[xoogler2004]

As a xoogler who interviewed way back in 2004, let me say that this post sums up my feelings exactly. The people I worked with at Google back then weren’t necessarily there for high six figure salaries. We were there to work with other people like us. We were there to be part of something larger than ourselves. In some sense I felt alone most of the time, and when I interviewed I felt as if I had found my tribe. These are people who made me feel dumb, but also astutely aware that I could improve. I learned so much during my tenure there, and I regret none of it. Perhaps I do regret taking so long to realize the sense of purpose and mission died when Emerald Sea started and good projects (reader, google talk, code search) were being canabalized to prop up a pipe dream that was never going to work. That’s the nexus event in Google’s time line… where things went askew and never came back to normal. Now people only care about perf, OKRs, and levels. Being a poor new grad with no savings and intentionally picking projects that would not get you promoted (but were fun) was frequent back then. The courage to do new things is rewarded in ways different than titles and symbols. Perhaps no “one” is more cognizant of that than the anthropomorphic Google of today.

[Nican]

I work at at a large corporation, and that is one balance that I am also constantly fighting and never seem to get it right. Having to provide a "Business justification"/OKRs for every technical feature has been soul draining experience, and while I can still make progress in making the product and drive the business forward, I have a hard time justifying spending the time in the little details that I would consider what makes a product really great.

I feel like the cycle turned one of making power point presentations of how the product has all the required features, but the overarching story and experience does not feel quite right. And I have been looking for advice on how to convey the importance to polish up the product.

[linspace]

We have been brainwashed into believing that engineers when left alone will obsess over technical details without business utility, which is something that can happen sometimes but that in my experience is rarely a problem. Quite frankly I think most SW products fail by being an obvious piece of crap, not because resources have been wasted on hard to monetize technical excellence, but the later are more talked about.

[dunkelheit]

You need someone on your team who figures out what is important for the users and prioritizes accordingly. The arrangement where the person who does this also codes a bit can work (especially when the team is small and the application domain is highly technical), but it doesn't happen automatically after you've banished all "pointy-haired bosses" from the project nor is anyone who is a good engineer automatically good at this thing also.

[bartread]

They're more talked about because a lot of us have worked places where we've invested months or years into developing products that... nobody bought or used. That gets pretty soul destroying too.

If that's not been your experience, lucky you, but I've witnessed and been involved first hand in my share of expensive failures that I don't particularly want to repeat.

[lozenge]

While some engineers can be like that, they can be a useful part of the team if enough others are more business needs driven.

[xoogler2004]

Truthfully? Prioritizing bottom up innovation has to oddly enough happen from the top down. Give middle and front line managers the responsibility and mandate to continually foster such a culture, and that’s what this is, culture. If you’re stuck in a company that doesn’t do this… and if you want to do amazing things, just be honest with yourself - is this the place for you?

[username90]

It is really hard to do though. Google tried to do it, but when you reward middle managers for innovation you get a lot of half baked projects soon to be shut down, like current Google. Or if you reward them for stability as Google is increasingly doing then innovation stops almost completely.

[enumjorge]

Didn’t Google pull it off in the beginning? If I remember correctly, some major successes like Google Earth came out of Google’s famous 20% policy. I’m not sure what changed since then. Maybe it’s not something that scales easily?

[bryanrasmussen]

It's true that there were some early notable 20% projects https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/20%25_Project#Notable_projects

[psyc]

Google Earth was acquired. Formerly Keyhole, IIRC.

[oblio]

Gmail was an acquisition, Google Maps was an acquisition, Android was an acquisition, Google Docs were an acquisition, I'm actually having a hard time thinking of a major Google project that's not an acquisition except for Google Search and Google Ads (and even there, I think they acquired DoubleClick early on and that boosted their ads business a lot).

[corobo]

No it isn't. But what are the options? Undiagnosed ADHD ruled out education which ruled out degrees which rules out most jobs, especially FAANG

Any place where smart people congregate have gatekeepers. Makes sense from their perspective, nobody wants to deal with other peoples problems, but we can't all just fall into early Googles haha

Anywhere desperate enough to hire based on skill doesn't have the capacity for fun projects

[xenihn]

what do you mean "especially FAANG"?

software engineering is the most forgiving middle-class industry when it comes to education credentials and pedigree, and FAANG is even more forgiving than the industry norm.

it's actually kind of amusing that the most desirable SWE jobs are the most lax when it comes to considering your background, while the least desirable SWE jobs are the most strict about requiring specific degrees

you can leetcode your way into most of the major tech companies that people actually want to work for without a degree.

is it unlikely? sure, but the important thing is that it's possible.

think of any other comfortable middle-class career, and how much gatekeeping there is. you can't do some equivalent of leetcode to become a doctor, or a lawyer, or a financial professional. you have to pay up and go to school, and it better be a good one. then maybe you'll get a job, but there's no guarantee

[maccard]

Smaller companies have far less stringent requirements and often don't require a degree.

> Any place where smart people congregate have gatekeepers.

