
Tips for Noogler Engineers (Noogler = New at Google) - btilly
http://piaw.blogspot.com/2010/08/tips-for-noogler-engineers.html
======
jacquesm
I love the ending line:

> Finally, if you get fed up of working for a big company, consider joining a
> startup.

This one posting probably did more damage to google hiring from the HN ranks
than all the others that I've seen to date. With friends like that who needs
enemies.

~~~
brown9-2
To be fair, Piaw sells a book all about how to get a job at a startup
(<http://books.piaw.net/guide/index.html>). The progression he describes in
the article ("fed up working for a big company" -> startup) is probably his
own as well.

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lkozma
That must be the most depressing thing I read in quite a while.

~~~
Tamerlin
Agreed... it's supposedly one of the few remaining companies that actually
respect engineers, but this post pretty much comes out and says otherwise in
bold, flashing letters.

"(Exception: War-room firefighting. Google loves those, and loves heroic
performances from people in war-rooms)"

The whole "war room" concept in IT has always bothered me -- it's what
managers do when they have a crisis that they don't know how to deal with.
It's usually a crisis that they could have avoided if they'd actually done
their own job in the first place. War rooms are also invariably where the
worst of the developers end up -- at Disney the war room period was one of our
most product weeks as a result. Of course, the folks who got rewarded were the
ones in the war room, even though their primary contribution was to strut
around in front of a bunch of executives while the rest of the team got
project work done and the operations team had already figured out what went
wrong.

~~~
brown9-2
Given Google's attitude towards perpetual betas, I'm curious if their "war
rooms" are more to solve immediate problems (show-stopping bugs, security
issues, etc) rather than attempts to "fix" late projects.

~~~
nostrademons
Google's attitude toward perpetual betas extends to perpetual war rooms.
Almost every feature that you'd recognize from the last three years was
developed in a war room. The visual redesign was a war room (well, war
cubicle). Real-time search was a war room. The search options panel was a war
room. SearchWiki was a war room. The bar across the top was a war room. Pac
Man wasn't a war room, but almost all the folks involved were in war rooms and
avoiding the war at the time.

Basically, it's just putting all the developers involved on a project in a
room together and giving them a clear goal (launching). Other firms might call
this "Agile" or even just "development". Heck, still others would call this a
"startup".

"We've always been at war with Eurasia..."

~~~
JakeSc
What's a war room? Google, ironically, was of no help.

~~~
skybrian
Get everyone who's working on a big problem together in one room.

It raises the question: if this works, why not do it all the time?

~~~
nostrademons
...which is basically what Google (and several other software companies)
_does_. That's why I say that some people simply call it "development".

~~~
Tamerlin
We have a... well, some random dolt with a VP or director or some similarly
overinflated title, but no meaningful role who explained that you should use
"agile" method when: 1) You don't have time for planning 2) You don't have
time for design 3) You don't have time for documentation 4) Requirements are
changing

Which to me meant, "You use Agile(tm) methods when your project has already
failed."

------
alain94040
I was expecting one more "google is great" love-post. It was anything but.

If you are dreaming of joining Google, this is the article to read. Really.

~~~
piaw
Google is still the best big publicly held company in the valley to work for.
I wrote this to guide the thousands of Googlers they'll add this year.

Having said that, I've been at well functioning startups, and I've been at
Google. Google when I joined was better than many many startups. Google when I
left was not so.

~~~
moultano
What I've noticed at Google is that there's really no comparison between
teams. Different parts of the company might as well be entirely different
companies, aside from a few common cultural attributes (flat hierarchy, data
driven decision, and of course all the perks.)

The best piece of advice in there (I think) is to pick your team carefully,
and more importantly, don't feel shy about switching if you aren't making
headway.

~~~
whatusername
I think you'll find that is true for any company of sufficient size.

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btilly
It is worth noting that Piaw quit Google, and so is biased by that, and the
experiences leading up to that. And internally lots of people have found lots
of things to disagree with about specific items on his list. There are others
that there have been pushes to improve on since. So take all of it with a
grain of salt.

That said, he does have a lot of experience, so you shouldn't lightly
_disregard_ what he says either.

But, more fundamentally, ask yourself what your goal is. If your goal is to
move up the ladder as efficiently as possible, his advice is probably pretty
good. If your goal is to enjoy your job, everyone will like you better if you
feel free to disregard whatever doesn't fit who you are.

