10 ms·

Controversial opinion here. I know that exaggerating and complaining is a surefire way to get clicks, but it's hard to take the author's criticisms seriously wh

• brianberns 8y ago
  Seriously. When Jim schedules a meeting for 9am the next day, just tell him that you need more time than that. Instead, this guy goes home and works through the night so he can prove Jim wrong. Way too much ego tied up in petty disagreements here.
  • fuoggler 8y ago
    The sheer number of Googlers posting here is amazing. We get it, you love the Gorg, but every single criticism he lists is real. Frankly, it has been a long time, too long, since we had a real voice air the realities of life in Goolag.
  • sealjam 8y ago
    Agreed. The thing it took me a long time to realise about stuff like that is that you're not winning by breaking your neck to get something done for an unrealistic deadline, they are!
• paulddraper 8y ago
  "If you run into an asshole in the morning, you ran into an asshole. If you run into assholes all day, you're the asshole." - Raylan Givens
  • pinewurst 8y ago
    Plenty of organizations breed assholes as an evolutionary process because they thrive more than better behaving people.
  • kthejoker2 8y ago
    So since the author calls out many people he enjoyed working with at Google, this quote isn't all that relevant.
• throwaway080383 8y ago
  If anyone except maybe my skip-manager scheduled a meeting for 9am, I'd say "Sorry I don't get in before 10".
• jccalhoun 8y ago
  totally agree. Things like "Let’s call him Greg because his real name is just as vanilla." are just petty. Maybe it is because I have a name I hate to explain to everyone but jabs at the name your parents gave you aren't cool. There is a lot of ascribing negative motives to other people's words and behaviors when other explanations seem possible from the description he gave to the situation.
  • village-idiot 8y ago
    Assuming the motives of others, especially when they’re always negative, is a huge red flag.
• Novashi 8y ago
  He wouldn't be the first designer to pick apart everyday things and question them. But you have to remember that he was told he'd get to work on Chrome but was then assigned to G+. You have to be extremely laid-back and financially secure to roll with that punch and not put the rest of the company under a microscope (even criticizing petty culture-identity labels like 'nooglers' builds up resentment).
  • ganeshkrishnan 8y ago
    How is changing projects a punch? Haven't been longtime in a permanent position but there never was a project guaranteed during recruiting, only the skills and type of work. Even if the project was guaranteed, things happen. Roll with it. Building resentment you are just hurting yourself. Fuck, posts like these piss me off so much. There are so many candidates who would give their arm and leg to work at Google. Heck, if i didn't have a startup I would have been happy to work even on Orkut at Google.
    • Novashi 8y ago
      Bait and switch, where they try to convince you to take a lowball offer because you'll work on prestigious projects like Chrome, then turn around and put you on G+ is most definitely a punch. Just because it happens (regularly) doesn't mean you should just roll over and take it. There could be inaccuracies here, it's a twitter rant after all, but as presented, that would demoralize a lot of people. You don't have to force your own happiness just because some people aren't getting their dream job at a dream company.
      • ganeshkrishnan 8y ago
        Then reject the job offer? Would you take up the job if the salary was reduced on day one? Some devs would roll with lower salary, some with different projects. You can still call the shots instead of going ahead and whinging publically
        • Novashi 8y ago
• ganeshkrishnan 8y ago
  Employees like these quickly wear you down if you are leading then. I am surprised Google is not doing a personality test before recruiting. When I was a recruiter for ibm I always made sure to check if the potential was an asshole or not before going ahead with tech. Talent can always be learned by those willing. Attitude is permanent.
  • rabidrat 8y ago
    You've got that backwards. Attitude can be adjusted, but only if the person is willing. Talent can't be learned--at least not by most people, and not on the timescale of an actual job to be performed.
    • zinclozenge 8y ago
      Talent only even begins to matter when you're at levels roughly 4-5 standard deviations away from the mean.
      • Alex3917 8y ago
        This. In college I was a lightweight rower. Despite there being thousands of people in that sport at the college level, in most years there are 0 to 1 kids with enough genetic talent to be unbeatable by everyone else who just works hard.
      • threatofrain 8y ago
        Then how do police forces argue that intelligence is a legitimate criteria in hiring?
