5 ms·

"The thing is - you are surrounded by incredibly intelligent & fiercely hard-working people." Good that they're intelligent. Fiercely hard working -- not so g

by gnosis 15y ago

"The thing is - you are surrounded by incredibly intelligent & fiercely hard-working people." Good that they're intelligent. Fiercely hard working -- not so good. I don't want to be surrounded by workaholics, no matter how intelligent they are.

andrewflnr 15y ago
Hard-working is not the same as workaholic. A hard-working person might be a workaholic, or they might just care about accomplishing stuff.
- gnosis 15y ago
  The OP didn't say "hard-working". He said "fiercely hard-working". Anyway, I'd still call even someone merely described as "hard-working" a workaholic -- meaning that they are probably working an excessive number of hours, and have an unbalanced life/work ratio. The amount of hours Americans work compared to much of the rest of the world is already insane. It's quite typical for employees to be expected to work more than 40 hour weeks -- 50 or 60 hours is much more the norm. So when someone's called "hard-working" that means that they're probably putting in even more hours than that. I don't even want to imagine the hours a "fiercely hard-working" Google employee puts in to compete with other brilliant employees who've all just gone from being exceptional at former jobs to "just average" at Google. And don't even get me started on the startup rat race. I'd take a cushy, "boring" job where I can work a sane number of hours without needing to impress anyone over an "exciting", high-pressure job at some trendy corporation any day. I can find plenty of challenge and fulfillment outside of work, thank you very much. My life outside work means a lot more to me than any trinkets they can dangle in front of me at work, even if it is 4000 servers I can run map/reduce on at whim. As for "accomplishing stuff", any company where you have to put in more than 40 hours a week to accomplish what you need is dysfunctional.
  - jrockway 15y ago
    This is not what Google is like. Google is a normal workplace but with smart people who care, and with all of your needs taken care of. Need a USB cable or a new laptop battery? Grab one out of the storage closet. Need a coffee? You're never more than 100ft away from an automatic coffee maker, premade iced coffee, and a $10,000 espresso machine (and burr grinder, of course). Need a new monitor? Open a ticket and it will be on your desk in hours. Need an adjustment made to your desk? Open a ticket and someone will do it for you today. When I worked at Bank of America, I spent about 6 hours a day dealing with bullshit and 4 hours a day working. At Google, there is no bullshit. I show up and can work for 8 hours. That makes me twice as productive even though I'm actually working less. (And, with all the great internal libraries and software... well, it was depressing for me to realize how little "infrastructure" software I would need to write.) I get the impression from outsiders that they hear a lot about how great Google is and then assume that they can't work at Google, so they then decide that what Google does is actually bad. The flaw is thinking that you can't work at Google. You can! Apply, brush up on your algorithms a bit, and start enjoying the amazing coffee!
    - kamaal 15y ago
      I get the impression from outsiders that they hear a lot about how great Google is and then assume that they can't work at Google, so they then decide that what Google does is actually bad. The flaw is thinking that you can't work at Google. You can! Apply, brush up on your algorithms a bit, and start enjoying the amazing coffee! Trust me, I would. I would actually do a lot better. I am definitely far more productive people around me. And I can build stuff and do my regular work both at the same time. Every manager I have every worked with says, they have seen no one like me before. I have built endless stuff without getting anything in return. Like you I'm also frustrated dealing with all the large corporate non sense. But I don't have Ivy league college degree, and yes I am not too much of an algo guy. Well, I think people like despite being having all it takes can never work there. You see I can research, think and build quickly. I can push long hours, I can do weekends. I can virtually work and solve any problems by reading manuals. I have worked at back breaking deadlines, delivered stuff when others said it was impossible.But I don't remember math theorems. And am not too much into text books. Unless those books are like OnLisp(Paul Graham), Higher Order Perl(Mark Jason Dominus)... Kind of books. People like me can't get hired at Google!
jrockway 15y ago
I have not noticed this. On my team, people start showing up at 10. By 7, nearly everyone is gone. (Dinner starts at 6, so most people stay for that.) I'm at work later than that, but mostly because I only have a temporary apartment and have better food / coffee / computing equipment at work. Ultimately, nobody monitors when you are in the office. All that matters is what you get done.
- gnosis 15y ago
  "On my team, people start showing up at 10. By 7, nearly everyone is gone. (Dinner starts at 6, so most people stay for that.)" If they don't compensate by bring work home and continue doing it at home, than this is definitely a good thing. "Ultimately, nobody monitors when you are in the office. All that matters is what you get done." This is a better attitude than micromanagement, but it can still be abused if you are expected to do so much work that it forces you to work long hours, even if you are not explicitly told to work long hours to do it. On the other hand, if you are skilled/smart enough to get done in a few hours what it would take someone less skilled to get done in 10, then you should (in theory) be better off under such a system -- except your managers could always compensate by giving you yet more work. At a healthy workplace, the amount of work you're expected to do will fall within the range of what you are capable of doing and what you want to do. I am getting the sense that Google is in fact such a place, and don't expect there are many deathmarches there. If there were, I doubt Google would be able to retain the caliber of talent it attracts.

