
Why I Don’t Work At Google  - bootload
http://www.sarahmei.com/blog/2010/04/17/why-i-dont-work-at-google/
======
adityakothadiya
I think the correct title would have been - "Why I won't work at Microsoft,
again.".

I don't think it's a valid argument against Google without having any data-
points. I've seen many Startups also don't finish their features/products and
throw away when they realize this is not the right thing to do.

Overall, don't generalize too much. Experiences are different for different
people at different places.

~~~
antirez
Right, but look at google's recent history: more and more people, and in some
way, less and less _signal_ generated.

This is some truly unavoidable thing I guess, unless you do some radical stuff
like splitting apart your company in different pieces, like anti trust itself
would do?

Also for me is truly disturbing the idea of being able to select people that
will do great stuff just using an interview. You can just check if they
understand big O, can design things, and are actually able to code. This is
already a result, but I bet this also creates a monoculture as this way you
create a filter that is not just cool, but also bad in some way (IMHO this is
why Google fails when trying to design stuff that are designed for the
masses).

disclaimer: I got a request for interview from google two times and refused
it, so I'm not frustrated about that or alike.

~~~
tensor
I disagree on the _less signal_ part of your comment. To me, it looks like
more and more signal. Since search, we've seen maps, mail, reader, chrome,
android, app engine, big table, google docs, wave, google voice, a google
branded phone, google fibre to the home for those lucky enough, prediction
api, charts, dns services, @font-face directory, google home page, and others
many others.

Sure, some of those have been buyouts. But overall that is a lot of signal as
far as I'm concerned.

~~~
dangrossman
Some? Only one or two things in that entire list originated at G.

~~~
xenomachina
First, why does it matter what "originated" there? Many of the projects that
didn't originate at Google wouldn't have seen the light of day if Google or
someone with comparative capital hadn't acquired them. And actually, it's a
bit ironic that you make this complaint here given the subject of the article,
since acquiring startups is a way to hire people who are both smart and get
things done.

"Originated" is also somewhat ambiguous. There are at least a couple of
examples where Google was working on a project internally and saw a similar
external project that they decided to acquire and merge with the internal
project. Did the resulting project "originate" at Google? Even if you answer
no, I think at least half of the items at that list still "originated" at
Google.

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nostrademons
This seems to paint the world in overly broad brush strokes.

There are good teams, and there are bad teams, and there's bound to be a bunch
of both in any organization. You have the same problem with startups: there
are good ones and bad ones, and it's usually not possible to tell one from the
other until you join them.

Why not just try, see what you get, and then you can transfer or quit if you
end up on a bad team? Hell, it's a lot easier than joining a bad startup,
where you have to get a whole different job to escape from it.

~~~
shadowsun7
I agree. It seems as if she's taking whatever she's experienced in Microsoft
(which is _one_ company) and applying that to any other company with
multidisciplinary teams and a large bureaucratic layer.

She should, at least, give working in Google a chance (maybe a couple years or
so?) before writing something like this.

~~~
Tichy
I am struggling with the decision to accept a job offer at the moment, and I
keep hearing this: "why don't you just try it (for a couple of years)". And I
don't understand it.

Granted, I could quit after 3 months, but it would probably invoke bad
feelings. So I assume for employment I would be looking into at least one
year. That is HUGE investment of time. It is 3% of my officially remaining
time in the work force (provided I stay healthy, until the official retiring
age). Is that really an investment you are supposed to make "just to try
things"???

~~~
studer
So what's your alternative?

~~~
Tichy
Freelancing, selecting projects with shorter durations. Saving enough money to
be able to bootstrap a startup and determine one's own working conditions.

Though I might be unique in feeling uneasy about quitting a job after a short
amount of time (like a month). Maybe for other people it is not as much of an
issue.

~~~
matwood
You shouldn't feel uneasy about quitting within 90 days. Most employes have
the 90 day provision to fire you if you don't work out, so just use the same
logic.

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clemesha
Damn, I really, really agree with this:

    
    
      I know that while it’s important to write quality software,
      it’s equally important to just fucking finish it.