Requiring a degree, especially at lower levels, isn't necessarily gatekeeping. I've been on the hiring side at 3 companies and every job listing we've made has had dozens of applicants for one role. Given the choice between two juniors who are otherwise equal(read: no experience), one with a (CS/engineering) degree and one without, why would I ever hire the latter?

[wccrawford]

When I find 2 juniors with no experience, I don't look at their education. I look at what they can do. They wouldn't be applying for the job if they couldn't code, so they had to have done some coding.

If neither can code, neither are getting hired anyhow. I never have to hire a body for that seat. I'm only interested in people who can do the job.

In the incredibly unlikely event that I've got 2 decent coders with no job experience to choose from, and I really can't tell whose code I like better, then I might look at their education.

But to be honest, in that situation, I'm likely to pick the self-taught coder over the one with the degree. All the best coders I know were self-taught, and there's a ton of self-teaching necessary to get up to speed on a new codebase, and also to learn new skills as we change technologies over time. I want someone who needs less hand-holding to learn.

I actually have a degree because I thought I needed one to get a job. (And an initial job-search seem to confirm that.) Later, I got my first job over someone that looked much better on paper because I had better actual skills. My next (aka current) job didn't care about my degree, either. I've been in the industry for about 17 years now, IIRC.

IMO, degrees are a crap-shoot. Some companies might require or prefer them, and others will do the opposite. Everyone should focus on what works best for them instead of catch-all advice like "Go to college".

[caskstrength]

> Given the choice between two juniors who are otherwise equal(read: no experience), one with a (CS/engineering) degree and one without, why would I ever hire the latter?

They are never really "otherwise equal" though. If they are, your interview process sucks.

[kreetx]

I think what the parent means is that the "want" to hire any of them is equal, both having their unique strengths and weaknesses in different areas.

You seem to imply that when an interview process doesn't suck then all hiring choices are a clear cut win for one of the candidates.

[praptak]

Not sure about other FAANG but Google requires a degree "or equivalent practical experience".

[psyc]

I find 95+% of companies of any size include the equivalent experience line as standard. I did not go to college, and I’ve worked at MS, FB, and had interview rounds at all the non-Netflix FAANGs.

[bquest2]

Oddly enough, I find the bottom up management style leads to OKR obsession (at scale). When too many smart people get in the room, they all start to have bright ideas and management is stuck trying to decipher which ones to actually implement.

The engineer who can come up with the biggest number, wins.

[atulatul]

Business justifications and soul draining experiences?

We follow SAFe agile and do our innovation work in IP sprint at the end of PI. Of course half of the IP sprint is dedicated to planning for the next PI. :-)

[auggierose]

I don't even want to know what all these acronyms mean.

[seanhunter]

You'll be AOK as long as the TCQ doesn't give you a TKO and the AETN doesn't overheat. If either of those happens you have to RTB for resupply.

[apatters]

Kudos on the ONI reference :)

[Cthulhu_]

wtf

[regularfry]

It's the agile consultant's way of saying "I plan to be spontaneous tomorrow."

[spaetzleesser]

The diagram here should give you a good idea of Safe Agile: https://www.scaledagileframework.com/

I will leave it up to you to form an opinion….

[karlding]

SAFe: Scaled Agile Framework

IP: Innovation and Planning

PI: Program Increment

[allo37]

I worked at a place that did this! Those week-long planning events were soul draining in their own special way...

[tiborsaas]

That's mind blowing how frustrating it can be. I had to come up with way to justify my product manager that implementing a loading spinner animation is essential. I failed.

[tdullien]

Former Googler here, too -- 2011 to 2018. The Google I joined was definitely a different place from the Google I left, and seeing the "phase change" up close was ... interesting.

Your sentence about salaries resonates; the Google I joined had a lot of folks for whom the salaries were a nice side-effect for a job they were intrinsically motivated for, the Google I left seemed to have many unhappy people that were fearful of leaving that salary behind.

[1vuio0pswjnm7]

Emerald Sea == Google+ (2011)

This is when a Google employee told Wired the company needed to start focusing more on gathering information about people.

[dehrmann]

> The people I worked with at Google back then weren’t necessarily there for high six figure salaries. We were there to work with other people like us.

I wonder how much this used to apply to the Valley as a whole.

[ChrisMarshallNY]

> The people I worked with at Google back then weren’t necessarily there for high six figure salaries. We were there to work with other people like us.

As an older dev, who isn’t a “cultural fit,” I can vouch for this. It ended up becoming my bane.

It forced me into an early retirement (I never made the huge gobs of money that people seem to make, these days, but I lived frugally, and invested fairly well).

The end result, for me, is that I am now happier than I have ever been in my life. I’m architecting and constructing software that shames anything I ever worked on, as a younger dev. I’m exploring software development practices that my employers never let me do (and that are working well).

I’m not making any money at it, but I’ve never actually done this stuff for the money.

“other people like us” has changed, over the years. Folks like me, are now an anachronism.

Of course, the thing about grey hair and cultural awkwardness, is that it comes with decades of experience in shipping software. That’s not something that comes in a Cracker Jack box (an example of said “cultural awkwardness”).

I wouldn’t have had the guts to make this move, on my own. I had to be forced into it.

So, it sucked, and was humiliating and scary, but, in the aggregate, things have turned out OK.

