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Recent Xoogler here. I've never met anyone who was actually happy at Google when you sat them down for an honest talk. Everyone was either coasting and depresse

Recent Xoogler here. I've never met anyone who was actually happy at Google when you sat them down for an honest talk. Everyone was either coasting and depressed/disengaged, or overworked and stressed (I would say 80% were the former). People were frustrated about the bureaucracy, the promo process, the slow pace, the meaninglessness of the work an individual IC does, the stress for managers. Even on a super sexy project dealing with cutting edge AI that got tons of press coverage, everyone was frustrated. This company has a serious cultural issue.

koube 4y ago
I'm a Googler who has only worked in startups before, and my life has markedly improved in every single way since I started working at Google. There is nothing I miss from life before FAANGs, and I consider the vast majority of Faangineers be obscenely privileged. Most of them have progressed to the same point in life that I am at but are 10 years younger. Opinions are my own.
- ExGoogTA88 4y ago
  For sure, that's the upside of working there. Every aspect of my life outside of career satisfaction improved considerably - I relocated to the US, was able to buy a house, my work life balance got a lot better compared to working at startups, etc. But as a job in and of itself it was pretty lame (apart from a few periods that were fun). The thing is, I feel like that's true for most people there.
  - koube 4y ago
    I've had that feeling as well, absolutely agree that people can feel that way at Google. Personally the feeling of ennui was much more at my previous jobs, and I expect will exist anywhere I go. I do see however people incredibly engaged. I think there's a ton of luck in terms of what team/product you're placed in.
    - ExGoogTA88 4y ago
      Probably. But I feel like there's something in Google's current culture that leads to this. I've mostly had these conversations with people from the search and cloud PAs. Could be different in other orgs. Maybe I just got extremely lucky with my pre-Goog jobs that were ultra satisfying and challenging in a good way, I just had a blast coming to work every day and doing the work.
      - jhatemyjob 4y ago
        Another ex-Googler here. I never had a job that was ultra satisfying and challenging in a good way. The only way I got that was from my own projects / businesses. Maybe I got unlucky job-wise. Or maybe I'm an entrepreneur at heart, I think fundamentally I cannot be fully satisfied working on someone else's project. Either way, at this point I think I've seen enough. I think I should minimize time working and maximize pay. Working remotely for G was pretty great. The work sucked but there was so little of it. If it weren't for mandatory RTO I'd still be there. I'm gonna see how FB compares.
        robocat 4y ago
        > RTO .eq. Return To Office # For anyone else chilling somewhere in the world that doesn’t know that TLA
        jrochkind1 4y ago
        > Working remotely for G was pretty great. The work sucked but there was so little of it. If it weren't for mandatory RTO I'd still be there. And I think you just justified mandatory RTO!
  - nerpderp82 4y ago
    I also find that the stress and the promo process creates an environment where people are aholes to each other, but using Googler Norms of social combat.
  - mdoms 4y ago
    Sounds like a job.
- nwsm 4y ago
  You didn't really give us any experiences in this comment. No mention at all of why anything is better, or how your experience has differed from OP or the comment you're replying to.
  - koube 4y ago
    > I've never met anyone who was actually happy at Google when you sat them down for an honest talk. I know plenty of people that have left google for greener pastures but also many that stayed. Since my previous team mostly went to other teams within Google we did a lot of talking about leaving and the consensus was that everyone would be fine whether they stayed with Google or decided to leave. "Happy" is a subjective term but everyone I talk to is comfortable and is fine with staying or leaving. > Everyone was either coasting and depressed/disengaged, or overworked and stressed (I would say 80% were the former). In a realist sense this one is almost tautological. Either you are trying to rank up or you're not trying to rank up. If you're not trying to rank up you get a LOT of leeway at Google, and you can coast if you want, or you can continue to do good work, as I think a lot of people do. If you're trying to rank up you're going to be busting ass, but I think this is not different than other companies. If you have people delivering impact and people who are not, are you really going to make the case that you should be promoting the less hardworking people? Or that everyone should rank up equally? > People were frustrated about the bureaucracy, the promo process, This is constantly brought up on memegen but there are also comments on memegen saying something to the effect of: "Despite our complaints Google is still a great place to work" and I don't think I've ever seen any pushback on this. Compare this to for example Reddit memes where there are zero people saying things are still good despite complaints. Promo by the way is being revamped due to complaints (I think this is public enough that I can mention this) and we'll see how the new process is. > the slow pace, the meaninglessness of the work an individual IC does, Despite my past projects falling flat, I personally find my current work important. In general I both agree and disagree with this point. It's 100% true that some people may not be personally invested in the success of the specific projects that they are working on, and I have indicated my agreement with this in a later comment. Where I disagree with this comment though is that people are very invested in project delivery in general, as your are extremely well rewarded for delivering projects. Above the L5-L6 level you will find people are working extremely hard to be impactful. This is maybe where the perception of "overworked and stressed" comes from. I will tell you these people are generally doing an amazing job and are being compensated for this overwork with amazing pay. And when they are