~~~
kenjackson
It's also sometimes important to simply fail a project. I don't know what she
worked on, but I suspect that it's just as equally likely that the product
should have never reached market.

~~~
clemesha
Good point. When a project is clearly going no where, it's worth it (but not
easy) to fail it and move on.

I've personally have had this experience, and although failing a project
hurts, it ultimately frees up time to move on to bigger and better things!

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lanstein
I'm waiting for the part where she explains why she doesn't work at Google.

~~~
ellyagg
I believe because the publicly available reports of their interview process
don't seem to emphasize "getting stuff done" as much as she prefers, but
instead emphasize other attributes. She believes that if it's not emphasized
in the interview process, it's likely to be underemphasized in the
organization as a whole. Since she believes that attribute to be more
important than its proportion of apparent emphasis, the probability of being
dissatisfied with her work environment is too high for her tastes. That's how
I read it anyway.

~~~
cdibona
I would say that interviewing for engineering knowledge (coding, algorithms,
software engineering) is pretty straight forward, but interviewing to figure
out if a candiate can get 'real' work done is very difficult.

I don't know of any magic way of testing for that. There are some good
signals, of course, such as:

1) pre-interview open source reputation and release. 2) References from people
you trust and respect. 3) Publications with significant content written by the
candidate.

But I've seen each of these fail, even in combination, in predicting the
ability to execute. That said, it's better than nothing.

(disclaimer, I work for Google, and am also waiting for the part about Google
in the OP)

~~~
rjett
There is a way to test to see if someone can get stuff done, but that usually
entails hiring someone for a predetermined time (6 mos, a year, 2 years) and
then evaluating whether they meet your standards at the end of that time
period. If they do, they stay on. If someone really wants to work for your
organization, I can guarantee that they'll do everything in their power to get
stuff done during this time period.

~~~
cdibona
Oh, sure, but some of the best people won't work on a contract basis.

~~~
rjett
Yes, I totally agree, but I was assuming we were talking about evaluating
people who were for the most part unproven in the work world. Many investment
banks and consulting firms hire fresh undergrads on contract.

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cjbprime
First, it would mean a lot more to explain why you don't want to work
somewhere if that company had actually offered you a job. Anyone can say that
they don't want to work at Google, but it doesn't have much force if it could
just be a sour grapes rationalization. It would at least be good to disclose
whether or not you've talked to them about it.

Pretending that isn't a problem, though -- where does the claim that Google
doesn't finish things come from? Google must have one of the highest ratios of
number-of-devs-on-a-product to number-of-million-users-using-that-product in
the industry! I see no reason to conclude that a Google engineer's work would
be likely to be canceled and disused.

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sliverstorm
Any time someone makes such a statement, I can't help but think of this:

<http://xkcd.com/192/>

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tom_ilsinszki
Completely rational and smart people can form an irrational group. Since you
have a network of people, they could form such a group, that everyone's
individual talents are cancelled out.

This is why, I don't believe in complete democracy at work. There has to be a
clear leader, who is not afraid to make decisions, to see them through, also
is accepted by others to make decisions (in most cases at least), and is
someone, who finishes stuff.

Last week I read a great way to assemble such a group (at least it sounds like
a good way to me). In the book '33 Strategies of War', there was a chapter on
how George Marshall, an American military leader trained young proteges, and
picked the ones, who were the most like him. After putting these young people
to test, he gave them key roles and placed them in key positions. He, then
encouraged them to also train their own subordinates.

Basically he 'cloned' himself, and then showed his 'clones', how to 'clone'
themselves too. Thus he was able to create a new, more efficient group of
leaders, without confronting leader with large egos.

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rbanffy
As a counterpoint, I'd never work for Microsoft, not because they would make
me use Windows, Outlook and Visual Studio, not because I'd have to end lines
with semicolons. Neither it would be for a lack of smart people to work with -
there are incredibly smart people there, several of them dear friends of mine.

I wouldn't because management has continously engaged in unethical (barely
sub-criminal) behaviour I don't want to enable. I don't want my work to be
used for that.

The passing mention to the antitrust investigation is telling.

