In 2008 Google HR set up a private Google Group to ask former employees why they left the company. We’ve been forwarded what appears to be authentic posts to the thread by a number of ex-Googlers, which we reprint below minus identifying information other than their first names.
The thread shows a brutal honesty about what it’s like to work at Google, at least from the point of view of employees who were unhappy enough to resign. Top amongst the complaints is low pay relative to what they could earn elsewhere, and disappearing fringe benefits seemed to elevate the concern. Other popular gripes – too much bureaucracy, poor management, poor mentoring, and a hiring process that took months.
A few of the posts are more positive, and frankly there isn’t a whole lot here that you don’t see in other big companies.
One message stands out though in most of the posts – employees thought they were entering the promised land when they joined Google, and most of them were disappointed. Some of them wondered if it meant they were somehow lacking. One person sums it all up nicely:
Those of us who failed to thrive at Google are faced with some pretty serious questions about ourselves. Just seeing that other people ran into the same issues is a huge relief. Google is supposed to be some kind of Nirvana, so if you can’t be happy there how will you ever be happy? It’s supposed to be the ultimate font of technical resources, so if you can’t be productive there how will you ever be productive?
The full thread is below.
From: Stephen
Date: Wed, 28 May 2008 13:25:07 -0700 (PDT)
Local: Wed, May 28 2008 2:25 pm
Subject: Re: So… Why’d you left, guys? I mean, seriously.
Actually, I hit the Send button on this before I intended to.
I left Microsoft to work for Google in 2005. I stayed 10 months. I
was demoralized. I shouldn’t have ever taken that job. I was
disenchanted the whole time, and yes, like you, my regret over the
poor bargain I’d made affected my performance.
As I was saying. Google actually celebrates its hiring process, as if
its ruthless inefficiency and interminable duration were a sure proof
of thoroughness, a badge of honor. Perhaps it is thorough. But I
would be willing to wager that Microsoft’s hiring process, which takes
a fraction of the time, does not result in a lower-skilled workforce
or result in a higher rate of attrition. And let me say this: if
Larry Page is still reviewing resumes, shareholders should organize a
rebellion. That is a scandalous waste of time for someone at that
level, and the fact that it’s “quirky” is no mitigation.
I was, like you, offered a considerable pay cut to go to work at
Google. The relocation package was lame. So were the benefits. (I
had worked at Microsoft. Microsoft was self-insured, so there were no
co-pays.)
In one TGIF in Kirkland, an employee informed Eric Schmidt that
Microsoft’s benefits package was richer. He announced himself
genuinely surprised, which genuinely surprised me. Schmidt, in the
presence of witnesses, promised to bring the benefits to a par. He
consulted HR, and HR informed him that it’d cost Google 22 million a
year to do that. So he abandoned the promise and fell back on his
tired, familiar standby (”People don’t work at Google for the money.
They work at Google because they want to change the world!”). A
statement that always seemed to me a little Louis XIV coming from a
billionaire.
I still can’t recall all the moralizing postures without a shudder of
disgust.
From: Ben
Date: Wed, 28 May 2008 14:43:09 -0700
Local: Wed, May 28 2008 3:43 pm
Subject: Re: So… Why’d you left, guys? I mean, seriously.
Stephen wrote:
> He
> consulted HR, and HR informed him that it’d cost Google 22 million a
> year to do that. So he abandoned the promise and fell back on his
> tired, familiar standby (”People don’t work at Google for the money.
> They work at Google because they want to change the world!”). A
> statement that always seemed to me a little Louis XIV coming from a
> billionaire.
I ran into a similar irritation while at Google, actually – during that
time when the minikitchens were being stripped heavily. I heard that one
of the reasons was cost – I remember figures mentioned like “thousands
of dollars per day” – and it just didn’t jive well with me.
I mean, look at the profit numbers. Google’s net income for 2006, when I
left, was 3 billion. 22 million a year? Less than 1% of their *profit*.
“Thousands of dollars a day”? Even if it’s ten thousand, that’s still
well under 1%.
Reduce profit by 2% to make your employees much happier . . . well, I
know what I’d choose. In some ways it seemed like Google was getting
increasingly pennywise/poundfoolish, and that just seemed like a dubious
situation.
(Although, to Google’s credit, they opened up a new cafe that solved
many of my food-related issues . . . after I left. Sigh.)
-Ben
From: Ted
Date: Wed, 28 May 2008 17:39:06 -0700 (PDT)
Local: Wed, May 28 2008 6:39 pm
Subject: Re: So… Why’d you left, guys? I mean, seriously.
Sounds familiar (I was at Kirkland too.)
Google took longer than any company I ever worked for to get thru the
hiring process (approx 5 months from resume to job start.)
The interview process was very mixed: They had me slated as a Windows
Developer for some reason, tho everyone on my interview loop wondered
why. I flubbed my first coding pretty bad but after that it was clear
that no-one on my interview loop had enough experience or knowledge to
level me. On the other hand they figured that out and scheduled a
follow on interview with the head of the Kirkland office who asked
reasonable and pertinent questions.
Unlike the previous posters, I was happy with my salary and (for some
reason I can’t articulate) I kept my own private medical insurance…
Also I was surprised that Google seemed to be proud that they didn’t
communicate from one interviewer to the next: at Microsoft it was a
good opportunity to find more appropriate interviewers, etc. if a
person seemed misslated. Oh well, I thought my interview and hiring
process was an anomaly.
From: Laurent
Date: Thu, 29 May 2008 08:10:08 -0700 (PDT)
Local: Thurs, May 29 2008 9:10 am
Subject: Re: So… Why’d you left, guys? I mean, seriously.
I also left Google after only 5 months.
As soon as I got inside, I had the feeling of being swallowed by a
giant borg 
Really, I felt like I didn’t exist, watching people buzzing around
with laptops.
I did however meet with Larry and Sergey during a product review
meeting, and have only good things to say about these 2 guys.
Regarding compensation, I did have to negotiate quite a bit to get on
par with what I earned before.
For options however, I didn’t get much (something like 180 options and
330 gsu).
What was strange with me at Google was: while outside, I had all these
big ideas I could do if I ever worked there.
Once inside, you have 18,000 (at the time, Feb 2008) other googlers
thinking the same things.
I think it’s a good move for them to have App Engine: they won’t need
to hire that many people anymore, or buy small garage-guys because
now developers will be able to develop over the Google OS for free for
Google
One last thing: Google also thinks inside a box (the browser). I felt
this a lot, and was another reason I left. (too constrained)
It’s no surprise that they push to extend what the browser can do.
(Gears, Earth plugin)
Cheers.
From: “shuba
Date: Wed, 28 May 2008 22:01:06 -0500
Local: Wed, May 28 2008 9:01 pm
Subject: Re: So… Why’d you left, guys? I mean, seriously.
Hi Friends,
Yes, I do agree with Stephen about HR. I totally second the statement that
Google’s Hiring process is slack. Agreed, they receive a record number of
applications everyday, but still the feeling that the resume is lost in a
‘black hole’ when there is no reply in as long as 6 months, is terribly
disappointing. Also, the whole exit process could be bettered and ironed
out.
I understand when Eric Schmidt says, one doesn’t work for Google for the
money alone. Job with Google is sure an experience. But, yes, bringing the
perks on par with other bigwigs will bring down the attrition level to some
extent, thou we all do understand that attrition is not a big problem for
Google right now.
Keep writing!
Shuba.
From: Shelby
Date: Thu, 29 May 2008 10:26:39 -0700 (PDT)
Local: Thurs, May 29 2008 11:26 am
Subject: Re: So… Why’d you left, guys? I mean, seriously.
I had an equally ridiculous hiring process – although mine actually
seemed normal (by Google standards) until the result. “And let me
say this: if Larry Page is still reviewing resumes, shareholders
should organize a rebellion. That is a scandalous waste of time for someone at that
level, and the fact that it’s “quirky” is no mitigation. ” – this
couldn’t be more true.
My experience actually in Aug. 2004 when I was interviewing for a
sales position in the Seattle office was the typical 13+ interviews,
including a day trip to MV where I was told that someone would take me
to lunch and instead she took me in a conf. room and interviewed me.
So I ended up not eating at all that day until I returned to the
airport at 4pm. However, I passed my interviews with flying colors
and was surprised 3 weeks later when I still hadn’t heard from my
recruiter about the results of the hiring committee meeting. Finally
he called to tell me that I was rejected because I was currently
working as a Flight Attendant. A job I had started 4 months prior
because it was a great opportunity to move into their management group
but then the airlines started downsizing management and so I applied
for the Google Travel Sales role instead. However, apparently the
elitist hiring committee members believed that FA’s are stupid and
there was no way they would be able to work at Google. Lucky for me
the recruiter agreed it was incredibly sexist and fought with HR to
bring me on as a temp. Three months later they resubmitted me to the
committee and had me remove my former job – instead I mentioned that I
was “traveling” for four months and bingo! I got hired full time. 3+
years later I was promoted twice and named a Google Luminary! Good
think Larry is such an excellent judge of character.
I have to say though, that level of bureaucracy remained pretty much
the whole time I was at Google. I finally left after a lifestyle
change moved me to Austin and they re-nigged on an offer to move me
into the Travel Vertical role for which I was promised before the
move. It’s a real bummer because I loved my co-workers and there are
a ton of great people at Google. But the management has no power to
influence change because they are micromanaged by the Execs.
I’m very happy at my new company though – making twice as much and
enjoying the benefits of a start-up culture again.
From: issara
Date: Fri, 30 May 2008 08:50:45 -0700 (PDT)
Local: Fri, May 30 2008 9:50 am
Subject: Re: So… Why’d you left, guys? I mean, seriously.
I was hired to work in Google’s Singapore office. I found out very
quickly that Google International is not the same as Google-US. The
offered pay was way too low to survive in Singapore, so I left after I
got another job offer that I felt was better for me. I really do
believe that Google is doing some important work with humanitarian
mapping projects and digitizing libraries. But for me, I felt that
Google’s popular image did not match its actions in the work place,
and that some of the things they did were not very “Googly.”
Issara
From: “Lisa
Date: Fri, 30 May 2008 15:16:20 -0700
Local: Fri, May 30 2008 4:16 pm
Subject: Re: So… Why’d you left, guys? I mean, seriously.