getting pay commensurate to the work they are doing, I personally feel that the use of the label "overworked and stressed" needs to be heavily caveated. > the stress for managers. Even on a super sexy project dealing with cutting edge AI that got tons of press coverage, everyone was frustrated. I personally have not seen this but I don't dispute it. I have heard other teams have a lot of frustration. > This company has a serious cultural issue. This one is entirely subjective, but again I don't dispute this in terms the feeling of ennui at work. Sometimes leadership doesn't seem to have a coherent strategy and work is done for no reason. I can't really define what is "an issue" or "not an issue" culturally. What I can do is make comparative judgements: In my previous startups the culture was much worse, and there was much more of a sense of "what is leadership even doing?". I haven't worked in any places where I've had the sense that things are done better at Google. Others will have to speak to this.
strikelaserclaw 4y ago
A lot of FAANG people want to get paid FAANG levels of money but also work on exciting and meaningful projects, we can't have it all.
- com2kid 4y ago
  The issue is, originally FAANG jobs were exciting. Think about it this way, everyone who was early at Microsoft/Apple/Google/Facebook/etc has awesome stories of being on the first team in the world to ever try solving some really difficult problems. Exploring unknown new fields of computing, designing new UIs for never before imagined devices. You did super cool things. It is comparatively recent that FAANG jobs have become sort of lame. Remember how cool Google maps was when it first came out? Or how awesome Gmail was? Those were ground breaking projects! Heck we take distributed databases for granted now days, but Facebook pioneered a lot of amazing technology, so did Google, Amazon, and Twitter. Microsoft actually may have had the right model way back when, back when they had teams and job roles in charge of making new products, and another org just devoted to maintaining current versions of software. Of course that division was easy to make back when software came on CDs. Now days everything is cloud based and evergreen. Maybe companies need to have a career path that is just "maintain stuff" and your promos are based on how well stuff keeps working and any cost savings/perf improvements you can squeeze out of the existing code w/o doing a massive rewrite.
  - chrsig 4y ago
    When they first came out, neither google maps nor gmail was really unique. They were just better than the alternatives. Mapquest and hotmail were the true trail blazers in that respect.
    - VikingCoder 4y ago
      When it first came out, the Tesla Roadster wasn't really unique. It was just better than the alternatives. The Model-T was the true trail blazer in that respect.
    - cmrdporcupine 4y ago
cmrdporcupine 4y ago
I mean, I often make the same points as you (also ex-Google.) But I have to say, as a counterpoint, I met many people inside Google who loved it there and were living their best career lives there, and getting treated really well to do it. It wasn't me, but, there's a personality type that thrives in those environments. It's not all awful. You get to play with some really fancy big tools. Deploy your stuff across thousands of servers or ship a product to millions of people. Sit on the shoulders of other really smart engineers and use the pretty amazing stuff they build (like, seriously, stuff like F1 etc. is pretty amazing). And if you can play the game there well, and you really want to succeed there, there's lots of room to climb. Wasn't my game, but let's be honest, there's actually a lot there to go with.
nostrademons 4y ago
2gler here. I was actually really happy for about the first 80% of my first time at Google (Search, 2009-2012). Miserable for the last 20%. Mildly discontent for my first team back, reasonably happy after transferring. Your team and the specific work you're doing matters a lot for your happiness at Google (and presumably any big company). Work with your manager to craft a job description that's better suited for you, or transfer if you can't. You have to actively manage your career - and your happiness - in any job.
- Tozen 4y ago
  > You have to actively manage your career - and your happiness - in any job. Truth.
bla3 4y ago
I loved it while I was there. Fun projects, global impact, good pay, fairly reasonable work/life balance.
ProAm 4y ago
> I've never met anyone who was actually happy at Google when you sat them down for an honest talk. Everyone was either coasting and depressed/disengaged, or overworked and stressed I think this is true of most careers in the US. At the end of the day it's a job, help you provide for yourself and family. It would be amazing if you were in love with every minute of it, but it a means to the end. You hear many NFL players say the same thing, they dont care if they win or lose, it's just their job. They show up, play, get a pay check and go on with their life.
- ExGoogTA88 4y ago
  I'd settle for at least feeling like my time on earth is not wasted and my talents are appreciated. I completely felt that in jobs before Google and I'm feeling it right now in my post-Google job at another FAANG (but it could be because I'm at a more senior role and it's a honeymoon phase)
otikik 4y ago
Using the word "coasting" as "the opposite of overwork" already hints at a problem.
- ExGoogTA88 4y ago
  What I mean was that I saw no middle - people working okay hours and enjoying themselves. You had motivated people producing good work with decent load but hating it, like me. Or people not caring and coasting doing little work - also like me when I got depressed from the work. And people super stressed and burning out. But I saw no happy people.
wanderer2323 4y ago
I’m a Googler and I’m very happy with my job and the company in general. People I work on projects with also seem engaged and satisfied with their work.

koube 4y ago

I'm a Googler who has only worked in startups before, and my life has markedly improved in every single way since I started working at Google. There is nothing I miss from life before FAANGs, and I consider the vast majority of Faangineers be obscenely privileged. Most of them have progressed to the same point in life that I am at but are 10 years younger. Opinions are my own.

