7 ms·
Why Are Google Employees So Disloyal?
- sksksk 13y agoThe article makes a false assumption that perks are what keeps you at a company. I'd say that they're nice things to have and definitely work as great recruitment tools. However, if the work you're doing is boring, no amount of free food will make up for that. We (people working in the software industry) are extremely lucky that we can jump around and work on pretty much whatever we want. I've only been out of uni for three years and I've got to make slot machines, car sharing platforms, mobile apps and transportation apps. So, if you have the opportunity to basically go do whatever you want, why wouldn't you take it? It's certainly not going to last forever
- s3r3nity 13y agoI disagree -- really good health/dental/etc. insurance + 401k matching + daycare + maternity/paternity leave + etc. can go FAR in maintaining good retention rates and/or recruiting new talent...though I don't have data off-hand to support the generality of that statement.
- incision 13y agoThe parent is describing perks (free food). You're describing benefits (health, retirement).
- seanmcdirmid 13y agoI disagree. Many of us don't want a job so much as to get paid for what we want to do anyways. Give me work that excites and interests me over pay/perks any day, within limits of course. I've never even applied to google before because they have a bad reputation of sending people like me to work on ads. Do you work to live or live to work? How you answer this question determines what you'll value more.
- s3r3nity 13y agoTo some extent I agree -- but I think that's because I'm a spoiled white moderately wealthy tech worker (and I'm guessing you fall into at least one of those adjectives if you're on HN.) It would sound incredibly naive to the average worker in the world, however, to pass up all of that (even free food) simply because you don't live/breathe your work.
- seanmcdirmid 13y agoWell, on the topic of current and ex-Google employees, they probably fit into the moderately wealthy tech worker mold, but not necessarily the white label, which I don't think is very relevant. Where I work, I'm the only white guy on my team and the rest are Chinese and have similar views on work.
- deleted 13y ago[deleted]
- solarmist 13y agoBut that's assuming that work is at least moderately fulfilling. Unfulfilling work and the best benefits in the world will only retain the lazy or insecure.
- malandrew 13y agoDid they separate the turnover numbers for those above the Real Googlers line vs everyone else? I would expect very different numbers between those two groups.
- shmageggy 13y agoCan you expand on what you mean by "Real Googlers line"?
- malandrew 13y agoIt's a line that lies somewhere between senior and staff where you are allowed open allocation (choose your projects and whatnot) instead of closed allocation (you will work on what your told and for who you are told to work with)
- general_failure 13y agoMost smart people are ambitious and they want to make a high impact on the world. Such people will always want to move on to a position where they can make important decisions about the direction of product and technology - no, we are not talking about which build system to use (gyp? cmake?) or whether the usb protocol should be text based or binary based. Whilst these are important, people want to make decisions like "should chrome os be killed and replaced with android?", "what's the next most important feature required for android?" and so on. Things that change the future of technology. A company can provide only limited positions for such decision making. So, people move on to startups where they hope their thoughts will shape the future in a big way (future of technology or future of company). Note that this is regardless whether these people are any good at decision making outside their tech expertise. Today's low bootstrap cost startup world makes it possible for them to find out. And that's what they do.
- mentat 13y agoExcellent analysis. This is exactly where I am personally. It's interesting because you really want to have those kind of people as long as possible as they have the fire and passion to make things better, but they will leave.
- general_failure 13y agoIndeed. They will leave unless you can identify talent and ambition for decision making and move them to such a position. I also think companies of today must have a "ycombinator" division that encourages entrepreneurship. Like google ventures but for employees. It should be trivial to get into without having to get into insane amount of documents and proposals. Something like: - people that have been for 3 years can apply for "ventures" with an idea - give people real funding - they get to use all resources of parent company - absolutely no interference from the parent company for like 1 year or something. I think you will find that if people don't have interest in their idea, they will just come back to join parent company and do normal jobs.
- soupboy 13y agoI stopped reading at "Potential new recruits are asked trick questions like "How many golf balls do you think will fit into a school bus?"
- DannyBee 13y agoMe too. Can't even bother to get simple things right.
- jlgreco 13y agoWhen you recruit straight from universities and try to give the air of being some sort of continuation of university (all those perks that are designed to make people stay on campus as long as possible and/or make people fresh from college feel at home. It really seems like the only thing they are missing are the dorms...), then perhaps you should expect some of your employees to eventually start "graduating".
- verisimilidude 13y agoI went to a job interview last year (at a trendy SF-type start-up) during which the interviewer boasted, "We have amazing catered dinners every night at 7pm." To some, that may sound like a perk. To me, it sounded like late nights. That was actually the red-flag that convinced me I was a bad fit for their culture (despite otherwise having really complementary domain knowledge/skills). Though I'm not sure how much of that anecdote applies to Google, it's still worth noting that not all perks are interpreted as such by employees.