~~~
piaw
Yes. The advice was given to help people move up the ladder, grab the brass
ring, and get the big payout. If you want quality of life, that advice is not
for you. Then again, if you want quality of life, and money is not that
important, I think that a good startup is hard to beat.

~~~
nostrademons
If your goal is to get the big payout, what the hell are you working at Google
for? Most of the people that got the big payout from Google joined...right
around when you did, or a few years before. Your odds of becoming an executive
at Google are far lower than they are at succeeding with your own startup and
getting bought out for big sums.

If you want a big payout, you're much better off working for Google for a
couple years to build experience and a reputation, quitting and founding a
startup, and then getting reacquired by Google in a $5-20M talent acquisition.

Most people I know at Google are there because they want to work on
interesting technical problems without dealing with all the bullshit that
comes from running your own business. Google is still very, very effective at
that - quite possibly the best place in the world for an engineer that wants
to do cool stuff, launch to millions of people, and not push their way through
lots of hassles.

~~~
piaw
Google is still handing out million dollar awards. For many people, the low
risk but potentially high reward setup is ideal.

For instance, getting the big Android founder's award probably beat being the
10th employee at Aardvark.

~~~
nostrademons
Only if you're Andy Rubin.

When I look at the dollar amount of some of the largest-ever Founders Awards
and then see how many people they're split between, I can't imagine that the
payout is anywhere close to even an employee's payout for an acquisition. I
dunno how the Founders Awards are divided up, but I'd imagine that it's a skew
distribution, with most of it going to the initiators and key early team
members of the project. Some of these teams have _hundreds_ of employees; I
really doubt that someone who joined six months before the Founders Award
makes off with any more than a "Hey, that's a nifty bonus" amount.

~~~
piaw
People tell me how much they're getting. The numbers do go up to 7 figures
even for rank and file engineers. But if I wrote a post about how to get that
kind of money, I'd be accused of being even more cynical (I'm already accused
of being very cynical when I wrote this article). Besides that kind of
information should really go into the next edition of my book.

Google can and does hand out big bonuses. There's so much cash flowing through
the company that a little sprinkle of it (by Google's standards) is still a
lot of money. If you're one of the fast-tracked folks at Google, there is no
reason to join a startup just for the money.

------
aarghh
This is good advice for any large company, not just Google. Tips #3 and #4 are
key - I would prioritize those higher than #1 and #2. In short - make sure
your manager/leader is capable of pushing you; make sure you get to work on
visible projects; and optimize your time to make contributions to the more
visible projects. One of the things I wish someone had told me a long time
ago.

~~~
mikeryan
Yeah but I think most people see working at Google as all unicorns and
rainbows. Its a bit disheartening to find out that in someways its not.

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vsiva68
This post has to be taken in context of everything else that Piaw has been
saying for a while: Google is an excellent place to work. It may not be as
nimble as it used to be, but it is still better than most other big companies
and most other startups as well. Sure, it is not _the_ best place, but it is
right there at the top.

Once you keep that as the background for the article, then you realize that
the article is meant for Nooglers interested in a certain career path. It is
not for everyone, but it is certainly the most common expected path for the
majority of their engineers.

It is odd to see HN jumping to conclusion reading one article without any
background. I think thats part of the reason why bloggers stop blogging
because whatever they say is taken to mean something else.

~~~
piaw
Thanks!