I’m enjoying this group and this thread.
I had a far different hiring experience — it moved too
quickly! I wasn’t actually ready to leave my previous position, but
when the Google recruiter called, it would have been silly not to talk
to her.
I had one full day of MV in-person interviews, a few phone
conversations, and the next thing I know, they’re calling me to
present an offer. In retrospect, I shouldn’t have accepted it. I spent
all of 11 days working at Google before I returned to my previous (now
current 
company.
I wish I had asked more questions and asked to meet the team I’d be
managing (at least some of them!) before I jumped on board, but
Google’s reputation as an employer is legendary. At the time, I felt
conflicted, but then I’d think “Google wants me, and everyone knows
how hard it is to get hired there. I should jump on this opportunity.”
I don’t bear any ill will — I think Google is an amazing company, is
doing some revolutionary things, and is full of smart people. And I
bought shares in 2004, so I hope they continue to be very successful.
Cheers!
Lisa
From: Pam
Date: Fri, 30 May 2008 15:39:04 -0700 (PDT)
Local: Fri, May 30 2008 4:39 pm
Subject: Re: So… Why’d you left, guys? I mean, seriously.
I have been sitting back, surprised at the level of negativity
expressed by those on this thread, and wanted to share my very
different experience. Sure, Google isn’t perfect, its management isn’t
perfect, the HR department isn’t perfect, etc, but by and large they
do things better/smarter/friendlier than the vast majority of
companies out there.
My hiring process back in 2003 was, like some of yours, somewhat drawn
out, and I was made to contract for almost 4 months before being
hired, but Google gave me a chance, and I gave Google a chance. And
I’m so glad.
Forget about the cool products I worked on over the years that are on
the cutting edge of technology and impacting millions of people. We’re
mostly talking about work/life balance and job satisfaction. I get
such a kick out of thinking about the incredible stuff I got to do
while at Google (watch Barack Obama/Al Gore/Hillary Clinton/Colin
Powell/Malcolm Gladwell/Jimmy Carter speak, go to a trapeze class,
hear John Legend play in Charlie’s cafe, go to a chocolate trufflemaking
class, ski on Google’s dime year after year in Tahoe, to name
just a few), not to mention enjoy a work environment at Google that
was informal, comfortable, safe, and supportive — so different from
the work environments of my friends in other industries or at other
companies.
I wonder if post-Google bitterness is correlated to when you joined
and/or how long you were at Google. It seems that it is. Maybe it’s
the memories of Google in the first few years I was there that make it
it seem magical, but I really do treasure the time I spent at Google.
I left a few weeks ago, after almost 5 years at the company, because I
wanted to pursue a markedly different career path. Sure, I had times
when I was frustrated with the way Google was doing things, or when I
felt that my particular project, or assignment was lacking, and I
definitely had managers that I didn’t enjoy. But all in all — what a
freakin’ amazing experience!
—–
And, separately, regarding the compensation issue, it seems to me that
Google would do their research and pay market wages high enough to
attract the best. If good candidates refuse to take the jobs because
the wages aren’t high enough to live on, they’d be forced to raise
compensation.
From: “Logan
Date: Fri, 30 May 2008 15:56:47 -0700
Local: Fri, May 30 2008 4:56 pm
Subject: Re: So… Why’d you left, guys? I mean, seriously.
I experienced the same painful hiring process all of you did. The
reputation of Google is why I worked there for three and a half years. I
took pride in where I worked and the work I was doing. I knew I could get
paid more elsewhere but the caliber of people to my left and right was
amazing. I learned a lot and have benefited from the time I spent at
Google.
When asked by friends and family why I was leaving I came up with an
automobile analogy.
One auto has a 5 star crash safety rating, with good gas mileage, low
maintenance costs and good performance. Another, has bluetooth for your
mobile phone, 10 cup holders, sexy looking instrument panel, premium sound
system, DVD player and seat warmer but has poor gas mileage, poor
performance, bad safety rating, expensive maintenance, etc.
Some will make a purchasing decision on what really matters; safety,
performance, serviceability. Some will make a purchase based on “how many
cup holders the car has”. Google is the car with all the sexy features
but very little of what really matters. The amenities,extra-curricular(s)
and conversastion peice of “working for Google” is what keeps most
working at Google.
My $.02
From: Ted
Date: Fri, 30 May 2008 16:27:35 -0700
Local: Fri, May 30 2008 5:27 pm
Subject: RE: So… Why’d you left, guys? I mean, seriously.
My bitterness is almost entirely because of my manager. He was in my
orientation group in Mt. View and seemed like a good egg at the time. Just
as Google can be a great place for the software engineer to do great work
unencumbered, it’s also possible for a manger to be a complete jerk
unencumbered. Tho the other members of the group (that didn’t leave sooner)
thought that they could put up with anything to work at Google they did
notice my manager’s particular irrationality when dealing with me. There
were only two days of my six months there that I didn’t dread going to work.
My manager made sure that no other manager would talk to me and as soon as
the head of the office left town he tried to put me on a PIP. Life is too
short to deal with jerks so I felt I had no choice but to leave.
I do believe that I could have really enjoyed myself at the home office or
with a different manager, etc. but I wasn’t given the choice of what to work
on nor who to work for.
-Ted
From: “Greg
Date: Fri, 30 May 2008 20:29:18 -0400
Local: Fri, May 30 2008 6:29 pm
Subject: Re: So… Why’d you left, guys? I mean, seriously.
I wonder how much of a difference there is between
engineering/non-engineering and MV/non-MV, in addition to the
old-timer/non-old-timer split.
I started working at Google a while ago as an engineer when there was
only the Mountain View office. (If I recall correctly, the NY sales
office opened later that month.) Google certainly seemed like an
ideal place to work at the time, and if I wanted to be an engineer,
I’d probably still want to work there. But there were certainly
issues, even back then, and I believe they’ve mostly gotten worse as
the company has grown.
The hiring process:
Google’s hiring process tends to have a lot of false negatives. If I
had submitted my resume myself, rather than getting recommended by an
employee, I don’t know if I would have gotten in. My GPA was a 3.7,
and the cutoff (at least at one point in Google’s history) was 3.8 (I
went to a tough school, the 6th 4.0 GPA in its history just graduated
this year). I honestly don’t know if this cap is still there (I
suspect not) but this is just one way Google arbitrarily cut down on
the number of people interviewed.
After I had been working, I found out that I was lucky that one of the
members of my team hadn’t interviewed me. My C++ skills weren’t
really all that great, since I hadn’t used C++ in a couple of years,
and I would have totally failed if he had interviewed me. He told me
that he would have been wrong to do so, since I actually ended up
replacing him on the team and automating most of what he had been
doing by hand, so I hope that my example helped make at least one
interviewer a little more reasonable. But the old-timers certainly
felt like they had to have tough interviews, and in many cases “tough”
equated to things like trivia questions or brain teasers, neither of
which are completely relevant to what people were being interviewed
for.
The Google lifestyle:
Food at Mountain View in the early days was great. Things got a bit
crazy when Charlie was cooking in the same tiny kitchen that he had
cooked for 70 people in when there were something like 400 people
eating in the cafe, although the food quality didn’t go down nearly as
much as I would have expected it to. But this was just one of many
examples of overcrowding in the offices that happened over the years
at Google. (And honestly, keeping the cooks happy seemed like a good
idea to me…)
But along with the food came the Google lifestyle: if you were staying
for dinner, it better be because you were working afterwards. It was
frowned upon to leave right after dinner. I think a lot of people
spent quite a bit of time either just before or just after dinner
hanging out and not really being all that productive, which is nice
for the mostly 20-something crowd, but I can sympathize with the
people who have families that didn’t fit in. I had my own reasons for
not wanting to hang out at work, so I never really got that far into
the Google social scene. And my experience was that the people who
spent all their time at Google were the ones that ended up on the
sexier projects or in charge of things. (Admittedly, some of these
people were also workaholics, and I wasn’t willing to give up some of
my non-work social activities, but there seemed to be a bit of
favoritism going on as well.)
Engineers and everyone else:
Unlike most other engineers, I had a job that required me to talk to
people all over the company. I talked to the lawyers, marketing, PR,
product managers, executives, engineers… And because I started
early enough, I also knew quite a few people in sales. As far as
salary went, my offer was 35% higher than my next highest job offer,
so I think I lucked out there. That was certainly not the normal
situation, though. Over the years I talked to plenty of people about
what they thought about Google’s compensation… There’s a huge
discrepancy between engineers and non-engineers. Most of the adwords
support people I talked to complained a lot about their situation.
Not only were they generally overqualified for the jobs (given what
the work actually was, but Google has always prided itself on having
people with extra education) but they could fairly easily have gotten
higher-paying jobs elsewhere. The usual reason for sticking around
that I heard was that after a few years at Google, their resume would
look a lot better on the job market.
And that’s not counting the people who are contractors. I never
understood why all of the recruiters were contractors, given that
Google showed no signs of slowing down its hiring. All this meant was
that a lot of the recruiters had to spend a lot of time training new
recruiters, since they were replaced so frequently. (This, I think,
goes at least partway for explaining why the hiring process was
occasionally a bit slow.)
Management
My biggest pet peeve was the management, or lack thereof, at Google.
I went through many managers in my first few years. I ended up having
at least one manager during this time that was an unpopular manager,
and because of that, I was told many times over that I shouldn’t
bother trying to get a promotion. When I left, I had never been
re-slotted. This, in spite of the fact that my technical judgment was
respected enough that I occasionally delayed launches until their
logging systems were operating correctly. And in spite of the fact
that I essentially consulted to other technical groups. I could go on
about this for a while, but then I might actually sound like I was
bitter.
Remote offices
I worked in Mountain View for 3 years before moving to New York.
Around that time, I started traveling a lot: I had college alumni
activities in southern California, so I occasionally worked out of
Santa Monica, and my brother lived in Seattle, so I worked in Kirkland
a few times. The “Google experience” is substantially different
outside of Mountain View. And being outside of the Mountain View
culture bubble makes it that much harder to get taken seriously. I
honestly have no idea what it’s like to work for Google outside of the
US, but even when you’re only 3 time zones away, it’s sometimes hard
to get noticed by Mountain View.
This e-mail has gotten a lot longer than I really meant it to. But my
point is that there are plenty of good reasons people can have
negative impressions of working at Google. Just like there are plenty
of good reasons people have great experiences there.
