

Why I Left Google - jeanhsu
http://www.jeanhsu.com/?p=239

======
pmorici
I've got a stupid question. When people quit their job and go solo like this,
what do they do about health insurance? Do they just forgo it since their
young and it's unlikely they will need it or are there affordable plans you
can get when you don't have insurance through your employer? I've looked
around the Internet but can only find vague information on the topic.

For example this
[http://www.ahipresearch.org/pdfs/2009IndividualMarketSurveyF...](http://www.ahipresearch.org/pdfs/2009IndividualMarketSurveyFinalReport.pdf)
document seems to indicate that someone in their late 20's would pay just
under $2,000 on "average" but the numbers seem to range wildly with location
and some family plans going as high as 13k per year which seems ridiculous.

Edit: This thread though it contains helpful responses confirms my suspicion
that getting non employer health coverage is a complete CF.

~~~
tptacek
Not a stupid question. Most people COBRA. COBRA is expensive but, like a group
plan, automatically accepts you. Since the overwhelming vast majority of indie
startups fail, COBRA usually lasts long enough to bridge you to your next job.

After about a year or so, if you're not certain you're going to end up with a
full-time job, you need to look for real insurance. COBRA will last for almost
another year, but when it ends it ends, and god help you if you're hit by a
car or diagnosed with something nasty towards the end of your COBRA coverage
(nobody will insure you).

Coverage from the majors costs roughly $400/mo. It gets much cheaper if you
choose a high-deductable plan (you should), in which case you pay for all your
health care out of pocket. A family of four can expect to pay over $10k/yr for
low-deductable insurance, which is what virtually all companies offer.

Now, choose your own adventure:

Are you ~22 years old, male, with no dependents, with no long-term health
issues and no prior history of hospitalization for illness? You can easily buy
high-deductable insurance on the open market. There are several websites that
will sell it to you.

Otherwise: you may be screwed. If you don't qualify for a group plan of some
sort (which is how most Americans obtain health coverage), you may find that
you are uninsurable. For instance, in the first year of Matasano, we tried to
get private insurance and found that both my daughter and my wife were
uninsurable. My daughter had been hospitalized for a freak seizure when she
was 4. Erin has a functioning female reproductive system. NO COVERAGE. Not,
"we won't cover the things we don't like". No, NO COVERAGE. Every insurer. The
list of conditions with "deny coverage" attached to them, which most insurers
publish, includes a wide variety of conditions experienced by tens of millions
of people.

Good luck!

~~~
pfedor
I believe in California there is something called Cal-COBRA which lasts
another 18 months after COBRA expires, that gives you three years total.

~~~
pmorici
I don't suppose that applies if you quit a job in the midwest and move to
California?

~~~
NateLawson
Not unless your previous employer was a California corp.

------
btipling
There are what like 20,000 or 40,000 people who work at Google? One of them
leaves and feels compelled to write an article about it and then post it
themselves to HN? What else was there in this article? You're going to work on
Android apps because of some professor who inspired you, wonderful.

You know if I was to self-post something to HN, I'd at least try to mention
something I'm working on, or some technology I'm using or some idea I have.
There's nothing like that here. There's nothing here.

I don't understand what the upvotes are for? Moral support?

~~~
pg
This is a very mean thing to say. An unfortunate example of the sort of
comment I have in mind when I say that while the articles on the frontpage of
HN are roughly what they've always been, the comments are meaner. And worse
still, it got net 18 upvotes.

Would you say this to someone if you were talking face to face? I hope not.

~~~
jedwhite
Interestingly, the account is not only 1000+ days, but the same user says
their first account was banned:

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2157137>

So chances are this was a mean commenter in the earlier days too. But it would
seem back then it was unusual and unacceptable enough to get the account
banned, whereas now the meanness is more common place.

On balance though, as someone who lurked for a long time before signing up to
contribute, it is still one of the most supportive communities anywhere that
I've had any involvement with personally.

------
kevinelliott
Your reasoning is synonymous with why I never accepted an offer from Google in
the past. Big companies often have a lot of perks, but much like continually
buying electronic toys every week, it's only medicating most people's
existence.

Breaking out on your own to create your own products forces you to adapt in
ways a "cushy" corporate job just can't stimulate. And although it's
infinitely harder, the battle is worth fighting through. Seeing it through,
persevering, and then driving home a success, all on your own (or with some
help) is an experience you simply can't replace.

Best of luck to you. This is a great community to help see you make it happen.
And congrats!

~~~
kkowalczyk
How many offers did you get and why were you going through the interview
process in the first place if you knew you would not accept an offer?

~~~
kevinelliott
I'd rather not discuss details, but I chose not to work for Google simply
because I had worked for other large companies with similar perks and I was
too young at the time (and at heart) to see myself there. In the future, I may
change my mind, but I certainly don't see that happening any time soon.

------
gvb
Jean has a picture in her album that is metaphorically Life in a Big Company:
[http://lh6.ggpht.com/_jwxdZ0d5COI/TD-
SgCdOmYI/AAAAAAAAHb4/pk...](http://lh6.ggpht.com/_jwxdZ0d5COI/TD-
SgCdOmYI/AAAAAAAAHb4/pkkbb0HHjkc/IMG_2498.JPG?imgmax=640)

* Walled garden.

