
Ask HN: I've been slacking off at Google for 6 years. How can I stop this? - futur321
I joined Google straight from college 6 years ago as a SWE, and by now I&#x27;m used to the style of work of &quot;do the minimal work possible to do the job&quot;, I never challenge myself to deeply learn about what I&#x27;m doing, it&#x27;s almost like I&#x27;ve been using only 10% of my mental capacity for work (the rest was on dating&#x2F;dealing with breakups&#x2F;dealing with depression&#x2F;gaming&#x2F;...).
Even when I get a meaningful project, all I do is copy code from the internal codebase and patch things together until they work. I was promoted only once.<p>Now that I&#x27;m thinking of jumping ship to other interesting companies, I&#x27;m having serious doubts that I really learned what I should have learned during all those years. Especially since I&#x27;m considering companies with a higher hiring bar than Google.<p>How can I keep myself accountable while I&#x27;m still at the company to deeply learn the FE&#x2F;BE technologies to be better prepared for other companies? Should I start by preparing a checklist of technologies and dive into each of them for a month and continue from there?
======
md5wasp
Hi there, I did the exact same thing as you (at Google Sydney), before
eventually deciding that I must strike out into the wilderness.

In the few years since I left; I worked as a solutions architect managing a
team, a team lead, a remote dev, and now in a startup. Front-end, back-end,
flip-side, all the ends. So I've been deliberately trying different angles of
my career to see what suits.

I'd describe this process as grueling, ("challenging" is too friendly). I
honestly think I would have been happier staying at Google, farting around,
and being social. I agree with a lot of the comments here. However it's a
catch-22, because the me that exists now wouldn't choose to go back and
overall I think this has been good for me – and not just because of the, er,
_character building_ aspect of it.

If you stay at Google, make the most of it by progressing deliberately in your
social life. If I'd've stayed, I could have comfortably raised some kids with
my wife by now - but that's still on the todo list.

If you leave, just jump right in. I didn't study anything, I just picked it up
as I went along. If you were able to follow Steve Yegge's advice and Get That
Job At Google, then I'm sure you're a smart cookie and can fake it til you
make it.

Basically I'm saying you can be happy either way. If you leave, know what
you're getting yourself into. If you stay, don't waste this time but use it on
yourself.

~~~
thrownaway954
"If you stay at Google, make the most of it by progressing deliberately in
your social life. If I'd've stayed, I could have comfortably raised some kids
with my wife by now - but that's still on the todo list."

THIS all the way.

When we are young, we think that we will be remembered by the company that we
worked for and the people that we worked with. The sad truth is that in
99.9999% none of those people will remember you the second you walk out the
door.

The family you raise will remember and love you though.

I'm in my 40s and got fired a very cushy job like OP has. The reason was cause
I wanted to challenge myself and I worked myself into early alcoholism which
resulted in my dismissal. My co-workers don't call, the company doesn't call,
they don't care. My marriage broken up cause of the job and me wanting to
pursue my so called dream. I'm alone and will most likely die alone this year
by my own hand since the pain is too much bare sometimes. I miss my wife and
my little Pomeranian terribly.

OP... if you want challenge in your life, challenge yourself to being a good
partner to someone in a marriage and raise some kids, get a Pomeranian :) Have
something in this world that will truly appreciate and remember you when you
are gone.

"I never saw a tombstone that read. 'If I had only worked more'"

~~~
marcus_holmes
I was there. Now in my 50's with an amazing life. I'm grateful every day to my
alcoholic, depressed 40-odd-year-old self who didn't kill himself. I could not
have seen from there how happy I am now, and I could not have predicted the
adventures I went (am going!) through to get here.

Hang in there, buddy. Just keep breathing. It will change.

~~~
at-fates-hands
I had the same experience my first few years out of college. Had a long
relationship end, started drinking, went through several jobs and within three
years found myself alone, severely depressed and an alcoholic. I contemplated
suicide frequently, but held out hope my life would change if I could just get
to tomorrow. My life started feeling like the movie "Groundhog Day".

Eventually things did change, and my 30's have been a whirlwind of happiness,
sobriety and a GF who loves me unconditionally for me. Like you said, if I
knew this is where the black hole I fell into would lead to, I would've pushed
harder to get sober, try harder to put myself back together sooner. But I'm
here now and am grateful I held out and often think about this wonderful life
I almost passed on.

~~~
marcus_holmes
Of course, the "just keep breathing, it will change" is just as true for the
good times, too.

I try and remember every day to savour and make the most of this happiness,
and be grateful for it.

Because it won't last. Nothing does.

------
dhuyrv
You remind me myself a few years ago: a talented, but bored slacker who didn't
see any point in investing any energy into that project. Turns out I was
right: the project didn't go anywhere after I left and investing any extra
time would be a clueless thing to do.

So what's changed since then? Have I found meaning in work? No! I've become a
professional slacker who knows all these psychological tricks, knows what body
language to use to make the desired impression, what to say and what not to
say. My managers think I'm a high performer who also makes valuable social
contributions to our team and this is reflected in pay rises. I see my mission
at work in carefully educating the overly enthusiastic co-workers by dropping
a few seemingly random hints or observations that make them think and
challenge their beliefs.

Work is just work and unless you're curing cancer, you shouldn't put any
effort into making some billionaires richer. Just do the minimum, get your
paycheck and appreciate the fact that you don't need to worry about money.
Very few people in the world have this level of freedom.

But life is quite a bit more interesting than it seems. Learn applied
psychology to understand what drives people. Learn about all these LLCs,
corps, trusts and other fun stuff. Talk to a lawyer and try to start your own
company. No need to leave your current job: you can use the gained knowledge
to hide traces, while still being very legal and very cool. Even if you get
caught, use the learned psychology tricks to negotiate: you may even find
yourself in a VP position as few people can covertly pull this type of stuff.
Even if it doesn't work, there is nothing to lose: 50 years later the only
thing you will regret is not taking the risk because of some silly non
competes with a company that no longer exists. Learn some Buddhism and some
Tiberian phylosophy: it gives a very interesting and different outlook at
life. Learn how pilot an airplane: like I said, there is nothing to lose.

~~~
ChuckNorris89
This blows my mind that in the US one can make such insane money in tech while
still being a slacker and retire early with a dream house bought and paid for
while in Europe devs are slaving away through SCRUM powered meat grinders
burning themselves out for a 3% salary increase on a pitiful 40-80k/year, no
stock options, without any hope of early retirement or owning a decent home
without a 30 year loan or financial assistance from their parents.

You guys don't know how good you have it. The behavior of slacker Googlers
described here would have gotten them instantly fired in any European
company(yes, the _" you can't fire people in Europe"_ is just a meme).

Reading OPs problem and some posts here where people are too bored of making
ludicrous money left me with a bitter aftertaste that life really is unfair
and success in life is more linked to the lottery of birth and opportunities
available to you than any amount of hard work. Not hating, just saying.

Good luck to you guys and hope you find a calling for a fulfilling job or a
hobby that gives you meaning or purpose in life.

~~~
Galanwe
> in Europe devs are slaving away through SCRUM powered meat grinders burning
> themselves out for a 3% salary increase on a pitiful 40-80k/year

There is so much wrong in this sentence.

First, there is no more “meat grinders” in the US than in Europe. I worked at
Microsoft and Criteo in Europe, and the slacking there seems to be on par with
what OP describes.

You mention 40/80k per year being pitiful? This kind of remuneration puts you
in the top 10%/5% of France population easily. If your partner manages the
same level of salary, you should be even better in the top.

> no stock options, without any hope of early retirement

You are dreaming. The kind of stock options you get in big tech companies is
not what you think. You can expect some hundreds/thousands dollars per year,
that need 3/5 year to vest until you can have them in full. European companies
would traditionally prefer to give a bit of extra money rather than stock
options.

> early retirement

....

> owning a decent home without a 30 year loan

What are you talking about... you earn 40/80k per year. The mortgage rates in
France at the moment are amongst the best in the world. You should be able to
get a loan at 1% for ~500k for 15 or 30 years without any problem.

Also, please, bear in mind that you cannot directly compare US and EU
salaries. Your 80k€ gross in e.g. France should be the equivalent of $150k for
a US worker; if you account for the same level of medical care and retirement
savings. Not much of a difference after you realise this.

~~~
rayiner
> Also, please, bear in mind that you cannot directly compare US and EU
> salaries. Your 80k€ gross in e.g. France should be the equivalent of $150k
> for a US worker; if you account for the same level of medical care and
> retirement savings. Not much of a difference after you realise this.

What makes you think that? As to retirement savings, American retirement
payments replace 70% of working income on average, versus 60% in France:
[https://www.etk.fi/wp-content/uploads/PaG2017EN.jpg](https://www.etk.fi/wp-
content/uploads/PaG2017EN.jpg). The US retirement system is one of the better
ones in the OECD. Like the U.K., Germany, Netherlands, and Sweden, the U.S.
has a two-pillar system, with a public pillar and a defined contribution (i.e.
401k) pillar. The public system alone pays out about as much in absolute terms
as in France. (60% of French pre-retirement income ~= 40% of US per-retirement
income.) Adding in the tax-advantaged defined-contribution component (but
excluding other private investment income) makes the total income replacement
one of the highest in the OECD.

Of course, at the end of the day, a programmer is going to be a “net
contributor” to the retirement system in both countries. The French person
will pay (percentage wise) much higher social insurance tax to get a bigger
(percentage wise) public pension check, while the American person will make a
401k contribution plus a lower social insurance tax. At the end of the day,
that doesn’t have any effect on the comparison of 80k euros being less than
$150k, because retirement savings will come out of both numbers.

As to healthcare, programmers are going to be among the 65% of American
workers who get healthcare through their employer. That means that, on top of
their salary, they get additional compensation in the form of employer-paid
healthcare premiums. Meanwhile, the French person will pay for healthcare in
the form of higher taxes out of that 80k euros. Although Americans spend twice
as much on healthcare as French, that isn’t relevant to this comparison,
because for the American the additional part is paid by the employer on top of
the $150k. It’s not something you subtract out. (Put differently, the 80k
euros versus 150k comparison understates the difference, because the American
salary includes $10-15k in additional health benefits.)

Finally, cost of living is about the same in France as in the US.

~~~
Galanwe
You are completely missing the point here. Not only are you trying to argue
against things that I did not say, but you are also comparing things that
cannot. What Europeans call "gross" salary is NOT what Americans call "gross"
salary. And you are mixing them together, which is exactly what my comment was
trying to prevent.

> the comparison of 80k euros being less than $150k, because retirement
> savings will come out of both numbers.

No, the 80k remuneration is AFTER half the retirement contribution.

> the French person will pay for healthcare in the form of higher taxes out of
> that 80k euros

No, most of the healthcare is actually in the employer part, which is already
removed from these 80k.

 __In Europe, what people call "gross" is the employee part of the income.
This part already had the employer part removed, which contains a part of
medical care and retirement. __In US, especially with 401k, the employer part
is pretty much non existent until the employee triggers a contribution.

What it means is that on the 80k that a European will call his "gross" salary,
he will in fact have been paid around 140k, with 60k going to his mandatory
retirement/medical care for the employer contribution. The taxes left on the
80k are only the employee part.

People in Europe usually don't add up the employer contribution part into
account in what they call their "gross" salary because it's a mandatory part
and often not displayed on the payslips.

This is not how it works in the US. The $150k that employees refer to as their
"gross" income did not had the employer contribution deducted yet.

I am not _at all_ trying to compare the retirement system of US versus EU, or
saying that one is better or not or whatever. All I'm saying is EU gross is
not comparable to US gross, as these numbers do NOT contain the same
deductions.

In your post, you are _consistently_ mixing the two gross numbers together,
which is very wrong.

~~~
mkohlmyr
I don't know anyone who calls take-home (net) pay gross salary in Europe. I
have lived and worked in multiple countries.

And the actual gross is definitely displayed on the payslips.

~~~
jhrmnn
Let me try to reformulate OP's comment. In many European countries, there are
three deduction levels: (1) the net salary, after all taxes and health and
social care deductions, (2) the gross salary, after all mandatory employer
contributions to the health and social care systems (3) the total cost of an
employee to the employer (the English equivalent of the term used in Czechia
would be "super-gross" salary). OP's point was that first, in the EU, there is
often a big difference between (2) and (3), whereas they are very close or
equal in the US, and second, gross salary usually refers to (2) in the EU and
to (3) in the US.

