[refulgentis]

It's crazy there's zero accountability for bad behavior in tech. I went through my own story at Google, and seeing them say it was vaguely bad before promoting him to VP mirrors exactly the "intervention" I saw.

The deck is completely stacked against you based on hierarchy. Behavior that a fast food manager would proactively solve in 30 seconds gets ignored in white collar tech. No one above you will even mention it - they know you can't win and they just hope you'll quietly give up.

If someone above you in the informal hierarchy is messing with you, there's massive confirmation bias if you complain. They'll spin it to whoever you complain to make you the bad guy. HR never helps - their job is to investigate, and then give the results to someone 2-3 steps above you to do something with.

The higher ups control the outcome, and they designed the power structure in the first place, their confirmation bias is accept the spin.

If you want to survive, avoid conflict 100% of the time. Let people blame you, fail reviews undeservedly.

My Google career ended from just doing exactly what I was supposed to do in order to get a 3 year delayed project done, that 4 separate VPs had been asking for all those years. I spent 6 months warning my manager fuckery was afoot. Didn't matter. TPM witnessed and defended me, didn't matter. Guy who led it hired his unqualified childhood buddy to replace me. Didn't matter. All on me. Everyone wanted to do it, and gee whillakers, refulgentis went mad and dropped the ball completely for some reason.

Of course, 6 months later they delayed the project a 4th year because they could, documenting the only downside being a strained relationship with a less influential partner team. (my orgs managers didn't realize their...unvarnished...takes were in a doc shared with all of Google)

At the end of the day, HR will funnel you into taking mental health leave -- 6 months worth, exactly long enough that an EEOC complaint can no longer be filed. (took me 6 years to realize why "disgruntled Google employee" news articles always included a bit referencing leave/6 months off as if it was a bad thing. go/mh-leave if you're at Google. You don't actually need to talk to HR, and I don't recommend going to them ever. I didn't for this, but they wouldn't have helped.)

The whole system is broken.

[VirusNewbie]

>Guy who led it hired his unqualified childhood buddy to replace me. Didn't matter. All on me. Everyone wanted to do it, and gee whillakers, refulgentis went mad and dropped the ball completely for some reason.

How is that possible at Google, which should have a hiring committee? Managers aren't allowed to just hire rando person.

Did your director or VP not like you or something? I'm curious if there's more to this story.

[refulgentis]

There always is, things that mattered here:

Why didn't higher ups care? I didn't bother going up higher than skip. My core interlocutor was my skip's peer's report's report, I didn't expect my skip to go to war over slow-drip white collar bullying. Honestly, I was done and planning my exit once year 3.5 of "not this year" hit, going crying to VPs you see once a month / once a quarter felt insane & would have just devolved to he said/she said.

To your point re: seems like a lot. I worked with a couple counselors at same level as my skip over my last year there. (highly recommend G2G if anyone reading is at Google, kept me sane.) #1 said they dealt with less after kissing their VP's wife at an off-site - which is why I got #2, wasn't sure if that one was too skeezy at first.

What would I have done differently? I was honest the whole time, which didn't help because the fact I wasn't happy and it was escalating was clear. ex. with the hiring friend thing, told my manager that I was shocked and didn't expect that kind of thing at a startup.

How do you hire a friend without domain experience as a manager?

There's a core principle that once you've made it through Google interviews, domain doesn't matter, all Google SWEs will excel. Having loose rules with kind intent is awesome, but they're double-edged. That gives you rationale, and combined with moving recruiters into individual orgs., lets you put your thumb on the scale and bring in who you want. Also 2022 through June, Google was desperate to hire, this would have been justified as an awesome referral, and what's a friend, anyway?

[VirusNewbie]

> lets you put your thumb on the scale and bring in who you want. Also 2022 through June, Google was desperate to hire, this would have been justified as an awesome referral, and what's a friend, anyway?

Ok, I guess you're saying a manager brought in his friend, who was already hired by google (or passed HC), but they didn't get them hired at Google, right?

>#1 said they dealt with less after kissing their VP's wife at an off-site

Lol please tell me this is an official story I can find somewhere???

Anyway, I've heard Google is extremely slow with firing folks, even ones who are abusive. But I do see people get fired, though usually after many years of a pattern.

Sorry you had to deal with all that.

[refulgentis]

> Ok, I guess you're saying a manager brought in his friend, who was already hired by google (or passed HC), but they didn't get them hired at Google, right?

Exactly, you're right, they still went through interviews.

And thank you