7 ms·

Google hasn't become a terrible place to work, it's just not as great as it was 5 years ago. I think most people would agree with that. Also, why can a burger

• filoleg 7y ago
  It can, if you are comparing between similar positions. Comparing the environment of an In-N-Out engineer to a Google engineer is valid, and so is that of an In-N-Out cook to a Google cook. But I don't think that knowing whether life of an average Google employee is "better" or "worse" than that In-N-Out is gonna be useful or illustrative of anything at all to an average In-N-Out employee. It's like making a lawyer compare his workplace to that of a surgeon at a private practice, you are comparing apples to oranges. In part, because the chosen field in itself affects the workplace environment, and there isn't really a good way to separate the effects of the field vs. the individual workplace environment for the purpose of that chart.
• downerending 7y ago
  One of my measures for whether a tech job is "good" is how it compares to the pizza place that I worked for in college. Ignoring the lower pay, the pizza place wins more often than you'd think. And as for Google, no not terrible, but no longer good enough that I'd accept a position there.
  • vecter 7y ago
    Can you explain why?
    • sjwright 7y ago
      Here’s my shot: satisfaction of work performed and stress levels at the end of the day—even if considered relative to remuneration.
    • the-dude 7y ago
      I'll have a shot : clear boundaries
      • malandrew 7y ago
        So much this. With tech jobs I feel like I'm always on because of email and oncall. With shift work, you have the luxury of turning your brain off work at the end of every shift.
        • deleted 7y ago
          [deleted]
        • CamelCaseName 7y ago
          Not just that, but even on breaks and during work there would be times where you can just turn off. It could very well be age related, but I was never more relaxed than when I worked a retail-eqsue job. Even when on vacation.
    • datashow 7y ago
      Another shot: at that time he / she was a college student. Totally different preferences and cretira now.
    • taneq 7y ago
      Simple part-time job, clear expectations, no pressure to innovate, working with a crew of like-minded individuals. Yeah, I can see how it’d be more fun than a high level professional job.
    • butterfi 7y ago
      No one worries that In and Out is eroding our democracy.
    • downerending 7y ago
      It'd differ by the job I'm comparing to, but in general, at the pizza place, the role and goals were pretty clear, my boss was outstanding, we were rarely idle and never given busywork, occasionally I got to save the day, and we made customers happy (in person!) many times every single day. My highest-paying jobs generally lacked most or all of those qualities.
      • ryansc0tt 7y ago
        Possibly the most thoughtful comment I've ever read on this site :)
        • downerending 7y ago
          Gosh, thanks for your kind words!
      • gabaix 7y ago
        Thank you for sharing! Fulfillment at work is about many intangibles beyond pay.
  • m0zg 7y ago
    How about if Google sweetens the pot with $350K/yr in sweet, sweet cash? Would you still prefer the "pizza place"? I mean, higher pay is pretty hard to "ignore" to folks without a trust fund. This is _five times_ what an European software engineer typically makes, and it's by no means the upper bound. FWIW, I loved my years at Google, and I think of going back from time to time. Is it an ideal workplace? No. But it's the best I have worked at by quite a margin. Why do I think that? Because Google is able to offer competitive pay and the projects that don't make your eyes glaze over right from the start, with the potential for truly breathtaking pay and world-leading projects with a little bit of effort and moving around internally, if you have the chops. It's not the best paying place anymore (that'd be FB), but not far behind, and on the balance it more than compensates for that by offering more meaningful work and beyond state of the art dev infra. Disclosure: I no longer work at Google, and hold no positions in its stock. They treated me well when I was there, so I wish them well.
    • roenxi 7y ago
      'Best place to work' is different from 'place I chose to work'. Indeed, money sweetening the pot signals that a job isn't at a place that people want to work. In theory, a place could be so great to work at that people would pay to be there. That would be negative pot sweetening with money.
      • m0zg 7y ago
        Doesn't work like that if you have a family to support and a mortgage. In fact, it doesn't work like that at all. The probability that you will find interesting work as an engineer at least is directly proportional to how much the employer (or client) is willing to pay. If you're paid half a million dollars a year, chances are you won't be doing something mind numbing that a $100K/yr fresh grad can do. You will be doing gnarly, interesting shit where there's disproportionate ROI. In fact in my current consulting gig, some of my clients insist that I offload bullshit work to their FTEs. I like that. I wish I could do that when I was an FTE. :-)
        • JenrHywy 7y ago
  • adventured 7y ago
    > Ignoring the lower pay, the pizza place wins more often than you'd think. It only wins because you're excluding some of the most important criteria. Stay at the pizza place for 12 years and see how you feel about what has happened to your life and well-being. Did you buy a house? No, you couldn't afford one. Did you get married and have a family? No, you couldn't afford one. Did you have amazing health insurance? No. Did you save anything for retirement? No, your bills are pretty close to your wages and the pizza place provides squat for benefits. The only way the pizza place wins is if you work there for a short amount of time, otherwise entropy will particularly badly eat away at you (in every regard). Low paying jobs are brutal on people over long periods of time, living at the line of existence perpetually is very harsh. You can't fix things that break, you can't acquire values that you want.
    • jimbokun 7y ago
      "Ignoring the lower pay..." I think it's just saying if both jobs paid the same, the pizza place would be a more rewarding, fulfilling and pleasant place to work.
