
Ask HN: Is it time to leave Google? - kj65557
I&#x27;ve been at Google for 2+ years and am pretty happy with the salary&#x2F;benefits, but I&#x27;m really strating to question the overall direction of the company. It&#x27;s not clear to me that Google is still innovative like it used to be. I&#x27;m a bit torn because I don&#x27;t want to be cavalier and forego the opportunity that was given to me, but it seems like a lot of smaller companies are doing much more interesting work. How do I know when it&#x27;s time to leave? What sort of criteria should I be looking for in other companies? I&#x27;ve always been interested in aerospace but most of those companies (SpaceX, etc) seem like a stretch.<p>(Note, I&#x27;m new here, let me know if there&#x27;s anything I can do better when writing textposts)<p>Edit: It seems like maybe my particular role isn&#x27;t that interesting. Which orgs within google are good to work for?
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monfrere
How senior are you? I would first spend some time hunting for innovative teams
within Google to transfer to. There are plenty of boring jobs at Google but
also plenty of ambitious small teams working on startup-like projects. Even
cute experimental features on big established products
(search/gmail/maps/drive/etc.) often could plausibly be the basis for an
entire startup, but there are also some pie-in-the-sky projects people are
working on if you look around a bit.

~~~
kj65557
There might be some possibility for leadership but otherwise it's all CRUD
operations and the complexity is in the business, not the tech.

~~~
jmalicki
Why aren't you _creating_ something interesting? Good careers don't go to
those waiting to be handed a golden egg.. understand the business, understand
innovative technology, and connect them, and the world will be your oyster.

If management won't let you understand enough of the business to do so, I
sympathize, I've been there. But if you're allowed to understand the business
and are expecting _someone else_ to come up with the innovation, you just need
to get your shit together and be an engineer.

~~~
kj65557
I see what you mean, but getting approval to make changes is challenging in
this particular department.

~~~
jmalicki
Also, if you're not getting approval, maybe you need to work on connecting
your ideas to business value a bit more...

~~~
kj65557
That's true. I'm still new to this org so things might change

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maxander
At the risk of stating the obvious- it doesn't matter how innovative a company
is as a whole, it matters how innovative _what you 're doing_ is. SpaceX does
some really cool stuff, say, but you're not a rocket scientist- managing their
financial software wouldn't be cooler than it would be for anyone else's.
Conversely, Snapchat is just a goofy app for teenagers, but whoever writes the
facial tracking system they use in their photo filters is doing some neat
science. I don't know what the insides of Google are like, but I would bet
that if there's anywhere a mid-career programmer can gain some interesting new
skills on the job, it's probably _somewhere_ in there- and that will get you a
more interesting position, whether you stay or go elsewhere in the longer run.

~~~
aserafini
I respectfully disagree with this. Doing something cool in your day-to-day
work can still be depressing if your personal values are not alligned with the
organisation's.

For example, I was once offered the opportunity to work on low-latency
software that identifies users as they move between websites (fingerprinting
in ad tech speak). There are tons of cool CS problem around this, but in the
end I turned it down.

Now I do ostensibly 'boring' CRUD work for a large eCommerce marketplace
company. But it's an honest business model that benefits both sides of that
market and I feel happier than I would have been in ad tech.

~~~
maxander
Sure, but company ethic is a different axis from innovative-ness. It sounds
like you chose to work at an ethical-but-conventional position over an
unethical-but-innovative one, and good on you for it. But you can have both
(or neither) at once, too. Where Google falls on the ethics dimension is a
good question, but that didn’t seem to be the poster’s complaint.

------
charleslmunger
If you've been there for 2+ yeara and you're no longer excited about the work
you're doing, maybe take advantage of Google's liberal transfer policy, and
join a different team.

But it never hurts to interview.

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ggm
I do not work for Google but know people who do, and did. The ones who are
happiest have a high degree of personal autonomy and self actualise to work on
things which interest them. Some of them took their 20% cool time to real
work.

Some resented being moved interstate or overseas, and sought a path home to
where they like to be.

Some say they are burned out and burnt by scale problems but mainly I think
it's loss of autonomy at root. Being told to do things you don't believe in is
hard.

Only one left in some sense fully vested, and he's a bit bored by the outside
world. I don't think google is a 'chocolate factory' but be warned after
initial enthusiasm wears off, you need to retain some sense of core role in
any job, and few may be as accommodating as Google is said to be.

------
zitterbewegung
I generally go with decisions like this with my gut. If you feel like that you
aren't happy with where you are then quit or figure out something new to do
either within or without the company. Do you want to be filled with regret or
not at the end of the day?

------
praneshp
Many Googlers I meet/am friends with have no fucking clue about the rest of
the industry, especially so if that was their first job. If that applies to
you, be careful.

I'd look internally first.