–
Greg
From: “Lilly
Date: Fri, 30 May 2008 23:36:36 -0700
Local: Sat, May 31 2008 12:36 am
Subject: Re: So… Why’d you left, guys? I mean, seriously.
I left to go to do a PhD. I liked the work I was doing at Googlea and, like
Pam, I treasure the time I had there, but I also left exhausted and
processing a lot of stress. I joined in June 2003 as an intern and 6 months
later, my amazing manager, Jen, made me a full-time offer without any
additional interviews. HR worked with me to make sure I could finish school
and continue working at Google. I really felt like they had my back and my
best interests in mind.
I think for me, some of the trouble was the crazy unaccountable product
strategy processes that would tell you to work on high risk things on the
one hand, but would hold you back for taking those chance on the other. I
worked on Google Page Creator from the time it was just a 20% prototype and
I also spent a lot of time believing in and doing some a lot of work to make
Google Notebook something successful. I’m not sure taking on those
high-risk, challenging projects was a good idea in the long run, but nobody
told me “hey, we don’t think this project is really worth the resources.”
I’m sort of a heart-and-soul into project person so this meant that I spent
a lot of energy trying to good work on high-risk projects I believed in, but
through the inconsistent support and wavering strategies I had no direct
control over, I felt like a lot of my energy got wasted.
There was also a big management overhaul on our team about a year before I
left and I felt like my team spent so much time trying to figure what was
coming down the pipe next, who was leaving next, etc that it wasted a lot of
energy. In user-experience design, there are a lot of smart, capable people
who have to sort of surf the waves of having a really unclear relationship
with product management.
But on the upside, I really did take advantage of 20% time. In the first two
years, I really felt rewarded and appreciated for my work and in the last
two years, I at least felt respected if not rewarded. Many days at work were
really intellectually stimulating. And despite the management / exec
culture being weird, I felt like Google’s managers are really among the top
in terms of not being corporate world pillagers.
I had decided I wanted to go grad school in my first year at Google, but it
was fun enough that I delayed going *twice* (that was a really awkward set
of deferrals).
But in the end, I was pretty tired of the constant change, the inconsistent
management, and I wasn’t sure if the kinds of people old Google hired –
wearing many hats and workng butts off to take ownership of project’s
success — is the kind of person new Google needed — people who were better
able to step in line to keep the company marching under control. I was part
of the chaos generation.
From: Luqman
Date: Sun, 1 Jun 2008 01:34:53 -0700 (PDT)
Local: Sun, Jun 1 2008 2:34 am
Subject: Re: So… Why’d you left, guys? I mean, seriously.
It looks like most of us have same story to tell….
My case resembles that of Bob ….
It took two months(lesser than others I guess) for my hiring process
to complete, and I made it clear that I had an offer from IBM in hand
which was paying me good … but I was offered the same salary as my
previous employer … which always kept me de-motivated throughout my
tenure. I joined the job due to company’s name and reputation as well
as I had the option to work in day shifts.
There was no proper mentoring for 6 months and within 9 months of my
tenure my manager was not happy with my performance, and mgmt always
stressed on “Putting some Extra Effort” – in other words “Spending
some extra hours” … this may not be the case at Google-MV but this
is what it is in India.
If you don’t put extra hours then you won’t get promoted, no promotion
means no salary hike.
I feel sad about my decision on choosing Google over IBM … Small
pay, No work, No Team spirit, No Hike in 12 months, No balance between
Family Life and work are few things which motivated my move out. I am
still jobless after 5 moths of leaving Google, but I am happy with my
decision(I feel like it is better be jobless than work for google as a
Field Tech).
Coming to the positive side, I enjoyed helping fellow googlers fixing
their PCs or Laptops and helping them with their queries. But Field
Techs have to do all the crap apart from some good work.
I like Logan’s example … good decision.
Cheers,
Luqman.
From: “Marc
Date: Sun, 1 Jun 2008 09:22:03 +0200
Local: Sun, Jun 1 2008 1:22 am
Subject: Re: So… Why’d you left, guys? I mean, seriously.
I agree with Pam. I started working for Google in 2002 in Amsterdam to set
up the Dutch and Belgium Sales office and these years were the best of my
life!
I had to wait 9 months before they hired me, but it was definately worth is.
I had only three interviews then, but number three was Omid, so I might have
been lucky back then. But waiting for 9 months was a challenge as well, but
I knew at that time that Google was something very special, so I had the
patience to wait and it was definately worth it!
I agree that the process of hiring is a pain in the behind, but i also agree
that the hiring process should be hard as Goolge should keep up the process
hiring people that are smarter than yourself. There aren’t many companies in
the world that have so many smart and ambitious people.
The challenge is to keep up the energy within the company and enterpreneurial
part and give people the opportunity to grow within the company. I do agree
that the HR process has always been tough and I do agree that that should
change. I do think too that Google is in the process of decentralising more
and providing management with more authority, also ouside of US.
But don’d forget that Google has existed only for almost 10 years with about
16,000 employees and a 20B dollar company and then you have growing pains as
well.
With these numbers and the fact that Google has a model where
you look closely at teh high performers and the quality of employees is
extremely high, you have issues where you cannot make everyone happy at the
same time. It’s a lot about numbers as well and we must admit Google is
pretty good at numbers, right?
Again, I worked for Google for 5.5 years and I had a great time growing from
a small company of like 500-600 people to 16,000 now.
Again, I agree that HR should be more decentralised and not all be approved
out of MV as the current long process of approvals from MV and little
authority from local offices causes pain and time and influences the spirit
within the company negatively.
And having worked for Google and leaving Google the right way without any
issues should be a great jump in your career as with Google the knowledge is
huge and not many other companies I know has this knowledge, so use that as
good as you can!
Marc
From: “Phil
Date: Thu, 5 Jun 2008 12:38:10 -0700
Local: Thurs, Jun 5 2008 1:38 pm
Subject: Re: So… Why’d you left, guys? I mean, seriously.
On Mon, Jun 2, 2008 at 5:30 PM, Dan wrote:
> I’m somewhat tempted to reply with my own list, but I’m curious ..
> what’s going to happen with all this info? Not obviously useful if no
> one is going to do anything with it (e.g., gather and post a summary
> back to the board, bring it to someone who cares).
At this point I think that the executive committee knows that there
are people out there holding these opinions. In fact, I was at a
couple of TGIFs where Larry and Sergey addressed questions about the
hiring process and others where other execs talked about why they were
making it harder for people to switch projects even though we’d been
bragging externally that it was easy. I thought long and hard about
how to talk about that during interviews. I think that a big part of
is is that Googlers are supposed to be totally “A” players who just
always make things work out well. And there’s some truth to that: for
each of us here with a bitter story to tell there are other people who
landed in pretty much the exact same situation and ended up loving it
(and a lot more who put up with it and kept their mouths shut). So,
until it gets hard for Google to hire top talent, I don’t think the
kind of complaints that have been raised here will become a priority
at the Googleplex.
There’s still a lot of value in this conversation though, if not for
Google, then for the participants. Those of us who failed to thrive at
Google are faced with some pretty serious questions about ourselves.
Just seeing that other people ran into the same issues is a huge
relief. Google is supposed to be some kind of Nirvana, so if you can’t
be happy there how will you ever be happy? It’s supposed to be the
ultimate font of technical resources, so if you can’t be productive
there how will you ever be productive? The truth is that Google can be
a really horrible place to work if you happen to run up against its
shortcomings. Not liking it and/or not being successful there is not a
good indicator of personal competence (and if you think about it you
may realize that some Googlers are successful despite being
incompetent, so it works the other way too.) With so much positive
press about Google it is very difficult to put a negative experience
there in perspective. This thread serves to balance the picture and
gives us a, sometimes badly needed, lens through which to view our
experience at Google and re-evaluate ourselves.
I think that it’s painful for some Google alum to read these posts
when their own experiences were so positive and their sense of loyalty
to Google runs so deep. I think that it would be a mistake to become
cynical about Google. Something truly unique and magical happened
there and may still be happening for all I know. But the magic was
neither universal nor unflawed, and the Google experience left some of
us with open wounds. I was going to say that it would be Googly to be
respectful of that, but to be honest, Google culture just isn’t that
mature. Not yet anyway. Nevertheless, the most positive thing for
those of us who are interested in this thread to do is to understand
and respect the experiences described here. Doing so will, in a small
way, strengthen our own careers as well as those of the people around
us. And eventually some little bit of the learning we do here will
inevitably seep back into Google and do some good after all.
From: Aaron
Date: Thu, 12 Jun 2008 13:48:41 -0700 (PDT)
Local: Thurs, Jun 12 2008 2:48 pm
Subject: Re: So… Why’d you left, guys? I mean, seriously.
My previous employer was sinking fast, and Google seemed like a good
opportunity to get out.
First, I was really disappointed with the salary that Google offered.
During negotiations, they accommodated me a little, but not much. I
was barely making more than I had been in the midwest, and the
difference in CA state taxes wiped out almost all of that. Then
there’s rent. My wife and I don’t have any debt, we pay cash for our
cars, we live in a modest apartment, we only have one small child, and
we don’t travel or live a luxurious lifestyle. Yet we were already
dipping into savings during the second month just to pay the bills.
Part of it was certainly my fault; I shouldn’t have accepted such a
low offer.
The relocation and hiring bonus’ stated values were pre-tax! That was
a huge unexpected blow to the pocketbook. It may sound strange to
some, but Google’s the only company that has ever done that to me.
Again, that’s mostly my fault; I made a naive assumption.
The relocation company told us it would take 8-12 days to get our
stuff. It took 14 days. We managed as best we could for almost 2
weeks with a 1-month-old baby in an apartment with no furniture, no
extra clothes, and a rental car. Google should have taken more
responsibility and initiative on this, but they stood very much
aloof. Their only other option was the corporate housing option (move
twice!). If I had known it would be this bad, I would have rented my
own truck for 1/3 of what Google paid the moving company. I can drive
from Indiana in 3 days; I’ve done it many times.
Anyway, Google should know that good engineers are in high demand.
They get their market value, especially in the Bay Area. So after
only 3 months at Google, I was aggressively recruited by another
company that offered 2x my base salary (which has been increased
repeatedly since then). The company also wanted to hire me to do what
I am most skilled at doing, and I could never say that about Google.
