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I'm curious if it's actually possible to treat all employees as more than a disposable cog. I worked at Google and have several friends that work at Google. The

I'm curious if it's actually possible to treat all employees as more than a disposable cog. I worked at Google and have several friends that work at Google. There's a ton of work to do that is not fun and doing it feels like disposable cog work. It's not fulfilling but it needs to be done. This is one reason lots of people leave. There's a few glamorous jobs and lots of not fun jobs. I'm sure others can come up with better examples but basically with such large code bases things take forever to implement, pass all the tests, and need maintenance forever. There's so much to do and the team so large that you personally get to concentrate on one tiny tiny part of years. Maybe another example is working on drivers for the various new ChromeOS devices. Another might be all the solutions engineers for companies using Google Cloud related stuff. I know people doing it. Their job is to take a call from the customer and then try to write code to show them how to fix their issue. Maybe there are people who want to do those things but I don't.

AnIdiotOnTheNet 8y ago
It was once quite common for people to work completely unglamorous assembly line jobs for decades at the same company. Maybe the real issue is that google's hiring practice selected for prima donnas?
- lotsofpulp 8y ago
  Maybe the smart people saw what happened to those that chose to work unglamorous assembly line jobs for decades and realized it's not to their benefit.
  - AngryData 8y ago
    Probably because they want actual raises over time instead of the promises of increasing pension pay, which as have many found out is just a lie. Even big companies like GM, promised good pensions years ago, hit a double and got rapid inflation to make the pension payments a fraction of what they were expected to cost, then decided it wasn't enough and went for a triple by successfully lowering pensions for people that have already long retired, bought out other's pension plans for similar pennies on the dollar caused by the fear of lowering pension payouts, and then gave bonuses to all of upper management afterwards because they did so good at destroying other people's retirement and possibly life.
TallGuyShort 8y ago
I sometimes do unpleasant work because it needs to be done and I support the long-term goal. My boss talks to me like a human being and makes sure I'm being well compensated in other ways. Unpleasant work != being a cog.

AnIdiotOnTheNet 8y ago

It was once quite common for people to work completely unglamorous assembly line jobs for decades at the same company. Maybe the real issue is that google's hiring practice selected for prima donnas?

lotsofpulp 8y ago
Maybe the smart people saw what happened to those that chose to work unglamorous assembly line jobs for decades and realized it's not to their benefit.
- AngryData 8y ago
  Probably because they want actual raises over time instead of the promises of increasing pension pay, which as have many found out is just a lie. Even big companies like GM, promised good pensions years ago, hit a double and got rapid inflation to make the pension payments a fraction of what they were expected to cost, then decided it wasn't enough and went for a triple by successfully lowering pensions for people that have already long retired, bought out other's pension plans for similar pennies on the dollar caused by the fear of lowering pension payouts, and then gave bonuses to all of upper management afterwards because they did so good at destroying other people's retirement and possibly life.

TallGuyShort 8y ago

I sometimes do unpleasant work because it needs to be done and I support the long-term goal. My boss talks to me like a human being and makes sure I'm being well compensated in other ways. Unpleasant work != being a cog.