I worked at Google for close to 10 years. I resigned when I had made enough money to retire comfortably (for the next 40 years) in a European city.
The first two years were enjoyable but then it started going downhill, fast. Some close friends and co-workers had major implosions on the job and I was burned out. Once I realized that Google would suck me dry if I let it and that reality was completely different to the expectations I had going in, I found ways to drastically reduce the number of hours I actually worked and spent the rest (company time) doing things that contributed to my self-development (side projects and reading books, mostly).
I spent the last ~5 years doing no more than two hours of actual work per day. Needless to say, these were some of the best, most carefree years of my life. My mind rebounded and it felt great knowing that I was screwing the company that only viewed me as a commodity whilst getting paid top dollar.
I am pretty sure I wasn't the only one doing it, either.
Not far from the truth. Recently started working with a former Googler, and almost every sentence starts with, "well at Google, we..." Well that's great, but you realize we're in an entirely different market and business model, right?
Many of us had the experience of working for a nontechnical manager. It's always been surprising that companies think technical work can be managed by an average non-technical manager. I had one great non-technical manager, he just wanted me to explain what was going on and then let me do it, made suggestions, kept me apprised of priorities. It's disastrous for beginning devs.
I’ve been at Google about as long as you, and I’ve heard folks say some variation of this since the day I started. Personally, while there may be political or spiritual changes further up the ladder I’ve noticed no real change in my day-to-day over the last five years.
"Interviews" doesn't actually appear in the text of the article or its title. What does appear in the text is a very clear description of where the information came from.
"We spoke to several former Googlers to find out why they left the company, compiling their responses with those of other former employees who have written about their departures publicly."
I'm am, once again, quite impressed by hn's top comments.
I left my tab open long enough to still have the original title:
"Interviews with former Google employees to find out why they decided to leave (businessinsider.com)"
That's basically what happened to me. I got bored after a while, working on a small feature on v8 of something. Fixing bugs and not having much testing for my system was a drag. The original leader of my mature product team was good, but he left and then a first time overly confident bro was the leader. We reported issues but new upper level management didn't matter.
You don't want to work there because they think everyone wants to work there? That seems silly. It's pretty common for all recruiters in the universe to not have the new employees best interests at heart - they mostly want to find people who can get hired.
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[ 4.8 ms ] story [ 57.2 ms ] threadThe first two years were enjoyable but then it started going downhill, fast. Some close friends and co-workers had major implosions on the job and I was burned out. Once I realized that Google would suck me dry if I let it and that reality was completely different to the expectations I had going in, I found ways to drastically reduce the number of hours I actually worked and spent the rest (company time) doing things that contributed to my self-development (side projects and reading books, mostly).
I spent the last ~5 years doing no more than two hours of actual work per day. Needless to say, these were some of the best, most carefree years of my life. My mind rebounded and it felt great knowing that I was screwing the company that only viewed me as a commodity whilst getting paid top dollar. I am pretty sure I wasn't the only one doing it, either.
"We spoke to several former Googlers to find out why they left the company, compiling their responses with those of other former employees who have written about their departures publicly."
I'm am, once again, quite impressed by hn's top comments.
(I mean, how many skilled, driven, ambitious people don't want to promote themselves?)