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> But Gooogle [sic] has changed, and Go has changed, and the overall computer programming environment has changed. It’s become clear over the last year or so th
by RainyDayTmrw 1y ago
> But Gooogle [sic] has changed, and Go has changed, and the overall computer programming environment has changed. It’s become clear over the last year or so that I am no longer a good fit for the Go project at Google. I have to move on.
That's kinda surprising to hear. I wonder what happened. It would have been easy to leave out these 3 sentences or replace them with fluff. The author choosing to write this out suggests that there is some weight here.
- hiddencost 1y agoI think management started turning the screws. They're doing that everywhere. Management isn't technical anymore.
- RainyDayTmrw 1y agoOne would think that someone prominent like Ian Lance Taylor or Russ Cox (who also left within this past year, as noted by another commenter) would be relatively insulated from that.
- vlovich123 1y agoWhy would you think that? You still have management, you have to go through perf calibration and justify your performance. Engineering like most human profesional activities is a very social endeavor where you rely on the people that surround you and you always have people pressuring you to do something.
- 90s_dev 1y ago> you have to go through perf calibration and justify your performance He did sound relatively defeated when he accused himself of not accurately predicting the future needs of Go users, as if it were even possible! Maybe management has just been unjustly critical of his performance, and he's taking it too much to heart? Hard to tell, but I just get that feeling.
- nine_k 1y agoMaybe they are safe from being laid off, though you never can tell [1]. But it does not mean they enjoy the tension, the demands, the disagreements, etc that likely crop up. At their position, they can afford to not put up with that, not hold onto the enviable salary, like many others doubtlessly and begrudgingly do. [1]: https://nerdy.dev/ex-googler https://nerdy.dev/ex-googler
- spacemadness 1y agoThat’s not true from talking to folks. If you aren’t focused on “the right thing” you can definitely be laid off now. The right thing being AI mostly.
- Cthulhu_ 1y agoSome time ago the "right thing" was social, when Google tried to pivot to a social media company with Circles or whatever; that didn't work out, but I don't recall people got laid off at the time for not working on that at the time.
- atombender 1y agoRuss Cox didn't leave. He's still on the Go team at Google, but he's stepped down from his position as tech lead.
- pjmlp 1y agoIt is almost the same, Anders Hejlsberg still colaborates with the .NET / C# teams, however others now drive where it goes.
- geodel 1y agoFunny thing is I think Russ is working on AI stuff which leadership really approve of!
- pjmlp 1y agoNow that you mention it, "Introducing Genkit for Go: Build scalable AI-powered apps in Go" https://developers.googleblog.com/en/introducing-genkit-for-go-build-scalable-ai-powered-apps-in-go/ https://developers.googleblog.com/en/introducing-genkit-for-... Which is to be expected, there won't be any corporate sponsored language left without AI tooling being pushed.
- lokar 1y agoInsulated by whom? Most of the old time sr Eng mgmt is either gone (replaced by oracle people, or people like them) or have shifted to that mode of operation.
- rtpg 1y agoOr management is cynically thinking they could get more bang for their buck with multiple people (I gotta imagine at 19 years at google gets you a healthy multiple compared to new hires)
- IX-103 1y agoNot to mention the current push to "grow" in low cost locations. Google is laying off people in the US but rapidly hiring in India and Poland.
- throwaway519 1y agoManagement is more technical fallacied than it's ever been: HR believe they are fine tunng for good.
- kortilla 1y agoThis theme has been repeated a bunch over the last 10 years or so. Google has been in a constant state of decline since the employment surge in the back half of 2010s culminating with a hiring fervor in 2020 that diluted out all of the extremely talented employees. This severe decline of the median engineer means comp gets cut back, perks get cut back, and most importantly, autonomy gets cut back. Oppressive process and political gamesmanship reign supreme. Even when I left nearly a decade ago, the idea that something like Gmail could be made in 20% time was a joke. 20% time itself was being snuffed out and dipshit PMs in turf wars would kill anything that did manage to emerge because it wasn’t “polished enough”. At this point Google is far beyond recovery because it is inundated with B, C and now D players. It’s following the same trajectory of Intel, Cisco, and IBM. Pockets of brilliance drowning in mediocrity
- qyph 1y agoGmail wasn't created with 20% time. https://time.com/43263/gmail-10th-anniversary/#:~:text=Gmail%20is%20often,an%20email%20thing.%E2%80%9D https://time.com/43263/gmail-10th-anniversary/#:~:text=Gmail...