~~~
kj65557
How so?

~~~
praneshp
Couple of things I notice mainly

1\. Pushing code and being unaware of the build system that does anything
else.

2\. Unable to comprehend that there can be teams/companies where some products
are written and maintained by one person, and does not have any practical code
reviewing. (This is not a good thing, but it is not difficult to imagine how
that can be).

3\. (and lately), people explaining things that come off to me as SWE/SRE
friction, as opposed to the typical google SRE hiring/book propaganda.

I'll add anything I can think of, but obviously it's one persons opinion.

~~~
stormbeard
Can you elaborate on #3 a bit? I'm not sure what you mean and m really
curious. I've always gotten the vibe that the SRE recruiters were not giving
me an honest view of the realities of that job.

~~~
praneshp
Reach out over email, please? I'm not super worried about my friends being
identified but got to respect their privacy.

------
Scene_Cast2
So the way you're describing the situation is "should people leave google",
not "should __you __leave google ".

General career advice has been discussed a lot here, but it really depends on
your personality and motivation. (E.g. do you want a stable job, can you
tolerate a stable job for a long time, are you looking to get into management,
can you pull off company hopping every 2 years, are you a SWE and do you have
a math background & drive to branch into data science, are you planning to
launch a startup and what skills are you still missing to do that, etc)

~~~
rapnie
..and maybe: do you agree with the ethics, moral values and the direction they
are trending towards, and your personal contributions to these aspects :)

------
jrockway
I think you probably know the answer already. Given the wealth of forums
inside Google where you could ask for this advice, you've decided to post
anonymously to Hacker News. That probably means there's some underlying issue,
like you think your manager is going to punish you if he or she finds out that
you aren't happy with your position, or you think future teams you may want to
work with will look upon you unfavorably if they read the post. As soon as you
stop trusting your coworkers, it's probably game over. (And I'm not saying
you're doing the wrong thing, or that your concerns are unwarranted. They are
probably legitimate concerns.)

I was extremely happy at Google for many years. I liked my coworkers, I liked
my work, I liked my manager. I did get burned out from time to time, but
usually there was something interesting to keep me going through the rough
patches, and my team, coworkers, and managers were all very supportive of what
I needed to do to stay productive and happy (which in a lot of cases was
"sleep for 2 days and maybe wake up to have a meeting that would be
inconvenient to move"). It was quite wonderful. I had no trouble getting
promoted, got "strongly exceeds" performance reviews, and had a lot of fun.
Good times.

All good things must come to an end eventually, however. I came into work one
day and my project was cancelled (and not like "wind it down over the next 6
months", but literally "might as well delete the CLs you're working on") and I
hastily transferred to another interesting-sounding team that, in retrospect,
I kind of got the hard-sell to join.

As it turned out, I didn't really care for the other team that I transferred
to, and thought to myself "everyone else on my old team got 6 months to sit at
home and research other projects to transfer to, so I'll just look for another
project." I did not get that option. I was basically told "you just
transferred, so you can't leave." And then told, "you really aren't getting
enough work done on your own hours, I want you to be here at 9am so I can make
sure you're working." That went as well as you'd imagine. A bunch of people
advised me "you're depressed, you should take 3 months off and get some
antidepressants". I talked with my doctor and did that. In the end, it had no
effect. The third-party company that handles paid leave denied my claim, so it
was unpaid leave. I decided to take a vacation right at the end of my leave...
which the vacation system decided was invalid and silently discarded. When I
was on vacation without cell phone service, Google started calling my parents
(I'm 32 BTW) looking for me. It was quite a production when I finally got cell
phone service back. 3 months of de-stressing, instantly erased.

