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The prospect that Google could one day be a bad place to work does not invalidate my claim that it is currently a great place to work. The premise of your origi
by enneff 15y ago
The prospect that Google could one day be a bad place to work does not invalidate my claim that it is currently a great place to work. The premise of your original post was that the only way to have a good working life is to work for yourself. I don't think that this is always the case.
To be honest, the doomsdays scenario you outline is ridiculous to me. It's so far removed from the current culture at Google. I think I'd be long gone by the time such things were taking place.
It's also worth noting that the majority of Google shareholders are Google employees (including me), and that the managers in Engineering at Google are all engineers. You should also investigate the conditions of Google's IPO - the shareholders don't have a lot of influence at Google.
Of course, these things can all change. But like I said, it's great the way it is now and I'm having a blast. If it changes, I've got plenty of cash and experience under my belt to get started on something else. There is no downside here.
(Addendum: If they cancelled my project (Go) I'd just quit and work on the code from somewhere else. That's the benefit of working on a project where all your contributions are BSD-licensed. ;-)
- codeonfire 15y ago>The premise of your original post was that the only way to have a good working life is to work for yourself. The premise of my original post is exactly what I wrote, "Every job is going to suck if you're an engineer for hire." I didn't say every job sucks now, just that the natural tendency is for forces to work against any good working life for rank and file engineers who stay in the same job. Things are going good for you right now? Great, you're an outlier working at Google. The vast majority of working engineers more than probably face declining benefits, compensation, and working conditions in the future without changing jobs. For example, most companies don't offer cost of living salary adjustments even though company revenues would presumably increase by a similar amount. My point is simply that such job changes are costly in time, money, and effort and can be avoided by working for oneself and that it is a good and desirable goal that engineers should pursue.
- enneff 15y ago> My point is simply that such job changes are costly in time, money, and effort And that's where I disagree. When I said there's no downside, I meant it. Changing jobs has been only an enriching experience for me. As long as you're savvy with your finances, it's no sweat to find another job. On the other hand, if I ran a business that started to tank, I think that would be far more stressful (thankfully mine never did). I agree that running your own business should be a desirable goal, but I think you can make a great living working as an employee. It depends a lot on your interests. Both approaches have their benefits and pitfalls.
- tlogan 15y agoI also had a dream job for a while. But tendency is that quality of engineering positions slowly deteriorates as company matures.