14 ms·

+1 I'm finding this post a bit confusing as well. TBH, Google seems to be an ideal place to have work-life balance. Things move slowly and everyone expects that

+1 I'm finding this post a bit confusing as well. TBH, Google seems to be an ideal place to have work-life balance. Things move slowly and everyone expects that projects never get delivered on time (as the author points out). People generally are not expected to work outside of working hours and definitely not on weekends. I believe a better title for the blog post could be "Why I left Google: unsatisfying work" and seems more inline with what the author experienced.

ocdtrekkie 4y ago
Google's culture is built to replace your out of work time with time on Google campuses and ensuring your friends are other Googlers. Work-life balance for Google is just living at Google. Add that everything you say probably means your work life is also unsatisfying... I mean, nothing makes me happier about my work than when I get something done.
- thematrixturtle 4y ago
  And that culture was blown out of the water when everything shut down and you were sitting at home all day. That said, while I think "offices with every perk you can think of" is definitely a part of Google culture, the "living at the office" stereotype really only applies to younger folks. Once you have a family, living in a van in the Google parking lot and showering at the gym doesn't really work.
  - bogomipz 4y ago
    >"Once you have a family, living in a van in the Google parking lot and showering at the gym doesn't really work." Are there actually folks who live in a van in the parking lot or is that a healthy bit of humor?
    - googlr29783 4y ago
      When I interviewed in pre-pandemic Mountain View, there was a section of the parking lot with around 6 RVs parked next to each other. I couldn't believe my eyes. Maybe they did it long enough to save up money for a house.
    - munificent 4y ago
      There was famously one dude who did it for a while: https://www.businessinsider.com/google-employee-lives-in-truck-in-parking-lot-2015-10 https://www.businessinsider.com/google-employee-lives-in-tru... It's the kind of socially awkward but technically allowed "lifehack" kind of thing you can imagine a stereotypical Googler coming up with.
    - stkenned 4y ago
      It was real (I personally knew one person who did it), though I guess the pandemic must have stopped it.
    - sgtnoodle 4y ago
      I worked there with an intern who happened to be in his 40's. He was previously a professional athlete, and decided to get into engineering. He owned a gorgeous ranch in Montana, with his own baseball diamond, outdoor bed, and enough land that the neighboring farmer leased it for planting. He was living in a crappy studio apartment in the bay area. He decided to try and save money by buying an RV and live in one of the known Google shanty towns in an unused office parking lot. We all teased him that he would never find a girlfriend without real plumbing. He lived there for about 6 months, until security politely asked him to leave because the company wanted to start using the parking lot.
      - bogomipz 4y ago
        >"He decided to try and save money by buying an RV and live in one of the known Google shanty towns in an unused office parking lot. We all teased him that he would never find a girlfriend without real plumbing" This whole passage had me in stitches. I'm glad I asked. I may never heard the phrase "known Google shanty towns" again but I will probably never forget it. Cheers.
- mrwh 4y ago
  Maybe in Mountain View, but even then: it was never that many people who stayed after hours (I worked there for years, then transferred to SF, where even fewer people stayed/stay late).
- bogomipz 4y ago
  I remember a friend showing me around the FB Campus and there was a gym, a barber shop, a Mexican restaurant with bar and I think a drop off laundry place and dentist. I know it was meant to impress but I was horrified by the subtext of all that i.e that it was really just required because people spent so much time there.
  - nmfisher 4y ago
    I would love to have a gym, barber, dentist and laundry all in the one place. Commuting to those places really isn't time well-spent for me, so the faster I can get in and out, the better. Restaurants and bars is getting a bit iffy, because that's an inherently social activity and I think you need wider horizons than a hundred fellow Metamates.
    - est31 4y ago
      In europe there are plenty of walkable cities.
  - chrisseaton 4y ago
    But you can use all those facilities during working hours, leaving your own free time more free.
- munificent 4y ago