That said, I don't think that the difference between (2) and (3) is as big as
suggested by the OP even in the EU, at least in the countries that I'm
familiar with.

~~~
dragonwriter
Gross salary usually refers to #2 in the US, to, and, contrary to the upthread
suggestion, just as in Europe, there is an “employer portion” (which in the US
includes some of retirement and retirement healthcare, but not current
healthcare—that is, specifically, federally half of the tax for Social
Security and Medicare,—plus, a portion of the cost of federal and state
unemployment insurance) which is not included in gross salary because it is
paid out of employer taxes rather than employee taxes. There are also
sometimes employer-provided benefits that while part of total compensation are
not part of gross salary , and may or may not be part of taxable income; some
portion of employer-provided healthcare cost is frequently part of this, and,
though this is almost entirely a public-sector concern now, some portion of
employer pension costs also frequently would be part of this, where a pension
exists at all (adding these employer taxes and benefits to gross salary isn't
the total cost to the employer of the employee either, as there is overhead
and other employer costs for employment that that still excludes.)

It is true that the spread between #2 and #3 (when limited only to the
required taxes and any benefits not part of salary, which seems to be the
intention) is typically greater in Europe than the US, as the supported social
services are greater.

------
pavlov
I think you underestimate your value to the company.

“All I do is copy code from the internal codebase and patch things together
until they work” — this is exactly what established tech companies mostly need
from their engineers. They want people with enough CS competence to not fuck
things up while patching together new solutions from the institutional code
soup that everyone knows how to navigate and review.

If you can do this reliably at 10% of your capacity and don’t have ambitions
of applying creative solutions with unproven tech, you’re a real asset. Don’t
leave rashly unless you’re genuinely bored or frustrated.

~~~
ec109685
You didn’t read his whole post. They’re bored. Their value to google is high
enough to keep them employed but the job is beneath their capabilities.

The failing for google is not providing this person a path to do more or at
least understanding their ambition to do more.

~~~
mindcrime
_Their value to google is high enough to keep them employed but the job is
beneath their capabilities._

That's what we call "the perfect job." It pays the bills, but leaves you the
maximum amount of (mental|emotional|psychological|spiritual|whatever) energy
to work on the things that _really_ interest you ... outside of work.

Of course different people will approach this differently, but I don't _want_
my job to be interesting. I don't draw any sense of self-worth / self-
satisfaction / joy-in-life / etc. from my job. My job is just a means to an
end, where that end is to pay the rent, pay the electric bill, buy food etc. I
have enough other ways to achieve those other things, and an "interesting"
(and by extension, "demanding") job just gets in the way.

~~~
lovehashbrowns
For me personally, being bored at work actually leaves me more tired at home
afterwards. I'm working on something so boring at work now and I can't handle
it. It's just going to kill me very slowly over the course of the next month.

Now for your second point, I completely agree--I don't want to feel like my
job is my worth or joy in life, and it isn't. But at the same time, I wouldn't
take a job at an assembly line even if it paid $1M a year.

~~~
jama211
That's why you work on your side projects at work. I plan and design and write
in a text editor my personal stuff all the time. It's just a text editor so it
doesn't look suspect.

~~~
asdff
make sure it stays on personal accounts and equipment to avoid ownership
issues but ianal

~~~
alex7o
Or better work on gpl code, then it's s win win I think.

------
goatherders
You don't realize how good you have it:

1\. you work for a company that is an excellent resume booster outside of the
valley. I'm from central texas and most everyone I know in tech has worked at
Dell and once complained how boring it was to work at Dell. The moment they
decided to move away from Austin their Dell experience made them very hot
commodities to non-Austin tech companies. Every day you stay at Google the
more valuable you become.

2.you presumably make enough money to not worry about your monthly Bills and
probably have enough to save as well. At age 28 you are well ahead of the vast
majority of 28 year olds from the last 100 years. Not saying you should be
content but still...

As others have said you have a great opportunity to do some new things, both
in terms of mental and financial capacity. Nevermind learning more tech
stuff...get a hobby. Try different things to make you the kind of person
you've always wanted to be. Most people are not able to do that because of
stress at work or stress about money. You seem to have neither.

~~~
agitator
I think this highlights the fundamental problem with hiring at many large
companies. They think they are getting the best, but are they? They sure are
overpaying for their employees.

I think if OP isn't motivated enough to learn, excel, and build cool things on
the side while he has a catered life at google, I don't think she/he will put
in much effort elsewhere? That intrinsic motivation isn't there. And it
honestly doesn't make sense to leave, take a pay cut, and hope that you will
be given responsibilities to do new things that require learning. If you
haven't been learning new things on the fly, you missed years of practice
trying new things, and they won't give those responsibilities to you.

~~~
o-__-o
>That intrinsic motivation isn't there

it took me leaving a job that i thought i was stuck in to find my inner
musician, snowboard daily, and ultimately start my first business.

sometimes being an employee is just a soul-sucking adventure

~~~
throw_this_one
Yeah just _having_ to be at my office for 9 hours makes me sleep worse, and
drains your spice for life that you would normally be able to parlay into
diving into your interests.

Did you just quit and spend a year or whatever with your interests and
thinking of business ideas?

~~~
o-__-o
I took a new job in a new city. Moving to the new city made me focus on my
interests, I think after realizing that I could leave work at 4pm and head
straight to the mountain made me realize I have control of my life. I spent
2-3 months exploring this, then ideas just sort of came out of the woodworks.
Taking control of my life was instrumental to pursuing the business idea. I
wouldn't have put up $30k before then, and it took losing $30k in this venture
to realize the freedom that owning your own business really provides.

I ended up quitting the new job and for the next 6 months worked on a business
plan and opened up shop. Today I am back to sitting in a strict 8-5 and spend
all of my free time honing the next venture.

~~~
throw_this_one
So you went from a city city like NYC to a city closer to nature like Seattle?
I find NYC constricting sometimes because you're always around people and
products of people, never just out on a trail going for a run/bike/hike.

I am thinking that whatever it takes to rekindle that sense of agency, that's
the way to go. Everyone had some sense of agency as a kid playing with legos,
games, etc.

------
throwaway_googl
I have three friends at Google who are nice, smart people, but terrible
employees. All three of them seem to be doing just fine in their Google
careers.

One is very smart, but he's been telling me literally for years that he has
zero motivation, to the point where he sometimes won't actually start working
until 6PM. He's moved around within Google trying to find something he's
interested in, but it's just the same thing on a new team. I've suggested a
number of times that he leave and find something that inspires him, but he's
too used to the salary, perks, and lifestyle to try something new.

Another friend is very similar - nice guy, but there was a consensus at his
last startup that he wasn't really accomplishing very much, and he would have
been fired if he hadn't left voluntarily.

Another friend is a nice guy, but the most irresponsible person I know. He's
been fired from other jobs for being unable to show up before 1PM, and he
keeps making some truly irresponsible life choices (ghosting people, drugs,
prostitutes).

I know this is anecdotal, but do other people have this experience with Google
engineers? It seems like Google is the kind of environment where (at least if
you're an SWE) you can get away with doing the minimum for a very long time.

~~~
HashThis
I know companies that won't hire Google employees because of this reputation.

~~~
yaitsyaboi
Is this serious? I replied to another person in the thread with a similar
take. I agree that large tech companies are not the heavenly place that people
depict them to be where everyone is a super genius, but I just don't find what
you're saying to be consistent with my experience.

I joined Amazon as a new grad and spent 3 years there. I went from a 0%
callback rate on cold applications to like 60%. I've been at Google for 2
years, and I am approaching 80% callback. A third of the time, I get to skip
phone screens entirely and go directly onsite.

I don't think that the vibe irl is the same as on HN. I never get the
impression that people are weary of Googlers. Maybe my Amazon experience is
the difference maker? I think if anything, sometimes I get the impression that
the person interviewing me is a bit defensive at the beginning of interviews
as they feel me out.

~~~
MiroF
People are extremely defensive about elite institutions like FAANG or the
Ivies. Those are generally not the people making the hiring decisions, but
they can be.

------
dash2
It's sad and revealing to see the other comments here. Many of them say, don't
seek fulfillment in your job, just keep on cruising. What a change from the
exciting atmosphere of the 2000s. Seems like software engineering has become a
safe, dull career nowadays. Don't listen to them. Your 20s are the time to
learn, push yourself and discover who you are. Autopilot is for middle age.

~~~
wayoutthere
Software engineering just isn't that hard. Tedious yes, but not remotely
difficult. We've been fed the narrative of economic success that many folks
have forgotten what personal success looks like. You can be successful in your
career and still feel like a failure.

Therapy is the answer here. You have to un-brainwash yourself from the notion
that your job is your life and figure out what _really_ matters to you. Then
focus on that, and use your job to fill the boring hours in between.

I agree that you need to push yourself and discover who you are -- but the
answers to those questions aren't going to be found at work. This sort of mid-
life crisis is pretty common for career-focused people in their late 20s -
early 30s and the solution is to find interests and friendships outside of
work.

~~~
rzzzt
How do you figure out what really matters?

~~~
Difwif
This one is long but I recommend trying to finish it. If it resonates at all
you'll probably get sucked in to it before the halfway point. (The whole blog
is fantastic)

[https://waitbutwhy.com/2018/04/picking-
career.html](https://waitbutwhy.com/2018/04/picking-career.html)

------
yongjik
LOL are you me, because that sounds very familiar. I cruised along at Google
for many years, got bored, quit to try my own startup idea, didn't work out,
now working in some SV startup. (Can't say I'm getting better challenges, but
at least I'm tackling them better.)

I think you got enough advice, so I'll just add a few points:

* Challenging oneself to try harder is itself a skill. Don't lie to yourself that you're only using 10% of your capacity - it implies that given the right condition you'll be 10x as productive, but we all know "the right condition" never happens. Truly productive engineers (and I saw a lot of them at Google) bring the right conditions to themselves. At best, you will be something like ~2.5x productive, _if you try your damnest_.

* Google still has tons of different projects. I don't know how easy it is to transfer internally these days, but at least try to find something that sounds interesting to you. A lot easier than changing the company.

* Googlers have complained that "all we do is moving protocol buffers from one place to another," since forever. That's part of the job: truly interesting stuff doesn't happen that often. And yes, I think the problem is more pronounced at Google, because really interesting problems were already solved by much better people, so you end up moving protobufs. But all other places have similar issues, more or less (see point 1 above).

* If you decide to change places, do NOT look for higher hiring bars. (I'm not telling you to avoid them: I'm just saying they're irrelevant.) Google already has a pretty high bar, and tons of incredibly talented engineers. Having extra hoops during the interview did't motivate anyone, and it wouldn't you, either.

~~~
drivebycomment
These are good, practical advice.

I'd say moving to a different company/team every few years is a very useful
way to keep oneself motivated. I personally make it a habit to look for
different opportunities every few years. Even if I decide not to move after
evaluating options, it helps me keep motivated. And when you do move, there's
nothing like the excitement of learning new things and feeling a bit
nervous/anxious in a new field and having/wanting to prove oneself that will
keep you motivated and focused.

As for "moving protocol buffers" \- indeed, all code does, at the smallest
level, is just moving bits and flipping bits. There's no amazingly interesting
things in computer science when broken down. What's interesting is what
happens in between and what the combination of all of those accomplishes
together. What it accomplishes is what matters. We're all just standing on top
of the shoulders of giants that is collective human knowledge, adding tiny
bits of our own contributions on our luckiest days, and just barely holding
onto the shoulders in our normal days. If you're not advancing human
knowledge, keeping some tools used by millions working is useful and
meaningful. Keeping millions of people entertained is useful. Providing tools
for other thousands of engineers is meaningful. The meaning of a job is what
you define it to be.

Even if you decide you won't find meaning in the job itself and decide to take
it purely as a "to-make-a-living", necessary-evil endeavor, what you achieve
through it can be personally meaningful (provide for your family, for your
personal experience, for society, etc).

------
zellyn
I was at Google for five years, and by the end of it, I'd reached a similar
place as you. Alas, my leaving Google was precipitated by us deciding to move,
not a well-thought or self-directed intentional impulse on my part. But it
turned out to be the best thing ever. For some reason or other, I had the
interview day of my life at Square, and got offered a position where they
expected a _lot_ from me. It has been wonderful, and I should have switched
companies sooner.

Leading up to that, part of my path out of the doldrums was (a) therapy, and
(b) going through the list of technical subjects that seemed out -of-reach-
wizardly (writing a compiler, writing an emulator), and chipping away at them
one plush, cushy Google bus ride at a time until they were working. But the
change of scenery — and especially of expectation — was invigorating.

A few miscellaneous comments (“advice is a form of nostalgia”…):

\- the feeling that you're only idling at 10% mental capacity will kill you
slowly.

\- you might want to investigate the idea that you're procrastinating because
of anxiety or depression, rather than the reverse

\- assuming you're giving programming interviews, and using
borg/bigtable/cns/etc/etc/etc day-to-day, you'll be amazed at how much
knowledge you've picked up in 6 years. You probably have a practical fluency
with distributed and sharded capacity design that most interviewees lack.
Depends on where inside Google you landed…

\- just preparing for and attempting the interviews at “companies with a
higher hiring bar than Google” will probably wake you up a bit. Good luck!