I got back and started working on a new project under the supervision of my
existing manager. He decided that, based on git commit timestamps, I wasn't
programming quickly enough. (I got that from another very new manager once,
and it was also an App Engine project. I'm not sure if that says more about me
or App Engine, but I digress.) To be brutally honest, I'm kind of offended
that he didn't consider me to be capable of forging timestamps on git commits.
I thought about it, honestly, but in the end decided that experienced managers
knows that some things are easy and some things are hard. But in the end, I
thought honesty was the best policy.

I was pretty stressed out at this point because my manager and I clearly
didn't get along, and the project I wanted to work on didn't have official
headcount so I couldn't really get out of a bad situation. At that point I
wrote up some email to the relevant concerned parties and realized "I do not
want to read the response to this email", so I didn't. Some time passed and
someone from HR called me saying "you know if you are gone for 3 days, you're
voluntarily resigning, right?" I said, "yup." And that was the end of my
experience working for Google. I still have my laptop and badge. They still
have a box of my stuff (including my beloved Realforce 87UB keyboard!) Oh
well.

My point is, there are other places to work. Google is a huge company and some
people are happy and some people aren't. If you're unhappy, maybe you can find
happiness elsewhere. I'll tell you one thing, though... antidepressants won't
make you happy about a job you don't like.

------
skybrian
You did't say what office you're in, but Google is a big place and there are
lots of internal job openings, at least at the larger offices. I'd suggest
looking around both internally and externally to see if there's something that
interests you more. (There are teams doing good work that has little to do
with the larger political issues.)

That's awfully generic advice, but to do better you'll need to get an advisor
who can get to know you.

~~~
kj65557
And recommendations for advisors?

~~~
skybrian
Not really, but if you decide to look for internal transfers, I think there is
an internal advisors program that might help. (I never used it but it seems
like a logical place to start.)

------
killjoywashere
Brain. Verily, calico, look at their venture page: hundreds of amazing
projects backed by teams of phds in the prime of their careers. You could
bring some of that work in house.

------
chrismcb
Nothing has really changed in the world in the last two+ years. Google did
some cool innovated stuff then, and it is doing it now. Small companies were
doing cool innovated stuff, as well as boring stuff then... As well as how.
I'm not saying you shouldn't leave, but I wouldn't leave because of the reason
you gave. There are advantage and disadvantages to worrying for a small
company. Look around, but look around Google as well.

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hux_
Find People and teams you want to work with internally first and interview
with them. What is happening in the news has nothing to do with developing
your own skills. That fully depends on the people you surround yourself with.
And if you haven't learnt how to find those people within a place like Google,
it's not going to be easy to learn outside.

~~~
SemiEarlyGoogle
A fun, different, but effective way to find creative Googlers and Xooglers to
chat with is at [https://gxjam.com](https://gxjam.com)

GXJam prolly wasn't designed for that purpose in mind, but that's how I use it
:)

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dingo_bat
On the whole, Google is still one of the most innovative places to work. Even
if their ingenuity is decreasing, that doesn't necessarily mean some other
place is better. Another thing to consider is what about your job
specifically? If that is innovative enough for you, why do you care?

------
cottonseed
I found this to be an interesting discussion on the question:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k2gidnJyGZA](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k2gidnJyGZA)

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pkaye
What is your skillset like?

~~~
kj65557
FlumeJava/Spanner/Stubby Services, mostly in payments

~~~
trash54321
Hear, hear. I am formerly Google Payments too. Don't leave just yet, there's
plenty of hope for you staying and transferring to another org.

I have been at Google about 12 years now and had a three year stint in
Payments until somewhat recently. Out of all of the organizations, projects,
and products I worked on (6 projects, 12 managers, 5 offices, 2 continents),
Payments is the least Google-feeling of them all with the worst management and
politics (frankly it was fucked). The rest of Google was a dream in
comparison. Had I known Payments was in bad shape, I might not have joined it
originally.

Before leaving, try somewhere else. I recently founded my own team elsewhere
build software for distributed system infrastructure, and I cannot tell you
how fun it is. The joy is still at Google, but Payments is a blackhole. I
can't believe the rest of the leadership tolerates that hostile black sheep of
an org.

Google is largely what you make of it.

~~~
kbyatnal
What team are you on now?

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harlanji
"Fuck yes or no" lets me see the answer. Nice job using your position to help
your name get some bubble. Everything cool is happening outside of silly con
valley at this point.

~~~
kj65557
If you have suggestions for other places to work let me know