- meerita 13y agoI would answer: "Thanks, but I have an special diet and I cook my meals." :D
- mayanksinghal 13y agoSome of us actually do cook dinner at home. I come in to work quite late, stick around till 8PM but skip the dinner at Google. I have a few teammates who leave at 5PM, some others who leave at 6PM and the rest who leave around the same time as me. There is really no requirement to stay in late, but the availability of dinner for days when I am too bored to cook is a great thing.
- meerita 13y agoI think I feel privileged in my current job. While I don't have the perks, the salary of any Googler or any hot startup (I'm located in Barcelona, Spain) I can go to make my lunch and dinner all days. I have 2 hours to eat and nap and then i come back at 8PM to make dinner at 9PM.
- verisimilidude 13y agoMy actual answer: "While that does sound cool, is there a place here for the kind of guy who likes his wife's awful casserole?"
- jusben1369 13y agoStraight talk: "As a startup we expect you to work long hours - often into the evening. To offset this somewhat we do pay for you dinner with some pretty good catered meals" Passive Aggressive: "We have amazing catered dinners at 7PM"
- colindean 13y agoI can't find the original posting of it, but there was a blog post written a couple of years ago by someone who "didn't want to spend the rest of [their] career finding new ways to get people to click ads". I wonder if this feeling applies not just to Google Adsense/Adwords team, but ultimately to other Google products, many of which are essentially ways to get people to click ads.
- neutronicus 13y agoApparently, one moves up the pay ladder faster by job-hopping.
- marssaxman 13y agoIs this surprising? It has been true of the software industry as long as I've been involved in it, which is just over two decades now.
- neutronicus 13y agoI'm in academia, so I don't want to claim firsthand knowledge. That's just a good explanation for high turnover rate.
- tomjen3 13y agoHopefully the people google hire are smart enough to know that there os no such thing as loyality towards employees in business and as a direct consequence there should be none from employees toward businesses, once a better offer is availeble.
- Jun8 13y ago"A lack of employer loyalty is a defining feature of Generation Y." Before attempting such overarching explanations, try simpler ones first: It's very easy to change jobs in the Valley due to (i) neutron star -like tech company density and (ii) a social graph that has an unnaturally large number of connections. Both of these stem from how the place got started. Compare the churn rates with, say, Chicago, and you'll see that they are quiet different. The other important point that this (brain dead) article does not consider is the high rate of learning you experience at these companies. Working at a top company like Google or Facebook or like getting a MS, in perhaps half the time. If you work on the right projects and you pay attention, you can gain tremendous insider knowledge in less than a year, which increases your marketability. Then the salary/position you've been hired for may not be applicable any more.
- hvs 13y agoI find that any time an article references a "generation" it is the product of lazy writing/thinking. Plotting individuals along some imaginary scale based on when they were born is only slightly more useful than using horoscopes. I say this a "Gen X'er" (I think. I was born in 1976 as a product of "Baby Boomers" so I've never known exactly what personality traits I was supposed to exhibit.)
- deleted 13y ago[deleted]
- greenyoda 13y agoAlso, loyalty to an employer used to mean a lot more in the days (which are long gone) when employers actually had loyalty to their workers. These days, most employers will be happy to fire you, with no prior notice, if they think they can find someone who'll do the same work for less (e.g., temp workers who get no benefits, or offshore workers), or if they want to show Wall Street a quick spike in profits to boost their sagging stock price.
- Jormundir 13y agoI think this is a more interesting topic than the article. The results of building flat companies is that employees don't have much room to move up. So it's a much better career move to switch companies in order to get into a higher position. You learn a lot, and then a year later feel like your career is stagnating again and have no good opportunities to move up within the company you're in, so you jump again. I feel it's almost a bad career move to stick it out with the same company, because the tech companies I've worked at are so terrible and / or slow about promoting from within.
- rhizome 13y agoJudging from the number of job ads where companies and recruiters tout their principals as "former Googlers" or "Stanfords," or "Facebookers," this would seem to be a petard upon which Google et al have hoisted themselves through their corporate branding via their "smart" hiring practices. That branding is transitive, but it winds up fomenting a kind of credibility bubble among those they hire.
- lettergram 13y agoI remember listening to an interview Marissa Mayer (now CEO of yahoo!) from I believe the audio book: In The Plex: How Google Thinks, Works, and Shapes Our Lives. Amazon Link: http://www.amazon.com/In-The-Plex-Google-Thinks/dp/1455875724 http://www.amazon.com/In-The-Plex-Google-Thinks/dp/145587572... She told the interviewer (I believe Steven Levy) that they train future managers by sending them all around the world and spending a ridiculous amount on each one, but they only expect one of every five or six to be there within three years. They want those type of people because they are ambitious and they want the Google ideology everywhere so they are happy to do it. Essentially, even if you can only get an employee for a year, Google usually highers the best and brightest so they'll probably achieve great things AND when they move on there will still be a connection to Google (and spread Google ideology). Also, from the ex-Google employees I have talked to they don't feel they can make a big enough difference and would rather join a startup. That's probably because they vet the applicants so well to get ambitious individuals they end up losing them because they want to start or join a new company to both make more money and make a larger impact.