------
mcknz
It's official: performance review sucks everywhere.

~~~
arvinb
Yes, one would immediately think that the items he listed are somehow all true
at large companies.

------
dochtman
Looks like a nice list of things for Google management to improve about their
promotion process.

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bajsejohannes
So what is the effect of promotions? The article hints at one thing: Higher
salary cap. Are there other things?

So far in my own career, I have recognized a few situations where I could
choose to climb the career ladder. In all of those situations, I have chosen
not to. The new responsibilities did not seem to be worth it. I believe I have
a much more interesting job as a consequence, and as far as I can tell, my
salary has not been hurt noticeably (I _do_ fight for my pay rise).

Do you really have to add "flare" to your title in google to be successful?
Makes me not want to work there.

------
escape
Former Googler here.

I left a few months ago after four years. I have nothing but great things to
say about Google. I loved my job, the environment, the people, the perks, the
feeling of being privy to the most closely held secrets in Silicon Valley.
Most of all, Larry and Sergey, who have always - always - kept their employees
at the top of their priority list, even after the company went public. These
guys really mean "Don't be evil", but you need to work at Google to really
understand what this means.

Why I left? Career, mostly. I had reached a point where it was hard for me to
get promoted. I could have settled for an easy job that is very well paid but
without much hope of going much higher. A lot of people are okay with this and
I was for a while, but then I realized I wanted more.

If things don't work out at my new gig, I'll try another gig. And if this
doesn't work out either, I'll go back to Google in a heartbeat.

Keep an open mind, if you get a chance to interview, take it. If you get a job
offer, take it, even if it's just for a few months. At the end of the day, the
only person who knows what's best for you is yourself, not a blogger, nor an
anonymous Hacker News commenter.

------
fs111
When reading this I feel like a 1950ies rocket engineer reading about how bad
a warp-drive really is...

------
jeebusroxors
Had to look up "SRE":

SRE: Site reliability engineer

SWE: Software engineer

~~~
ciupicri
It seems that I should have answered _acronyms_ to the "Ask HN: What annoys
you?" question[1].

[1] <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1560796>

~~~
anr
Yes, we should complain to the AAAA.

The tried and true _American Association for Acronym Abuse_ can help there.

------
unshift
so basically it's the same as any large megacorp?

~~~
wan23
Any large megacorp with distracting fun mailing lists and talks to avoid (tip
#2). Also 20% time and mentoring (tip #1). Definitely the part about
performance reviews (tip #3) and having a good manager (tip #4) is applicable
to any company, though the part where you should make sure you _choose_ a good
manager might not be.

~~~
philwelch
I like how the advice to succeed at Google involves ignoring (tips 1 and 2)
the distracting and fun things that distinguish Google from other companies.

~~~
jrockway
If you are willing to spend more than 8 hours a day on "work", then you can do
well _and_ read mailing lists. If you were at a company other than Google,
then your 9th hour wouldn't get you much more than a headache, but at Google,
you can learn about cool stuff and get to know your coworkers better.

(I think 8 hours is way too long to spend working in a single day anyway, so
company-sponsored mailing lists seem like a nice distraction. I would rather
just go home and read Internet mailing lists though.)

------
neutronicus
I momentarily misread "Noogler" as "Nuclear".

Alas. I had hoped for another nuclear engineer HN reader.

~~~
fs111
When I read yours, I had Homer's voice in my head, somehow :-D

------
brown9-2
Are there any of these tips that stop being true if you substitute "Google"
for any other large tech organization?

------
kenjackson
I thought at Google most people, regardless of salary or rep, were just
"Software Engineers". If so, how do people know you got a promotion?

~~~
frognibble
Software engineer is the generic title for a number of levels: software
engineer II, software engineer III, senior software engineer, staff software
engineer, senior staff software engineer, and so on.

I heard that the job titles for engineers above a certain level are shared
publicly with in the company.

------
moonhorse
This is very similar to the big company that I work for - we use "visibility"
instead of "high profile" though. :) So I suppose when company grows larger,
it is inevitable. You just need to adapt to that or leave if you can not stand
it. Also, the team and manager you have has big impact on your experiences. I
do not believe there is a perfect environment.

------
sabj
There is a lot of helpful context that could theoretically be added to an
article like this, which would obviate a lot of the "wow, so depressing" or
"Google has succumbed to the times" comments here.

Alas, for confidentiality reasons, such cannot be shared :|

Suffice is to say, do be sure to take this as but one data point of many :)

------
elblanco
Sounds like any other big corporate organ grind -- self promotion and working
on high profile, corp important tasks gets you up the ladder, keeping the
engine running just keeps you on the ladder. The sexy just wore off for me.
Meh.

------
known
Everywhere mid-management strategy is _Heads I Win. Tails You Lose._

------
taloft
Most of this advice is (unfortunately) true in large companies. It's sad that
the idealism of our youth is corrupted by the reality of survival/prosperity
in the workplace.

------
aaronkaplan
Has anyone read Piaw's book (linked to in the last sentence of the blog post)?
Do you recommend it?

~~~
shalmanese
I have and it's excellent. Short, to the point and contains a ton of
invaluable information I never found anywhere else.