~~~
user24
> just preparing for and attempting the interviews at [better companies]

This really rings true, I attempted and utterly failed an interview recently
and was a real kick up the arse to improve myself - I'm no longer the hot shit
I was 10 years ago.

------
sbodevguru
Something that really helped me when I was younger and in a similar boat, was
to grit my teeth and throw myself into the work; by that I mean, force
yourself to be first in, last out every day, take on literally every task - no
matter how shitty - that is available to you, your team, or anyone you know
that needs help. Take some work home with you if you can. And keep doing this
for 4-6 months. By that time you will probably be heading towards burnout, and
you'll need to slow things down for a bit.

But when you do take some slack and reflect, then you will realise that you
just learned a ton of really practical things that can help you in your next
job. You've also learned the discipline of hard work (which in the long term
trumps any deep knowledge of tech because ultimately every job eventually
becomes a grind, and tech is ever-changing anyways). Plus you've probably made
a good reputation for yourself which never hurts.

You will also be able to decide if you found that last few months energising
or if you would rather gnaw off your arm than do it again. And that helps to
answer if you should leave the job or not :)

~~~
mattm
While I don't agree with going overboard and burning yourself out, I do agree
with the premise.

So many people want to find their passion first and then they think they'll
work hard once they find it.

It's actually the other way around.

Give 100% to what you're working on (no more though) and you'll find that you
become passionate about it.

------
Mikeb85
Honestly, start a side project or get a hobby. Take a vacation. Go for long
walks on the beach.

I really doubt any other tech company that pays as well as Google will be any
more interesting. And most people eventually get bored with their jobs. There
is no job that isn't repetitive to some degree.

Also, you seem to be downplaying your experience and what you've learned but I
highly doubt you'd have kept your job if you were truly slacking. Odds are you
just got efficient at doing your job and are getting bored.

Anyhow, there is something to be said for a stable, well-paying job, so go
figure things out in your personal life before you shake up your professional
life.

------
Itaxpica
Switch teams, ideally to something entirely different than what you’re doing
now. Google makes it easy and painless (in most cases) for a reason. I stayed
at my first team at Google for years longer than most people do, and though I
started strong, by the end I found I was feeling similarly to what you
describe. I took that as an impetuous to switch teams and moved to doing
something very different, and now a year later I’ve got my fire back and I’m
learning tons every day. I’m sure at some point I’ll get comfortable and
complacent here again, but now I know to keep an eye out for it and take that
as a signal that it’s time to move forward again.

------
shantly
I am not kidding: you are all set to be CTO or dev lead (mind: only if there’s
actually a team so you don’t have to do much development) at some late-early
stage funded startup, that wants a long-time Google alum on their staff, in
leadership. Without even a change in your work ethic. Not even slightly a
joke.

~~~
jspaetzel
Hahahaha. There's absolutely nothing in the OPs post that suggests they would
be a good CTO or dev lead. That's exactly the counter to the question made by
OP.

------
combatentropy
How can you keep yourself accountable? What motivates me is to focus on the
other, instead of on myself.

If you're doing the minimal amount of work, does that mean that the users are
suffering? If you had put in more effort, would they be able to get more out
of your software with less effort? The drive to make the best experience for
my users motivates me to learn everything I can about design.

What about your fellow programmers? Does anyone else have to deal with the
code you wrote? If so, is your code sloppier or harder to maintain than you
could have made it, had you put in more than 10%? The drive to make code a joy
to work on, for others and myself, motivates me to learn.

What about Google? Are they getting their money's worth out of you? This is a
bit harder to sympathize with, being that now we're talking about a rich
company instead of particular people. But think of it as a test of your
honesty. Did you agree to work a certain number of hours but are really
working a fraction thereof? Don't get me wrong, no one that I know can code
for 40 hours a week, 50 weeks a year, without burning out. But I think your
managers, if they understand programming, expect some reasonable fraction of
your day to spent working hard, doing your best, etc.

------
blueblimp
If you're looking to have kids eventually, your job situation is perfect for
that: good salary and low stress.

If you're having issues with dating and work at Google HQ, the problem may be
that you're in an area over-saturated with your demographic (nerdy
20-something men). Strongly consider seeking a transfer to another office,
any(?) of which will have more favorable area demographics for dating.

------
sfblah
I’m in the same boat as you. I’ve been working at the same tech company for
6.5 years making around 500 (used to be 1.2 but my stock grant ran out). I
only show up one day a week to have lunch with friends and do nothing. My
advice is to keep the money flowing and do something else on the side.

~~~
sweetheart
This blows my mind. I make 120k as a young person in SWE, and I feel like a
fraud often for making that money, and being able to work from basically
anywhere I want in the world. How do you justify it to yourself? Do other
things fulfill you? I’m already feeling pangs of doubt about my life, and I
work more and earn less than you. I’m passing no judgement at all, I’m just
curious about how that dynamic effects you and your life.

~~~
polishdude20
Yeah this is crazy to me too. I don't work in software, I teach engineering at
a local tech institute and I make like 55k Canadian. I'm fairly autonomous in
that as long as I fulfill my class hours and workload I'm free to work from
home and all that. I have a great work life balance and I love it but the pay
is abysmally if I want to start a family in the future and save for
retirement.

I've started getting into software development in my free time and planning
for a career change but I feel as if I'd be trading my free time for more
money. And if there's a kid on the way, what's more valuable to get from your
dad? A dad that makes lots of money but isn't around much or a fad that is
around a bunch but can't support you as well? Maybe real life isn't so cut and
dry and I can find a happy medium between the two in software. Any advice?

~~~
mpmpmpmp
30 year old dad of a 2 year old. I did software dev fulltime for 3 years then
a consultant for the last 5. Having the flexibility to be at my kid's doctor
appointments and go to the park on a weekday is cool. But I pay for it with
either not getting things done or staying up way too late and killing myself.
I'm just now starting a more traditional 9-5 schedule (still as a consultant)
and I'm hoping that will translate into less stress with being able to work
and be a parent and take care of myself. There's hopefully always a happy
medium for anybody but it depends on what your priorities are. I definitely
noticed a change in my childs behavior when I stopped spending every night in
the basement working and learning. Even if it was only for 30 minutes at a
time. But obviously my ability to be "in the zone" for hours after billing
time was over changed too. But it matters to me, so that's why I do it.

~~~
polishdude20
I don't mind having a 9-5 as long as it means I definitely finish at 5 and
don't have to take my work home with me. I guess it depends on the company and
what their work life balance is.

------
struct
> it's almost like I've been using only 10% of my mental capacity for work
> (the rest was on dating/dealing with breakups/dealing with
> depression/gaming/...)

I think that could give an indication of what might be wrong here, I can
relate (somewhat!). I work for a top-flight tech firm, straight out of school,
for about 5 years or so, and for a long time I felt just like that: I focused
for a very long time on achieving the next goal - passing an exam, getting
into University, getting that job, and not really focusing on what that was
all for, not really focusing on my personal life etc. Once I got my job I was
like “what is all of this for?”

So I changed tack, I rotated positions at my job, I tried to “live with
purpose”, do something with a super-high impact, and not put myself under such
relentless pressure to succeed. It may not feel like you have a super-high
impact, but I’d say you do - the services you run help to improve literally
millions of people’s lives. Try to think about it like that, instead of “I’m
not living up to my potential”, think about the enormous impact you already
have. If you just don’t find the work interesting, talk to your manager about
the possibility of a secondment to another team.

I’d also advise that relationships are hard, and it is OK to feel miserable
when they end. But one thing I only realised recently is that if your misery
extends by more than a two months, it could be indicative that you need to see
a doctor. Depression is a terrible condition that’s still (IMO unfairly)
stigmatised and it’s often hard to disentangle from the rest of what goes on,
but it is not a weakness to admit that we all need some help sometimes. If you
need an impartial but sympathetic ear, you can find my email in my profile.
Good luck! :D

~~~
chrisco255
Heartbreak often lasts longer than 2 months. It's not necessarily a medical
condition though. Counseling can help, but also more time helps too.

------
CodeWriter23
A) I saw “boss as a service” on HN some months ago. This might teach you
diligence and accountability by rote. B) Jumping ship won’t change this
problem. This IS actually about you, and guess what, until you address it, it
will go with you everywhere you go.

Or you can become a skillful slacker as some here have mentioned. That
personally wouldn’t work for me; maybe it will for you.

------
alpb
I have been at this situation at Microsoft for four years straight out of
college. I would achieve notable things without putting too much into the
work. Then I figured out what kind of a role and technology area I wanted to
work on, changed ship and jumped to Google —now still happy after three years.

Since you are new grad employee, I assume your comp wasn’t competitive as it
could be. 6 years at L4 also probably indicates you are at/below median comp
for that level/location. You might be due for a change if you want more money.

In my opinion, Google is still an amazing place to practice all sorts of
different technologies. Internal education programs and mobility between teams
would let you work anywhere in the company that’s interesting to you. I
suspect unless you find that passion, this might repeat anyhwere you go.

------
christiansakai
......I don't know what to say. I know a few people are like this too. On the
other hand, I think I do a lot of things for my employer and constantly
learn/challenge myself, but don't make anywhere near FAANG SWE. I am trying
hard to pass onsite FAANG interviews, and still failing. So I'm still
Leetcoding now.

But hearing stories like this just kinda demotivates me and confuses me more.
Most non FAANG companies have no interest in keeping people who wants to stay
purely technical like me, so in the end I'll have to end up at FAANG/unicorns
to get better compensation. But on the other hand, joining FAANG seems soul
crushing.

~~~
blihp
Don't confuse the mystique for reality. Google is just a large company now.
The mystique helps them recruit talent. The interviews are mostly a filtering
process since they have far more people applying than they actually need.
Being a large company, they have more than their fair share of bozos who are
now the gatekeepers of that process. The only thing that Google management
really cares about at this point is maximizing profit. It's just a business
and that's reflected in everything they do and don't do these days.

There's nothing wrong with any of that. If you want to make more money and/or
get Google on the resume to open up some new doors, keep trying and you'll
probably eventually find a way in. Just don't think it's going to be some sort
of techie nirvana... it's going to be a lumbering bureaucratic beast ruled by
politics as virtually all large companies are.