- 10098 13y ago> Google is known for its rigorous entry testing: Potential new recruits are asked trick questions like "How many golf balls do you think will fit into a school bus?" That is a stupid myth, nobody asks these questions, at least it's not for software engineers.
- jwoah12 13y agoAgreed. After having done interviews at Microsoft, Google, Facebook, and Amazon at various times over the past 5 years, I never encountered a single one of these questions. I wonder why this myth continues to live on.
- saalweachter 13y agoAlso, am I just stupid or is that not a trick question?
- blankenship 13y ago“One. I think one golf ball would fit inside a school bus. Probably more. But I feel confident about one.”
- DannyBee 13y agoEven if you treat it as a real question, it's not that hard, because buses meet maximum vehicle width restrictions, are of a few common lengths (which are rarely violated because they want to meet CDL gross vehicle weight restrictions so normal bus drivers can drive them), and the interiors are basically standardized. Using 35' x 7.5' x 6.5' would give you a reasonably close interior volume. Golf balls, on the other hand, have a standard volume (2.483 cubic inches). Even if you didn't know the number, you could guess pretty well and say the radius was an inch (which would get you close). Even if you start varying the bus width, length, and height, you can see the answer is somewhere between 1 and 2 million for a sanely sized bus.
- svachalek 13y ago
- gnosis 13y agoWhen was the last time a corporation was "loyal" to its employees?
- ihsw 13y agoThe article seems to imply that there's a large imbalance between employer and employees, specifically that companies go to great pains for employee retention. Employee retention is expensive and it could be construed that the article writer equates perks with 'loyalty.' So, to answer your question: all the time. By continuously offering perks they remain 'loyal' to you.
- eli_gottlieb 13y agoThen why don't they offer contracted, non-at-will employment?
- deleted 13y ago[deleted]
- deleted 13y ago[deleted]
- meerita 13y agoProbably they cannot feel fulfilled professionally in the current company. I heard that some took the entrance to Google to earn the title "former Google engineer" and then get better positioning for investment.
- asveikau 13y agoMedian time in position means that if a company hires a lot, it goes down. For example Amazon was high on this list, but anyone who's been to Seattle lately knows they are hiring like mad. I think you need some kind of metric that accounts for recent hires. Maybe some of those recent hires will leave in a year or two, but some of them won't.
- mhurron 13y agoWhy should I be loyal to a company? What benefit is it to me? I can not expect the same from them, why should they expect it from me?
- poink 13y agoThis seems like the simplest answer. What about most modern large companies would inspire loyalty from their employees?
- kevingadd 13y agoI still don't get why people are attached to the concept of company loyalty in the first place. Maybe it made sense back in the era where you'd work for a company for 2+ decades and retire on a pension, but we don't live in that world anymore. Loyalty is earned, not implicitly deserved. There are thousands of companies out there where a software engineer can show up, do quality work, and draw a salary and benefits. The fact that a company like Google happens to have an on-site masseuse or slightly better 401k plan doesn't really mean anything at all; there are way bigger factors to consider: work/life balance, healthy management and corporate structure, good project planning, opportunities for personal growth, etc. A company that big tends to have a lot of project churn and waste, too, so it's not unnatural for some of that churn and waste to result in more people leaving than might be the average at a smaller company.
- saraid216 13y ago> I still don't get why people are attached to the concept of company loyalty in the first place. Maybe it made sense back in the era where you'd work for a company for 2+ decades and retire on a pension, but we don't live in that world anymore. Why not? What changed? It's not enough reason to dismiss a concept by saying, "Times changed." You have to examine why they changed and whether or not the things lost are worth preserving or reinventing for the new era.
- makmanalp 13y agoGood question. I keep answering this one and I hope it becomes a more common question. Let's start with at-will employment. Basically, when I'm hired, I sign a document that says that the company may fire me whenever it feels like it, no questions asked, with 2 weeks notice. During my parents' generation, you'd get hired provisionally for a short term contract, and then if they like you you'd be hired in the longer term (year to 5-year). If this is the kind of loyalty we get from companies these days, then what kind of loyalty do they deserve? At will employment goes both ways, of course. I can quit whenever I want. It's also up to an employer to keep their offer competitive. If I have a potentially better deal somewhere else, why shouldn't I go there? The default reaction of employers to increasing market salaries is to ignore that fact unless you specifically go ask for a raise or comply with some set of arbitrary rules. How is that a demonstration of goodwill? If you want me to stay, you have to pay me what I'm worth. If you don't think I'm worth that, but I think I am, why is it surprising that I'd change jobs? If I succeeded in changing, clearly someone agreed with me. If you want me to stay despite non-stellar salary / benefits, you'd better have some other benefit such as: a) your product is my baby and I get personal recognition b) good career development & learning opportunities c) a potential to be great. Basically, if you want me to take a chance on you, you have to take a chance on me.