I took the job. I get invitations to interview at companies regularly
(Apple contacted me most recently) but I turn them down every time. I
like what I’m doing, I believe I’m well-paid, and we just released a
very successful product.
There are nice things about Google. I met some intelligent and good
people that will be lifelong friends. I got to see Ron Paul speak,
and I have many fond memories. The bureaucracy and authoritarian
“gods of coding rules and regulations” were crippling for an
experienced developer, but are probably just the right thing for
someone green out of college. To me, the food wasn’t that big of a
deal. It was good, but I’m not much of an eater. However, I was
really disappointed when the hot chocolate started disappearing from
the mini-kitchens. I hope that 20 cents a day was worth it to them!
As a full-time employee I prefer a good salary to graduallyevaporating
fringe benefits and arbitrarily-sized bonuses. I started
out in the dot-com boom, and I’ve seen those empty promises go
unfulfilled time and time again.
I’m not bitter anymore; just disappointed that Google didn’t come
close to what I thought it would be.
From: Juliette
Date: Fri, 1 Aug 2008 10:54:42 -0700
Local: Fri, Aug 1 2008 11:54 am
Subject: Re: So… Why’d you left, guys? I mean, seriously.
Google was my first job out of college. I was an English major at a
prestigious college and was hired to work in HR. That is one of the problems
I had with Google right there – is it really necessary to hire Ivy League
graduates to process paperwork? I went from reading Derrida to processing
“Status Change Request Forms” for X employees to go on paid leave. The term
“Status Change Request Form” will forever haunt me.
The company is – unquestionably – an amazing business model. Despite the
gripes some people may have at Google, employees are Google are coddled much
more than at most other companies. I left after working at Google about six
months (left without even thinking of a bonus) because my abilities were
entirely underutilized and, of the three managers to whom I was assigned,
two were complete nightmares. One was about six feet tall, and I secretly
referred to her as Medusa or Medea, depending on my mood. But that is
neither here nor there. Another reason I left was because I felt overmanaged
in every conceivable way. I shared, for a large part of my experience, the
same office as said manager of mythological Greek she-monsters.
I really have no hard feelings toward the firm. When I tell people I worked
at Google, most people are incredulous that I would have left after such a
short time. I want to make this response as objective and as helpful as
possible, so I have three suggestions for the firm in how to prevent cases
like mine from happening.
1) Avoid hiring creative writing/art/film production majors into highly
structured and highly interpersonal roles like HR. I spent most of my
college life writing short stories – alone. Perhaps not the best indication
that I care or even know how to be productive in a role that requires
constant client-facing time. My manager used to always pride herself on
being excellent at “customer service,” which she often said was her favorite
aspect of HR. Service ANYTHING gives me the chills, as it does – I am sure -
for most highly left-brain types.
2) There is Google quirky, and there is too weird to ever fit into a
corporate mold. Identify.
3) Make it easier for people to switch managers if the fit is egregious
4) Give a more accurate representation of Google to potential employees
BEFORE you hire them. All I knew before starting at Google was “#1 Place to
Work According to Forbes” and “Free Gourmet Food” and “Unlimited Sick Days”
and “We Want You to Be Googley!” Like, properly, echoing in my brain. My
twenty-two year old greedy magpie self was wholly drawn in by the idea of
having sashimi anytime I wanted without paying a dime. But as nice as it is
having a cushy 401K and unlimited sick days, I was not willing to sacrifice
my personal happiness and career fulfillment, not even for all the free
kombucha I could drink.
In short – I left for personal reasons listed above. Now is the time for my
shameless self-plug. After bumming it around for 5 months doing odd jobs
(like, properly odd… I did stints in PR, dog walking, babysitting,
modeling) I finally landed the job I’d always dreamed of, which is to write
for a living.
I now run my own fashion blog and host an online fashion “web show” at
< …> If anyone out there is interested in fashion,
even as a passing thing, it might be of some interest.
-Juliette
From: Scott
Date: Mon, 6 Oct 2008 12:37:03 -0700 (PDT)
Local: Mon, Oct 6 2008 1:37 pm
Subject: Re: So… Why’d you left, guys? I mean, seriously.
Hi there,
Well I left Google three months ago so the scars are still fresh! I
worked in sales and a bit of sales management (will explain) in London
between 2004 – 2008.
I think with all these things, its the little bricks that make the
house. I have yet to find a perfect job, so I was pretty bummed when I
was pitched one when I joined.
Here is my two penneth
Management – I strongly believe there were a lot of people who did
very little in the way of people management. Due to the aggressive
growth of Google, a lot of managers essentially learnt nothing about
the products or issues with staff. Instead they ‘managed up’ covering
their own patch or careers. I averaged consistent high OKR scores
(despite the managing of the curve nonsense that creates more
subjectivity than objectivity) and despite having 5 managers in 3
years (all of whom knew nothing about my vertical) I watched newer
employees join talk utter rubbish, speak in non sensical management
talk, piss off agencies/clients (I know because they used to call me
laughing) and get promoted.
Mostly because they loved doing business in a suit, if you were not
wearing a suit and did a lot of brown nosing you were screwed. I did
neither…hehehe – Maybe that has something to do with a change of
culture. If that is the case then the rules to be Googley should
change. It sometimes felt like the rules to being Googlgey were a PR
strategy.
Culturally – In London I just felt the soul of the place change. A lot
of people I worked with or knew there were deeply unhappy with the
lack of fun (Still are , but they won’t talk to management because
they know it is not important- see above). It all seemed to be
contrived and a little false. Of course nothing stays the same but you
when working with a team where politics, egos and bullshit didn’t
exist and suddenly it did, you can’t help but feel confused.
You read so much about how amazing it is to work at Google and for the
first two years it was. I was empowered, promoted, treated with
respect and honesty. Before I left it just was a place full of quiet
moans, talented people being undermined and a structure that created
hostility and politics.
I loved my time there. It was a real education. Not to mention my very
risque TGIF routines in London. Actually I think that maybe while I
was ignored. I was not going to compromise my personality by dressing
like a business consultant. I was serious at my job without wearing my
suit.
The food was amazing though.
Actually I have just read this back and it now appears I should of
left years ago. Whatever – Google you have some amazing people there -
start listening and responding. Wisdom of crowds….cough….splutter
i thought all googlers are happy working at googleplex…it’s normal..nothing perfect.
As competitive and ambitious as Google is, I thought they’d like to attract similar people. The jive I’m getting from most of these comments (from the article, not reader comments) people felt working for Google would be there ticket to easy street–all their hopes, dreams and desires would be fulfilled.
To get ahead in a competitive and ambitious company, you have to be likewise competitive and ambitious. Lower pay and lacking benefits are one method a company uses to weed out people who aren’t committed. If you were making 150k, with full health and fringe benefits, what motivation do you have to move ahead? Your qualifications and abilities just gave you the ticket in. Once you’re in, you have to prove that you’re more than a piece of paper with flashy words on it.
With the crash of the FI market and its associated fallout, more and more companies are going to act like this. Many of the posters alluded to their days back at Microsoft. I think we can all agree that Microsoft is a gross exception.
Google has begun penny pinching, at first it was an internal think amongst the cafeteria and other services they offered, while now it’s become more external with services being shut down, adsense earning being lowered, etc.
150k is arbitrary. What about the people who are making 150k with full benefits (perhaps because their training and experience and job position warrant that on a competitive basis)? Should they have their pay cut to keep them motivated to get back to that level? Maybe they’re motivated to get to $200k, or $300k.
At some point, you *have* “proved” that you’re “worth” that money. But by your reasoning, people should never get paid that, so they’ll continually try to prove that they *should* get that amount (whatever ‘that’ amount happens to be).
searching firstname+google in facebook reveals these people’s identity.. i simply dont understand keeping firstname open to public
there’s 18k first names…
“Lower pay and lacking benefits are one method a company uses to weed out people who aren’t committed.”
Nonsense. I never heard of this before.
The reason Google pay less is because they know they have strong brands + other perks that makes up the poor pay. They know people would still accept their offer because of these two.
Paying people less to motivate them? That’s some pretty terrible logic, and the kind of stuff that results in disgruntled employees.
That *only* works if you truly can move ahead. Big companies like Google use that “moralizing” attitude to get their employees to build shareholder value at the lowest possible cost. They don’t care about them, and as long as other minions are willing to take their place, they don’t care about morale.
We had the same problem at Yahoo: pay less and give more options. Well, without no real opportunities to affect the stock price, how does that motivate me? Upper management didn’t listen, and really had no idea what they were doing. It will be interesting to see where Google is in 10 years.
If you did not make the cut, don’t feel bad, you can still be part of this amazing revolution by buying their stock. The world will be in debt to Google for a very long time in light of the many free services they have provided.
I’ve rarely read such idiotic nonsense in all my many years on earth.
Low pay and stingy benefits are your motivational strategy? Dude, you need to spend some time studying motivation.
Maybe larry and Sergei should give away their billions and live on the same income as entry level staff. Let’s see how enthusiastic they’d be then.
Sheesh.
People typically look at Google as one of the smartest companies in the world today. Their success was attributed to their rigorous interviewing process, which most shareholders have come to understand and appreciate.
If you did not make the cut, don’t feel bad, you can still be part of this amazing revolution by buying their stock. The world will be in debt to Google for a very long time in light of the many free services they have provided.
To the back stabbers: They fed you for free, gave you a job and means to be in touch with the cutting edge technology. The least you can do is shut up and leave if you don’t like it.
If you see what people around the world are working for and how hard they are working, you’d never complain about the pay being poor in comparison with Microsoft or a start-up. This is undeniably true – there are absolute geniuses working in IT all over the world for as low as USD 1000 – USD 2000 and making the world a better place – and these guys are MS and PhD.
There’re guys working for literally peanuts in the opensource world to make the world a better place. I think, people do not give enough thought to the simple fact that the money is needed for the hardware. I might be very wrong on this – but hardware cannot be made cheap like humans can be.
