
Day in the Life of a Google Manager - Nimi
http://matt-welsh.blogspot.com/2015/01/day-in-life-of-google-manager.html
======
lchengify
My first manager at Google (and the first in my career) had 2 young kids,
around 5 and 7 respectively.

He left the office every day at 6:30 sharp and, like clockwork, would answer
emails and code reviews starting at 10. Eventually we learned to time our
emails and code reviews according to this clock.

The consistency of the timing was remarkable; our favorite theory was that was
his kid's bedtime. I guess in effect, he was putting two sets of kids to bed
each night :).

~~~
oaktowner
If they're like my kids (6, 2, and 2): 10 isn't their bedtime...it's when I've
finished dinner cleanup _after_ their bedtime and can get on my computer to
finish up tasks for the day.

~~~
foobarian
My 2 year old is usually sound asleep by 9, and after some cleanup I have some
free hours to catch up on work. Sometimes I can't help it if it's something
interesting, and makes me feel better about only spending some 7-8 hours at
the office. I escaped from academia too, where I got to having anxiety about
every single minute not spent working, and now am still feeling the
aftereffects.

------
pmorici
Kind of an interesting full circle. I remember reading his "why I'm leaving
Harvard for Google" post a while back and If memory serves it was because he
was doing to many managerial type things that he wasn't thrilled about yet he
finds himself in a similar position again a few years later. It would be
interesting to hear what he thinks of his current responsibilities compared to
the teaching job he left.

~~~
foobarian
It's probably the case that he could've stuck with being an individual
contributor. I don't know about Google but the tech shop I work for has paths
explicitly for the introverted engineer types who don't care for the drudgery
of managing people. This is invariably a lot harder in academia, as getting to
tenure pretty much requires one to act as a startup founder-- do all the
business dealing, run a team, get funding, etc.

Given that Matt did get tenure he clearly is really good at such managerial
roles, and probably couldn't help but step up. I bet Google leadership try
very hard to get people to do management--it's not easy, on the contrary
engineers don't like it and it's a fight to get the good ones to step up. I
would bet too that the managerial type things at Google are a lot more fun
than the academic ones.

------
lifeisstillgood
> Despite this, I still do not have the faintest clue how Bitcoin works.

Oh thank god. Not about bitcoin specifically but it feels the whole world has
managed to find the time to do a course on FRP, brush up on SEO, configure a
Hadoop cluster, grok Haskell monads and still work out what a Mocachino is.

Glad to know mortals still exist.

------
tdicola
"8:00pm - Freedom! I usually spend some time in the evenings catching up on
email" \- I guess Google managers have a slightly different view of freedom
from work than I do.

~~~
TheSwordsman
Sometimes just reading mindless things at the end of the day is the perfect
way to end it.

I find myself using the evenings to catch up on email, because I can take my
time and do it in between other things. I'm sure once family life becomes more
prevelant I'll change my tune.

~~~
dsuth
I do this too, some nights (and I have young children). It's a good time to
reflect on trickier emails with no time pressure. Of course sometimes I blow
work off completely and hang out with the mrs, or get some gaming time. I'm
very cautious about burnout, having ridden that line for the last few years
pretty hard.

------
drewg123
SWE in MTV: I get up early (~6am) and try to get to the office by 6:30am, as
the time before 9am is the only time my severely over-crowded open office is
quiet enough to code. Most days I have 1-2 meetings. I generally leave around
4pm, pick my son up from school, make dinner & then catch up on email after
8:30, when my son goes to bed.

All in all, it is very relaxing compared to my last job. I was full time
remote, and probably worked 80 hours a week. I have a much better work/life
balance now, as I generally leave my work at the office.

~~~
sukilot
9.5hrs per day in office, plus evening at home?

~~~
drewg123
The evening stuff is nearly always just minimal email check that seldom takes
more than 10 minutes. At my last job (where I was full time remote), my
schedule was working 6am-4pm working, taking a break to spend time with my
family, then real work from 8pm-midnight. This is a huge improvement.

Not all that 9.5 hours on campus is working time. I generally take a break for
breakfast & lunch, hit the gym a few times a week, and try to spend an hour or
two a week on fun, non work related things (like author talks).

------
rdl
While that doesn't seem like a lot of hours, the thing that struck me was I
didn't see a single thing in his actual day (other than maybe a 10 minute bike
ride, or reading a book at night) that I'd personally enjoy doing. Yet, he
seems perfectly happy -- good for him.

People really have totally different preferences. It's more striking when laid
out like that.

~~~
serve_yay
Yes, I felt much the same. The positive reactions to this are really
surprising to me, but as you say, different strokes.

------
brosky117
I really enjoyed this article. The grass is always greener, and I get that,
but man that sounds like a great way to spend your day! Personally, my daily
grind is aimed at one day having a daily grind like this.

I loved the emphasis on family and balance. Timely article for me, I guess.

------
chuhnk
I worked at the Google office in London as an SRE. I arrived their via
acquisition. Google was a leisurely existence in comparison to the startup
world. I could easily achieve nothing if only by just enjoying the endless
perks. In the early days I had a lot to prove and pulled double duty by trying
to stay awake in multiple time zones to get things done quickly. In the end
being in my 20s I felt like I was losing my edge being there and had to go
back to the startup world. Maybe one day I'll return when I have a wife and
kids.