  People say this all the time about Google and it simply doesn't reflect the reality I've seen working here. Yes, there are cafes and they serve dinner. There is a gym and a game room and other perks. And you know what? At dinner time, there's only a handful of people eating and the rest of the office is a ghost town. I'm sure that some people do end up with their life revolving around Google. That's probably particularly true for people who got hired right out of college and moved for work. But most people I know seem to have very balanced work and personal lives. I think people love the idea of a narrative that everything that appears nice about working at Google is actually secretly sinister and is making Googlers miserable but, like, maybe it's just a good job, you know? Maybe they offer all the perks because competition for software engineers is high and it helps attract talent. Obviously, there's many valid criticisms of Google, as there are with most companies their size. But it's not a supervillain fortress full of trapped minions or something. It's just a huge corporation that found ways to make a lot of money per employee thanks to the magic of software and data. In industries where the marginal cost is zero and competition is still high, this is what you should expect to see.
  - sgtnoodle 4y ago
    I worked at Google for a few years. I have the best Google food memories from "The Root". I remember the day they served the most delicious duck I've ever had, and the day all the food was Klingon themed. The food was a nice perk, but I really miss the gym. A few coworkers and I had a standing appointment with a trainer. A coworker also ran a weekly yoga session. It was also easy to bike to work. It all worked because of the on-site showers. I left to give a smaller startup a shot. I've been there 6 years, and the project continues to keep me engaged and fulfilled. They wrote meals into my employment contract, which I thought was pretty funny. They've followed through with it, although it's not as nice as having dozens of themed cafeterias. I've struggled to consistently hit the gym the last few years because of the relative inconvenience. It's my own lack of self-discipline, though, rather than any pressure from work.
    - andreareina 4y ago
      I don't know your situation but I find discipline to be not very helpful as an explanatory variable: it's not something you can meaningfully change. What you can change is the overall environment, such that it's easier to do the thing: have an appointment with a trainer (or set some other time, even before/after work on particular days helps), attach a meaningful goal (weight loss, strength standards), etc. Basically: reduce activation energy, increase desire.
- cromwellian 4y ago
  Complete nonsense. I can’t even reach most of my coworkers by chat after hours. Everyone in my office is gone before 6. This may be true for international workers or recent grads who don’t have families or friends local, but in my experience this stereotype of Googlers living on campus is mostly apocryphal and from the dot-com and 00s eta. I heard the same thing about Netscape, people working 100 hour weeks, sleeping under their desks. The Google of 2022 has over 150k employees, the culture is way different than say, 2007. The average age of the employees these days is older.
imgabe 4y ago
The author mentioned that the level in the bucket represented satisfaction, not necessarily time.
- haswell 4y ago
  The current popular understanding of work life balance (or lack thereof) is almost always about work consuming an unhealthy/unbalanced amount of time, often leaving little time for life. Job satisfaction and work life balance are often linked, but distinct. I think the thing others are pointing out is that regardless of what he clarifies in the post itself, the title does not match the content. It’s a confusing title for what comes after it.
  - d3nj4l 4y ago
    I actually don't think the title is confusing. It makes perfect sense. I wrote elsewhere on this thread that the author basically chose to tilt the balance towards work because the other side, life, wasn't working out.
  - XorNot 4y ago
    The issue is that when you don't feel like you're achieving things at work, it's stressful. At the end of a day when you worked on some task for a solid 8 hours, it's easy to unwind - work is done, work was accomplished, you know what you're doing the next day. At the end of a day when you spent the whole day trying to find out what you should be doing, didn't find anything and will resume that the next day...you can't unwind. Were you doing the right thing? Maybe there was someone else you should've contacted? What if you don't find it tomorrow? Is the organization broken? Should you try to fix it? (No) - there's a lot that you can't help but think about it.