- strlen 13y agoIt's not entirely clear whether or not they're counting contractors and those in traditionally high turnover roles like support and commissions-based remote sales. If the turn over for technical staff is indeed greater than industry and location average (and I suspect it isn't), then I think the reason is a bit simpler than most suspect: especially with less experienced engineers (0-3 years out of university), working for a company like Google quickly builds more career capital (as a result of strong engineering culture, social proof, ability to do fairly unique work, etc...) as opposed to same length stay elsewhere. In other words, it becomes easier for many to go elsewhere if they seek greater responsibility, better projects, flexibility (e.g., being able to work remotely full time), equity/salary, to move from SDET or SRE to a pure software engineering role, to get a position at a growing company that would have previously passed on them, and so forth... While I'm inclined to believe commentators promotion mechanisms on Google's technical ladder could be improved (and I am sure this is something Google is working to improve continuously), I don't necessarily think this kind of turnover is unhealthy. If a great person leaves and it's apparent to everyone that they've been overlooked and Google should have promoted them before they attempted to resign, it helps show a pattern of what kind of workers are overlooked; if a person leaves and the opposite is true (e.g., they weren't performing in a way that warranted a promotion, they weren't technically qualified to take on a project of their choice, etc...) then it serves a safety mechanism: those unhappy with their role leave -- meaning the average worker is happier with their role than otherwise.
- samspenc 13y ago"The median employee tenure at Google is just more than one year, according to the payroll consultancy PayScale." Can someone confirm this? I know friends at Google and follow work from Googlers who contribute to standards, and no one I know there fits this description.
- Dewie 13y ago> In one recent ranking of companies with the highest employee turnover rates, the Mountain View, California, company is among the leaders. The median employee tenure at Google is just more than one year, according to the payroll consultancy PayScale. Let me ask: does these numbers reflect only employees quitting, or does it also reflect the employee leaving the company on the corp's initiative (getting fired)? If it is the latter, then only talking about employee loyalty seems like a pretty big jump to a flawed conclusion. As an aside: I've heard that many American jobs have at-will employment. Working for someone that can fire me at any time for any reason doesn't really inspire loyalty in my mind.
- solarmist 13y agoA note: corps is a military term for a group of multiple divisions of troops. That's how I read it initially. Before I realized you meant "corp's". Be careful with your abbreviations.
- chrisduesing 13y agoToo many people are making the assumption that this is the new normal, or has something to do with the morals of a group of people. Instead, it is simply a market at work. Right now there are too few highly skilled programmers and too many job openings. Exacerbating the effect is cheap capital which allows companies to keep raising salaries. When the market shifts, which it invariably will, hiring will slow and average tenure will increase.
- cmancini 13y agoThis article isn't even about Google. The title is for linkbait and page views. Bershidsky should stick to writing about Russian affairs, not conventional "wisdom" generalizations about the "latest" trends in technical employment.
- ibejoeb 13y agoOr, "Why can't Google retain talent?" Or, "Average Googler works 4 years; stockholders see consistent gains." I struggle to find the author's point. By the title alone, this tenure seems to be some vice of Google and tech in general. Furthermore, it's an indictment of an entire class of workers. Is Exxon really that much better a company than Google? It must be, because the employees stick around for 2 more years! Google, as a company, still changes entirely over a four year period. That average tenure sees through a whole generation. I could write an article claiming it to be the defining characteristic of a successful company. This is as good as gossip.
- prospero 13y agoThe linked report seems to suggest that the median time was 1.1 years, not 4.
- rdouble 13y agoOnce systems get as large as the ones at Google, it can feel like the piece of the puzzle you are working on is inconsequential. This leads to boredom and ennui. There are currently a lot of opportunities to get paid well while feeling like you are making a bigger impact on the direction of a company, or simply just have the opportunity to create something from scratch. I often wonder if Google will turn into a place where older engineers go to "retire" with a stable job if their stints at startup companies never work out.
- known 13y agoThey're allowed to think out-of-the-box http://googleblog.blogspot.in/2006/05/googles-20-percent-time-in-action.html http://googleblog.blogspot.in/2006/05/googles-20-percent-tim...
- thatinstant 13y agoLink bait! The author doesn't truly answer the question in the title and even worse, the author throws a whole generation of people under the bus, so to speak. There is no balance to the explanation as it is one-sided with the employees to blame. Find me a corporation (that still exists) that is truly loyal to its employees... The author needs to read Richard Wolff.