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We individual employees had little control over stock and I don't remember anybody being particularly delighted when Patrick left and Ruth took over, despite th

We individual employees had little control over stock and I don't remember anybody being particularly delighted when Patrick left and Ruth took over, despite the stock going up up up. I don't think our GSUs were influencing work decisions on aggregate. What was influencing decisions was just the same as always: ad revenue. I think people who worked outside of ads at Google probably didn't get the sense of it. I came into Google as part of a competition crushing, monopoly focused acquisition, so I started off cynical. I could see right away what Google was, just a money printing machine with everything else they did a way to flush some of the excess gravy away. And because of that it all lacked purpose or real motivation. And into that void just crept more and more careerism and empire building. Agree about the ADD thing, but I think it's more a product of Perf economy than stock price. I lasted there 10 years for lack of anything else worthwhile to go to in my geo-region, and because the money was too good to pass up. But what a weird, weird, weird place. Wandering around the MTV campus was like being in a real life Elysium (movie) or something. I could never figure out what all those people were doing between free meals. I felt guilty taking the money, the whole time.

galdosdi 2y ago
Your experiences sounds very similar to mine. > I could see right away what Google was, just a money printing machine with everything else they did a way to flush some of the excess gravy away. And because of that it all lacked purpose or real motivation. This is precisely how I would summarize it too. Very well stated. > Agree about the ADD thing, but I think it's more a product of Perf economy than stock price. That I agree with, and I already regret implying stock was a bigger part of it than Perf/Promo-- I just wasn't thinking about them when I wrote that. Perf was a bigger factor for sure from our ground level (L3/L4/L5 presumably) and was the main reason I left, as all I saw around my on my team was people doing things that added zero value or even subtracted it, but at least they created a new project that would sound good for Promo committee. Managers helpfully shepherded their team in that direction, which was kind and all for growing our careers and helping us get more slop from the trough, but it still felt gross. I couldn't bear seeing that as my future. Sometimes, when I look at the housing market, or think about colleges for my daughter though, I regret not playing a long a little longer. I don't know. THAT SAID: I don't think the stock incentives affected decision making at your or my level, but at higher middle management levels, where GSUs started to become huger both in absolute value and percentage of compensation. At the levels of the people actually deciding what products to close down or pursue. I wasn't up at that level so this is just a theory I admit. Yeah, fair enough -- I still don't know if I've done a good job of successfully explaining to myself what the fuck it was I experienced working there and why, but it sounds like you and I had very very similar experiences. Everything about the internal incentive structure was fucked up and incentivized very low value producing behavior. And yet, I did learn some really valuable things there - napa cabbage is delicious - celery root is a thing - fresh made pasta is better - quiche and arugula pair great together - oh my god legit ramen is amazing Oh wait, outside of the food: - monorepos, with the right tooling, are unbeatable. all the monorepo haters just don't have the right tooling. google did - doing meetings right, with agendas and minutes, is also unbeatable, strictly better and more effecient than the alternative - doing planning right, by circulating proposed design plans for comments, is strictly more effecient than the alternative - doing cloud deployment right -- this is irrelevant now, most everyone knows how to do this now while google is stuck with legacy borg configs, but for a while, google actually was far ahead of the industry on this Despite having some fundamentals like that that made certain things way way more effective, it was squandered pursuing cockeyed goals.
- cmrdporcupine 2y ago
  Yep. Monorepos and fully vendored third-party deps, the two things I wish other people were doing... because the way the bulk of the industry is doing it is a stupid productivity killing, security, and reliability nightmare. I was always a square peg in the round hole there, and I have no idea how I lasted 10 years. I was at L4 the whole time and never made the move to even try for L5 because the perf process seemed like such stressful garbage to me and I was perfectly fine with my already generous compensation. I miss that kind of $$, but oh well. It got to the point I couldn't stand it anymore, and after watching the insane growth in hiring... I knew layoffs would be coming.
- bigstrat2003 2y ago
  I wouldn't say fresh pasta is better, it's different. Sometimes you want fresh, sometimes dried.
  - galdosdi 2y ago
    Oddly, I agree-- that section was just kind of an obvious hurried joke about the great food. I really did learn a lot of culinary ideas due to eating a lot of food I could have afforded in Manhattan, but normally would never have bought due to my frugality.

galdosdi 2y ago

Your experiences sounds very similar to mine. > I could see right away what Google was, just a money printing machine with everything else they did a way to flush some of the excess gravy away. And because of that it all lacked purpose or real motivation. This is precisely how I would summarize it too. Very well stated. > Agree about the ADD thing, but I think it's more a product of Perf economy than stock price. That I agree with, and I already regret implying stock was a bigger part of it than Perf/Promo-- I just wasn't thinking about them when I wrote that. Perf was a bigger factor for sure from our ground level (L3/L4/L5 presumably) and was the main reason I left, as all I saw around my on my team was people doing things that added zero value or even subtracted it, but at least they created a new project that would sound good for Promo committee. Managers helpfully shepherded their team in that direction, which was kind and all for growing our careers and helping us get more slop from the trough, but it still felt gross. I couldn't bear seeing that as my future. Sometimes, when I look at the housing market, or think about colleges for my daughter though, I regret not playing a long a little longer. I don't know. THAT SAID: I don't think the stock incentives affected decision making at your or my level, but at higher middle management levels, where GSUs started to become huger both in absolute value and percentage of compensation. At the levels of the people actually deciding what products to close down or pursue. I wasn't up at that level so this is just a theory I admit. Yeah, fair enough -- I still don't know if I've done a good job of successfully explaining to myself what the fuck it was I experienced working there and why, but it sounds like you and I had very very similar experiences. Everything about the internal incentive structure was fucked up and incentivized very low value producing behavior. And yet, I did learn some really valuable things there - napa cabbage is delicious - celery root is a thing - fresh made pasta is better - quiche and arugula pair great together - oh my god legit ramen is amazing Oh wait, outside of the food: - monorepos, with the right tooling, are unbeatable. all the monorepo haters just don't have the right tooling. google did - doing meetings right, with agendas and minutes, is also unbeatable, strictly better and more effecient than the alternative - doing planning right, by circulating proposed design plans for comments, is strictly more effecient than the alternative - doing cloud deployment right -- this is irrelevant now, most everyone knows how to do this now while google is stuck with legacy borg configs, but for a while, google actually was far ahead of the industry on this Despite having some fundamentals like that that made certain things way way more effective, it was squandered pursuing cockeyed goals.

cmrdporcupine 2y ago
Yep. Monorepos and fully vendored third-party deps, the two things I wish other people were doing... because the way the bulk of the industry is doing it is a stupid productivity killing, security, and reliability nightmare. I was always a square peg in the round hole there, and I have no idea how I lasted 10 years. I was at L4 the whole time and never made the move to even try for L5 because the perf process seemed like such stressful garbage to me and I was perfectly fine with my already generous compensation. I miss that kind of $$, but oh well. It got to the point I couldn't stand it anymore, and after watching the insane growth in hiring... I knew layoffs would be coming.
bigstrat2003 2y ago
I wouldn't say fresh pasta is better, it's different. Sometimes you want fresh, sometimes dried.
- galdosdi 2y ago
  Oddly, I agree-- that section was just kind of an obvious hurried joke about the great food. I really did learn a lot of culinary ideas due to eating a lot of food I could have afforded in Manhattan, but normally would never have bought due to my frugality.