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Why Google Employees Quit (2009)
- shakil 11y agoThis is from 2009. Even if nothing's changed, what's the relevance today?
- ChuckMcM 11y agoI left in 2010 so I was thinking the same thing. Folks who have since gone to Google have mentioned that they have added counseling for folks which could help. And as I pointed out to some folks while leaving, the people who care about these sorts of issues will leave, new people will be hired and the ones who stay won't care about those issues, and so you will have successfully evolved the culture/environment away from something the company was no longer interested in providing. As far as I can tell it hasn't killed their ability to hire new employees so the net effect is all positive for Google.
- paxtonab 11y agoThe whole point is that everything's changed. These people are griping about lack of free food in the office, bad pay and lousy benefits. They also complain that Google is "constrained to thinking in the browser." Too bad they didn't stick it out to see the self-driving cars, and none of these people were working on Android.
- jfoutz 11y agoGoogle hired the grand challenge winners back in 2007. Google has always had amazing world changing side projects. They just don't seem to go anywhere (yet). Google has been talking about satalites for free worldwide internet access since before SpaceX existed. Don't get me wrong, they're doing amazing stuff. The drone delivery system they built is cool. It's just that, aside from maps, it seems like they have a hard time pushing through to completion.
- jwatte 11y agoI know several people who worked on Android, and then left, because the architects were repeating known failure patterns from the past, yet failing to recognize it. Those patterns are some of the worst pain points for current Android developers. (No, not device fragmentation -- that was unavoidable.)
- majke 11y agoprevious: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=439298 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=439298
- deleted 11y ago[deleted]
- methyl 11y agoWhat I'm wondering about is that they mention long hiring process as a reason for quitting the job. They finally made it to the end and they quit because of that?
- learnstats2 11y agoIt shows disrespect for the employee's time. That might not cause you to quit immediately, but it might be an indicator for other problems and you might become more acutely aware of those when you start. Also, now you have "I passed the Google hiring process" on your CV.
- BrandonY 11y agoWould someone really put "once offered a job by Google, but declined" on their resume? Who am I kidding, of course SOMEONE would, but more than one or two people?
- freyr 11y agoNo, you work there for a short time and then you jump ship.
- YokoZar 11y agoThere are a fair amount of companies that, during their hiring process, will basically say "Oh, you have an offer from Google? Forward it to us, add 10% to the base, and we'll hire you without further interviewing."
- hinkley 11y agoI've had beers with a lot of people who had given two weeks at various employers, and in many cases where the person was a little disgruntled, their narrative went all the way back to the beginning of their employment. Which to me means that the way you treat them during the interview and their first weeks at work end up being part of the calculus of Stay or Go. I've really taken this to heart, and I'm profusely embarrassed if for instance their equipment is not there day 1 and I'm working order.
- ninjakeyboard 11y agoAll you need to do to thrive at google is love 5 star gourmet food. It's not uncommon to see in-house smoked bacon for breakfast, and then have quail for lunch. And then wild boar sausage rolls for a late afternoon snack. There is this thing: the google 25. Yeah it's worse than freshman year - you're gonna get fat bro. It is an interesting culture that's for sure.
- ridiculous_fish 11y agoIt's certainly not "all you need." I love food and did not thrive at Google. The food is amazing, but food alone won't make you happy at your job.
- throwaway1mctg4 11y agoAre you still at Google? Their current food is okay, but I'd never be tempted to describe it as "5 star gourmet", and rarely see food like you describe.
- kmicklas 11y agoI think it depends on the office. The food in NYC is amazing and many Googlers tell me the MTV food is not nearly as good.
- thrownaway2424 11y agoLike everything else about Mountain View, the food at Google's Mountain View office sucks. That office is also in a swamp, and the "city" of Mountain View offers nothing of any interest to anybody, unless colossal, endless traffic jams catch your fancy. I have no idea why anyone wants to live or work in Mountain View, for Google or otherwise.
- ridiculous_fish 11y agoThe food at Google's MTV office is excellent. Mountain View is not SF or NYC, but it's no wasteland either. Castro Street is fun. But the traffic is real and horrible.