If you're looking for technical challenge and growth, you probably want to be
looking at smaller tech companies who are where Google was 10+ years ago.

~~~
christiansakai
Thank you for the reply. I'll consider this.

------
tytso
There may be good reasons to try going to another company rather than Google.
If you've only been promoted once in six years, especially straight out of
college --- that's not a normal career trajectory, and so it's probably
obvious to your manager and your colleagues that you have been slacking.

On the other hand, going to another company may or may not help that much
either, and for two reasons. First, depending on where you are inside Google,
the technologies which you have picked up may not be all that useful outside
of Google. More importantly, and you've pointed that out for yourself, if you
don'y have habit --- and the curiosity --- to deeply learn new the
technologies you are working with, you're probably going to struggle wherever
you are.

Spending a month for each new technology that you think you need to learn is
not going to be enough to deeply become an expert in any of them. Also, it
sounds like you have some not-so-great work habits, such as not doing the best
possible job you can with any assignment you have been given. Shaking those is
also going to be helpful for you, no matter where you are.

So... here's what I would suggest for you. First, spend as much time working
on yourself as you so working on "new technologies". Try reading books such as
Steven Covey's The Seven Habits of Highly Effective people. I found listening
to books such as Brian Tracey's Success Audio Tapes to be helpful in my early
career. If you are more spiritually minded, some of Og Mandino's books are old
classics.

Secondly, try to bump your performance review ranking at least one level each
cycle, until you are getting strongly exceeds expectations. Not because you
necessarily want to stay at Google, but because of the self-confidence that
this will hopefully help you gain. And tell your manager that (a) you feel
that you've been slacking, and (b) that you want to do better. If your manager
is any good, they will want to work with you. Try to get promoted at least
once more at Google. Why? Because if you are going to try to strike out at
some other company, people who understood Google's performance levels will not
necessarily be impressed if you have been at Google for six years, and are
still a SWE III.

Finally, once you have a string of good ratings so it will be easier for you
to try moving to another teams, you might want to consider working at some
team which has contact with outside customers, especially in the Cloud PA.
This will give you a lot of contact with external technologies, since
customers will use a variety of different software components.

Please do keep in mind, first and foremost, that it's all about how you can
add the most business value, no matter what company you happen to be working
at, and no matter which customers you are trying to help. It's that work
attitude which is going to be the most important, which is why I started this
by suggesting that you work on your soft skills as much as your technology
skills. In addition to listening to various success tapes while I was
commuting to work, I also made sure I knew how to read a balance sheet and
monthly income/expense reports. I also took supplementary classes in
management (which my employer paid for) for subjects such as "Law for the I/T
Manager" at the MIT Sloan School. This is all going to be super useful,
especially if you think you want to leave Google; at large companies, you can
get by just being a technology specialist, but if you are working for
yourself, or at a small company, being a well-rounded employee who can
understand various business and legal issues will stand you in good stead.

The bottom line is you need to wake your curiosity to learn as much as you can
in a wide variety of subjects; not because you want to get a good/interesting
job elsewhere, but for its own sake. And you need to develop good work habits
and have the internal drive to do the best that you can no matter where you
are. Jumping ship to some other company isn't going to change who you are; and
you may find that it is much more about _you_ than your environment.

If you want to discuss this more, look me at at Google and I'm happy to chat
some more. My ldap is the obvious one at google.com.

------
wwarner
I thought about this over the weekend, and I have two comments. First, to
commenters, this kind of dead end happens at _all_ large companies, so it's
unfair to criticize this individual or Google without taking into account that
the same thing happens at Apple, Microsoft, Walmart, IBM, Siemens and any
other big organization that will survive its founders. While the large
corporation participates in a market economy to make revenue, internally it is
a command economy, and to my mind resembles an assemblage of regiments,
directed by commanders who have different marching orders, rationally designed
by the executive to head off competition for both the core business and the
future business. The number of people required to make the core business work
is absurdly small. The odds against the success of any of the speculative
projects are absurdly high. So most people working at a big company are
working as bench players in the core business, or on fanciful, doomed
projects. This has to be the case -- we're in the business of automation after
all.

Second, it's immoral for an individual contributor to resign themselves to
this fate. The lost opportunity is terrible for both the individual and
society. Be where the action is!

------
uncle_j
Make sure you save up the money, pay off _all_ your debts. Start doing stuff
at work "properly". Then once you got yourself back upto "match fitness",
start looking around.

------
dudus
I was in a similar situation, but even though I have an engineering background
I was in GTech.

I thought I was doing meaningful work at first. But after 7 years of the
grinding it took its toll, I burned out and I left in September.

I'm not sure our situation is comparable, but I'll share some of my
experience.

I was very well paid and that kept me on the job longer than it was healthy
for me. Still I can't tell you if I made the right decision or not. My job was
not stressful at all and not demanding, but I had some periods that I slacked
too much and that took a toll on my perf. A bad perf made internal movements
harder.

I wish I could have stayed longer for the money, I wish I had better scores
that internal movement was possible. In the end I just got up one day and
quit, and I don't regret.

I'm taking my time now to rest, travel and work on some side projects before
restarting my career. I lived a pretty scrappy life in the bay that I can now
not worry too much about money for some time.

I don't share the Google hate so common in this forum, I think it's a
wonderful company to work for. A lot of opportunities, great people and comp.
I blame only myself for my mental health deteriorating and affecting the
quality and balance of my work. I'll work on getting that in order before
finding a new job, and if I get back to Google I'll feel lucky.

This was more a rambling than anything. But to summarize my advice would be to
prioritize your mental health, that's a lot more important than you realize.
If you feel like the grinding is affecting you seek help or quit and find
something else more fulfilling. If you feel you are ok maybe try an internal
transfer and stay longer, add a side project if you need a challenge. If you
do decide to quit give yourself a quarter to rest at least.

And lastly you're probably better than you think you are, impostor syndrome is
real and affects everyone.

------
brenden2
Honestly, if I were you I'd just keep chugging along and collect as much money
as possible. Start investing, and make yourself financially independent. After
that, you can quit and do whatever you want.

------
usefulcat
Clearly you're not very interested in the work you're now doing at google. So
the question is, is it this particular job that you're not interested in, or
is it that you're just not that interested in programming? Probably the best
way to find out is to try a different job.

P.S. -- there would be no need to 'keep yourself accountable' if you were
genuinely interested in what you were doing.

~~~
giancarlostoro
> P.S. -- there would be no need to 'keep yourself accountable' if you were
> genuinely interested in what you were doing.

Unless the dullness burns you out / demotivates you.

~~~
usefulcat
'Burnout' tends to imply overwork, but that doesn't sound like the case here;
OP states they are doing the minimum amount of work to get by.

IME, boredom at a particular job coupled with a genuine interest in
programming in general tends to result in finding a more interesting job or
more time spent on side/personal projects. But that's not what I'm getting
from OP's description.

Sometimes people are very reluctant to ask fundamental questions of
themselves, like 'is this really what I want to be doing with my life?',
especially when they have a lot invested in the status quo. So to me this
sounds like the kind of problem where the first step is sufficient
understanding of oneself.

~~~
giancarlostoro
True, although btw you can be burned out outside of work as well.

------
lsc
>all I do is copy code from the internal codebase and patch things together
until they work.

this is... a big and important thing (and difficult... a lot of people re-
implement rather than trying to understand what is there.) when dealing with a
giant big corporate codebase. This might be, the primary SWE job at big
corporate? I mean, there's a _lot_ there, and to understand what is there well
enough to actually do something with it is not nothing.

All that said, 6 years is a long time to spend at your first job. There's
nothing wrong with seeing what else is out there. Don't quit until you have
the next job in the bag, and keep in mind, when you quit, that you might want
to come back.

------
UweSchmidt
Interesting jobs are, kind of by definition, hard at the beginning: Many
interesting and clever things are already in place that you have to learn in a
short period of time: not just the big technologies, but a lot of smaller
things like tools, environments and a lot of culture.

Inevitably you run out of cool things to learn, and very few jobs can keep
challenging you mentally all the time. Almost by definition a job must get
more boring over time.

You can do some learning and growing on your own, but that only goes so far:
You can write a script and look up stuff and apply it at your job, but can't
quite break out a sample project in the new framework.

Almost by definition, the person who can handle coming in at that kind of job
and grok it all, can't be the one who does the job for years on end. Enjoy the
ebb and flow of the job lifecycle - after a hectic start, settle in and enjoy
it for a while.

But then: leave! If the company is smart, they'll put you on a new challenge
if you ask. Most likely you'll have to quit and apply somewhere else. Then you
will be on 100% of your mental capacity again in no time :)

------
analog31
I'm not employed as a programmer _per se_ , but I work with a lot of
programmers and other kinds of engineers. I wonder if you're talking yourself
out of the value of your work. A great deal of engineering is not creating
fundamentally new components, but organizing and arranging things, fitting
them together, and so forth. Is this a bad thing?

As businesses and their products get more complex, "systems" behavior becomes
a larger part of making things work, until you might only need a few people
working on components, and everybody else on fitting those components together
in different ways. There's hardly any loss of honor in doing the 90% of the
work that needs to be done and makes the business successful.

I think you can do two things. First, look into new technologies that you'd
like to dive into. Second, start to rehearse your elevator speech about how
great your present work is, until you begin to believe it yourself, because it
might be true. Doing great work and looking for better work are not mutually
exclusive.

------
m0zg
If I were in your spot, with the benefit of the hindsight, I'd continue riding
the gravy train until asked to leave. Don't fuck up too badly, do your job,
just don't worry about it too much. Get off the promo treadmill. Spend bare
minimum of effort on work. Put the rest of the efforts into your hobbies and
relationships.

There's really no rational reason for you to worry about obscure corporate
bullshit which will be gone and forgotten in 3 years. It pays the bills, but
beyond that it's not your "life", so don't treat it as such. That's one of the
benefits of being an _employee_ rather than, say, an _owner_: you get to leave
work at work.

What you _think_ Google wants from you and what it actually wants might be two
different things. For as long as they choose to employ you (and moreover,
promote you), you can be sure they're getting a good deal as far as their
requirements are concerned.

------
fcd1ce2c
I'm currently an engineering manager at Google (in the US, though not in the
Bay Area), and I'm sympathetic to everything you've written here; I've done my
time in Larry and Sergei's Protobuf Moving Company. Being in my 40's (fairly
old for tech!), if I were in your position, I'd try to find my Sustaining
Passion outside of my day-to-day work. That might mean picking a 20% project
that excites you, or it might mean finding something meaningful outside of the
company that doesn't require a new job. It might also mean finding a new team
within Google, or even a new role (e.g., move to SRE, TSE, DPE, etc). With one
promotion in 6 years, I'm assuming you're hitting CME/EE every cycle -- which
is good -- so I'd position that as a good thing: for many roles, consistency
and stability are a feature.

------
cmsonger
It's hard to know how to answer without knowing more. I slack off when I don't
love the work. Whereas when I am building something that I think is really
cool, you can't keep me away from the keyboard. When I'm a cog in the machine,
I struggle to do more than the 10% you are doing.

First question I'd ask myself would be: "Why do I think this would be better
elsewhere?" Is the issue Google, or is the issue you/the profession?

Depending on the answer it seems like there are a few reasonable landing
zones: 1) find a new job at google that addresses the perceived issues at
google. 2) jump to a new job at a new company that addresses the perceived
issues at google. 3) approach your current job with a new attitude to work
harder and do more. maybe set your sights on next promo. 4) embrace your
slacking, saving money to prepare for a career change.

------
makach
It's difficult when going to work and doing work doesn't feel like work. When
copying files and patching stuff together is what they expect you to do but
that only requires a little bit of mental capacity, welcome to corporate
reality.

What you choose to do is completely up to you, but know that a lot of people
would give up their right arm and a leg for this kind of job and the job
security that entails.

That said, as long as what you are doing is keeping you relevant in the job
market and you are building competency you should be fine.

Don't worry. Go to job interviews when you can, this is to ensure that your
knowledge and persona are still relevant. If they give you an offer you are in
a good situation to use that information to either improve your current
position or change job. Don't forget you work to live, don't live for work.

~~~
bilekas
i would second this and also add, that when you're interviewing for other
companies, be upfront and tell them that you're just not challenged. That
you've been pidgeon-holed.

It will give the employer to guage if you will be a good fit for the project
and that you are more interested in learning that just pushing buttons.

------
holografix
You sound depressed, I think it takes one to know one. Working at Google in
the US is a dream 99% of the world can only dream of make sure you value it.

Also as others have said, don’t expect that your job will fulfil you
completely, unless you’re curing cancer it’s just a job, talk to your manager
about a different role or a bigger challenge but don’t give up a job at Google
because you’re bored.

And get some counselling, it’ll be the best thing you did in 3-6 months.

~~~
thrills
What people dream about doesn't really mean anything. They don't actually live
and work at google, as a software engineer. They just see some kind of
marketing version of "a day in the life of a software engineer at google". It
has nothing to do with reality.

