaced by technology. This is a highly skilled knowledge worker making probably an income probably in the 95 percentile of his country. Just because you can exploit something doesn't make it okay.