- devin 4y ago
  Having time provides a natural level of satisfaction. All of this discussion, but it feels like a natural “both” is the best way of describing the why behind this post.
throwawayamz27 4y ago
The subtlety is that its not about projects not being delivered on time, its about them never being delivered (either cancelled or scoped down until no one has to actually do anything). In an environment like this the incentive is to become a bottleneck for a lot of projects (so you get at least some that get delivered) and then a) do nothing on most to outwait the inevitable cancellation b) do the minimum possible work on the remainder, but make it seem as complex as possible. Even with low hours of work this becomes a very stressful environment as if you are trying to get something done, you have to be constantly convincing people you are depending on that the project is worthy of category b). While doing the exact thing to the people depending on you. Turnover makes this hard also as a small percentage of coworkers are very valuable to you (you can trust them to prioritize your project). From my experience this stress stretches into your out of work time, making the WLB worse even with a reasonable amount of "in office" hours.
- frostwarrior 4y ago
  Yeah. It's less like stress and more like a depressive void and a limbo where you have to work and at the same time not. Somehow this pace of low energy, zero initiative and low motivation also crushes your motivation for personal project.
  - pm90 4y ago
    I mean nothing beats the feeling of delivering real value by building or fixing things. Its a great feeling! Often after having fixed something after working on it for hours, I will want to do even more for a while because of that “high”.
  - throwfaraway5 4y ago
    I work for a another big company and this sounds exactly like my job. Currently trying to get out and writing applications since it becomes unbearable for me.
  - muse900 4y ago
    Usually its the extremes that are having the same effects. Atm I am in a super demanding job, requiring me to overwork, make decisions on the spot, work on problems etc. On my free time while I want to sit down and watch some TV, go for running, enjoy a nice dinner or whatever... I FEEL EMPTY! I am fixated with my work... its not healthy and its creating low motivation for me. It feels like work has taken away all pleasures in life for me. It is not HEALTHY at all (I am currently seeing professionals about it) Generally anything in moderation is key... P.S. I do overwork myself for someone else to enjoy the fruits of my labour... sad story.
femiagbabiaka 4y ago
I can only speak for myself but I personally find jobs like that to be very stressful. Every review period a coin flip. Periodic severe swings in work output expectations because the thing you thought wasn’t important is now on some executives quarterly goals. Etc. Spending 40 hours a week doing effectively nothing but pushing a rock up a hill can be exhausting. This is a phenomenon that exists outside of my single anecdote: http://www.garlikov.com/philosophy/Sisyphus.html http://www.garlikov.com/philosophy/Sisyphus.html. Having clear and achievable targets (that are achieved!) and consistent expectations is much preferable.
sl9dmk2 4y ago
Don't think author is replacing unhappy personal life with workaholism. He's saying that when you have low energy in some parts of your life, it drains into other parts. Now that he enjoys his work more, he's finding that he also has more energy for gym / social situations etc. I had the same experience in big tech. Lack of work progress made me depressed and bled into other parts of my life. Startups have their own issues, but at least there's more momentum on most days. Important to go with well-funded ones in this environment though, preferably by the top VCs: https://topstartups.io/ https://topstartups.io/
- freedom2099 4y ago
  You can hardly have time for family, friends and doing sports if you work evenings and weekends!
Varqu 4y ago
They would have an ideal work-life balance IF they enabled full remote work. Their hybrid you-have-to-come-to-the-office approach basically means that you still need to live in an area near to the office, which basically means no real benefits from remote setting.
roland35 4y ago
I had a similar experience - when I felt like things were moving too slow and I didn't deliver a lot I was much more stressed out. My manager and team was satisfied with my output but I couldn't shake the anxiety that I wasn't doing enough! Ironically for me I went the opposite direction, now working at a large tech company I have more than enough work to fill my plate. I am no longer worried about not doing enough:D