- xenadu02 11y agoCuriously some these people were hired during the no-poaching conspiracy to suppress programmer wages. I wonder if that had something to do with the salaries?
- ilyanep 11y agoOther people can correct me if I'm wrong, but my understanding is that Google now has a reputation for having quite compelling salaries, so maybe?
- reagency 11y ago2009 short-tenure Xooglers were that window where new hires joined post- IPO-stock-pop and so had an underwhelming equity compensation, especially relatively to slightly more senior coworkers.
- onedev 11y agoI propose a much simpler explanation: they get bored.
- gmjosack 11y agoI worked at Google from 2010 to 2012, just under two years, as an SRE. Google was a great company to work for and the people I worked with were all awesome. I ultimately left Google because I felt bored working there. You admin systems and fill out resource request through web browsers and work with proprietary stacks all day. It didn't take long to feel my skills as a Linux professional start to atrophy. The longer I stayed the more concerned I became about passing interviews in the rest of the industry as I became a Google engineer. I often miss the tools I had at Google but it's exciting building those tools at smaller companies and working with industry best practices.
- Yhippa 11y agoFunny, I have this same concern working for a government organization.
- jwatte 11y agoExcept for the "reasonable salary" part.
- thearn4 11y agoThe GS payscale is a bit unforgiving for very early career technical folks, but regular pay raises, step increases, and grade advancement catches up later on. Although congress has been pretty stingy with the "regular pay raises" over the last few years.
- mkramlich 11y agoie. they have such an extreme scale that often what's best for them is also unique to them, so doesn't really work/apply/be-appreciated anywhere else. They want sharp folks. But because so many, and because folks at top are so sharp, and because their scale is so gigantic, they want sharp drones. Color inside the lines, just really really really fast and perfect. Getting something 1% wrong costs them millions more than otherwise. Which is different than the mindset of the vast majority of other companies where getting something even 91% right means making millions of dollars more for the shareholders, than otherwise. The rest is details.
- confiscate 11y agowell to be fair google is a pretty big company. there's always going to be some percentage of folks who quit or are not perfectly happy for various reasons if google makes it a better place to work than other companies i think that's a pretty good achievement in and of itself
- shawnps 11y agoThis is what I gleaned from the article: Person 1: * Pay/benefits Person 2: * Benefits Person 3: * Hiring process Person 4: * Company felt too big. * Pay * Company goals were too constrained Person 5: * Hiring process * Benefits Person 6: * Hiring process Person 7: * Pay (international office) Person 8: * Cannot figure out why this person left, but it was after 11 days of working there. Person 9: * Pursuing different career path (overall was happy with Google) Person 10: * Hiring process Person 11: * Management Person 12: * Bad work/life balance * Pay (other people paid less than what they deserved) * Management * Hard to get noticed in remote office Person 13: * Company was changing too much * Management Person 14: * Hiring process * Management * Hard to get promotion * Bad work/life balance Person 15: * Hiring process Person 16: * N/A Person 17: * Salary/hiring bonus/relocation * Office benefits being removed Person 18: * Felt underutilized * Management Person 19: * Management * Lack of fun culture in remote office
- tjradcliffe 11y agoExcellent. Thank you for taking the time to pull some data out of the anecdotes. There are all kinds of tricky issues with this, as this is a small dataset, but by identifying categories you've created a template that could be used to further actual research.
- nagaiah 11y agoThanks for TL;DR
- randunel 11y agoI often go straight to comments for TL;DRs such as this one. Thanks.
- ak39 11y agoI wonder whether there's a "business" in there somewhere for creating a "TL;DR as a service" API?
- nowprovision 11y ago
- codecamper 11y agoJust install adblock plus and we will no longer have all these google problems.
- rdtsc 11y ago> The relocation and hiring bonus’ stated values were pre-tax! That was a huge unexpected blow to the pocketbook. (Perhaps off-topic) Isn't that the default? Doesn't every company do that -- pay you the bonus and then Uncle Sam (and friends) take a cut depending on the tax situation?