[skybrian]

Which software do you work on now?

[ChrisMarshallNY]

I’ve done a bunch of stuff. My strengths are device control and UX widgets, but I’m working on an aggregate system that is social-media-ish (for a specific demographic). Not actually the stuff I shine at, but I like challenges. It’s coming along nicely.

It is allowing me to play with UX, and that’s something I enjoy.

[bbkane]

Do you have a blog or something?

[ChrisMarshallNY]

I have a couple.

I'd suggest looking at my HN handle, but here's one:

https://littlegreenviper.com/miscellany

[ghaff]

Probably quite a bit. Pre-dotcom, Valley salaries mostly didn't scale with higher cost of living. (There are still CoL issues of course, but not as much at the mid/senior FAANG level.) It's one reason I never moved there from the East Coast.

[Aeolun]

Probably a lot, especially before the money came flooding in.

[xoogler2004]

More than we want to admit and not enough to get us to stay.

[zelphirkalt]

In my experience, one does not need to go to some FANG or other big company to learn, that one has still lots to learn and find areas to improve in. I personally got that from mailing lists, particularly in the free software communities, where sometimes people write stuff, that is waaay over my head and that I have never dealt with, even though I am a professional software developer. I even think, that some of the more theoretical stuff goes beyond most things a normal engineer will hit working for a big company. So at least that bit is available for anyone out there, no need to work for an, in terms of ethics, questionably acting company.

The bit about finding ones "tribe". Yes, it happens for us engineers, when there are many smart people in "the room". I would not value it over finding purpose though. Purpose in technical perspective, as well as ethical perspective. There is a lot of feeling alone for many of us, because most of us cannot be around similar minded people a lot. What makes me feel more alone though is, when I meet bright people, who do not care about the ethical aspects of their work or hobbies. So personally, I do not think I would "find my tribe" in a FANG or similar company. I highly doubt it even, no matter how smart people there are.

[quijoteuniv]

I think we need more great people working on real humanity problems. I am glad they probably do not need the money any more and that “the big money” cannot suck their talent anymore.(for profit) Cheers for all those talented engineers with guts to leave behind the big players

[zozbot234]

> the sense of purpose and mission died when Emerald Sea started and good projects (reader, google talk, code search) were being canabalized to prop up a pipe dream that was never going to work.

Interesting way of putting it. And it also jives with the fact that Google+ always looked half-baked even from a pure UX perspective, and is now dead altogether. Perhaps with the benefit of hindsight, we can speculate that Google leadership should have tried to move in that direction while still meshing with the existing "sense of mission and purpose", not just suppressing it.

[dvfjsdhgfv]

> the sense of purpose and mission died when Emerald Sea started

And when it materialized and they started to shove Google+ down everybody's throats it was a tipping point for many faithful Google users, too - any trust and good faith that was still there was instantly depleted.

[paganel]

> code search

After all these years I still miss this, can't explain exactly why. Maybe it is the nostalgia of the 2006-2008 years when everything seemed still open and doable when it came to things on the web.

[zozbot234]

In 2021, the new way to do code search is to write your search terms and let Copilot fill in the rest of the code.

[nitrogen]

Copilot would actually be kind of cool if it automatically inserted comments linking to the original source of the snippets and automatically added the source project's copyright/license notices to your app's legal notices UI.

[jahller]

> Perhaps I do regret taking so long to realize the sense of purpose and mission died when Emerald Sea started and good projects (reader, google talk, code search) were being canabalized to prop up a pipe dream that was never going to work.

the day google reader was shut down was probably one of the saddest i had ever been for a piece of software.

[sakagami0]

I worked on Chronicle and remember seeing your name everywhere. Thanks for all the help in the typescript channel, good luck at Figma!

[tj-teej]

For someone on the outside, what was 'the pipe dream that was never going to work'?

[felixfbecker]

Curious what you mean by code search being cannibalized?

[varispeed]

> The people I worked with at Google back then weren’t necessarily there for high six figure salaries. We were there to work with other people like us.

You were a perfect specimen to get exploited by a big corporations. You had knowledge and you were willing to work for the sake of it. That's why we need laws that would prevent something like this from happening in the future. It's scary that you don't even realise that.

[ctvo]

Hilarious. You act like they were paid minimum wage to do their jobs.

They didn’t care about the money is very different from they weren’t paid good money.

I don’t disagree that corporations will exploit you given the opportunity, but software engineering is a very low priority on that list.

[varispeed]

Oh so the exploitation is acceptable as long as you are not paid a minimum wage?

I can't believe people defend these companies. Stockholm syndrome?

[blindmute]

The exploitation is completely acceptable when you are paid $300k+ and don't even feel exploited, yes. I fail to see how getting paid huge sums to do what you enjoy doing is even close to 'exploitation' for any reasonable definition.

[varispeed]

So company makes a billion out of your work and you are happy with $300k. Okay.

[blindmute]

What does that matter? You'd decline $10 if it meant someone else got $20? FAANG pays extremely generously. You're either being paid enough to work or you arent; what someone else gets should be meaningless. When you call being paid some of the highest salaries in the world exploitation, you devalue the word.