ExGoogTA88 4y ago
For sure, that's the upside of working there. Every aspect of my life outside of career satisfaction improved considerably - I relocated to the US, was able to buy a house, my work life balance got a lot better compared to working at startups, etc. But as a job in and of itself it was pretty lame (apart from a few periods that were fun). The thing is, I feel like that's true for most people there.
- koube 4y ago
  I've had that feeling as well, absolutely agree that people can feel that way at Google. Personally the feeling of ennui was much more at my previous jobs, and I expect will exist anywhere I go. I do see however people incredibly engaged. I think there's a ton of luck in terms of what team/product you're placed in.
  - ExGoogTA88 4y ago
    Probably. But I feel like there's something in Google's current culture that leads to this. I've mostly had these conversations with people from the search and cloud PAs. Could be different in other orgs. Maybe I just got extremely lucky with my pre-Goog jobs that were ultra satisfying and challenging in a good way, I just had a blast coming to work every day and doing the work.
    - jhatemyjob 4y ago
      Another ex-Googler here. I never had a job that was ultra satisfying and challenging in a good way. The only way I got that was from my own projects / businesses. Maybe I got unlucky job-wise. Or maybe I'm an entrepreneur at heart, I think fundamentally I cannot be fully satisfied working on someone else's project. Either way, at this point I think I've seen enough. I think I should minimize time working and maximize pay. Working remotely for G was pretty great. The work sucked but there was so little of it. If it weren't for mandatory RTO I'd still be there. I'm gonna see how FB compares.
      - robocat 4y ago
        > RTO .eq. Return To Office # For anyone else chilling somewhere in the world that doesn’t know that TLA
      - jrochkind1 4y ago
        > Working remotely for G was pretty great. The work sucked but there was so little of it. If it weren't for mandatory RTO I'd still be there. And I think you just justified mandatory RTO!
- nerpderp82 4y ago
  I also find that the stress and the promo process creates an environment where people are aholes to each other, but using Googler Norms of social combat.
- mdoms 4y ago
  Sounds like a job.
nwsm 4y ago
You didn't really give us any experiences in this comment. No mention at all of why anything is better, or how your experience has differed from OP or the comment you're replying to.
- koube 4y ago
  > I've never met anyone who was actually happy at Google when you sat them down for an honest talk. I know plenty of people that have left google for greener pastures but also many that stayed. Since my previous team mostly went to other teams within Google we did a lot of talking about leaving and the consensus was that everyone would be fine whether they stayed with Google or decided to leave. "Happy" is a subjective term but everyone I talk to is comfortable and is fine with staying or leaving. > Everyone was either coasting and depressed/disengaged, or overworked and stressed (I would say 80% were the former). In a realist sense this one is almost tautological. Either you are trying to rank up or you're not trying to rank up. If you're not trying to rank up you get a LOT of leeway at Google, and you can coast if you want, or you can continue to do good work, as I think a lot of people do. If you're trying to rank up you're going to be busting ass, but I think this is not different than other companies. If you have people delivering impact and people who are not, are you really going to make the case that you should be promoting the less hardworking people? Or that everyone should rank up equally? > People were frustrated about the bureaucracy, the promo process, This is constantly brought up on memegen but there are also comments on memegen saying something to the effect of: "Despite our complaints Google is still a great place to work" and I don't think I've ever seen any pushback on this. Compare this to for example Reddit memes where there are zero people saying things are still good despite complaints. Promo by the way is being revamped due to complaints (I think this is public enough that I can mention this) and we'll see how the new process is. > the slow pace, the meaninglessness of the work an individual IC does, Despite my past projects falling flat, I personally find my current work important. In general I both agree and disagree with this point. It's 100% true that some people may not be personally invested in the success of the specific projects that they are working on, and I have indicated my agreement with this in a later comment. Where I disagree with this comment though is that people are very invested in project delivery in general, as your are extremely well rewarded for delivering projects. Above the L5-L6 level you will find people are working extremely hard to be impactful. This is maybe where the perception of "overworked and stressed" comes from. I will tell you these people are generally doing an amazing job and are being compensated for this overwork with amazing pay. And when they are getting pay commensurate to the work they are doing, I personally feel that the use of the label "overworked and stressed" needs to be heavily caveated. > the stress for managers. Even on a super sexy project dealing with cutting edge AI that got tons of press coverage, everyone was frustrated. I personally have not seen this but I don't dispute it. I have heard other teams have a lot of frustration. > This company has a serious cultural issue. This one is entirely subjective, but again I don't dispute this in terms the feeling of ennui at work. Sometimes leadership doesn't seem to have a coherent strategy and work is done for no reason. I can't really define what is "an issue" or "not an issue" culturally. What I can do is make comparative judgements: In my previous startups the culture was much worse, and there was much more of a sense of "what is leadership even doing?". I haven't worked in any places where I've had the sense that things are done better at Google. Others will have to speak to this.