Things are pretty dynamic in the space that Google operates in. Lets not forget that nobody has come up with as a good a search as Google yet. There’s enough freedom in this world to make something like Google’s engine, but what people forget is that Google stores multiple copies of web2.0 in RAM, indexed and distributed across the world. That is not what any other company does. Google is not an AI and software company – it is an IT infrastructure company – a huge distributed supercomputer that knows how to read your harddisk bits with your permission (Desktop Search). Microsoft hasn’t been setting up mirrors as much as sales and partner offices.
That’s the key – Google is not changing the technology game, they’re inventing a new game – the distributed infrastructure game.
That costs. I said I may be wrong, but it is this platform that separates Google from other companies.
Also, from a very zen-like simplistic point of view, without Google, the web would be shit and useless. Which other search engine allows you to get the exact ONE of the hundreds of billions of webpages that have the praticular sepling mitsake that you remember?
Google does _that_.
An IT infrastructure distributed supercomputing company. Not a search engine. That costs.
I’m no genius at finance or whatever, but this money is actually used to buy hardware which … i don’t know, how much it costs.
And really, the way you guys live in the US… NO.
Not fair. People are dying from starvation in the millions in every African country. Your perks and pay aren’t useful here – I want to really know how much infrastructure Google has put on the African continent or how much they will soon put. Their Africa policy will prove the genuineness of their “change the world” and “don’t be evil” claims. Luckily, Africa is at least officially on their radar.
What about Microsoft? They’re opening sales offices and bribing politicians – at least that’s the stuff that makes it to the mainstream tech news.
Please enlighten me, because it does not seem that the Wintel group wants to do ubiquitous computing in Africa yet. Google already has the infrastructure in place for many Africa initiatives.
Don’t talk of pay and comforts till you see Africa.
Have you even played the Freerice game?
Africa is a huge moral debt on developed economies – Africa still has more than enough natural resources – after 400 years of continuous ongoing looting – it does not need healthcare like BillG seems to think, or aid, it needs freedom from developed economies and their instruments and non-interference from those powers.
The most relevant question is this:
*************************
Did *you* decide that you would be born an American citizen, living in at least basic luxury?
That you would not be born to a hungry family with roof in the refugee camps in Darfur or Gaza?
You didn’t, right?
*************************
All you want is perks and career? Africans are not human beings? They have no right to food, water?
Have you even played the Freerice game?
People work at Google to solve those problems with minimum interference from the economic and political systems in place.
I don’t work for Google, i’m not even a GPA 3.5 guy, forget MS and PhD. But, a few friends work at Google and we regularly discuss these very things as part of how Google could help improve this picture.
As for Eric Schmidt’s personal fortune, well, he;s the best guy to defend his riches, but I think he used to work for other companies too. And he invests too and he rubs shoulders with people who rob African and Asian riches daily. And they don’t listen to millionaires, they only listen to billionaires – that is verifiable.
You can’t talk to the CEO of those companies if you’re just a millionaire. Maybe that explains his wealth, I don’t know, but I’ve seen this first-hand, repeatedly, for over 2 years now. You need a big name and a big fortune to talk to many of these guys and get their money to work for you.
It’s alright to be a billionaire but not to be a manipulative guy.
Eric Schmidt cares about nothing but his riches and he’ll want to bend you to that end.
And: I’m sure that if Google opened a data center in the african jungle, they’d want to hook these tribes and make money from them in the long term.
Or maybe electrical power is so cheap to manufacture there.
The first step Google should do to save the environment is to not construct its HUGE power consuming data centers.
“Have you even played the Freerice game?”
read this in notgoogler’s wall of text, and realized that the inane ravings of the suburban couch analyst are the most ignorant and pretentious bullshit i’ve ever heard.
seriously, you’re admittedly neither a good student nor a google employee, so how DARE you insult people who spent their entire lives being educated to get their dream job. it wasn’t handed to them, but it didn’t work out anyway. that’s no reason to insult them. yes, it’s harder for impoverished africans, but you’re obviously not one, because you’re wasting your time in the internet like everyone else in the developed world.
how about you piss off and go help the africans if their plight is so important to you.
and before you accuse me of being heartless or ignorant, i went to college, i donate money to people like that, and more importantly, i donate my time. if google were so damn benevolent, the founders wouldn’t give piss poor starting salaries to the cream of the crop, and they certainly wouldn’t sit on billions of dollars when they could donate it to the same people they’re “helping” with freerice.
in short, fuck you
It’s alright to be a billionaire but not to be a manipulative guy.
Eric Schmidt cares about nothing but his riches and he’ll want to bend you to that end.
And: I’m sure that if Google opened a data center in the african jungle, they’d want to hook these tribes and make money from them in the long term.
Or maybe electrical power is so cheap to manufacture there.
I agree that HR should be more decentralised and not all be approved out of MV as the current long process of approvals from MV and little
authority from local offices causes pain and time and influences the spirit
within the company negatively.
I’ve rarely read such idiotic nonsense in all my many years on earth.
Low pay and stingy benefits are your motivational strategy? Dude, you need to spend some time studying motivation.
All Googlers willing to quit are welcome to apply at Verteego, online enterprise sustainability solutions.
What happens to the company mission if you subtract all those buzzwords?
LOL, that really made my day XD
The top-down style always works fine in a rising market. At one time Yahoo had no trouble luring talent either.
As I feel for these people, why didn’t they ask to interview with others in the company. Why didn’t they seek out those who had worked there. Why did they hold Googgle in such high regard? If they were going to Google during “dorm” days then it would have been a wonderful opportunity and yes they were changing the world. But now Google has to answer to shareholders and John Doerr. Actually, they are top heavy and have to pay those execs lots and lots of money so the underlings are just that – cattle-call, couldn’t have an original thought if they tried and if they did – someone else will steal it as their own -
I worked for Sun Microsystems and MCI..and both were fabulous companies until they weren’t and they begin to believe their own marketing hype and lost their way – MCI was lucky they were sold – to the wrong company albeit – and Sun will either file for bankruptcy or be sold off if they can get someone to finance the deal –
So, be careful of putting any company in the bell tower – unless it is a resume builder for you –
Very nice post.
TGIF – Thank God It’s Friday
32 more definitions here: http://www.abbr...ations.com/TGIF
EXCELLENT EXCELLENT POST MICHAEL!
Tech news seems to be very slow these past couple of weeks, but posts like these are what makes Techcrunch still a wonderful read.
Well done for publishing this, and helping tear down some of the silly myths about Google.
Exactly. I thought all Googlers lover their job at Google.
Now it seems like that people like working at Microsoft more than Google. Wow.
Wow this is some development! I was reading the Google Story yesterday, and it seems Google is no longer what it used to be!
BestJobsOnline
http://tinyurl.com/7uj5ay
You might want to find a list where people who like google are talking about why they are staying before making any permanent pronouncement.
So, I work at google. It’s a great place to work. It’s not like it used to be. Some things are better some things are worse. You heard it hear first, more or less. Salvage the rest of your day while you still can.
Surprised me to read “Top amongst the complaints is low pay relative to what they could earn elsewhere”.. in India, most of the people believe that Google offers the highest salary than another mnc…and people really feel lucky if they got job @ Google..
The hype spread as newspapers started writing about the good pay packages they were offering in campuses. Anyone on a job for a couple of years will tell you that MS is as good, and Intuit pays even better in India.
One of the emails above actually specifically mentioned that Google was below-scale in India, and generally (based on the other emails), in all of its offices except Mountain View.
Well, i guess google’s offices in india are doing mainly testing and support related work, not much development..so may be they dont pay much for those work… i m not sure…
A hefty read, but I think you could of cut it short if you read it yourself. The posts are pretty repetitive, with a few differences in experience.
All in all, I too always thought that it was “magical” to work at Google. I guess that is not the case.
People are the key to success; hopefully Google realizes it before it’s too late.
Amazing insight. Have you considered applying at Google?
I lol’d
same here
http://cashcratereview.com
I think this guy is serious about what he’s saying, not joking…what a amazing insight..
I may have to sell my Google stocks. I’ve lost about a hundred dollars per share. I bought before the Google phone and Chrome browser were launched. I should have waited.
This was an eye opening thread… Management to micromanagement (similar to a lot of common companies out there).
Techies have this uncanny habit of bitching – no matter where they are or what they do – or get paid for. I mean come on, techies get paid a lot!
No wonder companies go offshore. Less bitching, more work.
I think you’ve just illustrated the reason why: absolutely no respect. (A non-techie using the word “techie” to describe engineers and developers is almost like a white person using the n-word.)
In most companies other than startups, techies are treated with less respect than the janitor, because people at least understand what the janitor does. Not understanding often leads to hostility and disrespect.
On the upside, this is why so many techies start their own companies.
Fail. It’s nothing like that at all.
Agreed, epic fail. What you describe is not like any tech company I have worked for.
I agree with terra all I hear is waah waahh, I think I’m waah waaah, when I vent about the fact that our ‘lounge’ (a small room with a TV, an employee-paid coffee maker and a microwave) might (hasnt happened yet) get converted to storage.
I believe this to be absolutely true, Rick. My second “wow, I’m really moving up in the world” job was in a control center maintaining in excess of 5000 remote machines. This includes satellite uptime, EV-DO uptime, constant monitoring of device health, a lot of programming to make unique tools to make the job easier, etc. I worked long hours, worked on the road, and was attached to a BlackBerry. All in all, I gave more of myself to this job than I have with any other, but all I ever got was a load of suspicion from the BizDev/Executives because they couldn’t understand a damn thing about what we were doing.
Our entire department was gutted while the BizDev/Executive staff got vacations, raises, etc.
It was awful.
Wow if that is your experience as a software engineer, you should absolutely change employers. I don’t think there’s any reason in this day and age for a skilled developer to put up with mistreatment.
There are some technical folks who abuse the fact that others don’t understand their work. If no one else has a clue, you can tell them whatever. You can tell them it’ll take 10 times longer than it really will. You can talk technical jargon over their head until they are in tears. You can hide options you don’t want others to pursue.
The jackasses who do the above are few and far between. I hope that employers who shit on developers are equally rare. I have yet to experience one myself.
There was one ex-googler above who thought reneged was spelled “re-nigged”. It being MLK day, let’s not dwell too deeply on what she thought the origin of the word was, and if she thought that, why she thought it was OK to use…
You completely missed the point, I’m afraid.
I’m an ex-Googler myself, and therefore I fully understand what these people complained about. It’s not a “techie” issue, most of the complaints about Google, particularly with regard to the salary levels, came from non-technie employees (those working in Online Sales & Operations, not the actual software engineers).