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spaghetti
Have you considered Fogcreek? "Smart and gets things done" seems to be a
strong theme throughout the company.

~~~
seldo
As long as you don't mind working on boring software. (I mean, I know Joel is
everyone's nerd idol and everything, but really: bug tracking software?
Version control? That's all you got?)

~~~
Psyonic
Joel's a pretty smart guy, but he's definitely not everyone's nerd idol. He's
not even on my list.

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msort
Being smart doesn't necessarily mean cannot getting things done.

The author never worked at Google. It seems not so reasonable to project her
experience at one Microsoft group to Google.

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jrockway
She does have a good point; I've always found that people that like those
mindgames are never really very good at programming. Something about wanting
to find the right answer to a specific question seems to conflict to finding
an answer to a vague set of requirements, programming.

A better interview question might be "draw a picture of anything that comes to
mind".

~~~
kaib
I interviewed with Google four years ago and have been working there since.
None of my interview questions were of the puzzle variety. Many were coding
and some interviews were completely open ended of the type "You seem to have
done a lot of X" followed by a series of hard questions on X from someone who
is clearly interested in learning more about X. I found the interviews quite
enjoyable. YMMV.

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billmcneale
tldr: I interviewed at Google two years ago, I didn't get an offer so now I'm
writing a blog post to explain that I didn't really want to work there anyway.
Psych.

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zach
I'd say the ultimate proof of being both talented and effective is being part
of a talent acquisition where the acquired team's product can be fully
evaluated.

The fact that Google does many such acquisitions is, to me, conclusive
evidence that they do value both of these traits.

But no, maybe not so much in the hiring process, because it's difficult and
error-prone enough just to determine potential effectiveness.

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nlawalker
"Microsoft" represents hundreds of different places to work, and I'm pretty
sure Google does too. Different teams at large employers can be worlds apart.
The corporate culture that they all have in common is a thinner stripe than
most people think, especially when it comes to how you really feel about your
day-to-day work and your ability to get things done.

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ww8520
I won't work for Google via recruitment neither. The only case if Google buys
my company.

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memoryfault
Would be interesting to know which product she worked on at Microsoft. Sure
they have teams that don't deliver, but they also have teams that get shit
done.

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stcredzero
"Just %#~*^{}! Finish It" is really just a vaguer "You Ain't Gonna Need It" or
"The Simplest Thing That Could Possibly Work."

------
Tichy
Can't you ask questions about the team during the interview, to gauge whether
they get things done or not?

~~~
nostrademons
Google hiring is done at a company level, so for most hires, you don't
actually know what team you'll be working on during the interview. You are
typically given some idea at offer time (I was told my manager's name, my
manager's manager's name, and the department), and you can talk to people you
might know at the company, but if you're remote or don't know many Googlers it
can be tough to get more information.

It's also not unusual for teams to change shortly after you start - I switched
managers in my second day there, and then what I ended up working on wasn't
exactly what I was assigned to work on.

~~~
brown9-2
I've heard that a new employee can expect his or her first project to last
about 12-18 months - can you confirm or deny this?

~~~
nostrademons
It depends a lot on what your particular project is, but 3-6 months seems much
more typical to me. Mine lasted exactly 4 months from the day I joined to the
day we launched...I was joining an already-existing project that was fairly
far along, though.

It often takes 12-18 months before you have a good enough understanding of the
company and your own desires to figure out where you _want to be_. (And often
more - I know people who joined in 2007 who are just now working through
this.) But that time isn't all spent on one project: typically you'll work
through a bunch of them, all in the same focus area. I think this is more akin
to the normal process of discovery that most young people go through, though,
and not something specific to Google.

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dylanz
I could only relate to that last sentence: "That's about as appealing as
another winter in Redmond."

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radicalmatt
These are problems that I wish I had to worry about.

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jamesseda
I stopped reading at "My first job out of college was at Microsoft."

You are willing to give Microsoft a chance but not Google?

~~~
julio_the_squid
She is saying that she shuns the idea of working for Google based on the
lessons learned working at Microsoft.

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sfall
title: why i don't work at google

response: they did hire you

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zmitri
I won't work at Google because Al Gore is one of their "senior advisors".