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- whiplash451 1y agoI think the main point remains (skunk work is now impossible)
- kortilla 1y agoThe purpose of 20% time was to allow things like gmail to be created
- happyopossum 1y ago> comp gets cut back, perks get cut back That hasn’t really been happening - perks and comp have been pretty stable for the past 3+ years at least, so…
- babyent 1y agoWhat if I told you.. Most of the actual groundwork has already been laid by passionate, actual engineers. Today big tech is just a place people go to make money, and they don’t necessarily care about long term vision. Mostly filled with the most uninspiring, forced-to-do-kumon types who have little “passion” for engineering or computers. Zero imagination and outside the box thinking. Just rote memorization to get in and then getting PIP’d or laid off to go do the same at the other big corps. TC or GTFO types. Better luck at startups that are the Google’s of yesteryear.
- blitzar 1y ago20-30 years ago when you graduated if you wanted to get paid you targeted banks, accountancies or consultancies. Now you go for big tech (and startups). The cliche of the young "banker" personality type is now the "tech" personality type, and is coming soon to an Ai startup near you.
- tmpz22 1y agoI've always used the analogy of 90's Wall Street to explain the Tech industry behind the curtains. Our 2008 moment will be when society realizes AI is nothing but a tool for wealth transfer from what remains in the middle class to the top ultra wealthy. We had a brief window in the mid 2010s when folks started to throw rocks at the tech buses where I thought people were starting to realize it. Around Bernie's presidential run - which makes sense because he preached wealth inequality. But somehow during COVID tech slithered back into everybody's good graces. * I don't condone people throwing rocks at the buses for both the humanitarian reasons and the fact that few if any executive or social changes could result from that behavior. But it struck me as a microcosm of the prevailing sentiment towards technology workers.
- spacemadness 1y agoTech provided some means to stay connected during that time, so it’s not surprising. People felt even more disconnected initially and extroverts were not getting their needs met as easily. However I think the added exposure to algorithmic feeds caused an acceleration of social decay and a growing disenchantment with social media in some camps.
- UncleMeat 1y agoI've seen a lot of high level engineers at Google leave over the past couple of years. There's vastly more pressure from management and much less trust. And a bunch of L7+ folks have been expected to shift to working on AI stuff to have "enough impact." The increased pressure has created a lot of turf wars among these folks, as it isn't enough to be a trusted steward but now you need your name at the top of the relevant docs (and not the names of your peers). Prior to 2023 I pretty much only ever saw the L7s and L8s that I work with leave Google because there was an exciting new opportunity or because they were retiring. Now most of the people I see leave at this level are leaving because they are fed up with Google. It's a mess.
- jnwatson 1y agoI think there's a simpler answer. Google has drastically slowed hiring. Less hiring means fewer natural opportunities for growth. I joined in 2021. I feel like I caught the tail end of old Google. Any decent idea was greenlit. Now, it is a lot harder to find resources to do things. (This is of course relative. It is still far easier than any other place I've worked at). The company has transitioned into something a little more traditional.
- UncleMeat 1y agoFor at least some of the L7+ people I know who have left they weren't interested in growth (others I'm not certain). I know one person who left because they weren't able to get the VPs to greenlight their stuff and eventually got frustrated by it but I definitely know others who left because "continue to be a responsible steward for this large ecosystem that is important to Google's ongoing success" was no longer a viable path to sustained work (as opposed to promotion).
- riku_iki 1y ago> Less hiring means fewer natural opportunities for growth. IC's natural way of growth is to produce larger impact by solving harder problems, there are always hard unsolved problems which hold some business opportunities.
- coliveira 1y agoWhen they put Sundar Pichai, a person of little brilliance, to lead Google, it was clear that they want to transform the place into just another money maker and destroy the original culture of the company.
- ocdtrekkie 1y agoSundar is brilliant, just not in the ways you want. He went from developing an IE browser extension to a web browser to running the world's most powerful company. He understood that what Google needed to keep the numbers going up was not better search, but better market capture.