        • kthejoker2 8y ago
          How do they measure intelligence? Whatever test they give, I promise it doesn't reveal intelligence, only aptitude, knowledge, and whatever latent biases the exam preparer had.
    • ganeshkrishnan 8y ago
• tyingq 8y ago
  Yep. Seems like a smart guy, but overwhelmed with bitterness. Also a fair amount of irony from someone complaining about fair treatment, like: "Let’s call him Greg because his real name is just as vanilla"
  • randycupertino 8y ago
    The author of this article sounds insufferable to work with. Sounds like the google team all couldn't stand working with him, so while they didn't specifically fire him, they orchestrated to force him out so he would resign. After reading his self-indulgent, whiny, bitter grandstanding tirade, can't say I blame them. Also shows a complete lack of introspection or self awareness that he'd post and promote this drivel and think it makes him look GOOD! Lol. Career suicide imo. If I was considering hiring him and googled him and came across this writing, I'd nope out so fast.
    • kettlecorn 8y ago
      In my opinion it makes both him and Google look really bad.
      • mercer 8y ago
        I'd describe him as the second designer I'd hire. Possibly invaluable to the endeavor, but not the single source of truth.
• deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
• didibus 8y ago
  I agree the writing style, it's not constructive. That said, I think the main point is that his manager and some of his colleagues ganged up on him because they felt threatened, and that resulted in him being let go. That does indicate a problem for Google if true. This is often the slow death people talk about when big company culture turns like this. This is made stronger by the fact Google+ failed, and they're shutting it down. If i was an exec at Google I'd totally take this as a retrospective data point, and I'd explore to see how much of this attitude existed within the Plus org, if it was prevalent, it could have had a role in the failure of Plus.
  • marcinzm 8y ago
    >That said, I think the main point is that his manager and some of his colleagues ganged up on him because they felt threatened, and that resulted in him being let go. >That does indicate a problem for Google if true. I mean, if his writing is a reflection of how he behaves then why is this a problem for Google? Getting rid of toxic people in a company is a positive and not a negative.
    • AstralStorm 8y ago
      This is assuming they are actually toxic and not a scapegoat. Can't tell that from a single post as it usually takes more than one instance for a person to blow a gasket just like that. (unless there is something really wrong) People on bad projects like scapegoats. Ganging up on one guy, especially new young upstart, is a sign of a dysfunctional team too.
    • mercer 8y ago
      He doesn't come across as toxic. At worst, he's not a team player. That can be a problem, but I'd argue not being able to tolerate or channel these individuals definitely is a portend of a bad corporate culture.
• gedy 8y ago
  I don't think it's controversial, post was unprofessional and came across very entitled and immature. It's bad for his career imho.
• adverbly 8y ago
  Totally agree. Sounds like conflict management is not handled very well by anyone in these situations.The author certainly could have handled it better, and "Greg" should have handled it way better. Very disappointing to hear, but at the same time these kinds of conflict are usually local and only affect a few individuals, so it is probably not very fair to describe the whole project and exec team as operating in this fashion.
  • Flow 8y ago
    Management above Greg should have seen through Gregs behavior a long time ago and acted on it. People like Greg are poison to a workplace, IMHO.
    • joe_momma 8y ago
      Naw, people that think they are always right and don't recognize other talented people are the poison.
    • adverbly 8y ago
      I agree that management above Greg could have possibly identified his behavior and acted on it, but it might be reaching a bit to expect them to have done so... sometimes these individuals can be hard to identify and root out (for example I doubt that Greg would ever be so mean in front of his bosses). Good on the author to bring this kind of stuff into the open though so that it hopefully happens less in the future. At least something went right lol!
      • jeremysmyth 8y ago
        Assuming "management above greg" are competent (not a stretch in a successful company) then they likely measure Greg on important things like effectiveness and retention. Not being mean in front of his bosses has little to do with that.
• Meekro 8y ago
  It was a hard lesson for me to learn in the past: if you care wildly more than the people around you -- so much that you work late into the night while your grandmother is dying and your coworkers are pounding drinks with their counterparts at a competitor -- you'll just end up really hurt and frustrated and they'll all think that you are the problem. The author seems like the kind of person that I'd love to do a 3-person startup with. We'd be in an environment where working late into the night is valuable sometimes, and because all of us would be doing that he'd have no reason to be resentful. Hopefully he gets into a group like that before the corporate life trains him to preserve his sanity by not caring so much.