Every programmer I met is depressed, hates computers, and spends all of their
day just pretending to work because they burned out in the first month of
programming. Programming isn't a real job for actual humans. We can't do it.
The market just demands it.

~~~
colonCapitalDee
Claiming that humans intrinsically hate programming is a real hot take. Have
anything to back that up besides sketchy anecdotal evidence?

------
irjustin
The question you asked, "how can i stop this?" is commonly not possible to
tackle directly. If you didn't care about the company before, there likely
isn't much for you now.

I think you've got the right mentality - that staying where you are isn't the
best long term move at your current stage of life.

Ask yourself what is it that you want to try? ML, FE, BE, Full stack? and
simply build a project out of it. Dabble and dabble. It'll likely be hard at
first since there's a mental rut, but at some point, something will pique your
interest.

From there it's just diving deeper and deeper until you're ready to jump ship.
You may even find it at the current company through a transfer.

I don't recommend jumping ship until you're sure. You've got a fantastic
backstop.

------
2sk21
Google of today sounds a lot like the IBM of the early 90s. There were many
clock watchers who came in, read the newspapers and left for the day - with a
long lunch break in-between. A big chunk of these people were kicked out by
the crisis that hit IBM in 1994.

------
booleandilemma
What about joining a startup so you’re forced to do some real work?

I’ve done the startup scene before, and I can tell you, you will be doing 3
different jobs and using 100% of that mental capacity. You will be making
changes that wouldn’t be possible without director-level oversight at larger
companies. You will feel like you’re making a difference.

------
frobozz
Your current behaviour should mark you for fast track promotion.

[https://www.ribbonfarm.com/2009/10/07/the-gervais-
principle-...](https://www.ribbonfarm.com/2009/10/07/the-gervais-principle-or-
the-office-according-to-the-office/)

~~~
not_qe
Forming and subscribing to a world view based on a TV series script does not
strike me as a good idea.

~~~
leetcrew
probably not, but I recommend checking out the whole article series. it's a
fun read, if nothing else.

------
razodactyl
You’ve lost your edge. This is actually pretty common amongst technical
fields. You lack the inspiration required to achieve more either from life or
work factors. Look after yourself as a priority and ground yourself. Your job
is clearly stable enough to help you correct your foundations.

------
mondoshawan
HN isn't the best place to ask for this since we can't really give actionable
feedback. Look me up internally (jtgans) -- I've been at Google off and on for
about 8 years cumulatively now. Happy to talk over VC if you'd like.

------
viburnum
Have you been on the same team the whole time? I’ve found that how I feel
about my work and my productivity has a lot to do with what kind of team I’m
on. I don’t like being the superstar (too much pressure) and I hate being
around a real superstar (all my code gets rewritten by the superstar so why
bother writing it in the first place). When I’m with people at roughly my own
level I have a ton of energy and actually enjoy my work.

------
ping_pong
I would love to know what Brin, Page or Pinchai would think about this entire
thread? I have a friend who joined Google a couple of years ago, and he said
that working at Google has killed his love of coding. He comes into work, does
minimal work, and then goes and works out. So this sounds like a common theme.
I'm curious how the founders and CEO would feel if they saw this or if they
think this is just an aberration?

------
sixtypoundhound
Whoa there... you've got a blessing in disguise... use it wisely before you
scamper off.

I've had two of these in my career - extended stays in a role which is
"naturally prestigious" but had minimal actual challenge or operational
responsibilities. They're fantastic...

The first one (at about your age) I used to court my wife and read / think
EXTENSIVELY about business and life. It let me get my shit straight before the
next leg up.

Rolled off that into a super-intense turnaround role and fatherhood (also
super-intense) which took about 5 years. At the end of that, wound up as an
"executive caretaker" managing group with instructions not to disrupt anything
while they sold the company. So 3 - 4 years of sideways action with no
meaningful opportunities for promotion.

Which turned out to be a MASSIVE gift. My bosses basically didn't care what I
did with my time, so I learned how to code (full stack + database management)
on company time and leveraged that into a successful side business. They
funded me through the low-return slog of learning a new industry and starting
a new business....

THANK GOD they didn't make me a fucking VP....

------
jdavis703
It sounds like you need someone who you feel accountable to. You mentioned
depression. I’m not sure if you mean clinical depression, or post-breakup
blues. But either ways consider talking to a therapist [0]. If it turns out
your mental health is fine, consider a career or life coach to help you meet
your goals.

0: I can personally recommend TalkSpace. Fixing my anxiety and ADHD has made
my work life nearly immeasurably better.

------
jboggan
If you can not only survive at Google but slack along well enough to get
promoted once on "10% of your mental capacity" I'd stay right where you are.
You aren't going to find a better place to earn money for equivalent effort
and it sounds like you've already adapted to the ecosystem. Sounds like you
need an interesting side project or just a meaningful hobby.

Don't go looking for the missing sense of fulfillment you have at work, either
for Google or any other company. Crack some classic literature and take some
long walks, figure out what you haven't been doing.

~~~
rkagerer
Strong disagree! I can't believe all the advice here telling you to stay in a
situation where you don't feel challenged. Clearly you wouldn't have written
the post if you were content with the status quo.

Find a role you thrive in, doing work that musters your enthusiasm. Whether
it's at Google or elsewhere. Yes, it means giving up the cushy freeride, but
there's no substitute for the deep sense of pride and satisfaction from
solving a tough problem and building something you're passionate about.

~~~
Consultant32452
I suppose this depends on whether you prefer to live to work or work to live.
When I was younger I lived to work. Now I work to live. I've taken up
backpacking, woodworking, and put a greater emphasis on my family life. If
anyone is on the fence here, I definitely recommend working to live. If you
can avoid misery at work, you're a lucky person, so do that if you can. But at
the end of your life the odds you'll be most proud of selling a few more units
of some software is very small.

~~~
ThrowawayR2
This person is in the early stage of their career. Building the skills,
network, and reputation necessary to carry them through the rest of their
career while they are young and energetic _is_ working to live, particularly
at a FAANG. Nobody wants to become a 50 year old with the skills and
experience of a 30-year old.

~~~
Consultant32452
If someone with the skills of a 30-year old can eek out a good comfortable
living without much effort, what's wrong with wanting that? Most 50-somethings
I know are doing basically what they were doing at 30.

------
tmpz22
Does anyone else feel like a 3rd or 4th class citizen reading posts like
these? How is someone supposed to "compete" financially or socially when there
is a magic gate with so much privilege on the other side?

~~~
ryanmercer
Yes. I should preface this by saying I'm not a CS type but Igross about 34k a
year, I've been at my job 13 and a half years, I'm in the same position I
hired into because in my OpCo it's only 5 rungs until I'm at the corporate
level.

I do not get a bonus, the 401k contribution is fairly meh, our pensions will
no longer be contributed to later this year. The company stock purchase is
merely we pay whatever the price is but don't pay a _buy_ commission, however,
we pay a sell commission and a fee on top of that for direct deposit and an
even higher fee for a paper check if we sell.

The only realistic way to move up in my OpCo is to get at _least_ a 4-year
degree, Masters preferred though, and be willig to physically move across the
country chasing jobs. My manager worked here in Indiana when I started, to
become a manager she had to take a job in the bay area and move there for
several years before a manager position eventually opened here and she had to
compete for it. Similarly around the same times a guy had to come here from NY
to become manager and wait for a position to open in NY to move back. In
another OpCo a friend of mine is equivalent to my boss's boss now after
starting a month before me, getting her bachelors, getting her masters, and
moving to 3 different states over that period for a total of 5 moves.

When I see people on HN "yeah, I make a bazillion dollars, plus bonus, we've
got free rides to work, free gym, free food, free this and that, great stock
options and 401k match, but man I'm bored" I get quite irritated. I hate my
job, I work every holiday, we hot bunk desks with another shift, regulations
are constantly changing, internal policies are constantly changing, Office
Space looks like heaven compared to my office, I actually make _less_ some
years after you consider insurance increases... but I don't have a degree and
I've been here for 13.5 years so if I go to a company doing a comparable thing
I have to take a few dollar an hour pay cut and lose nearly a month of annual
vacation to start as a new hire. That's if the competitors will take me, I've
had a few reject me for not having a degree, one of which has only been in
business about half as long as I've been doing the job...

 _sigh_

But hey it's ok, I only have to work here _until I die_ since I'll never be
able to adequately fund retirement accounts to retire!

------
freedomben
I've fallen into slumps, and it can be hard to get out of them. However, what
worked for me was putting my sights on something new, sometimes related
sometimes not. I found I'm better at devops stuff, and it's more interesting
to me than building CRUD services.

You might try deep diving into Linux. Buying a book and studying for the RHCSA
is a great way to get started with an achievable and valuable goal
(disclaimer: I work for Red Hat and have the RHCSA). It is mostly applicable
to all Linux, maybe 5 to 10% is RH specific.

I also bought some Great Courses on philosophy and that has been stimulating.
I can highly recommend the courses from David Kyle Johnson.

You may also try starting a new project. That is the best way I've found to
really learn BE/FE. Elixir is an incredibly fun language, and it's gaining
traction. Get the Dave Thomas book first, then the Chris McCord Phoenix book.
Being at Google there's probably lots of great people to ask for advice too.

Just my thoughts. I'm no expert at this, just sharing what worked for me.

------
peterwwillis
Real talk: if you haven't kept yourself accountable for 6 years, you probably
won't now.

I say quit your job, but don't have a plan; figure things out afterward.
Catapulting yourself out of your comfort zone is the best way to get to know
what you really want to do, and force yourself to care about what it is you
want to do. Nobody here can tell you what that is.

------
angarg12
Humblebrag much?

I spent the first 7 years of my career in the public sector. Talk about a
career killer.

If you are concerned about getting a job elsewhere, just study and do online
coding exercises like crazy. That should land you a job at most companies with
whiteboard interview at your seniority level.

If you are concerned about actual learning, most of my professional growth has
been on the job.

I spent a long while doing 'proactive learning' where I would study new techs
and frameworks. It turns out that all of them, either I never had to use, or
when I had to, I needed a refresher, since I forgot most about it. Lately I
have been doing more 'reactive learning', where I learn new things as I need
them, or studying general topics that can be broadly applied.

Long story short, look for positions that will stretch your abilities, you'll
be fine.

~~~
StandardFuture
> just study and do online coding exercises like crazy

Is this _really_ the new go-to for the software industry?

Which "online exercises" and "study" tools do you recommend the most?

I would love to visualize what this new canonical basis looks like. Since it
will apparently define the software of the 2020s.

~~~
shantly
The FAANG and similar interviews are designed—one hopes, anyway, because if
they're trying to do something else they've screwed up—to select for some
combination of decent-or-better IQ and having put in enough work to prep for
their tests using, yes, online exercises and some books, with the set of
things one needs to study being fairly large but also very well-known. There
are lists all over the place, including one sort-of famous guide someone put
on Github, outlining what you need to study, and where to study it.

Basically they want you to be at least semi-smart in a raw general
intelligence sense, and to really want the job and have put in the work to get
it. Whatever their reasons for this, it will almost certainly have the effect
of making a successful candidate value the offer more and think more highly of
their co-workers, for the same reason that e.g. initiation (hazing) rituals or
costs tend to improve group cohesion. Perhaps this is why they do it.

------
enitihas
We are highly lucky to be in a time where it is very easy to switch among high
paying jobs across various companies. If you are able to get by with 10% of
your mental capacity, I am sure you would be able to land up a lot of jobs. I
would recommend you apply to many places, and take it from there, depending on
the interviewing experience.

I don't think you really need to learn anything special for job interviews.
There is no necessity to understand special technologies, as most good
companies are fine as long as you have any experience with similar things.

I would also recommend you read books on programmers. I recently read "Masters
of Doom", and it might open your eyes into goal driven programmers and their
impact on the world.

Also, out of curiosity, which companies do you think have a higher hiring bar
than Google?

------
nikhilbagde
Grass is always greener on the other side. I work in Deloitte as a Java
developer and I feel the same that I'm not using my knowledge what we learnt
in Masters. But you work at Google. Guys like me are still trying to get out
of this rut and try to get offer at companies like Google. But People like me
are so into this routine life that it's hard to again go back and brush up
skills. I just got married and I'm planning to change company. And I'm scared
but optimistic that I can catch up. It's very confusion from where to start.
There is so much to learn nowdays. JavaScript, node, angular, react, aws,
Dockers. Then again problem singing skills for that again algorithms. There is
so much to learn.

Then what about AI machine learning.

Life looks so difficult now.

~~~
pokepim
Thats funny. I work at EY (consulting team) and we use all those things you
mentioned, be it JS, React, AWS (mostly Azure though), dockers, k8s. We do
also some ML and DL. I think you can find it at Deloitte too, but maybe
depends on the city.

------
_pmf_
> it's almost like I've been using only 10% of my mental capacity for work

I believe this kind of "we need the brightest engineers to spit out HTML via
JS" is the major reason for the ridiculous amount of yak shaving around web
development.

------
mukel
Google is going downhill, the day I finished my internship I sweared I'll
never in my life work on any money-making, no-challenge project. A bunch of
engineers do enjoy what they do, they work on the cool projects, that's enough
to keep it going; the rest is just cattle, work for the cash, enjoy the free
food and the reputation of working at Google; I'm still sick of being
bombarded with the "changing the world" nonsense. Change projects/company,
find a mentor and/or a mentee, build new stuff; find your purpose, unleash
your intellect. Don't fall for the "changing the world" lie.

~~~
walshemj
Fair enough but those sort of interesting jobs are A rare and B badly paid.

------
elil17
In my experience, most medium to large size companies are primarily comprised
of people doing what your doing. Most places you could lateral to would get
what they expected. I think it’s totally fine to do that and let the rest of
your life be the more important thing.

Now, if pushing your career forward is what you really want, people in a new
company will start to notice once your putting in the effort and communicating
what you accomplish. There’s no trick to it, just putting in the effort on the
tasks you take on and being thoughtful about how to accomplish them in a way
that is focused on the company’s goals.

------
surfsvammel
This also sounds like a bit of imposter syndrome. I’m sure it will be fine and
that you’ve actually picked up more than you realise. You should definitely
leave and try something new. It seems obvious that you are not happy with the
current situation, just sitting off time at work.

Don’t start prepping to much, just do it. Jumping in is the best way to get
moving.