ocdtrekkie 4y ago

Google's culture is built to replace your out of work time with time on Google campuses and ensuring your friends are other Googlers. Work-life balance for Google is just living at Google. Add that everything you say probably means your work life is also unsatisfying... I mean, nothing makes me happier about my work than when I get something done.

thematrixturtle 4y ago
And that culture was blown out of the water when everything shut down and you were sitting at home all day. That said, while I think "offices with every perk you can think of" is definitely a part of Google culture, the "living at the office" stereotype really only applies to younger folks. Once you have a family, living in a van in the Google parking lot and showering at the gym doesn't really work.
- bogomipz 4y ago
  >"Once you have a family, living in a van in the Google parking lot and showering at the gym doesn't really work." Are there actually folks who live in a van in the parking lot or is that a healthy bit of humor?
  - googlr29783 4y ago
    When I interviewed in pre-pandemic Mountain View, there was a section of the parking lot with around 6 RVs parked next to each other. I couldn't believe my eyes. Maybe they did it long enough to save up money for a house.
  - munificent 4y ago
    There was famously one dude who did it for a while: https://www.businessinsider.com/google-employee-lives-in-truck-in-parking-lot-2015-10 https://www.businessinsider.com/google-employee-lives-in-tru... It's the kind of socially awkward but technically allowed "lifehack" kind of thing you can imagine a stereotypical Googler coming up with.
  - stkenned 4y ago
    It was real (I personally knew one person who did it), though I guess the pandemic must have stopped it.
  - sgtnoodle 4y ago
    I worked there with an intern who happened to be in his 40's. He was previously a professional athlete, and decided to get into engineering. He owned a gorgeous ranch in Montana, with his own baseball diamond, outdoor bed, and enough land that the neighboring farmer leased it for planting. He was living in a crappy studio apartment in the bay area. He decided to try and save money by buying an RV and live in one of the known Google shanty towns in an unused office parking lot. We all teased him that he would never find a girlfriend without real plumbing. He lived there for about 6 months, until security politely asked him to leave because the company wanted to start using the parking lot.
    - bogomipz 4y ago
      >"He decided to try and save money by buying an RV and live in one of the known Google shanty towns in an unused office parking lot. We all teased him that he would never find a girlfriend without real plumbing" This whole passage had me in stitches. I'm glad I asked. I may never heard the phrase "known Google shanty towns" again but I will probably never forget it. Cheers.
mrwh 4y ago
Maybe in Mountain View, but even then: it was never that many people who stayed after hours (I worked there for years, then transferred to SF, where even fewer people stayed/stay late).
bogomipz 4y ago
I remember a friend showing me around the FB Campus and there was a gym, a barber shop, a Mexican restaurant with bar and I think a drop off laundry place and dentist. I know it was meant to impress but I was horrified by the subtext of all that i.e that it was really just required because people spent so much time there.
- nmfisher 4y ago
  I would love to have a gym, barber, dentist and laundry all in the one place. Commuting to those places really isn't time well-spent for me, so the faster I can get in and out, the better. Restaurants and bars is getting a bit iffy, because that's an inherently social activity and I think you need wider horizons than a hundred fellow Metamates.
  - est31 4y ago
    In europe there are plenty of walkable cities.
- chrisseaton 4y ago
  But you can use all those facilities during working hours, leaving your own free time more free.
munificent 4y ago
People say this all the time about Google and it simply doesn't reflect the reality I've seen working here. Yes, there are cafes and they serve dinner. There is a gym and a game room and other perks. And you know what? At dinner time, there's only a handful of people eating and the rest of the office is a ghost town. I'm sure that some people do end up with their life revolving around Google. That's probably particularly true for people who got hired right out of college and moved for work. But most people I know seem to have very balanced work and personal lives. I think people love the idea of a narrative that everything that appears nice about working at Google is actually secretly sinister and is making Googlers miserable but, like, maybe it's just a good job, you know? Maybe they offer all the perks because competition for software engineers is high and it helps attract talent. Obviously, there's many valid criticisms of Google, as there are with most companies their size. But it's not a supervillain fortress full of trapped minions or something. It's just a huge corporation that found ways to make a lot of money per employee thanks to the magic of software and data. In industries where the marginal cost is zero and competition is still high, this is what you should expect to see.
- sgtnoodle 4y ago
  I worked at Google for a few years. I have the best Google food memories from "The Root". I remember the day they served the most delicious duck I've ever had, and the day all the food was Klingon themed. The food was a nice perk, but I really miss the gym. A few coworkers and I had a standing appointment with a trainer. A coworker also ran a weekly yoga session. It was also easy to bike to work. It all worked because of the on-site showers. I left to give a smaller startup a shot. I've been there 6 years, and the project continues to keep me engaged and fulfilled. They wrote meals into my employment contract, which I thought was pretty funny. They've followed through with it, although it's not as nice as having dozens of themed cafeterias. I've struggled to consistently hit the gym the last few years because of the relative inconvenience. It's my own lack of self-discipline, though, rather than any pressure from work.
  - andreareina 4y ago
    I don't know your situation but I find discipline to be not very helpful as an explanatory variable: it's not something you can meaningfully change. What you can change is the overall environment, such that it's easier to do the thing: have an appointment with a trainer (or set some other time, even before/after work on particular days helps), attach a meaningful goal (weight loss, strength standards), etc. Basically: reduce activation energy, increase desire.
cromwellian 4y ago
Complete nonsense. I can’t even reach most of my coworkers by chat after hours. Everyone in my office is gone before 6. This may be true for international workers or recent grads who don’t have families or friends local, but in my experience this stereotype of Googlers living on campus is mostly apocryphal and from the dot-com and 00s eta. I heard the same thing about Netscape, people working 100 hour weeks, sleeping under their desks. The Google of 2022 has over 150k employees, the culture is way different than say, 2007. The average age of the employees these days is older.

imgabe 4y ago

The author mentioned that the level in the bucket represented satisfaction, not necessarily time.

