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I've only met two googlers in real life. One past, one present. Both talk about google like its a great place, but both seem slightly spent/burnt from the pla

I've only met two googlers in real life. One past, one present. Both talk about google like its a great place, but both seem slightly spent/burnt from the place.

hello_moto 17y ago
Oh... I was referring to the fact that the author just completed his first month at Google... It's hard to judge a company just in one month especially when some people might spend their first week (or two) doing company orientation.
- dschobel 17y ago
  Agreed. I don't doubt that it's an amazing place to work, but every job has its honeymoon phase and the author is definitely in that. I'd be eager to hear an honest assessment from him after a year though. There has to be a reason why brilliant and motivated people leave Google, after all.
  - nostrademons 17y ago
    I've been there for just over a year. My reactions are basically the same as his - they were the same when I started, but they've dulled as I got accustomed to it. Still think it's a great place to work. The OMG-everyone's-so-smart factor does fade as you get accustomed to all the proprietary infrastructure and realize that hey, I'm smart too. Eventually, intelligence just doesn't matter all that much. It's like my dad's story about starting at MIT: the first 2 weeks, everybody has their phi-beta-kappa rings on all the time. After a month, they've all disappeared, because you realize that everybody else has one too, and then smarts just aren't an issue afterwards. You also tend to become more overworked as you gain competence. There's far more that we'd like to do than what we can do. Eventually that marveling at "Oh my god we built this" becomes "Oh shit I have to build this", which can be very satisfying, but also is a lot of work.
  - bigbang 17y ago
    For honest assessments, probably reviews on glassdoor.com would help. Blogs are generally going to be positive, as the person's identity is attached to it. Annonymous reviews, has its own problems ofcourse
  - _delirium 17y ago
    The people I know who've left have left mainly due to the secrecy this article also talks about: they developed cool algorithms they wanted to publish research papers about, and weren't allowed to.

I've only met two googlers in real life. One past, one present. Both talk about google like its a great place, but both seem slightly spent/burnt from the place.

hello_moto 17y ago

Oh... I was referring to the fact that the author just completed his first month at Google... It's hard to judge a company just in one month especially when some people might spend their first week (or two) doing company orientation.

dschobel 17y ago
Agreed. I don't doubt that it's an amazing place to work, but every job has its honeymoon phase and the author is definitely in that. I'd be eager to hear an honest assessment from him after a year though. There has to be a reason why brilliant and motivated people leave Google, after all.
- nostrademons 17y ago
  I've been there for just over a year. My reactions are basically the same as his - they were the same when I started, but they've dulled as I got accustomed to it. Still think it's a great place to work. The OMG-everyone's-so-smart factor does fade as you get accustomed to all the proprietary infrastructure and realize that hey, I'm smart too. Eventually, intelligence just doesn't matter all that much. It's like my dad's story about starting at MIT: the first 2 weeks, everybody has their phi-beta-kappa rings on all the time. After a month, they've all disappeared, because you realize that everybody else has one too, and then smarts just aren't an issue afterwards. You also tend to become more overworked as you gain competence. There's far more that we'd like to do than what we can do. Eventually that marveling at "Oh my god we built this" becomes "Oh shit I have to build this", which can be very satisfying, but also is a lot of work.
- bigbang 17y ago
  For honest assessments, probably reviews on glassdoor.com would help. Blogs are generally going to be positive, as the person's identity is attached to it. Annonymous reviews, has its own problems ofcourse
- _delirium 17y ago
  The people I know who've left have left mainly due to the secrecy this article also talks about: they developed cool algorithms they wanted to publish research papers about, and weren't allowed to.