In these situation, I always tell myself (or if it is the board of directors /
leader group at my company that is being a bit too risk averse): ”Ingen minns
en fegis” (Swedish, more or less “No one remembers a coward”)

------
PopeDotNinja
Have you considered simply finding things to work on that you'd actually find
interesting? They don't have to be projects that are officially sanctioned.
I'm doing mostly backend coding on a legacy app, but certain parts of the app
and our infrastructure make that harder. So when I identify something I don't
like, I've started chipping away at making it better: logging, deployment,
testing, builds, etc. Surely something at Google is suboptimal. You can seek
it out and make it better.

------
drenvuk
OP if you wouldn't mind going into it, what are these companies with a higher
hiring bar than google?

------
randshift
I'm in engineering management at Google. In my org, we're actively trying to
improve how we give performance reviews, motivate people, measure the projects
people work on, and relevant to this topic, manage out low performers.

The days when people can coast forever at Google are coming to an end. I had
to let one person go because they basically never did more than the bare
minimum (and got 3 Needs Improvement ratings in a row), and I know many more
(some under me, some not) who are approaching a PIP.

------
koonsolo
I personally hate working for big companies. Your are just a little cog in a
very dysfunctional machine. The 10% without anyone noticing sounds about
right. Makes you wonder how much effort your colleagues are putting in...

Go work for a small company, at about 6 to 20 people. Your work can actually
make a difference there. 10% or 100% at a big company won't really be noticed
as x10. At a small company, it makes a huge difference, at about x10. And for
me personally, much more gratifying.

------
davefbb
I started out somewhat similarly - but in my case I just wasn't very _good_
right out of school so I started focusing more on my social life. What changed
it for me was having a job where my boss fucked up and was fired, and me being
given his role. I learned that having people count on me was the best
motivator for me. (And having people not really care that much one way or the
other about what I'm doing is, to this day, an excellent DEmotivator for me.)
I eventually went on to work for a startup that grew _really_ quickly (yes,
THAT one) and was given an enormous amount of responsibility - something that,
by that time, I would never have dreamed of shirking.

I'm not sure how this might apply to your situation, but hope it will give you
some helpful perspective. You can take the exact same slothful person and put
them in different circumstances and end up with a stellar worker - the game-
changer for me for me was to be accountable, in a big, meaningful way, to
someone besides just myself. If this resonates, maybe you could volunteer your
tech skills to a small nonprofit or something, and see if you feel more
engaged with that work.

BTW, I think it's possible to have a great home life and a great career, but
THAT takes REAL work.

------
mrpoptart
Motivation comes from three things, provided you're in a creative role and
money's not an issue: Autonomy, Mastery, and Purpose. You need to be able to
decide how to get the job done, you need to be able to get better and better
at your job, and you need to understand why your job matters in the scope of
something larger than yourself. Figure out which is missing, decide if you can
find it, and if not, go somewhere that can give it to you.

------
rafaelvasco
It appears you don't really want to work at Google anymore. If you are
thinking of jumping ship then do it. We must always be 100% engaged and
mentally connected to what the company is doing. If the fire burned out, then
it's time to leave, no matter if you're at Google or not. I stayed at a
company for years after my fire burned out. Never again. We must always seek
what makes us fulfilled. Always.

------
oppositelock
Quit.

I worked at Google for eight years, and fell into a funk, because I picked up
new challenges and moved teams, and learned a whole lot, but I also worked on
backend infra projects, not shippable features, and you know how well that
goes over with the perf review and promo committee.

So, I left for a startup. It was trial by fire, because Google does thing the
Google way, and everyone else uses other technologies. Gone were borg, stubby,
tap, and in came Kubernetes, REST, Jenkins. It took a long time to learn how
the rest of the world works, and Google wasn't my first job, I started there
after already working for fifteen years, but in eight years, the world changes
a lot.

Now, I'm the main tech lead for a large startup on the verge of success. It's
been a crap ton of work, grueling, I've probably made 30% of the income I
would have if I stayed at Google in the years that I've been gone, but I've
also worked with the best people I've ever encountered - better than at
Google, and I feel professionally successful, albeit not financially.

~~~
ubertoop
You have 20+ years of experience, so what is your title now? You mention
you're main tech lead so... VP of engineering? CTO?

------
throw_me_2020
Knowing more or specific technologies isn't what makes someone a good
engineer.

Practice identifying problems, taking full ownership of them and fully
thinking through and delivering solutions.

This is way easier if you find a problem that you're interested in.

If you're not able to sink your teeth into any good problems, at least pay
attention to people around you who do this well so you can copy them in the
future.

------
mrnobody_67
Get an internal transfer at Google.

Or find ways to challenge yourself outside of work = learn to fly a
helicopter, set a goal to run a marathon or ironman, learn ballroom dancing,
learn how to sword fight/fence, whatever... push yourself outside of the
comfort zone, sign up for 5 "intro to" classes to avoid procrastination and
see what clicks.

------
LockAndLol
Either:

\- invest yourself in a project to learn as much as you can \- start or join a
project at home that you believe in. It doesn't have to be code; community
outreach, gardening, repairing a car, taking some moocs, making wine or soap
or beer or whatever

But most importantly, save up the money you're making there (it should be
pretty good) and then take time off for yourself to decide what you want to
do. When you're financially secure, your options are open.

By "financially secure" I do mean having money in your savings to sustain
yourself for at least a few months or years. Speaking from personal
experience, it's a load off of your shoulders when you can sit down and really
decide on what you want to do without financial pressure. You can ask to work
on 4 days a week, join a movement, travel the world, work on opensource or
that contraption in the garage, learn something new, whatever.

------
thewileyone
The credo that I work by, and advise to everyone even those who report
directly to me, is to work for your resume/CV. What this means is to take up
challenges, formal or informal, to make yourself more attractive to a future
employer.

After all, you're ultimately responsible for your own progress in your career.

------
raldi
Paul Graham's recent essay
<[http://www.paulgraham.com/lesson.html>](http://www.paulgraham.com/lesson.html>)
should speak to you. You've learned how to hack the test: Big companies don't
reward you for doing great things, serving the users, etc. They reward you for
pushing particular buttons, and you've learned how to push those buttons, and
while that's freed up your time and given you financial stability, it's
rotting your soul.

Quit. Join a small company, where you'll have the freedom to work the way you
want, the inspiration to do so, and the certainty that you'll be judged
properly. It'll lead you to do great work again, work you're proud of and that
makes you feel good and that really makes a difference.

------
aey
Work smarter not harder. Your brain should be sweating not your fingers.

I worked at a Big Corp, and would often spend the day surfing or training for
ironmen, and coding at the cafe shop between sessions.

My reviews came back nearly the top ranking consistently. My “secret” if
anything was jumping into the hardest technical problem available to me and
taking it on largely myself.

The folks that were promoted faster were the ones that put out business
critical fires and spent 80 hour weeks debugging customer issues. Which was
well deserved imho.

Google is a huge company, with tons of opportunity. Your risk adjusted return
there is probably higher than YC. If you can’t figure out how to hit homeruns
at Google you are likely to fail everywhere else.

Your managers job is to tell you what you need to do to become a “critical”
employee that’s on the fast promotion track.

------
sgibat
Moving to a role with more impact might be motivating and fulfilling. Check
out 80,000 hours [[https://80000hours.org/](https://80000hours.org/)] -
they're a non-profit that researches how to best use your career to help
others.

------
kerng
You might be to harsh on yourself and what you have accomplished. Six years at
Google is a great achievement in itself. Have you considered impostor
syndrome?

Maybe do a side gig and build something that you find interesting, could be a
game for kids, a dating app, a music app,...

~~~
oneepic
I think everyone in the tech industry mentions imposter syndrome so much that
it's either not the problem here, or OP has heard it so often that they're
deaf to it.

------
syllable_studio
There is so much important and inspiring work to do in the world. It might
take some energy to find it, but I think it will be rewarding if you do. It
sounds like you have an amazing opportunity to find this work because you have
a financial cushion to fall back on. So good luck in finding it! You could
start by just seeking out people to talk to who you think are doing important
work. Maybe don't worry about whether there's a job in it or if it even feels
related to technology. Chances are those conversations could inspire you to do
something you can't picture yet. Maybe an entrepreneurial opportunity.
Everything needs technology these days after all. Good luck!

------
designium
I had a different experience than you had when I was working in Google Brazil.
I was the first AdWords Product Specialist in the office - also, the office
only had 50 people; it really felt like a startup in 2006.

At the bottom of my heart, I always wanted to build my own startup or work
with startup so eventually I left Google.

Now, during that time, I did my work as many other Googlers would do but the
difference is that I was in a position to access huge amount of training
materials, design docs, 3rd party research materials, etc. In my "spare" time,
I just went through and read, absorbed as much as I could; so at the end, I
did learn a lot but outside from my usual scope of work.

------
goodguy1234
Here is my philosophy in life.

"Make it a ride and become a passenger."

I mean we are all going to the same place in the end. Nothing really matters.

Have a comfortable job. And positive outlook but never plan for anything. Its
so much fun. Life happens all around you and you just observe.

------
musicale
Sounds like you have a pretty good work-life balance. ;-)

In my experience, once you have enough money then friends, family, social
life, and pursuing your own interests are a lot more important than working
for a company, and far more deserving of your time and attention. As they say,
nobody on their deathbed ever says "I wish I'd spent more time at the office."

I don't like the idea of checklists of technologies to learn.

Instead, I like the idea of thinking about important problems that you would
like to solve and then investigating technologies that might help you to do
so.

I would also consider looking for some more interesting and fun work within
Google.

------
GuB-42
The way I deal with that is by experimenting. Not taking the fastest/easiest
route but instead trying to do something interesting.

There are some downsides to that of course. I mean, I am purposefully
reinventing the wheel. Sometimes, it fails, and short term productivity takes
a hit, but I consider it a long term investment. Because next time I see the
problem, I know what not to do, and why.

This presuppose you are not at 100%, because you sometimes need to catch up
with your mistakes, but since you are at 10%, that shouldn't be a problem ;)
Being at 100% is a bad idea anyways, because you can't take a step back.

------
robomartin
You need to leave. You need to go somewhere else immediately. A small company
where your contribution will be necessary enough that you will not be able to
do what you are doing now.

This is a very dangerous and destructive behavioral pattern, not unlike what
happens with people when they are on government support and don't have to
worry about earning a living. It's destructive for you and those around you.

Print this in a large font and place it on your monitor and wherever you spend
the most time at home:

"Your focus determines your reality" (Star Wars, Phantom Menace).

There's a great deal of depth in that simple five word sentence.

------
kamranahmedse
I would never understand this "bored at work" thing. To make it interesting
you have side projects and things outside work. If you are working for someone
then the "boringness" is something that you have to deal with. Every job that
you will have will become boring at one point or another - there will be
repetitive tasks but it doesn't seem logical to keep switching every few
months. If I was in your shoes and this was my situation, I wouldn't jump ship
and rather get involved in the interesting opensource projects or work on the
interesting stuff of my own.

------
anigbrowl
Why not work for yourself instead of getting hired? After 6 years at Google
you probably have some cash in the bank. Also, consider the possibility that
maybe you don't enjoy programming just because you're good at it. What do you
daydream about? You mention dating/breakups/depression and gaming (arguably a
form of escapism), so it sounds very much like you have some unfilled
emotional need. If that's family based you need therapy of some sort, but you
also need to find something to do that satisfies you rather than hoping a
partner will fix you somehow.

~~~
Hydraulix989
It's important to straighten the rest of your life out first before dating.
Exercising everyday will help you feel calmer, more confident, and have more
energy. Once you exercise for about a month (5+ days per week), you will start
feeling stable again and even extroverted. At that point, find a core group of
really good friends (probably at work but online works too -- Discord is
great).

If all else fails, I can tell you that leaving the Bay Area really helped me
re-gain my perspective. I recommend Singapore. Just transfer offices, and
don't look back. People here know how to work but not how to live. They also
view every social interaction as one that might opportunistically build their
own network, almost pathologically transactional in essence. Meanwhile, the
resource contention here has everyone stressed out about money (even if they
don't outwardly act like it), and long-standing communities don't exist
because everyone here has been transplanted elsewhere, so nobody has any firm
standing with where they live, nobody has each other's back.

I disagree that gaming is necessarily a form of escapism per se unless it is
one of the sole uses of your time. If you use gaming as a social outlet, it is
actually great (play games with your IRL friends online, get some friends
together, organize/participate in gaming events in real life, etc.).

------
atoav
I haven’t been there so.I have no idea, but you certainly _sound_ like you
hate the current state of affairs.

My advice: try to find the root cause of your slack-off mentality and adress
it. If you figure out that you need to place yourself beyond a point of no
return in order to get going, do it.

This however could potentially all happen while still staying at google. The
mind is a powerful thing and just a change in perspective can change a lot in
your life.

I always enjoyed building things — but they have to have some sort of meaning
to me. Do the things you build have any meaning to you? If not, which things
would?

------
sjg007
If I were you, before I would do anything, I would first go to therapy and
work with a therapist. That or pick up a good CBT book.

To me, it sounds like you have a lot of questions to resolve first. I would do
that before you change anything. For example why do you think you are doing a
minimal amount of work and does that actually mesh with reality? How do you
define and measure work output anyway?

You mention dealing with depression for example. In my experience dealing with
depression itself is a full time job. That you held down a second job during
that experience is a major accomplishment. Go easy on yourself.

Remember above all that your thoughts create your emotions. Ask yourself why
do you feel that way. What thoughts underlie the feelings. Question those
thoughts.

If you are in Mountain View or the bay area, I'd recommend going to the
Feeling Good Institute. I'd also recommend reading Dr. David Burns book
Feeling Good.

Consider CBT as a set of tools for your brain and human operating system. I
would start by learning those tools first.

