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The problem with established companies like Google is that all of the cool projects are already taken. That, and that they claim ownership over whatever you cr

The problem with established companies like Google is that all of the cool projects are already taken. That, and that they claim ownership over whatever you create, including stuff you do in your off hours, and any ideas you may have had. But the lack of opportunity is the big one. There's just too many people who've been there too long, with their own projects to work on that overlap with the work you'd want to do, to have any shot at actually doing groundbreaking work. Interesting work? Maybe. Groundbreaking? Not gonna happen. As an example, I work on pretty much the same problems as Jeff Dean and Sanjay Ghemawat, albeit with a radically different approach. Would I be able to continue that work at Google? Extremely doubtful, again, because all of the groundbreaking work is taken. (Note: Jeff Dean and Sanjay Ghemawat are awesome, I'm not trying to imply that they aren't up to the task or whatever. Far from it. Just that there's already really good chefs in the kitchen at Google, so there's no point in joining in the fun.)

sshumaker 13y ago
I have to disagree. Just in the last few years, tons of new, groundbreaking projects have sprung up. e.g. most of the publicly announced Google X projects didn't even exist a few years ago. And there's so many areas where there's interesting stuff to work on. Now obviously, unless you're really special (e.g a known expert in your field) you're not going to be able to waltz in and be given a huge area of responsibility and a team, but that's just common sense. You do have to prove yourself, and there is some discounting down of your work pre-Google (your impact since Google is valued far more highly). At the end of the day, Google is a heavily engineering-driven company, so if you have good ideas, nothing is stopping you from going ahead and starting your own cool project. If you're driven and talented and demonstrate success, the 'cool project' could transform into something much bigger, and you could end up leading an important company initiative.
tagabek 13y ago
they claim ownership over whatever you create, including stuff you do in your off hours, and any ideas you may have had. Does this mean that if you are working on side projects during your free time (ie. at home on weekends), you do not own them?
- _delirium 13y ago
  Many employment contracts try to claim that, or something that practically amounts to the same. Some states do limit the enforceability of such contracts. For example California prohibits the company from trying to grab ownership of inventions produced entirely in one's spare time: http://www.leginfo.ca.gov/cgi-bin/displaycode?section=lab&group=02001-03000&file=2870-2872 http://www.leginfo.ca.gov/cgi-bin/displaycode?section=lab&gr... However, even in CA's case there is a big exception: work that is closely related to the employer's business might still be owned by the employer, on the theory that if you developed something closely related to your day job (you work at an industrial-sensors company and are developing your own industrial sensors on weekends), you probably inevitably used some of the employer's trade secrets / business information / etc. in developing it. Whereas if you develop a side project in a different area (you work at an industrial-sensors company and are developing C++ dev tools on weekends), you're more in the clear. The problem with how that interacts with Google is that nearly every field of technology is related to Google's business! They do search, datacenter infrastructure, IaaS, PaaS, operating systems, programming languages, compilers, robotics, computer vision, AI, storage systems, email, mobile apps, mobile phones, office/productivity software, news aggregation, data visualization, etc. So it's difficult to come up with a safe side project that isn't closely related to your employer's business.

sshumaker 13y ago

I have to disagree. Just in the last few years, tons of new, groundbreaking projects have sprung up. e.g. most of the publicly announced Google X projects didn't even exist a few years ago. And there's so many areas where there's interesting stuff to work on. Now obviously, unless you're really special (e.g a known expert in your field) you're not going to be able to waltz in and be given a huge area of responsibility and a team, but that's just common sense. You do have to prove yourself, and there is some discounting down of your work pre-Google (your impact since Google is valued far more highly). At the end of the day, Google is a heavily engineering-driven company, so if you have good ideas, nothing is stopping you from going ahead and starting your own cool project. If you're driven and talented and demonstrate success, the 'cool project' could transform into something much bigger, and you could end up leading an important company initiative.

tagabek 13y ago

they claim ownership over whatever you create, including stuff you do in your off hours, and any ideas you may have had. Does this mean that if you are working on side projects during your free time (ie. at home on weekends), you do not own them?

_delirium 13y ago
Many employment contracts try to claim that, or something that practically amounts to the same. Some states do limit the enforceability of such contracts. For example California prohibits the company from trying to grab ownership of inventions produced entirely in one's spare time: http://www.leginfo.ca.gov/cgi-bin/displaycode?section=lab&group=02001-03000&file=2870-2872 http://www.leginfo.ca.gov/cgi-bin/displaycode?section=lab&gr... However, even in CA's case there is a big exception: work that is closely related to the employer's business might still be owned by the employer, on the theory that if you developed something closely related to your day job (you work at an industrial-sensors company and are developing your own industrial sensors on weekends), you probably inevitably used some of the employer's trade secrets / business information / etc. in developing it. Whereas if you develop a side project in a different area (you work at an industrial-sensors company and are developing C++ dev tools on weekends), you're more in the clear. The problem with how that interacts with Google is that nearly every field of technology is related to Google's business! They do search, datacenter infrastructure, IaaS, PaaS, operating systems, programming languages, compilers, robotics, computer vision, AI, storage systems, email, mobile apps, mobile phones, office/productivity software, news aggregation, data visualization, etc. So it's difficult to come up with a safe side project that isn't closely related to your employer's business.