It’s all about expectations.
Propaganda, there is no doubt T¢ is under M$ control, like digg and facebook.
The order is to attack google, yahoo and apple, but never M$
No credibility at all.
Paranoid much?!?
MS hasnt’ been a startup longer than you’ve probably been alive. Google was a startup (or at least still considered one) during the lifetime of TechCrunch.
That makes Google news more relevant to TC than MS news.
Plus…do you not recall the MS/Yahoo crap all of last year, and the smack-down of Yahoo’s management? Or the mocking of MS once-a-month by TC’s appointed-AppleWhore?
“AppleWhore” . yes. Nobody suits that better than TC
My Reasons for leaving:
I was called by Larry to his room and was then brutally raped for 3 days and 4 nights. I was gagged and bound and the entire top management did the unmentionables with my holes.
And I am a man.
That place is a jail. Only jails are more safer.
And you enjoyed it too, bitch
Well some of it.. It got a bit tedious after Sergey came for seconds..
lol..Thiss the funniest thing i’ve read all day!
Really? No way. That’s not seriously Larry Page’s response?
If that was really Larry Page…then I’m really never going to work there.
With the recession now looming over the globe – wonder how they’d all react now?
Most of them quit years ago, Dick. And besides, Google has been cutting jobs too.
For those who had bad working environment experience with similar tech intensive companies, I think the environment of work depends on the people work there. If they tend to just focus on their work, of course, you won’t have much chance to talk to any of your colleagues.
Probably, apart from work related topic, you won’t be able to find any other thing to talk about with them.
That’s an impressive string of platitudes and inferences, care to add any substance?
Google employees are working in a “virtual prison” full of myth. The idea that Larry Page is still reading all CVs is a myth. The fact that all employees are happy in a happy environment is a myth too. From people I know that work in Google, I can tell you that it’s far from being the ideal company to work for.
Their strategy is simple: they setup strict rules in order to keep secret all internal issues to the external world. When you speak with “Googlers”, you really see that it has nothing different than a sect! If one Googler dare to criticized or comment on Google or other employees, he/she is red flaged by the watch dogs inside the company.
Using their magic marketing aura, they are able to attract qualified labour at a low cost (offering benefits such as free food, games, stock options that worth nothing and supposedly nice environment). The real face of Google’s inside is much more depressing. High competition, low benefits, hard boring and manual work.
Also in terms of technology, it is amazing to see that Google’s internal systems and organization is very rudimentary and doesn’t work well. They may have good technology for their users, but their employees suffers under huge manual boring tasks that can be easily automated with proper management, organization and systems.
Sorry to interrupt the sour grapes fest here, but you just made all that shit up, didn’t you?
No. Unfortunately I didn’t… Just being with Googlers all the time.. and also knowing it from inside out..
Then until you’ve worked there, STFU, Observer.
Yeah, and don’t criticize the police unless you’re an officer or have been in the military!
It’s true. Heard the same myself from a top Google exec. It’s a large company with very basic management systems, no proper management structures and an infantile culture.
This exec is a Wharton MBA, past McKinsey consultant and ex-CFO. In his own words, Google need sto ‘grow up’. It was he who told me even their accounting systems are a joke.
Well then it must all be true! Thanks for clarifying that up for me, Ari. Now I better get back to my hard, boring manual work while I slave away in this virtual prison, before those improper management structures catch on and red flag me for letting all those Google secrets out on TechCrunch!
so google isnt as nice or perfect as i thought 4.8 years ago, R.
All i can say is ” WoW “
World of Warcraft?
No; : “Watch Out, Witchcraft!“
Shock news – working at Google is like working at any uber-successful multi-national conglomerate, with some people disappointed and some people moving ever upwards.
In other news, utopia revealed to be a myth.
lol. I couldn’t have put it better myself.
I mean, what do you expect? You’re 1 in 30,000 where most of your peers are either extremely smart or extremely competitive or both. Honestly, when the degree of compensation (bonus) is based on merit then you’re setting yourself up for disappointment unless you have an IQ of 300 or you’re willing to work until your eyes bleed.
Secondly, if you don’t work in engineering then forget about it. Google is a company run by engineers.
The stories were interesting to read but with that many employees you are just statistically bound to get disgruntled people.
This reads like an obituary for Web 2.0.
Fickle generation. Wait that’s me 25 years ago!
“re-nigged” – re-nigged? Absolutely unbelievable – making up meaningless words like that, on the fly.
Relax, spelling nazi. Reneged.
he would be a nazi if she wasn’t bragging about how brilliant she is throughout her email…
That’s a niggling criticism.
I noticed that too and cringed, although I am generally not much for political correctness.
In fact I was a bit surprised by the lack of writing abilities demonstrated by several of the comments. I would think that “top graduates” from “top schools” would be more literate. A few were quite well written, however, so this is not a sweeping criticism of Google or Ivy Leagues.
I also thought this was hilarious considering how this flight attendant called the hiring team elitist.
Re-nigged? It sounds like a borderline racist term.
The closer you look for “racist terms” the more likely you’ll find them.
These are very interesting indeed… Does Scott Adams get any fodder for his Dilbert comic strip from inside GOOGLE?
I would be interested in any stats of onshore/outsourced trends @ HQ Google during the 2002-2008 time frame. I did not see any hints of that in the feedback.
cheer·io
-JP
Not so surprising. During a trip to the Googleplex, we met a Google “recruiter” who lashed out with her disgruntlement on our group. Since it’s too long to post in this comment, read about it in this blog post: http://www.itmi...make-any-sense/
Thanks for the additional post. Sounds like your recruiter was burnt out and about to hand in notice. Apart from the long interview process it all sounds very familiar… for call centre staff!
I’m so sick of hearing excuses made for corporations that lie during the seduction/recruitment phase, brain wash during orientation, suck the life out of their employees and then blame them for failure to thrive in an environment of two-faced wankers and favouritism.
Is google that bad or just people getting to used to it with high expectations? Try working for a startup and it be a different ball game.
Allen, I’m afraid that it’s not about the high expectations… Ironically enough, that’s what I did post-Google: joined a start-up. I congratulate myself on that every day.
let me guess…. your job is now to spam TC?
No, silly. It’s Business Development!
> let me guess…. your job is now to spam TC?
hahahaah !
These issues are not unique to Google. What is not typically addressed is that our current business management system is much of the blame for these behaviors; e.g., scorecards or created policies that lead to distructive behaviors. What is needed is a business system that leads to the 3 Rs of business; i.e., everyone doing the Right things, and doing them Right, at the Right time.
Suggest that you check out the article link below and its five embedded “non-advertising” links – MSNBC article: American Management Association describes a 21st Century Management Governance System
http://www.msnb...om/id/28654813/
Who decides what is right?
Public companies don’t answer to their employees, they answer to their shareholders. Grow up!
Hasn’t the global economic crash shown that they answer to no one least of all shareholders. They’re just the idiots who give them the money.
Google has a lot of employees. You can’t please everyone, this is a very good example of clear rational thinking on their part. A lot of companies might suppress this info.
Wow. Some of the reasons are really interesting and give light into the inner working of Google. Very interesting.
bewtiful
Well, that’s just a few, against that there are probably many many who really like working over there. If you thought Google was all nice for everyone to work at you should really think again. It’s like this everywhere and good for Google they set up such a group from which they could learn maybe.
I’m not sure I understand the one about the candidate currently working as a flight attendant. What’s currently working as anything grounds for rejecting a current applicant?
Creepier still perhaps, is how that story is told as if it were a gripe, but, regarding a completely routine scrutiny.
He’s not currently working as a flight attendant. He was working as a flight attendant when he first applied, and was rejected b/c the hiring commission thought that flight attendants are retards.
He re-applied, left off his then-current job as a flight-attendant, and was immediately hired…
The point of the story was that the hiring commission inserted pointless and ridiculous bias into the process. It was considered elitist b/c the “4 months of traveling” was seen as a benefit, whereas the “4 months of working as a flight attendant” was a disqualifier. Only rich folk can spend 4 months of traveling, which is where the “elitism” plays in.
I think it’s ironic that the poster complained of being unfairly accused of having low intelligence, and then proceeds to *grossly* mangle the word “reneged” as “re-nigged”.
It seems the poster was in some sort of sales position, and regardless of it’s importance, level of responsibility, ect…probably did not require much intelligence, so to speak. So, I’m sure they performed their job satisfactorily.
As someone who likes to think they posses a fairly high level of intelligence/ability I despair to see people who are really not terribly intelligent at all in high paying positions/careers, simply because they attended college, ect.
et cetera, genius. etc. Possess, its, high-paying… should I go on?
Google has a bias towards hiring Ivy league types, especially early in the firm’s history. They had a 3.8 GPA floor at one point.
That’s a practice that usually leads to institutional elitism and arrogance.
Why? Think about who graduates with 4.0 GPAs. You have the super-smart, than you have the super-slick, or the people whose parents donate generously to the building fund.
Hey, let them build their bubble. If it leads to failure, irrelevance, or Microsoftism, so be it. It’s not always the blind leading the stupid, sometimes the blind lead geniuses. The more focussed and/or academic you are, the less you want to deal with complicating forces from the general environment (abstract, I know). It is exactly this insulation by which companies and institutions build their own weaknesses where none should theoretically (academically) exist.
The alternative?
They should stick to hiring people with 2.0 GPAs from the local community college?
I don’t fault them for trying to only hire the cream of the crop. Maybe you call it “institutional elitism” but I see it as them trying to emulate the academic environment (eg. a graduate student laboratory) in a commercial setting.
“They had a 3.8 GPA floor at one point.”
Because we all know that smart people never get bad grades, right?
As if I expected to read somewhere “I loved being at the said company, and had no reasons whatsoever to quit; not even further studies could lure me. I just happened to get drunk and signed on the dotted line…”
Nothing comes as a surprise, however this is a good caution to jobseekers in general – take interviews seriously – research and ask more than what the company is researching and asking you.
Finally it comes out! I had a horrible phone interview with a google employee who was a recent grad. He asked me technical questions straight from his 3rd year exams. I’ve been out of school for 10 years and have done work where these types of questions where not relevant. So I did poorly. I asked if this is the type of questions required for the job and got the answer yes… in the search group. I was up for a job in a totally different group involved in totally different engineering techniques that suited my background better. But this didn’t matter.