~~~
khamba
Could you recommend a good CBT book?

~~~
sab24
Feeling Good by David Burns is a truly excellent book. Although published in
the 80's it is still very relevant and useful.

------
kalium_xyz
Go anywhere else if you are bored, most companies will hire an ex-googler. Or
lead a stable / boring life like people will tell you to do, its not like this
is the only life you have or something.

------
tcgv
My two cents: Consider starting some side projects on your spare time.

Choose topics in which you have genuine interest, use tech you're not familiar
with, adopt different architectural styles, make it public (ex: GitHub) and
share progress with developer friends / team mates.

Before you know you will feel more confident with your tech skills, may start
seeing opportunities to apply recent learnings into your daily tasks and even
if you really decide to jump ship these projects may come in hand while
interviewing for other positions.

------
vikR0001
Whatever my assignment is, I pick 1+ stretch goals for myself every day, and
try to over-deliver above and beyond what my team expects. They are usually
super-impressed and love it. Try that.

------
pmarreck
Choose to challenge yourself. With Google on your resume you’ll have a pretty
good safety net via pedigree. Choose temporary discomfort. Make Linux a viable
desktop platform or something. ;)

------
temporalparts
Have you figured out if it's Google or software engineering as a whole? I
think the safer option, if it's available for you, is to change to a different
team in a different part of Google.

Google is huge and if, for example, ads is boring to you, try Google Brain or
any of their X projects (self driving cars?). That way you have more data
points around what's causing you to slack. It's not necessarily the case that
when you do find personal alignment that you won't regress to slacking off.

~~~
dhuyrv
As if anyone can just go and try Google brain or self driving cars. Unless he
has suitable background, he won't be allowed to do the really interesting
projects.

------
skybrian
Sometimes changing teams helps. Another possibility would be to see if you can
take a leave of absence. Maybe combine them, take a leave of absence and then
start fresh with a new team?

------
beiller
You may think you are ripping off your employer, but in fact it is the other
way around in my opinion. This company has so much money, that their strategy
now is to hire all the engineers in the world on retainer (that's you) so the
hiring pool for the competition is diminished. That will raise the amount a
smaller company (potential competition) has to pay (and ultimately make them
unhirable). Maybe you should go find another job, but you might get a pay cut.

~~~
Clubber
Sometimes I wonder if Google and other tech firms don't hire a bunch of smart
people just so other companies / potential competitors won't have access to
them.

I couldn't stand having to go to an office every day just to be bored. I have
to keep my mind pretty occupied.

------
rajacombinator
Hiring hiring bar is generally a bad sign. Any company that thinks it needs to
be more selective (in technical ability, at least) than Google is probably
kidding themselves.

------
biasedOpinion
Do you intentionally work to 10% of your capacity, or do you try to work
better but can't?

If it's intentional then I don't understand why you'd do that, it seems to me
like it'd be horrible to wake up knowing you'll be slacking all day...

If it's not, I'd suggest first of all changing teams while you learn other
technologies for a different job.

edit: there are so many things broken with Google products, there has to be
_something_ you're interested in fixing...

------
kossmoboleat
Some of the advice from David Graeber's book "Bullshit Jobs" seems
appropriate. Although you seem to still fulfill a useful function at Google, I
found myself using some of the same strategies too.

Being conscious of the demotivating aspects of a job that has too low
expectations is described very well in this book.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bullshit_Jobs](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bullshit_Jobs)

------
mdonahoe
I started writing about my own experiences with boredom at work, and it
evolved into a blog post. I'll spare you the details.

My advice for you: just apply to other companies anyway and wait for an offer
that excites you.

The worst thing that will happen is you'll get rejected and the particular
interviewers will think less of you. You can always re-apply later.

Meanwhile, start watching Google Tech Talks during your spare work hours and
tell your boss's boss that you'd like a challenge.

------
dirktheman
I'm staggered by the mysogyny in this thread. A good relationship isn't based
on how attractive you are, how much money you make or whether you behave
arrogant or not. This implies that women are helpless, will-less creatures
that just flock to the peacock with the biggest feathers. A good relationship
is based on mutual respect and love.

If you think that your paycheck is a factor in finding a woman I have news for
you: you get the women you deserve.

~~~
acolumb
FWIW most of the comments are debating the ratio of working to slacking and
salaries across geographical regions, not gender differences.

------
StandardFuture
Wait, is this why we can never seem to get past 3% GDP growth?

B/c a huge percentage of our smartest people are utilizing their smarts to
figure out how to coast as lazily through life as they can while optimizing
their "observed personality"?

This explains a lot. But, it is not something I haven't suspected.

What would it take to change this? To allow productivity, growth, and proper
compensation?

It is not just software engineering where this is a very common scenario, btw.

~~~
Tiktaalik
There's data that shows that people basically reach max happiness at only
earnings of "merely" $80k, so of course there's no real need to try any harder
even when you're getting paid more than that.

Bigger GDP is probably only possible by getting more people up to 80k.

~~~
StandardFuture
Would be very interested in seeing a reference for this 80K thing.

B/c that would be 100% in favor of the sole focus of the country really
needing to be a restoration of the middle class.

------
wuschb
I have come to realize this past year some of us in IT have moved into the
domain of true Subject Matter Expert. I personally proved my worth to my
clients and based on that they more than happy to keep me on 'retainer' adding
nothing new, but ensuring that current systems to fark up... I work from home
doing nothing but attending meetings. I am on the peak of the efficiency
curve.

------
_russelldb
A higher hiring bar than google? Damn, I really am behind the curve.

Did you think about just chilling, getting a hobby, and treating your job as a
means to an end?

------
buboard
There s enough cynicism in this topic for the whole year. No matter how you
spin it, slacking and wasting your talent is neither healthy nor good. Sure,
it's hard to admit it when your salary depends on it, but it seems the
megacorp's tactic of outpaying everyone is working, because they don't seem to
be facing any new competitors anymore. they got a big golden cage

------
vectorEQ
if the learning/enjoyment/motivation curve flattens you have choices.

either accept it and settle at an employer, or change jobs. often this happens
around 5-6 years in if not sooner.

its ok to settle at an employer and just be happy wiht your life. if it sucks
the life out of you i'd suggest finding a new challenge. with a resume of
longer term employment at a big corporate like google , finding a new
challenge should be doable.

perhaps you enjoy a startup, its a lot more dynamic and versatile, though
often pays less atleast initially. personally i hate that, and try to
challenge myself in my current work rather than looking for different jobs.
but then again i don't have issues with my job being a bit boring / stale as i
try to find things outside of work to fufill me which can also help a lot to
fight depression / stress etc.

in the end you sound like you need some thing you are passionate about to work
on to feel good about yourself, this is normal, but it doesn't have to be your
job which gives you this.

------
j45
Why don’t you start showing up and working harder at google to see what you
can learn and do?

You’ll certainly be able to see higher and further from a place that has
supported you for this long than starting from scratch elsewhere.

If you don’t learn to make the most of any place you’re presently in, there’s
no guarantee you’ll do it anywhere else.

------
dominotw
Can you start

1\. Consulting on the side? Surely you being G employee will open lots of
doors.

2\. Side project/your own startup .

I think you are getting a great value for 10% of your capacity. I would just
keep milking it till you get something on side get started.

PS: I don't think 'deeply learn the FE/BE technologies' is good investment of
time.

~~~
akulbe
I'm guessing Google has a very wide-ranging non-compete and/or IP ownership
agreement that'd keep him from doing this.

He works for Google, and I bet Google would say "we own your work, all of it".

~~~
moonman80
Correct, but it is possible to apply for clearance on IP ownership depending
whether or not there is a competition or not.

------
uwuhn
If I were you, I would stay at Google but try a different type of SWE. Like
switching to mobile or something.

------
xen2xen1
If this is anywhere near the norm, it explains why Google has so many people
yet kills so many projects.

------
mixmastamyk
You’re in a rut. Take a long vacation aka sabbatical. Don’t fill your day with
activities, let your mind wander. Climb mountains, go skydiving perhaps.

At some point what you want should come into focus. Don’t be too quick to quit
the job, save up first and buy some income investments.

------
Inu
Well, here's how Karl Marx put it:

"What, then, constitutes the alienation of labor? First, the fact that labor
is external to the worker, i.e., it does not belong to his intrinsic nature;
that in his work, therefore, he does not affirm himself but denies himself,
does not feel content but unhappy, does not develop freely his physical and
mental energy but mortifies his body and ruins his mind. The worker therefore
only feels himself outside his work, and in his work feels outside himself. He
feels at home when he is not working, and when he is working he does not feel
at home. His labor is therefore not voluntary, but coerced; it is forced
labor. It is therefore not the satisfaction of a need; it is merely a means to
satisfy needs external to it. Its alien character emerges clearly in the fact
that as soon as no physical or other compulsion exists, labor is shunned like
the plague. External labor, labor in which man alienates himself, is a labor
of self-sacrifice, of mortification. Lastly, the external character of labor
for the worker appears in the fact that it is not his own, but someone else’s,
that it does not belong to him, that in it he belongs, not to himself, but to
another. The worker’s activity is not his spontaneous activity. It belongs to
another; it is the loss of his self."

~~~
codingslave
Bummer this got downvoted, I'm not a huge fan of Marx but he got some stuff
right. Noam Chomsky takes a similar view when he says:

"If person does beautiful work under external command, we may admire what he
does, but we despise who he is."

This is a quote he takes from the enlightenment.

------
catacombs
You're making good money by not working that much. What's the complaint? Use
the free time to work on side projects, learn a new language and enjoy the
fact you're making more money than many, many people who work low-pay jobs for
longer hours.

------
m23khan
You are lucky that you can identify what is wrong with you.

My only suggestion would be: Pick 2-3 technologies you have been using most
and which are popular (in terms of finding jobs) and really spend time
mastering them. Otherwise, good luck finding a more senior job.

------
sakopov
Use this time to spend your mental energy on projects that you're really
passionate about while enjoying your great (i'm sure) Google salary. I think
you underestimate what an amazing position you're in right now.

~~~
jedimastert
> Use this time to spend your mental energy on projects that you're really
> passionate about

Watch out about that. Non-competition being what it is, if you make something
they own it.

------
smashentry
"I'm considering companies with a higher hiring bar than Google."

I'm genuinely intrigued and curious about this one. Care to elaborate please?
:) What are the other companies with a higher hiring bar than Google?

------
qwerty456127
Companies with a higher hiring bar than Google? You mean the CIA, NSA or what?

------
m3kw9
Ask where do you see yourself in a few years, are you gonna achieve that by
slacking like that? Can you leverage work and doing great work help you get
there? Is slacking off worth the time wasted?

------
icedchai
My advice: Milk that cow as long a you can. Save and invest massively. Start
some side businesses. Spend that extra work time reading some e-books or
taking online courses.

You can set yourself up for life.

------
senderista
If you're still interested in technology for its own sake, quit your job
(assuming you have the savings, mental health, and self-discipline to do so),
or get a job at a company that doesn't think it owns all your work on your own
time (unlike Google), and originate or (nontrivially) contribute to an open-
source project. If it gets adoption, that could help you find more interesting
gigs in the future. If you're really ambitious, you could try to start a
company around your project (but that's not good advice for most people).

Otherwise, find a non-tech hobby as others have said, and remind yourself just
how good you have it compared to 99.99999999% of the rest of the world.

------
slumdev
Just get out.

Six years at the same place with only one promotion means that you're not
really advancing.

Fake it 'til you make it.