* Various plants (projects) pushed into the corner. Tidy, but the organization of them is somewhat arbitrary. Some are taller and bushier, but some are looking kind of scraggly. Many are on the shelf.

* Watering can and broom: maintenance is always there waiting.

* Manager in the foreground asking "What are you doing? Why aren't you sweeping? When am I going to get fed?"

~~~
KMStraub
One of the funnier things I've read in a long time. Thanks.

------
aforty
She graduated with a liberal arts background and was an engineer at Google? I
graduated with a degree in computer science and I can't even get them to call
me and setup an interview. I'm a smart guy with some good work experience
under my belt already and my resume looks great.

~~~
dagw
Maybe her liberal arts background gave her an advantage? There must be
thousands of people with more or less identical world class CS background at
Google. They might consider having someone with a different perspective on
things a good thing. Even if you are a programmer, having a big picture
understanding of things beyond code and algorithms can be a huge advantage.

~~~
stevenbedrick
Agreed. I mentioned something like this in a comment the other day- a liberal
arts background can be a massive help to one's ability to function as a
programmer, and when I was hiring programmers at my old job, I routinely found
that candidates who had spent some significant time outside of the CS building
tended to work out better than less well-rounded candidates.

~~~
wyclif
There's a company in the UK that has been profiled on HN before-- their name
escapes me now-- but they are famous for hiring Oxbridge liberal arts
graduates and training them in computer science and software development.
Anybody remember who I'm talking about?

------
tristanperry
A very good read. The job naturally sounds awesome: I mean, free gourmet food
and heated toilet seats?!? (Oh yeah, and that other stuff: good pay, working
with geniuses, etc etc ;-))

But equally, the ending really does IMO show that she's made the correct
decision:

 _"After I turned in my laptop and completed my exit interview on my last day,
I felt such exhilaration and relief. A whole world of opportunity was out
there, and I drove home with a ridiculous grin on my face."_

That definitely is a nice ending to a great blog post. Best of luck to Jean.

------
joshfraser
"I felt that if I stayed, I would look back at this time years down the road,
and wonder, what else could I have done? After I turned in my laptop and
completed my exit interview on my last day, I felt such exhilaration and
relief. A whole world of opportunity was out there, and I drove home with a
ridiculous grin on my face."

Love it! What great inspiration to anyone considering taking the leap into
entrepreneurship. There will be plenty of challenges along the way, but there
are few things in this world more rewarding.

------
jacquesm
Even if the article doesn't _really_ mention why she left google one line
jumped out at me:

> I really miss the heated toilet seats.

I never ever thought that that would figure in to reasons for leaving or
staying at a company.

It looks like having her project canceled hurt her pretty badly, big companies
have a way of axing projects that do not take the feelings of the people that
work on them in to account at all. We all understand it has to happen, how you
go about it can make all the difference.

I hope that she finds what she's looking for, if you're thinking about doing
the same, it helps if you have a better idea of what you're going to do when
you quit your job, it helps even more if you've already been experimenting
with different avenues while still employed, that way you save some runway
that might bite in to your savings in a way that you regret later on.

Having a good plan is really important, quitting without having a good plan
may work but it will definitely complicate matters.

Best of luck to Jean, I hope she keeps us informed about how this all works
out.

~~~
ronnier
Who sits on public toilet seats?

~~~
Mz
Women.

------
tmarthal
My question: Why didn't you work with your management to take a sabbatical
leave?

One of the benefits of the major corporations is that they have policies in
place for leaves of absence. Then you would've gotten the best of both worlds:
1) a fall-back plan if you fail to monetize in your venture 2) a rigid time-
period where you need to finish your venture (and not just be open ended on
figuring out your life)

I did something very similar, after a longer period of time (9+ years) in the
corporate world. I needed that time to germinate my technical ability and
understand my relevant skillset. For me, it was reading "Hackers and Painters"
rather than the Princeton article you linked that got me to pursue my
independent career.

~~~
nostrademons
She'd only been there for 2 years. Sabbaticals in most institutions are for
people with 5+ year tenures.

In a fast-growing company like Google that's still hiring, having a good
performance record and keeping in touch with coworkers is practically as good
as having a sabbatical, anyway. If she were to reapply to Google and her
resume said "Google: 2008-2010" and her old performance reviews were good and
she had good code leftover in the version history, do you think Google would
turn her down? I know of a bunch of people that left Google for startups or
FaceBook or other companies and then returned, and it's basically as if they
never left (except that for legal reasons, Google can't preserve their old
option grant and has to start fresh with stock compensation).

------
KMStraub
If you look at her bio, you'll see this author already has a new job at a
startup called Pulse. Somehow that dampens this act of bravery for me. For all
the upvotes she's gotten, the ending I was hoping for was her decision to
become a founder.

------
ehosca
because you have a big ego ?

------
warmfuzzykitten
She left heated toilet seats? Must be a wacko.

