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"When I was working at Google, we ..." Seems like every Googler cannot wait to tell us their stories about Google! Hopefully over the last year the general pu
by goalonetwo 3y ago
"When I was working at Google, we ..."
Seems like every Googler cannot wait to tell us their stories about Google!
Hopefully over the last year the general public has started to see those bigTech more as a dystopian place than a source of pride. I still cannot believe that we have hyped becoming a cog at Google to the almost top level of professional achievement.
- marcinzm 3y ago99.999999% of software engineering is being a cog in a machine. Startups included. Even your own startup if you have VC money and clients. Google is a nicer cleaner machine than most other machines.
- greatpostman 3y agoAs a founder, you have to live it to realize you are in some sense still an employee of the VC firm
- JanSt 3y agoAs a bootstrapper, you have to live it to realize you are in some sense still an employee of the client
- gomox 3y agoNext up: As a human in a capitalist system As a mammal on Earth As a cell-based organism on this arm of the galaxy
- sebastiennight 3y agoAs a conscious mind needing carbohydrates to sustain compute
- kbknapp 3y agoI've worked in large companies (thousands of employees) and startups (<20) and I actually felt more like a cog in the machine at the startup size companies. I was literally just a means to an end to churn out code on a product. I could have been (and eventually was) replaced at any moment with another generic cog willing to churn out the same code without much of a thought.
- tsunamifury 3y agoAfter working at Google and Startups, I totally agree. You are much more of a cog at a startup due to the desperate need to grind out the next A/B test or customer requirement. People WAY over glamorize startups.
- varelse 3y ago[dead]
- teaearlgraycold 3y agoDon't agree at all. Have you worked at a startup with <10 employees? It's more like 25% cog at that level. Even at 50 employees you're at worst 50% cog.
- avgcorrection 3y agoThat there is a denyonym for it—and an ex-denonym even—tells you enough.
- lostlogin 3y agoDo you mean demonym? Sorry I’m pre coffee and don’t know the word/words.
- avgcorrection 3y agoYes.
- karaterobot 3y agoThere was a time when it was true that being a Googler meant you were pretty hot shit, but that was decades ago at this point. Not insulting any of the talented people who work there, it's just a much bigger company with 1000x more people on staff, so obviously it's not just the top, crème de la crème nerds in the world, even if many of them are there. On the other hand, I'm not sure that this article is an example of pride or bragging. It seems like an inventory of what's unusual about Google. It also includes some somewhat cutting remarks about its dysfunctions, e.g.: > Most 10-50 million user problems aren’t worth Google's time, and don’t fit their strategy. But they’ll take on significant effort on problems that do fit their nature, strategy, and someone’s promotion goals.
- bobthepanda 3y agoAh, the classic Promotion Oriented Architecture.
- cmrdporcupine 3y agoI think it's useful for people who are founders or employees in a startup that Google (or similar BigCo) might acquire to read things like this. Also, I think there's things to be proud about working at Google. In general working there does teach a diligence of quality that is often missing in SWE in other orgs, though many companies are picking up on the same practices anyways. Personally, I found my time at Google to be useful from the POV of that, but also, yeah, just having it on my resume.
- dilyevsky 3y agoPeople usually don’t hand the keys to their company when things are going amazing. Very first sentence: > As we started to raise Socratic’s Series B in 2017, we quickly learned that our focus on getting usage at the expense of revenue was going to bite us As folks here seem be eager to read between the lines how terrible it was maybe they should read between this one too
- Domenic_S 3y agoYou may have missed the point of the article, which was explaining just how dystopian a place it is to try and get things done
- yunohn 3y agoYou always effectively a cog in the wheel. You’re never actually making a meaningful difference. There’s only a handful of universally “impactful” causes, the rest are just things that are part of the intricate world we’ve created. A job is almost always just a job, whatever the industry. Source: I’ve been in IT for over a decade, across all sizes of companies.
- izacus 3y agoMaybe you should read the article before bloviating about things (seriously, what's with this ranting and raving that doesn't even have the article it's supposedly answering in context?). It's not really a positive one.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- JCharante 3y agoTo the average person working at NASA feels the same. Most professional achievements are being a part of a cog and society functions by people working together as cogs to make a system function.
- laidoffamazon 3y agoThis sounds so old school - people today don’t think NASA is an impressive or prestigious job.
- wbl 3y agoWhere else does your stuff go to space and make headlines regularly?
- laidoffamazon 3y agoSpaceX, BlueOrigin fits the bill
- JCharante 3y agoI think you're very disconnected from the average american if you believe that.
- okdood64 3y ago> general public has started to see those bigTech more as a dystopian place than a source of pride It really has not. Unless you consider commenters on HN and r/technology the general public.
- paganel 3y agoThings are slowly but surely changing, and this goes for the tech world/culture as a whole, i.e. how we're seen by the "outside" world. I'd say that the high-point of the nerd/tech stuff was around 2017-2018, i.e. just before the pandemic, but ever since then techies have started being seen as a nuisance (and worst) by more and more people.