by gnosis 15y ago

andrewflnr 15y ago

Hard-working is not the same as workaholic. A hard-working person might be a workaholic, or they might just care about accomplishing stuff.

gnosis 15y ago
The OP didn't say "hard-working". He said "fiercely hard-working". Anyway, I'd still call even someone merely described as "hard-working" a workaholic -- meaning that they are probably working an excessive number of hours, and have an unbalanced life/work ratio. The amount of hours Americans work compared to much of the rest of the world is already insane. It's quite typical for employees to be expected to work more than 40 hour weeks -- 50 or 60 hours is much more the norm. So when someone's called "hard-working" that means that they're probably putting in even more hours than that. I don't even want to imagine the hours a "fiercely hard-working" Google employee puts in to compete with other brilliant employees who've all just gone from being exceptional at former jobs to "just average" at Google. And don't even get me started on the startup rat race. I'd take a cushy, "boring" job where I can work a sane number of hours without needing to impress anyone over an "exciting", high-pressure job at some trendy corporation any day. I can find plenty of challenge and fulfillment outside of work, thank you very much. My life outside work means a lot more to me than any trinkets they can dangle in front of me at work, even if it is 4000 servers I can run map/reduce on at whim. As for "accomplishing stuff", any company where you have to put in more than 40 hours a week to accomplish what you need is dysfunctional.
- jrockway 15y ago
  This is not what Google is like. Google is a normal workplace but with smart people who care, and with all of your needs taken care of. Need a USB cable or a new laptop battery? Grab one out of the storage closet. Need a coffee? You're never more than 100ft away from an automatic coffee maker, premade iced coffee, and a $10,000 espresso machine (and burr grinder, of course). Need a new monitor? Open a ticket and it will be on your desk in hours. Need an adjustment made to your desk? Open a ticket and someone will do it for you today. When I worked at Bank of America, I spent about 6 hours a day dealing with bullshit and 4 hours a day working. At Google, there is no bullshit. I show up and can work for 8 hours. That makes me twice as productive even though I'm actually working less. (And, with all the great internal libraries and software... well, it was depressing for me to realize how little "infrastructure" software I would need to write.) I get the impression from outsiders that they hear a lot about how great Google is and then assume that they can't work at Google, so they then decide that what Google does is actually bad. The flaw is thinking that you can't work at Google. You can! Apply, brush up on your algorithms a bit, and start enjoying the amazing coffee!
  - kamaal 15y ago
    I get the impression from outsiders that they hear a lot about how great Google is and then assume that they can't work at Google, so they then decide that what Google does is actually bad. The flaw is thinking that you can't work at Google. You can! Apply, brush up on your algorithms a bit, and start enjoying the amazing coffee! Trust me, I would. I would actually do a lot better. I am definitely far more productive people around me. And I can build stuff and do my regular work both at the same time. Every manager I have every worked with says, they have seen no one like me before. I have built endless stuff without getting anything in return. Like you I'm also frustrated dealing with all the large corporate non sense. But I don't have Ivy league college degree, and yes I am not too much of an algo guy. Well, I think people like despite being having all it takes can never work there. You see I can research, think and build quickly. I can push long hours, I can do weekends. I can virtually work and solve any problems by reading manuals. I have worked at back breaking deadlines, delivered stuff when others said it was impossible.But I don't remember math theorems. And am not too much into text books. Unless those books are like OnLisp(Paul Graham), Higher Order Perl(Mark Jason Dominus)... Kind of books. People like me can't get hired at Google!

jrockway 15y ago

I have not noticed this. On my team, people start showing up at 10. By 7, nearly everyone is gone. (Dinner starts at 6, so most people stay for that.) I'm at work later than that, but mostly because I only have a temporary apartment and have better food / coffee / computing equipment at work. Ultimately, nobody monitors when you are in the office. All that matters is what you get done.

gnosis 15y ago
"On my team, people start showing up at 10. By 7, nearly everyone is gone. (Dinner starts at 6, so most people stay for that.)" If they don't compensate by bring work home and continue doing it at home, than this is definitely a good thing. "Ultimately, nobody monitors when you are in the office. All that matters is what you get done." This is a better attitude than micromanagement, but it can still be abused if you are expected to do so much work that it forces you to work long hours, even if you are not explicitly told to work long hours to do it. On the other hand, if you are skilled/smart enough to get done in a few hours what it would take someone less skilled to get done in 10, then you should (in theory) be better off under such a system -- except your managers could always compensate by giving you yet more work. At a healthy workplace, the amount of work you're expected to do will fall within the range of what you are capable of doing and what you want to do. I am getting the sense that Google is in fact such a place, and don't expect there are many deathmarches there. If there were, I doubt Google would be able to retain the caliber of talent it attracts.