- cpitman 11y agoHow would they even know the post-tax amount? That is going to depend on your unique financial situation.
- ohw 11y agoThey set the post-tax amount without knowing the exact pre-tax amount, so whatever the pre-tax amount is they will just pay it. Even if tax rate varies person by person there will not be a huge difference. I checked one of my offer letter (not from google) and the wording is like "an amount of $XXXXX grossed up for U.S taxes".
- unimportant 11y ago>Isn't that the default? I don't know about the US, but in Europe it was always marked as expenses refunded to me on the payslip, which is tax free.
- prewett 11y agoI've seen two options: relocation bonus (pre-tax) or relocation reimbursement (post-tax, usually up to a certain amount). A hiring bonus would presumably always be pre-tax, since there's no expenses to reimburse.
- saalweachter 11y agoFor relocation costs, those are deductible from your (Federal) taxes under certain circumstances (something like, if you move more than X miles to be closer to a job). If it is just a bonus that is just taxable income. In the US, if they gave you $1000 straight-up for moving costs, you'd probably see something like: 1. Company gives you $1000. 2. $750 hits your bank account after withholding. 3. You spend $1000 to move. 4. You file taxes, claim $1000 deduction for moving expenses. 5. You receive $250 refund.
- unimportant 11y agoI used to work as at Google and it was my worst job ever. It was not for Google directly though, but via a temp agency for a Google project. Google rented an office building just for the project with temp agency HR on site and a few Googlers that were mostly in management and supervising things. Contracts were structured in a way to avoid having to pay benefits and to be able to maximize pressure on the the employee with extremely short notice periods. The turnover was enormous, almost everyone hated working there and 30-40% of the employees were reminded weekly by HR that they're on probation and will get fired if their performance isn't better next week. Basically a modern day sweatshop.
- reagency 11y agoWas this in engineering, or maps data curation, or ads customer support, or ?
- eitally 11y agoI am sorry you had this experience, but I would argue that this isn't the same as working for actual Google. This jives with other accounts I've read from contractors (and I think I read somewhere that about 35% of staff are contractors at this point, but that seems really, really high).
- batou 11y agoSo bureaucracy, cost cutting, management being dicks, no appreciation for family, inefficiency, boredom and detachment from the rest of the industry. Sounds exactly like the last 4 non-Google jobs I've had, including the current one. I suspect that any sufficiently large group of humans self-organises into this state of affairs.
- throwaway530 11y agoHas anyone else noticed a trend where people get hired by Google and just disappear completely? The Factor Language guy vanished after getting a job there, and now the project looks dead. I can think of some other examples, but maybe I'm just noticing outliers.
- reikonomusha 11y agoYes I've noticed this too, even with some friends.
- orless 11y agoI had two interviews with Google in 2011 (senior dev position in corporate engineering), got rejected after the on-site interview in Munich, Germany. I'm not sure why, I think I did really good back then. Their recruiters keep calling 1-2 times a year since then, but nowadays I can't even imagine applying. It's a huge preparation effort with unclear chances and benefits. Just can't afford it.
- pacquiao882 11y agoA few colleagues that have worked at Google over the years have expressed that depending on which office, project or position you are in, the experience was greatly impacted for better or worse. Everything from boredom, perceived growth and office politics seems to vary greatly even if offices were merely a couple towns over within the same state.
- sidcool 11y agoSometimes I feel that human beings are tough to please. Once they get what they want, soon it loses its shine. Perhaps it's OK, may be that's what keeps us going. But does that impact our happiness levels? Not sure.
- fapjacks 11y agoI turned down an offer to work at the Googleplex last year because there was a very creepy groupthink/hivemind atmosphere when I did my round of 6+ interviews there. Also combined with my favorite question to ask interviewers: "If you could make one change and it wouldn't be vetoed, what change would you make?" And every one of my interviewers said some variation of "I wish my work challenged me" with one guy very poignantly saying it as "All the low-hanging fruit has been solved, and only certain engineers get to work on the really tough problems" and then I couldn't wait to get the fuck outta there.