------
coldcode
So why does Google need a PhD to be a manager? Or is everyone there a PhD?
Seems like a waste of all that education.

~~~
mdwelsh
OP here. Lots of people at Google have PhDs. Most do not. My role is actually
a Tech Lead Manager, which is far more technical than a typical manager
position, and indeed I am on the Software Engineer ladder. I would say about
80% of my time is spent on technical things (writing code, design docs,
evaluating designs, etc.) and only about 20% on "manager" activities like
doing performance reviews, hiring, and the like. More here: [http://matt-
welsh.blogspot.com/2013/04/running-software-team...](http://matt-
welsh.blogspot.com/2013/04/running-software-team-at-google.html)

As far as "wasting education" is concerned, I've blogged extensively about the
differences between doing applied research in industry and doing that kind of
work in academia or in a more pure research setting, see for example
[http://matt-welsh.blogspot.com/2010/11/why-im-leaving-harvar...](http://matt-
welsh.blogspot.com/2010/11/why-im-leaving-harvard.html)

I find that applying my skills as a systems and networking researcher in an
industry setting, where I have the chance to develop and launch real products,
is far more satisfying than just writing academic papers. But this is of
course not for everyone.

------
marban
Reminds me of [http://strikemag.org/fuck-your-hard-
work/](http://strikemag.org/fuck-your-hard-work/)

~~~
chippy
It reminded me of the Puritan/Protestant work ethic. Mostly found in North
America, the idea is that only by working hard and diligently will a person
achieve the status of Good Person and get good things in this life (and if you
were religious, the next life). One can compare and contrast this cultural
idea about work with ideas about work in other countries, especially other
Christian ones.

~~~
henrikschroder
I'm amazed at the number of people in this thread who consistently work
overtime, but even more amazed by the people who seem to think that working
9-to-5 is a bad thing, and who wants to work more.

I work for an "extremely" progressive company in the valley, and I have three
whole weeks of paid vacation per year, and I'm chafing at that, because I'm
used to having six weeks of paid vacation per year.

I will never understand the american work ethic.

~~~
jcheng
Is it common where you're from for people to take all six weeks? That's almost
one week out of every eight spent on vacation. (Don't get me wrong, that
sounds amazing...)

~~~
desas
It's common in Western Europe.I get 5 weeks holiday plus 8 public holidays. I
sometimes don't take a day or two but will then take a day or two extra the
next year..

------
aresant
From the fringes - how typical is a 8:45am - 4pm (3 days a week anyways)
schedule for HN googlers?

~~~
munificent
I'm a software engineer at Google in Seattle. I try to get in by 8:30 but
sometimes it's closer to 8:00. I leave between 5:30 and 6:00 depending on when
I got in. The office empties out pretty quickly in the evenings.

I almost never work longer than that. (I honestly wish I could sometimes. I
end up having to interrupt myself in the middle of things to leave on time,
but such is life when you have kids.)

If he's also doing a bit of email in the evenings, leaving at 4:00 doesn't
seem unreasonable. I've never seen or heard anyone fret about work hours at
the office. My experience has been that the company is very results oriented.

(This is still hard for me to adjust to coming from EA where I worked a _lot_
of hours and company culture, unintentionally or not, placed a lot of emphasis
on how long you kept your seat warm.)

~~~
henrikschroder
> I almost never work longer than that. (I honestly wish I could sometimes.

But why? You won't produce more, you won't earn more, you won't learn more?

~~~
TheDong
All three of those statements are false.

If you're "in the groove" so to speak with coding, continuing work could be
much more productive. At the times he wishes to work later, his additional
work could be dozens of times better than a typical day. In contrast, coming
back to code you were in the middle of a day later can have an hour of delays
as you work just to get back to the state of understanding you had before.

In this way he will produce more. Producing more sometimes leads to earn more
(that one's not as definite). Learning more... well, the more projects you
complete the more you get to do; the more chances to learn.

This isn't to say that having a fixed end time is bad, just that your
statement is false.

~~~
jsprogrammer
The statement isn't necessarily false. You didn't show how the statement is
false.

More time spent staring at a text editor (or even spent pounding on a
keyboard) does not mean that you produce more. Maybe if your production metric
is characters typed you produce more, but in terms of usable features there is
going to be a point of negative returns on time spent.

~~~
brosky117
I think he means that when you are in a really good groove, you can be way
more productive (and happy to keep working). I don't know about anyone else,
but I can definitely relate. This is 100% about your state of mind. Happy code
comes from a happy coder :)

------
Wonnk13
reading the comments of some of the Googlers here really makes me regret
declining my offer :/ When the hell did Google become some 9-5 gig?

~~~
ryandrake
You're only hearing from the 9-5ers. The rest are still at their desks working
:-) It's only 7:30PM in the Bay Area.

~~~
sukilot
Most HN comments are written from work.

------
spydum
So, maybe a naive question, why does a manager need a pager?

~~~
tmhedberg
He's a Tech Lead Manager, or TLM, which means he's an engineer who also
manages the team he's a part of. In some cases, dev teams have SRE
counterparts who take the pager responsibilities, among other things. But not
all services at Google have SRE support, and for those that don't, the
developers themselves are usually on call. That includes the dev team's TL, or
TLM, as the case may be.

------
vidoc
That's not a lot of hours!

------
spocklivelong
Oh wow, Mark Zuckerberg is his student.