- haiku2077 1y agoI wouldn't call Google the world's most powerful company. Saudi Aramco, for example, has more power.
- dehrmann 1y ago> Saudi Aramco It's powerful to a point. If it tries to flex its power too much, and international military coalition rolls over Saudi Arabia.
- kridsdale1 1y agoThe House of Saud has done an incredible job ingratiating with multiple Republican Presidents personal family dynasties. They’ll be fine.
- kridsdale1 1y agoSaudi Aramco exists because the British Empire favored one nomad tribe over their adversaries to be granted land that appeared worthless but turned out to be covering the largest pile of treasure in the world.
- absolutelastone 1y agoIt has always seemed to me that level of strategic direction doesn't come from the CEO's brain, but from the big investors. The CEO's job is to execute what they want.
- nashashmi 1y agoThe appreciation for engineering and phd research is missing. All focus stems from the CEO on profitability and revenue and commerce. Edit: seems like he wrote about this before: > Much of these problems with Google today stem from a lack of visionary leadership from Sundar Pichai, and his clear lack of interest in maintaining the cultural norms of early Google
- mdwrigh2 1y agoWrong Ian -- Ian Hickson wrote about that in a blogpost, this post is about Ian Lance Taylor
- geodel 1y agoThis mostly sounds like "Look I have made my money but don't let that stop me from shitting on leadership (which kinda enabled making money) on my way out. It kind of make sense also since people blasting management while leaving are mostly not looking to launch their own companies so they will not be proven wrong about their "incisive critique" of management.
- NotAnOtter 1y agoWhenever I read these "I was at <faang> for 20 years and am now leaving" it always translates to "I have become unreasonably wealthy, mostly due to the company itself N-tuppling in value. And now after 20 years I don't need or care to have a day job that requires me to show up when I don't feel like it."
- kardianos 1y agoThat's not what Ian said, and he always says what he means.
- _qbxi 1y agoIt's possible for Ian to mean what he says, while also missing additional context (high net worth) that changes the perspective of the reader.
- ryandrake 1y agoI'm sure people who have worked at FAANG for 20 years aren't starving in the streets, but you don't know enough about their financial situation to predict whether they are "unreasonably wealthy." How much of their salary went straight in to their landlord's pockets? Towards student loan interest? Towards health issues, childcare, or taking care of extended family members? Maybe they tried investing and lost money. Heck, maybe they just prioritized travel over saving money, or something. You can't just assume someone has F-you money just because they worked for 20 years.
- abxyz 1y agoAnyone at Google from 2005 to 2025 is a multi millionaire many times over based on stock value alone. Even a savant at squandering money would struggle to come out of 20 years at Google without unreasonable wealth.
- engcoach 1y agoIt only takes a spouse with a personality disorder and a divorce to change the calculus.
- jhatemyjob 1y agoI'm surprised you find it surprising. It's well established among ex-Googlers that it jumped the shark with Emerald Sea. There will always be pockets of sanity within such a large corp but it's been decadent for over a decade.
- RainyDayTmrw 1y agoOn a second reading, the extra "o" might not have been a typo, but instead a reference to the early days of the Google search results page, where extra letters "o" were used for pagination.
- laidoffamazon 1y ago[flagged]
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- dmit 1y ago> probably thinks the rest of us outside of the Google/elite bubble are subhuman If you're wondering why your message got flagged, it's a lot of reasons, but mostly this part.
- laidoffamazon 1y agoIs it wrong? Listen to almost any Googler for a few minutes (esp long tenured ones with Yale like pedigree) and it becomes obvious
- compiler-guy 1y agoYes it’s wrong. Especially about Ian.
- laidoffamazon 1y agoThey wouldn't have gone to Yale if they didn't think the rest of us that can't get in aren't, as they say now, "NPCs"
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- avg_dev 1y agojust a quick response, i have asked a few Go questions that he (ILT) has answered on public forums. i don't work at google and never have. but he was clear and thoughtful with me. most of all, he was helpful.
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- 7bit 1y agoAnd yet, he chooses to say nothing at all. You say there's no fluff. I say that's nothing more than fluff. I wish people would find the courage to actually talk about issues instead of keeping quiet.