As a result I had an glimpse of the culture inside google and was happy not to be offered the job.
I’ve had phone interviews with large companies that consisted mainly of reciting manpages.
I had a similar experience with Apple. The recruiter was reading off a script of pre-canned questions, which may not be so bad except he couldn’t even read all that well! I had to ask him several times to repeat some questions which I’m sure made me look dumb. In retrospect I wonder how someone with such poor reading skills got hired at Apple to do the hiring, but I’m glad the job went to someone else, as I now own my own business and am very happy.
Well if you choose to work for the god of the internet… you best be perfect… and cheap… and work hard… and be single… and drink the Goolaid.
Don’t forget that it’s your own failure if you aren’t willing to do all of those things!
…be male, have no children, and know to wear a suit despite the famed “quirky” reputation…
Guess what? Many companies are taking away fringe benefits — from free sodas to breakfast Fridays. So this isn’t a Google-only thing. But many of the complaints sound valid.
Other companies at least have good excuses for that. Google is still insanely profitable and it’s cutting cheap benefits anyway. Do you guys remember the scandal around Google’s daycare?
I honesly believe if Google cuts 90% of its workforce, nobody will notice that.
sheds light on the real Google culture. From the outside you imagine Google to be heaven kind of like how I expected Yahoo to be back in the mid-late 90’s.
Just goes to show things are not always as they appear from the outside.
“Subject: Re: So… Why’d you left, guys? I mean, seriously.”
Seriously, what is with that subject?
Perhaps English isn’t his first language. Seriously. Some people grow up speaking a different language. It’s shocking, I know.
It’s more likely that English IS his first language!
I’ll use that next time I release a product.
Internet Explorer is not my first language, I know Firefox well, but not IE. So disregard those glaring UI issues you find.
poor analogy, maybe but you get the point.
Before this article I thought Google was one of the hippiest and happiest place to work in. And the fact they didn’t care if you turned up for work in bikinis.
These emails make me think I am grossly wrong!
BTW how many % of ppl resigned because they felt unhappy in Google I wonder?
According to some recent studies, exaclty 36.7% of ppl resigned because they felt unhappy in Google”.
On an unrelated note, recent studies has shown that 70% of studies present fake statistics.
What the dude said about editing. A little value add, TC. I had to skim and edit these myself.
Also I’m not surprised. I never imagined I’d be happy at Google b/c I’m old and that’s very much a young person’s domain, so I wouldn’t even bother applying. I don’t want to miss my child’s one childhood to kiss some 20 something’s pimply ass. Not that M$ would be better – I can’t imagine being happy being forced to use M$ products either.
Googlers are obedient. That’s what a high GPA really signifies.
Your post is awesome, Peter! And, so true
Your post is almost as awesome as Peter’s, Aaron! I am unsure if it is true or false.
When one of the lead scientists at the R&D lab I was working at said that he was turned down at Google, I was like, what? The man was a top academic leader in computational linguistics and had a track record of shipping profitable products. He said they asked stupid and immature questions.
This fella would have been a credit to any cutting edge search team, and Google just didnt see the MAN.
I can confirm we have indeed rejected quite a few top academics. But we’ve also hired more than our fair share. Bottom line is in order to succeed at Google, you need to be the type who can turn brilliant ideas into code, and (let’s face it) a lot of academics don’t fit that mold.
So everyone at Google has to code? You can always find coders but finding brilliant ideas are few and far between
> the type who can turn brilliant ideas into code
so someone like Einstein would be rejected ? so all Google researchers can “code” ?
I get the impression that it’s just not “Googley” to be a critic(al thinker).
> so someone like Einstein would be rejected ?
Correct, we would never hire someone whose abilities and interests lie purely in theoretical fields, no matter how good they might be. We instead try to hire people who will have impact within the company. While we respect fundamental scientific research and its potential to have long term impact, we also realize we’re in an extremely competitive domain and prefer hires more likely to benefit the company in a time frame commensurate with tech industry product cycles.
> so all Google researchers can “code” ?
Yes, though there are few exceptions. Computer science researchers who can’t code typically come in one of two flavors:
(1) they expect others to magically perform the difficult work of turning their ideas into something that actually benefits customers. History has proven this model of corporate research is nothing but FAIL.
(2) they simply don’t care about customers — the objective function they optimize for is how many papers they publish and how well they are known in their research area. These people are fantastic and knowing exactly what topics to pursue in order to get their next paper into top conferences, but rarely produce anything substantive.
Reading about Google and caring about customers is just too funny.
I can’t think of a company that cares less about customers. Just finding ‘customer support’ contact information anywhere on google.com is an exercise in futility.
Insular? You bet!
You think maybe it might be more important to hire people who can turn brilliant ideas into profitable products?
Google came to present at my university, and told us they had 127 products. Of these, only one (search advertising) makes any money. And this is a 10 year old product that existed pre-IPO and was forced on the Google leaders by a VC (Larry and Sergey didn’t see the potential in ‘corrupting their beautiful search results with sponsored ads).
So since it’s IPO, Google has been unable to come up with a single profitable product.
Someday, the Google bubble will burst, and we’ll see the emperor has no clothes.
@Arrogant Googler:
I see where you’re coming from, with this “all researchers must write production-level code” Google attitude. But I fail to see how you’ve really succeeded much more than all the other companies and practices that you so openly deride. I don’t think you have.
Where are all the brilliant ideas that came out of Google, because all your PhDs are coding all the time, rather than doing exploratory, innovative research? How many new, money-making businesses has Google gotten into, because of your coding approach? Did coding lead to video success? No, you had to buy YouTube. Google Video is shutting down. Did coding lead to Google Earth? No, you had to buy Keyhole. Did coding lead Google to create the web log phenomenon? No. Instead, you bought Blogger. I could go on and on.
You’re basically buying your way into other people’s innovations, rather than doing the long, painful process of having to research and develop them yourself. Were it not for the fact that there is innovation happening outside of Google, that people are thinking big, new thoughts, and that Google has the money to buy the fruits of those thoughts, Google would be flat in the water.
And how many advances have you made, in core search technology, because of your emphasis on coding? I’ve done some evaluation of Google Enterprise Search. It really isn’t better than BM25, a ranking algorithm that is over 15 years old.
If you spent more time doing basic research, rather than coding, you might come up with ideas about what kind of code you should actually be writing.
Ten years ago I might have accepted the argument that “[you] respect fundamental scientific research and its potential to have long term impact, [you] also realize [you]’re in an extremely competitive domain and prefer hires more likely to benefit the company in a time frame commensurate with tech industry product cycles.” But imagine this: If you’d actually spent some time, ten years ago, investing in fundamental research, rather than just coding all the time, you might have (for example) an Enterprise Search product that was much better than the competition, now. But you don’t have it now, for the current business cycle, because you didn’t invest in your future back then. And you still aren’t investing in your future, now, it appears. So in ten years from now, the story is going to be the same.
There is a popular analogy for this type of approach: It’s called “Eating your seed corn”. By forcing every single one of your employees to write production code, all of the time, you are consuming and enjoying the fruits of their labors, now. But by not holding anything back, and planting something for the future (by hiring computer science researchers that do longer-term research and innovation), you will have nothing to harvest, down the line.
Unwise.
Ari: That is an excellent point. Google has this attitude of “everyone must code, because code is the only way you can make a difference in the world”. But reality is a harsh mistress: Even when you do code, and create 127 products, you still only have 2-3 products that get mass usage, and only 1 product that makes any money. Google is no different (no more successful) than any other company out there.
What galls me about this attitude is that they still just don’t get it. They see investment in basic research as wasted dollars, because (as ArrogantGoogler says) “history has proven this model of corporate research is nothing but FAIL.”
But what he doesn’t realize is that those other 126 out of the 127 products are also wasted dollars. Despite ten whole years now of trying to turn even one of those 126 products into a second money-maker, the result is also FAIL.
@Ari: We do have other profitable products, just not on the scale of adwords. (One of them happens to be Enterprise Search, even though apparently “it’s really no better than BM-25″ according to your friend Gno.)
@Gno: First, please don’t misquote me — I never said researchers are “writing production code all the time.” All I said is they “can code.” Second, who do you think is responsible for all those innovations “we bought ourselves into”? Let me give you hint, it isn’t the academics. Third, there’s a hell of a lot more to enterprise search than ranking, but as an academic I wouldn’t really expect you to understand that. It’s actually funny you mention Google Enterprise, because in a previous life I worked on enterprise search within a big research lab at another company. I left because despite all the $$$ they continue to piss away on research, the product was (and still is) god awful. But I guess I should have consulted your “evaluation” before I jumped ship.
I’m really interested in hearing what revolutionary profit-making products you guys work on. In the meantime I’ll continue working on stuff people actually care about.
Best.
@ArroGoog:
First, apologies for the misquote, about writing production code all the time. I’m mashing up what you said, about “can code”, with what you said about not expecting other people to do your coding for you, with what I’ve heard your Director of Research, Norvig, say, about how all PhDs at Google have to launch a new product every 5 months. Who else is writing this production code, but the researcher? And then I read your statement about how some researchers don’t write code, because they don’t care about customers and never produce anything substantive. So maybe you yourself technically didn’t say it. But you pretty much imply it when you talk about researchers needing to write code that “substantively” affects “customers”. Is that not production code?
Well, if you really aren’t saying that.. if all you are really saying is that they should be able to code, then I really have no idea who you are pointing fingers at. You certainly aren’t pointing fingers at me. You certainly aren’t pointing fingers at any other Information Retrieval academic or industry researcher that I’ve ever known. Because everyone I know in the Information Retrieval realm builds systems.. writes code.. in order to test their algorithms and ideas. Frankly, I don’t know anyone who *can’t* code. You can’t do IR research without coding. At least, among the hundreds of IR academics that I’ve known, I’ve never seen someone do academic IR research and not have to write code, in order to do it.