strikelaserclaw 4y ago

A lot of FAANG people want to get paid FAANG levels of money but also work on exciting and meaningful projects, we can't have it all.

com2kid 4y ago
The issue is, originally FAANG jobs were exciting. Think about it this way, everyone who was early at Microsoft/Apple/Google/Facebook/etc has awesome stories of being on the first team in the world to ever try solving some really difficult problems. Exploring unknown new fields of computing, designing new UIs for never before imagined devices. You did super cool things. It is comparatively recent that FAANG jobs have become sort of lame. Remember how cool Google maps was when it first came out? Or how awesome Gmail was? Those were ground breaking projects! Heck we take distributed databases for granted now days, but Facebook pioneered a lot of amazing technology, so did Google, Amazon, and Twitter. Microsoft actually may have had the right model way back when, back when they had teams and job roles in charge of making new products, and another org just devoted to maintaining current versions of software. Of course that division was easy to make back when software came on CDs. Now days everything is cloud based and evergreen. Maybe companies need to have a career path that is just "maintain stuff" and your promos are based on how well stuff keeps working and any cost savings/perf improvements you can squeeze out of the existing code w/o doing a massive rewrite.
- chrsig 4y ago
  When they first came out, neither google maps nor gmail was really unique. They were just better than the alternatives. Mapquest and hotmail were the true trail blazers in that respect.
  - VikingCoder 4y ago
    When it first came out, the Tesla Roadster wasn't really unique. It was just better than the alternatives. The Model-T was the true trail blazer in that respect.
  - cmrdporcupine 4y ago

cmrdporcupine 4y ago

I mean, I often make the same points as you (also ex-Google.) But I have to say, as a counterpoint, I met many people inside Google who loved it there and were living their best career lives there, and getting treated really well to do it. It wasn't me, but, there's a personality type that thrives in those environments. It's not all awful. You get to play with some really fancy big tools. Deploy your stuff across thousands of servers or ship a product to millions of people. Sit on the shoulders of other really smart engineers and use the pretty amazing stuff they build (like, seriously, stuff like F1 etc. is pretty amazing). And if you can play the game there well, and you really want to succeed there, there's lots of room to climb. Wasn't my game, but let's be honest, there's actually a lot there to go with.

nostrademons 4y ago

2gler here. I was actually really happy for about the first 80% of my first time at Google (Search, 2009-2012). Miserable for the last 20%. Mildly discontent for my first team back, reasonably happy after transferring. Your team and the specific work you're doing matters a lot for your happiness at Google (and presumably any big company). Work with your manager to craft a job description that's better suited for you, or transfer if you can't. You have to actively manage your career - and your happiness - in any job.

Tozen 4y ago
> You have to actively manage your career - and your happiness - in any job. Truth.

bla3 4y ago

I loved it while I was there. Fun projects, global impact, good pay, fairly reasonable work/life balance.

ProAm 4y ago

> I've never met anyone who was actually happy at Google when you sat them down for an honest talk. Everyone was either coasting and depressed/disengaged, or overworked and stressed I think this is true of most careers in the US. At the end of the day it's a job, help you provide for yourself and family. It would be amazing if you were in love with every minute of it, but it a means to the end. You hear many NFL players say the same thing, they dont care if they win or lose, it's just their job. They show up, play, get a pay check and go on with their life.

ExGoogTA88 4y ago
I'd settle for at least feeling like my time on earth is not wasted and my talents are appreciated. I completely felt that in jobs before Google and I'm feeling it right now in my post-Google job at another FAANG (but it could be because I'm at a more senior role and it's a honeymoon phase)

otikik 4y ago

Using the word "coasting" as "the opposite of overwork" already hints at a problem.

ExGoogTA88 4y ago
What I mean was that I saw no middle - people working okay hours and enjoying themselves. You had motivated people producing good work with decent load but hating it, like me. Or people not caring and coasting doing little work - also like me when I got depressed from the work. And people super stressed and burning out. But I saw no happy people.

wanderer2323 4y ago

I’m a Googler and I’m very happy with my job and the company in general. People I work on projects with also seem engaged and satisfied with their work.