haswell 4y ago
The current popular understanding of work life balance (or lack thereof) is almost always about work consuming an unhealthy/unbalanced amount of time, often leaving little time for life. Job satisfaction and work life balance are often linked, but distinct. I think the thing others are pointing out is that regardless of what he clarifies in the post itself, the title does not match the content. It’s a confusing title for what comes after it.
- d3nj4l 4y ago
  I actually don't think the title is confusing. It makes perfect sense. I wrote elsewhere on this thread that the author basically chose to tilt the balance towards work because the other side, life, wasn't working out.
- XorNot 4y ago
  The issue is that when you don't feel like you're achieving things at work, it's stressful. At the end of a day when you worked on some task for a solid 8 hours, it's easy to unwind - work is done, work was accomplished, you know what you're doing the next day. At the end of a day when you spent the whole day trying to find out what you should be doing, didn't find anything and will resume that the next day...you can't unwind. Were you doing the right thing? Maybe there was someone else you should've contacted? What if you don't find it tomorrow? Is the organization broken? Should you try to fix it? (No) - there's a lot that you can't help but think about it.
devin 4y ago
Having time provides a natural level of satisfaction. All of this discussion, but it feels like a natural “both” is the best way of describing the why behind this post.

throwawayamz27 4y ago

The subtlety is that its not about projects not being delivered on time, its about them never being delivered (either cancelled or scoped down until no one has to actually do anything). In an environment like this the incentive is to become a bottleneck for a lot of projects (so you get at least some that get delivered) and then a) do nothing on most to outwait the inevitable cancellation b) do the minimum possible work on the remainder, but make it seem as complex as possible. Even with low hours of work this becomes a very stressful environment as if you are trying to get something done, you have to be constantly convincing people you are depending on that the project is worthy of category b). While doing the exact thing to the people depending on you. Turnover makes this hard also as a small percentage of coworkers are very valuable to you (you can trust them to prioritize your project). From my experience this stress stretches into your out of work time, making the WLB worse even with a reasonable amount of "in office" hours.

frostwarrior 4y ago
Yeah. It's less like stress and more like a depressive void and a limbo where you have to work and at the same time not. Somehow this pace of low energy, zero initiative and low motivation also crushes your motivation for personal project.
- pm90 4y ago
  I mean nothing beats the feeling of delivering real value by building or fixing things. Its a great feeling! Often after having fixed something after working on it for hours, I will want to do even more for a while because of that “high”.
- throwfaraway5 4y ago
  I work for a another big company and this sounds exactly like my job. Currently trying to get out and writing applications since it becomes unbearable for me.
- muse900 4y ago
  Usually its the extremes that are having the same effects. Atm I am in a super demanding job, requiring me to overwork, make decisions on the spot, work on problems etc. On my free time while I want to sit down and watch some TV, go for running, enjoy a nice dinner or whatever... I FEEL EMPTY! I am fixated with my work... its not healthy and its creating low motivation for me. It feels like work has taken away all pleasures in life for me. It is not HEALTHY at all (I am currently seeing professionals about it) Generally anything in moderation is key... P.S. I do overwork myself for someone else to enjoy the fruits of my labour... sad story.

femiagbabiaka 4y ago

I can only speak for myself but I personally find jobs like that to be very stressful. Every review period a coin flip. Periodic severe swings in work output expectations because the thing you thought wasn’t important is now on some executives quarterly goals. Etc. Spending 40 hours a week doing effectively nothing but pushing a rock up a hill can be exhausting. This is a phenomenon that exists outside of my single anecdote: http://www.garlikov.com/philosophy/Sisyphus.html http://www.garlikov.com/philosophy/Sisyphus.html. Having clear and achievable targets (that are achieved!) and consistent expectations is much preferable.

sl9dmk2 4y ago

Don't think author is replacing unhappy personal life with workaholism. He's saying that when you have low energy in some parts of your life, it drains into other parts. Now that he enjoys his work more, he's finding that he also has more energy for gym / social situations etc. I had the same experience in big tech. Lack of work progress made me depressed and bled into other parts of my life. Startups have their own issues, but at least there's more momentum on most days. Important to go with well-funded ones in this environment though, preferably by the top VCs: https://topstartups.io/ https://topstartups.io/

freedom2099 4y ago
You can hardly have time for family, friends and doing sports if you work evenings and weekends!

Varqu 4y ago

They would have an ideal work-life balance IF they enabled full remote work. Their hybrid you-have-to-come-to-the-office approach basically means that you still need to live in an area near to the office, which basically means no real benefits from remote setting.

roland35 4y ago

I had a similar experience - when I felt like things were moving too slow and I didn't deliver a lot I was much more stressed out. My manager and team was satisfied with my output but I couldn't shake the anxiety that I wasn't doing enough! Ironically for me I went the opposite direction, now working at a large tech company I have more than enough work to fill my plate. I am no longer worried about not doing enough:D