You ask: ‘Who do you think is responsible for all those innovations “we bought ourselves into”?’ Great question; I’ll help you find the answer. To begin with, the core idea for Google itself, which is the idea of using links analysis (and authority of the links) as a foundation for search engine design, came from academica. In particular, from Eugene Garfield at UPenn. Google updated the idea for the http protocol, by using web links, rather than citation links. But the fundamental idea arose through basic academic research, not from people who are focused exclusively on tech industry product cycles. Next, let’s look at one of your sexier technologies: the face detection that you do inside of image search and Picasa. That particular innovation came from Neven Vision. But Neven Vision itself only existed because it was spun out of the ISI / University of Southern California Machine Vision Research lab. One of the “nothing but FAIL” academic laboratories that you pan.
Finally, let’s take a look at one of your newer, business-necessary technologies: music audio fingerprinting. You need that for two reasons: (1) to detect copyrighted material on YouTube, to protect yourself from infringement lawsuits (and thus *saving* you lots of money — almost as good as making it!), and (2) so that you can continue to built money-making services (by doing affiliate links, recommendations, etc.) such as Google Music Search in China. Well, let’s look at that music audio fingerprinting technology. To begin with, I know people at Microsoft Research that were working on (and fairly robustly solved) this problem in 1998-1999. I have another friend in Paris that was doing it, academically, in 2000-2001. My Parisian friend told me that he approached Google at that time, with the technology, and said that Google should start doing it, because it was core to their mission. Google said no, we don’t need to. My friend’s response was “Oh, but you will!”
My friend relates that the reason Google gave at the time was pretty much unchanged from what you are saying now, which was that you are: “in an extremely competitive domain and prefer hires more likely to benefit the company in a time frame commensurate with tech industry product cycles.” What Google FAILed to realize was that tech industry product cycles come faster than you realize, and the reason why you do research in the first place is to have these technologies ready, when they are needed. So in 2006, after FAILing to develop this music audio fingerprinting research themselves, Google bought YouTube, and found themselves in a copyright mess. Google was not ready with the technology when it was needed. To catch up, Google had to first start trying to partner with Audible Magic, which was based on Muscle Fish technology, which came out of one of those industrial research labs that you pan: Yamaha’s R&D group. Google had to further play catchup, because they’re now doing similar research themselves, in Zurich. So here you are, 8 years later, and finally barely starting to get the technology to work — many years late. Epic FAIL. You were warned about it a long, long time ago — but because you took the attitude that it didn’t fit into the current tech industry product cycle, you missed the boat.
This strikes at the core of my point. I refute your two premises, that researchers who “don’t code” either (1) expect others to magically peform the work, or (2) don’t care about customers. I refute the first premise because I have never meet a single IR researcher that doesn’t know how to code. But I do know researchers who are more interested in growing big new ideas than they are in hacking AJAX for an existing, present-day customer. And maybe that’s what you mean by premise (2), when you say that those people don’t care about the customer. This is where Google really gets it wrong. It’s not that those researchers don’t care about the customer. It’s that those researchers care about a future customer, one that does not exist yet. And what they are doing is predicting the future, by inventing it, i.e. anticipating the future needs of a customer. They know technology well enough to know that the future is coming, and that the customer will be there, when it arrives. So they point the way, now.
That’s why people at ISI / USC were working on face detection, LONG before Google Image Search or Picasa ever existed.. and therefore long before there were any Google Image Search or Picasa customers. And that’s why Yamaha R&D researchers, and Microsoft researchers, and Parisian academics, were all working on music audio fingerprinting, LONG before either YouTube or Google Video existed. Because they knew the future was coming, and were willing to put in the time and effort to invent it.
Google doesn’t do that. Google doesn’t look that far ahead. Google only looks at the current customer, and doesn’t care about the future customer. I’ve seen evidence of it, when Google failed for years to do research in music audio fingerprinting. I’ve seen evidence of it, in the fact that they had to buy Neven Vision, rather than develop it, in house. I’ve seen evidence of it, when I hear Directors of Research talk about producing new products every 5 months. I’ve seen evidence of it, when I see you explicilty characterizing academics who like to work on longer-term ideas as people who “simply don’t care about customers” and who only care about optimizing the number of papers they publish. Maybe the reason these researchers are “fantastic at knowing exactly what topics to pursue in order to get their next paper into top conferences” is that they, unlike Google, can see the future coming, and are holding up lanterns to show the way. Since Google obviously won’t hire them right now (because the customers of their particular research topics are 4-5 years into the future) publishing papers and disseminating their ideas, in as “open source” way as possible, is the method by which they have substantive effect…by lighting the way for others.
You can correct my perception if I am wrong, but the way it appears from the outside is that Google modus operandi is to wait until someone else does the hard work of inventing the future, swoop in and buy the necessary technologies and/or people, and then swallow those people up into the Google black hole, where we never hear from them again. Those people, on the inside, then only work on productizing, by turning into customer-facing code the research that they had done elsewhere. They stop doing the type of research that they formerly had been doing, which is to look 3-5 years ahead of time, and work on those topics for which customers don’t yet exist, but will.
I stand by my earlier characterization: This is called “Eating your seed corn”. And if everybody in the U.S. did this, the way Google is doing it, the whole nation would lose our competitive edge, because we’d never invent the future.
Let me recommend a good book to you, on the pitfalls of only developing technology that customers right now are using, rather than doing research, for new customers and new markets down the road. It’s called “The Innovator’s Dilemma” by Clayton Christensen.
@ArroGoog:
Oh, and “Best” to you, as well. It is my mistake if I do not come across as cordial; I hope that I do.
Here is an excerpt from the hardcover of the book I just mentioned: “The author, an associate professor at Harvard Business School, asks why some well-managed companies that stay on top of new technology and practice quality customer service can still falter. His own research brought a surprising answer to that question. Christensen suggests that by placing too great an emphasis on satisfying customers’ current needs, companies fail to adapt or adopt new technology that will meet customers’ unstated or future needs, and he argues that such companies will eventually fall behind. Christensen calls this phenomenon “disruptive technology” and demonstrates its effects in industries as diverse as the manufacture of hard-disk drives and mass retailing. He goes on to offer solutions by providing strategies for anticipating changes in markets.”
Hey, ArrogantGoogler. You never got back to me, never responded to this thread. I gave you plenty of examples. You just folded. Slunk away.
Well, I have one more example for you. Your own company disagrees with you. Check out this Google Research Blog post:
http://googlere...-needs-hug.html
I quote: “it may be a long time before this work directly benefits Google, since we do not currently develop robots or computer games. But Google still benefited because the advances that we need to improve our search engine often start in academia. By encouraging our staff to follow up on their research work and to contribute to the research community, Google supports the growth of the next big idea. Knowing that we can follow up on our past work makes researchers at Google feel more empowered to pursue new ideas and continually exposes us to sources of inspiration. And that inspiration, which makes Google a better place to work, is exactly what I need to keep trying new ideas, which in the end will help make Google a better place to search.”
It looks like Google is finally joining the enlightened world of research, finally going beyond just looking down their noses, five months ahead. And that is as it should be. If Google continued to only do things the way you advocate, ArrogantGoogler, you would find yourselves, five years down the road, stuck and behind the curve in a lot more things than you already are (e.g. the way you dropped the ball on the extremely relevant YouTube content analysis).
It’s a good thing all Googlers are not as arrogant as you are.
How large is the population of these employees who quit in their work?
To work in a company like Google is a privilege for me, how could it be like this.
#1 response to what should improve is always, I don’t make enough money – so not surprised by that reaction.
Given that, it appears Google, like many companies, created something unique. As the company grows, management looses touch with what really made people happy about working there. Unfortunately, management thinks nothing has changed as they take on their new God like persona.
Growth, is the biggest destroyer of unique organizations! The entrepreneur does not know how to sustain it.
Oh, and spouse has not received a raise in over three years. Not going to change soon with layoffs and cutbacks. His company now offers two unpaid days as they took away two personal days and requires a couple of more hours a week. Yeah, great way to encourage a happy place.
Google sounds just like most other big corporations–full of politics, and a good share of incompetent managers who are good at the politics but bad at either the technology or people management or both.
The Google culture so reminds me of Bell Laboratories where I lingered, on and off, for a dozen years before “gaining my independence”.
Big corporate culture inevitably rewards people for sheep-like behavior, and I am not a sheep and cannot force myself to act like a sheep indefinitely.
Yes, this comment is bloody true!
So true! I have been a corporate slave/sheep for 12 years, developed dozens of desktop/web apps from scratch, all of which were highly praised (one still in use for the past 10 years!), some of which became successfully commercialized but were “owned” by the corporation. It was fun to play the hero by developing apps that everyone loved… for a while. But in the last few years, I felt a cloud of depression hanging over me – what was missing?
Recently I woke up from my haze of depression/creative slavery and realized I must find out if I can live off my own ideas instead of in the service of others’.
More challenge, more variety, more opportunity to stumble upon the next big thing and own it. Sailing under your own power. As long as you have enough food to eat and a roof over your head, it’s all good.
Now I’m glad Google rejected my application a few years back because of my GPA (I always found it ridiculous and ass-kissing having to “perform” in school by absorbing useless garbage and spitting it back out flawlessly to get an A. No creativity required. So I got Fs on all homework but As on the finals just to get through).
I think Google would do well to consider that for every 100 idiots they filter out based on a stringent GPA standard, they may be passing up one guy who is super creative and capable but just wasn’t built for standardized learning.
But now that I’ve detached from the corporate teat, I feel very much alive again, and am glad my creativity didn’t just get enslaved to another master, even if said corporate teat can dispense chocolate and strawberry milk.
Your posting is affirming of my recent re-direction and realization that the corporate world is no longer for me. Thank you!
Cry babies and poor soldier types. I would hate to be in a fox hole with you people. The corp world is about endurance not brilliance. There is something to be said about endurance.
Oh please. This isn’t the military. It’s business.
They are business “organizations”
And best organizations always maps ideas from military because, military is the biggest “organization”
> The corp world is about endurance not brilliance. There is something to be said about endurance.
LOL, well out….gotta remember that
Keep running SOLDIER!! You will save the humanity and make Billionaires more Billions.
Ouch! Now that’s a whole in the Google Gasbag! The new amazing information collection system by Google.
http://stuckinf...es.blogspot.com
SPAM!
Oops major typo. I meant hole not whole!!
http://stuckinf...es.blogspot.com
meh
software always claims oops. whole versus hole is a vanishingly rare erroneous substitution by human authors, so delete yourself spambot, and the bag of words substring kernel from whence you came.