  • rokhayakebe 8y ago
    and they'll all think that you are the problem. Agreed.
    • tdb7893 8y ago
      The thing is that often they are right. It's almost literally crazy to me that he wouldn't just try to reschedule the meeting and that he would work when his grandma was dying. It's not working long hours that's a problem but in my experience it often correlates with people who don't work well in a team (which this guy seems like a perfect example of).
      • ryanmarsh 8y ago
        I love working with people who “don’t work well in a team”. There’s something beautiful about these crazies. They make amazing stuff if you just have the wits to lead them.
      • mercer 8y ago
        I do sort of see that, but there's another side to that coin. This dude, and many people I've met similar to him, takes people on their word and acts accordingly. He might be a bad fit for an environment where this is not respected, but I'd argue this is not a sign of 'not working well in a team'. Rather, it's a sign of him taking people on their word and finding it difficult to work on a team where this is not respected. I imagine there are plenty of teams, in companies big and small, that do respect these kinds of things. Or at least do so begrudgingly. My personal experience is that any work environment that does not manage to handle these 'your word is your word' type situations, even if badly, is a horrible place and destined to fail (barring some exceptional situation where they can get away with it). Outliers like this particular person are a kind of anchor-point. Perhaps it's okay, even necessary, that they don't quite thrive in certain stages of a company. But when they actively flee the ship, it's a horribly sign.
• quest88 8y ago
  I find not being able to show up to your job, especially a 9am meeting you scheduled, because you were hungover to be irresponsible and unprofessional.
  • tdb7893 8y ago
    As long as it doesn't interfere with his work it doesn't seem necessary to judge why he wasn't there (people miss small parts of the day for different hobbies all the time). If all he needed to do was reschedule one non-urgent meeting it doesn't seem like it really matters.
• geofft 8y ago
  > It sucks that the author's grandmother died and that he felt the need to work through the night while that happened, but it's unfair to take that out on your colleagues. It's unfair to take that out on your colleagues, but it is fair to blame it on management and the culture they set. Some people are going to be more politically protected than others for reasons that aren't strongly related to the value they add to the business and able to get away with things others aren't, and if you don't counteract that, you'll both get inefficient results (either they're doing something they shouldn't, or other people don't feel empowered to do something they should) and also cause a loss to morale and trust. Setting clear (if mechanical) rules about things that would otherwise turn into "the politically connected can do this, the rest of you can't" is absolutely the responsibility of management. Saying to people up front that they should always feel free to take time off or cancel meetings for personal emergencies and the company trusts their judgment (if that is in fact the policy) and making sure people act like it's true - or making sure people show up and have extremely good excuses when they don't, if that's the policy - is management's job.
• cwyers 8y ago
  I finally read the story after reading this comment and some of the other ones, and this undersells how nuts it is. > Anyhow, my wholesale redesign of all of Jim’s work was obviously making him feel bad. > One day, he came up to me totally flustered in one of the micro-kitchens. He said “People aren’t liking these icons.” I said, “Oh, ok, let me know who and I’ll collect their feedback and we can make them better.” ... > Me: “OK, no worries man. Would it make you feel better if I put something together that explains my decision making and then you and whomever else can punch holes in it, and give me direct feedback?” > Jim: “Yeah, ok, sounds good. I’ll put something on the calendar.” > 9am the next morning. A dick move. > I went home and got to work. > In the early evening I got a call from my dad. My grandmother’s health took a turn for the worst. They weren’t sure she’d make it past the evening. > I couldn’t grieve. I needed to make this happen. These two designers were beloved by Greg. I had to win them over or they’d screw everything up for me. Everything I’d worked for could come crashing down due to their pettiness. Like, holy hell. Jim is a _peer_. Nobody asked Morgan to do this work, Morgan volunteered to do it. And he decided to work through a major life event in the off hours for something that didn't come from anyone above him in the hierarchy? And then to blow the other guy up when he reschedules the meeting? Wow.