    • fennecfoxen 7y ago
      Going back to In-n-Out instead of unknown-pizza-place which I can't look up and may not be on the list of good places to work: "The typical In-N-Out Burger Store Manager salary is $84,315. Store Manager salaries at In-N-Out Burger can range from $55,134 - $130,157." — Glassdoor.com That's pretty good for most of the US, particularly so outside of major cities, and especially if you've been making money — even just mediocre money — for 4 years, while skipping student debt.
    • domador 7y ago
      What's sad is that if you are right, then some tech companies are only better than a restaurant because they give you more money. It's very, very sad when one's life and career are reduced to just making money. It's also infuriating because you'd expect these large tech companies, with all their surplus resources, to be able to do better for their employees' happiness and well-being. Yet this would also be a money-focused way of looking at companies. I suspect employees' overall well-being has less to do with money and more with their bosses' attitude and the work environments they create. Many of these tech giants sound hellish to me, with their relationally-unenlightened, cutthroat, misanthropic corporate cultures. The maxim that "A players hire A players but B players hire C players" also applies to the human decency side, regarding the kind of managers a company's bosses hire or cultivate (as well as the policies they establish.) Some of these bosses may be A players on the technical/business side, but are B or C players on the human-decency scale (as with Steve Jobs, for example). Thus their company, though bursting at the seams with money, struggle to provide other things their employees need or want. Employees who worship their company might be overjoyed that they're one of the chosen ones, but other employees who don't drink the Kool-Aid might not be as happy with the cult's toxic aspects, regardless of the money they're making.
• avocado4 7y ago
  At Google you get amazing benefits, giant salary, world-class talent as peers, luxurious offices around the globe, first-hand knowledge of unparalleled technical systems, flexible schedule, ability to work on innovative products from healthcare to drone delivery, and the most prestigious alumni network in the world should you leave it. At In-and-out, you don't get any of those things. Not that I don't like I&O - their burgers are great, and I'm sure work environment is better than other fast food companies. But it's just not comparable to Google.
• ericd 7y ago
  Well, there's the small matter of a couple hundred thousand dollars difference in comp.
  • CobrastanJorji 7y ago
    Although I'm guessing that both may provide free meals.
    • ericd 7y ago
      Heh I wonder how long it'd take me to get completely sick of eating In-n-Out.
  • Digory 7y ago
    Maybe google has to pay more to make up for the being a bad place to work. Which is a bit of hyperbole, but higher pay is one way to get people to accept years of schooling, and soul-crushing busywork. You’re not paid for virtue or happiness.
  • jstummbillig 7y ago
    Are you comparing flipping burgers at one company to software engineering at the other? Because I can't see how else you'd end up with that number.
    • ericd 7y ago
      Well, I'm pretty sure that's the median job at each. But even if you wanted to compare software engineering at the two, I'm guessing that the comp differential still holds.
      • bashinator 7y ago
        Related, there was a really interesting article going around a few days back, on how Chick-fil-A provisions bare-metal K8s clusters to every single remote branch. Not all the innovation is happening in the FAANGs https://medium.com/@cfatechblog/bare-metal-k8s-clustering-at-chick-fil-a-scale-7b0607bd3541 https://medium.com/@cfatechblog/bare-metal-k8s-clustering-at...
• esoterica 7y ago
  Because the burger place pays 1/10th as much.
• trenning 7y ago
  All of these people are responding talking about how it doesn't pay the same at Google yet this site is filled with miserable people making hundreds of thousands of dollars and constant threads about it. Perhaps greed isn't as fulfilling in life as actually enjoying one's self and performing a job that has perceived value.
  • natechols 7y ago
    I don't think it's "greed" to want to work as a software developer instead of flipping burgers (I've done both). However it should probably raise some eyebrows in Google management (among others) that a company in an industry known for slim margins and low pay nonetheless manages to have happier employees overall.
  • stickfigure 7y ago
    ...or maybe these people don't remember (or have never had the experience of) working a low-paid job. Or maybe people like to complain. Or maybe there's just a lot of selection bias in the commenter pool. Maybe all the people happily working at Google are just busy working and don't care about HN drama.
  • deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]
• thanhhaimai 7y ago
  1) Flexible working hours. I can WFH any time I like. No questions asked. 2) Free buffet style breakfast, lunch, and dinner. The quality is not as good as it was, but still better than anything in&out would give, no? 3) Clear ladder and career growth. While in in&out you would be lucky to move up to any job higher than $22/h 4) Much more interesting job. Say what you want to say about how bad Google is, I can't imagine how working in a burger shop would be more rewarding than working at your desk in Google, with all interesting challenges, good resources, and the smart people to learn from. Google has problems, but this list is not a good list if it puts in&out over Google. It's misleading at best.
  • MuffinFlavored 7y ago
    > 1) Flexible working hours. I can WFH any time I like. No questions asked. How many of your team members are fully remote? If the answer is 0, it sounds like there are some "questions asked".
    • lucasmullens 7y ago
      I think "questions asked" was referring to questions about why you WFH, not about conversations you missed.
  • jhatemyjob 7y ago
    > still better than anything in&out would give, no? Blasphemy! I'd eat In-N-Out every day if I could.