If you do stay in place, get yourself promoted again and complete a graduate
degree.

------
daveheq
I thought Google paid developers to slack off and date and get depressed and
game.

Maybe your next career move should be to make YouTube videos about the days in
your life as a developer.

------
echelon
> Especially since I'm considering companies with a higher hiring bar than
> Google.

Google isn't the most stringent? I thought only the quant firms had higher
bars.

------
rdl
Could you take advantage of Google's geographic reach to try working from
different offices (potentially on the same team, or different team)?

------
chad_strategic
I don't think I could survive any coding job... with out knowing that at the
job was just a means to allowing me to work on my side projects.

------
nshung
This sounds exactly like my last job :P I wonder if software development tends
to become like this in general after a certain amount of time?

------
jimthrow
I seriously doubt you can “slack off” and keep your job. I think your probably
being to hard on yourself. Imposter syndrome happens to many

------
nogbit
Are you looking for job satisfaction or happiness? If the former then look for
another job, but the grass isn't always greener.

------
rooam-dev
Are you one of those college graduates that sets high bars when interviewing
candidates at google? :)

PS: Never interviewed myself, just read stories.

------
throwawayamaze1
It’s unfortunate that OP has found themselves in such an unfulfilling
position. May they find meaning and joy in their life.

~~~
throwawayamaze1
But still,

This thread has to be the most accurate and depressing reflection of the
current state of professional software engineering I’ve ever read.

------
text70
How do we confirm that you are not actually just a manager looking for
solutions to motivate lackluster employees?

------
dsaravanan
IMHO, its not that great to work at a IT company than working at a Software
Company like Google !!!

------
rfour
The crux of this post would make a great long-form article in the Atlantic or
Vice or something.

------
gordaco
Using about 10% of your mental capacity for your job is absolutely a good
thing, if you're still doing what your company expects from you. This means
that you still have 90% for yourself, and that's awesome.

If you don't feel challenged enough, seek intellectual activities (of ANY
kind, as long as you enjoy it. Code, study, read, play an instrument,
whatever) outside of your job. They will be much more satisfying, because you
will have complete control over when and how do you engage in them. I've been
doing this for many years and it's one the most satisfying aspects of my life,
if not the most.

Also, being kind of a veteran (35yo), let me tell you this: be careful what
you wish for. You seem to be enjoying a job that doesn't stress you or burn
you out. If you start working at a company where you don't have that any more,
there is a very good chance that you will miss the sustainability (in terms of
mental health) of your current one.

TLDR: if your job pays the bills and doesn't offer challenges, great. Look for
challenges in other areas of your life to maximise happiness.

------
westonplatter0
Take 6 months and hire a coach or go to therapy to figure out what you really
want.

------
fredgrott
beat me in the number of cognitive science books and studies read and learning
to apply....

Yes, seriously even! The count is n ow almost 100 books and studies only
including the CS AI part not other CS parts and whole lot of neuroscience

------
chemmail
Don't worry, keep at it and you will be president of Stanford.

------
carapace
I would say, keep your head down, save and invest, retire by 35.

------
loopz
Why name the company?

~~~
ChrisMarshallNY
_> Why name the company?_

Especially that one. I'll bet they know, by now (maybe they already did, and
don't care. Google is famous for leveraging their -and our- data).

I've found that many corporations are willing to settle for fairly mediocre
work, as long as the processes are followed, and the cheese not moved. Having
especially brilliant folks in place, means that if there is a problem, they
have the bandwidth to deal with it. If I were your manager, I'd probably be
pretty happy to have you there, but I'd also be worried that you weren't being
challenged, and see if there was something I could do to challenge you, while
improving my department's lot (I would probably do some kind of "20%"
project).

TBH: Most work is fairly rote. R&D departments are usually pretty small.
Production is about a predictable, low-variance workflow.

What I did, was work on some open-source stuff. Some of it has turned out to
be quite impactful.

But I was fortunate. I had an employment contract that didn't have the "shower
clause" (where they lay claim to the ideas that you come up with in the
shower).

I strongly suspect that your contract has a "shower clause."

~~~
walshemj
Depends on country in Anglo Saxon law (UK USA) its the norm.

And many European countries eg Germany just have it as part of the general
labor law - so you wouldn't see it in a "contract"

~~~
ChrisMarshallNY
So, just to be clear, if you are working for any corporation, in any job, the
corporation has full rights to all your work, and all your ideas, by law?

This explains why Germans always seemed so surprised when I mentioned my
extracurricular work to them.

Must make moonlighting difficult.

Also, I’m almost positive that the reason my company did not have the clause,
was because they hired many high-level creative folks, with lifelong side
businesses.

~~~
walshemj
Its Related works eg if you are a semi pro musician your employer has no claim
on any songs you write.

~~~
ChrisMarshallNY
In the case of my company, their side-businesses were often the _reason_ they
were hired.

It was a photographic equipment company, and we had some _really_ good
photographers all over the place.

One of our lens techs was a well-respected avian photographer, and our
Marketing department was filled with top-notch photographers.

You couldn't spit without hitting a first-class artist. Even the
administrators and accountants tended to be pretty awesome casual
photographers.

------
mam2
Cant change deparmentd easily at google ?

------
cschep
Do something you actually like! :)

------
0x262d
I recommend becoming a marxist, the concept of alienation is exactly that most
people in capitalism are paid to work on stuff that is profitable to rich
people but not socially meaningful and so it isn't intrinsically motivating
and becomes soul sucking. This even applies to comfy software developers.

This won't give you more work motivation but it will make the rest of your
life more interesting.

------
jaxbot
Wow, this sounds eerily similar to my situation, though I was only there about
3 years.

I left to join an AV startup and it's amazing how much more I've learned and
accomplished in a few months versus the time at Google. Things at Google move
slowly, and the amount of work per person is relatively limited. Also, all the
complicated infrastructure or codebase decisions were already made for you, or
is being handled by someone L+2 at least and outside of your purview.

Edmond Lau's _The Effective Engineer_ talks about this, except to the extreme
that he wanted to do and learn everything at Google, and even then he left
after ~2 years after he felt his growth was slowing.

I think for many, being at Google for a few years will give you invaluable
experience, but then severely diminishing returns on growth and practical
experience unless you're one of the lucky ones who gets promo'd every year or
two.

For your actual question, though: >Now that I'm thinking of jumping ship to
other interesting companies, I'm having serious doubts that I really learned
what I should have learned during all those years.

Having Google on your resume always helps get people interested. Having
experience working on big teams with big codebases is also something not
everyone in this industry has, and there's value to it, even if you'll
initially scratch your head at how to build without Blaze.

>Especially since I'm considering companies with a higher hiring bar than
Google.

Curious why you're confident in that statement. I've found that Google has a
much higher hiring bar to the actual required skill -- they basically seem to
hire as though everyone will work on GWS, when in reality many are just copy-
pasting CSS and BUILD rules from another project.

On the flip side, many more interesting companies have lower hiring bars
relative to the job requirement. It's harder to hire good talent when you're
not FAANG with a pipeline right out of the Ivy League.

>How can I keep myself accountable while I'm still at the company to deeply
learn the FE/BE technologies to be better prepared for other companies? Should
I start by preparing a checklist of technologies and dive into each of them
for a month and continue from there?

Well, I would focus LeetCode, tbqh. That's still the standard. But whatever
you want to do, focus in on technologies used in that industry/job role. Do
some side projects. Maybe take some online classes. I think you'll find the
practical experience requirement to be lower than you think. People can
generally learn the right technologies, and companies know this. It won't be a
big deal unless you're a frontend-only SWE who suddenly wants a ML role or
something.

Lastly -- feel free to DM me, I use this handle on twitter and gmail, happy to
help, especially if you're curious about where I ended up.

------
AlexCoventry
What's FE/BE?

~~~
sudofail
Frontend / Backend

~~~
AlexCoventry
Oh, of course. Thanks.

------
dfilppi
Start a side business

------
sheinsheish
Hilarious advice and thread. Thanks everybody :)

------
blueprint
Just do it

------
adamnemecek
Quit and start your own startup.

------
pdfernhout
Or maybe you are perfectly adapted to your circumstances according to "The
Gervais Principle, Or The Office According to “The Office”"?
[https://www.ribbonfarm.com/2009/10/07/the-gervais-
principle-...](https://www.ribbonfarm.com/2009/10/07/the-gervais-principle-or-
the-office-according-to-the-office/) "The Sociopath (capitalized) layer
comprises the Darwinian/Protestant Ethic will-to-power types who drive an
organization to function despite itself. The Clueless layer is what Whyte
called the “Organization Man,” but the archetype inhabiting the middle has
evolved a good deal since Whyte wrote his book (in the fifties). The Losers
are not social losers (as in the opposite of “cool”), but people who have
struck bad bargains economically – giving up capitalist striving for steady
paychecks. ... The difference between [upwardly-aspiring Ryan] and the average
checked-out Loser is illustrated in one brilliant scene early in his career.
He suggests, during a group stacking effort in the warehouse, that they form a
bucket brigade to work more efficiently. The minimum-effort Loser Stanley
tells him coldly, “this here is a run-out-the-clock situation.” The line could
apply to Stanley’s entire life. Stanley’s response shows both his intelligence
and clear-eyed self-awareness of his Loser bargain with the company. He
therefore acts according to a mix of self-preservation and minimum-effort
coasting instincts. ... The career of the Loser is the easiest to understand.
Having made a bad bargain, and not marked for either Clueless or Sociopath
trajectories, he or she must make the best of a bad situation. The most
rational thing to do is slack off and do the minimum necessary. Doing more
would be a Clueless thing to do. Doing less would take the high-energy
machinations of the Sociopath, since it sets up self-imposed up-or-out time
pressure. So the Loser — really not a loser at all if you think about it —
pays his dues, does not ask for much, and finds meaning in his life elsewhere.
For Stanley it is crossword puzzles. For Angela it is a colorless Martha-
Stewartish religious life. For Kevin, it is his rock band. For Kelly, it is
mindless airhead pop-culture distractions. Pam has her painting ambitions.
Meredith is an alcoholic slut. Oscar, the ironic-token gay character, has his
intellectual posturing. Creed, a walking freak-show, marches to the beat of
his own obscure different drum (he is the most rationally checked-out of all
the losers)."

If you want to change Google into a better company or alternatively build or
find a better place to be, here is a reading list I've put together which
might help: [https://github.com/pdfernhout/High-Performance-
Organizations...](https://github.com/pdfernhout/High-Performance-
Organizations-Reading-List)

Since you mentioned depression, see especially the related health sections.

All the best and good luck!

P.S. Something I wrote in 2008 on ideological challenges inherent in Google
inspired by contradictions in the "Project Virgle" April Fools joke:
[https://pdfernhout.net/a-rant-on-financial-obesity-and-
Proje...](https://pdfernhout.net/a-rant-on-financial-obesity-and-Project-
Virgle.html) "Even just in jest some of the most financially obese people on
the planet (who have built their company with thousands of servers all running
GNU/Linux free software) apparently could not see any other possibility but
seriously becoming even more financially obese off the free work of others on
another planet (as well as saddling others with financial obesity too :-). And
that jest came almost half a _century_ after the "Triple Revolution" letter of
1964 about the growing disconnect between effort and productivity (or work and
financial fitness) .... Even not having completed their PhDs, the top Google-
ites may well take many more _decades_ to shake off that ideological
discipline. I know it took me decades (and I am still only part way there. :-)
As with my mother, no doubt Googlers have lived through periods of scarcity of
money relative to their needs to survive or be independent scholars or
effective agents of change. Is it any wonder they probably think being
financially obese is a _good_ thing, not an indication of either personal or
societal pathology? :-( ... Google-ites and other financially obese people
IMHO need to take a good look at the junk food capitalist propaganda they are
eating and serving up to others, as in saying (even in jest): ... "we should
profit from others' use of our innovations, and we should buy or lease others'
intellectual property whenever it advances our own goals" \-- even while
running one of the biggest post-scarcity enterprises on Earth based on free-
as-in-freedom software. :-( Until then, it is up to us other ... "semi-evil
... quasi-evil ... not evil enough" hobbyists with smaller budgets to save the
Asteroids and the Planets (including Earth) ... from financially obese people
and their unexamined evil plans to spread profit-driven scarcity-creating
Empire throughout every nook-and-cranny of the universe. :-("

------
tuckerconnelly
Clean your damn room :) Recommend reading Jordan Peterson's 12 Rules for Life

------
hootbootscoot
Post your real name here and then email this posts link to your PM.

Then, once you lose your job, you will no longer be slacking at Google. This
will definitely push you a bit.

~~~
rak00n
Why PM?

