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Comment by aix1 | Hacker News Reader

Overwork? Toxic teams? Project managers running teams?

I've been at Google for a very long time, in quite a few orgs, and none of those things ring any bells. (Some probably exist in some pockets, though the last one sounds particularly implausible. It's just not how Google job ladders and the management structure work.)

Now, I have to admit to having not read the article, but the headline does resonate. I've spoken to a lot of current Googlers about this, and their attitude towards the company has definitely changed rather dramatically, almost overnight. People in non-US jurisdictions are feeling this particularly acutely, due to how the layoffs have been playing out for them.

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I’ve been at Meta for a few years and would say similar - I’m pretty sure that at any company with tens or hundreds of thousands of employees, you are going to get some horror stories - but in general it used to be an amazing place to work (ranked #1 on glassdoor for several years for good reason), but now… ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

I currently work at Google and my take is that it really depends on the team. If an IC is toxic, the effect of it isn't terrible. If a manager is, the effect spreads and if a manager of managers is toxic, that's a recipe for disaster and so on.

I personally am in a situation where nasty politics are being played out just for the sake of getting promoted. It's fine to focus on your promo, but not at the cost of your colleagues or the environment.

That being said, the broader google ecosystem and culture holds on a macro level. It really is the people that work there who define and uphold it. A couple of rogue high level folks are enough to destroy it.

> Overwork?

I don't know anyone working at Google, nor anyone who worked at Google in the past (except a single intern). Hell, I don't even live anywhere near a Google campus!

But I always assumed that Google wants you to spend your whole day there, from morning until evening. Because big tech is usually implicitly aiming at that.

- Serve three major meals a day, + you can bring your dog to your office, which eliminates any reason to go home (especially for those who don't have a house or spouse to take care of).

- Shuttle bus, where many employees have like, idk, 40min of free time? Why not just start working on the laptop already?

- Food servings are stretched out. Breakfast is till 10AM; dinner is served at 6:30PM, so if you started at 8:30AM, you need to stay another 1.5h to make use of dinner. Why not work in the meantime?

And some classical fear stuff which makes you want to work hard and long hours:

- Aggressive deadlines

- Get the promotion in 2 years or get fired

I dunno, I probably wouldn't mind working under these conditions, but I think there are reasons why the average tenure of a Googler is 1.5 years.

I worked at Google for three years. It was a great experience and I mainly left because I had grown accustomed to remote work and was planning on moving back to live closer to family after having a falling out with the bay area.

I do get the impression that people have had vastly differing experiences at Google, but the culture was very laid back. Deadline pressure existed, but ultimately it never felt that bad: if we weren't going to hit it, we weren't going to hit it. It happened.

>Get the promotion in 2 years or get fired

I don't think this is true. I'm pretty sure once you're L4 or so you can pretty much coast. I heard a similar thing when I was at Google, but knew of many counter examples within my circle of coworkers.

First: Thank you for sharing your experience! But I have one question, I'd be glad to get some clarification.

> I'm pretty sure once you're L4 or so you can pretty much coast. I heard a similar thing when I was at Google, but knew of many counter examples within my circle of coworkers.

Do you mean that there are employees who were below L4 and have not been promoted in the past two years?

Or do you mean that you know employees, who are L4, but haven't promoted to L5 in the past two years?

In general, it seems (judging from HN comments) like L4 is the minimum growth expectation.

I am not sure if it is ladder-dependent but yes, you can stay at L3 for longer without getting fired. Not sure if there's actually a set limit anywhere, and I suspect it's more of a rule of thumb.

Part of the reason the average tenure is so short is companies usually quote Median, and that’s low by definition in high growth companies. If you double your headcount in 2 years, your median will be less than 2 years even if nobody quits.

> I always assumed that Google wants you to spend your whole day there, from morning until evening.

People always cynically assume that's why Google has the perks but in all the Google offices I've worked from or visited, the building is a ghost town after 6:00pm.

The real reason is that Google is competing with other tech companies and perks are an effective incentive to get people to pick your company over another one.

> Because big tech is usually implicitly aiming at that.

Tech companies are aiming for maximum long term productivity of intellectually challenging complex work. I'm not aware of any data that shows the way to get that is by grinding your employees into the dust with overtime.

yeah, I've heard a crazy amount of bellyaching at other FAANG companies about not having the same perks as Google

I'm sitting here thinking "News flash: you can just buy lunch for yourself at a restaurant using the $400,000 they pay you per year"

Those perks are the real deal. They do pull people in

> "News flash: you can just buy lunch for yourself at a restaurant using the $400,000 they pay you per year"

The magic of free food as a perk is that it's a non-zero value proposition for both employees and the company.

Before I worked at Google, I worked at a software job without free food. We could afford to eat out for lunch every day and we did.

But it meant at least twenty minutes of driving every day. The food was more expensive because it didn't have the same economies of scale as cafeteria style service. It was less healthy because restaurant food tends to go over the top with salt and fat to amp up the flavor and entice people in. There were never any serendipitous conversations with new coworkers because I always went with the same team every time.

Conversely, when I eat at Google now, it's a five minute pleasant walk. There's no wasted time sitting waiting to get served. There are fewer options so I don't get stupid analysis paralysis deciding where to go to lunch or what I want to eat. I eat more salads and smaller meals because I don't feel compelled to get my money's worth. When I travel to other offices, I know I can easily get breakfast and lunch there without having to navigate an unfamiliar city if I don't feel like it.

Meanwhile, the cost of driving to restaurants and eating out each day is quite a bit higher than the total cost of feeding employees in a cafe. So for companies that don't offer this perk, they have to compensate employees enough for them to feed themselves and I suspect that the total comp for that is more expensive than just feedling them.

Free food is my absolute favorite perk at Google, and I treasure it deeply.

Yeah, all that stuff is true.. although most of it's true about the subsidized cafeterias at Amazon, Apple, and Microsoft too

I'm not making a relative comparison to other companies that also offer free food.

> I don't know anyone working at Google, nor anyone who worked at Google in the past (except a single intern). Hell, I don't even live anywhere near a Google campus!

I did a couple year stint at Google, and I also didn't know anyone who worked there at all.

I just wanted to underline that my "knowledge" comes from reading HN comments. And it looks like I got a lot of stuff wrong too!

Did you hear about "megablocks"? They ran the shuttles and cafes on the weekends and "encouraged" engineers to work through the weekend until that project was done. I wasn't in that org and joined Google a bit after the project concluded, but it had an infamous reputation that stuck around.

No, never heard of "megablocks".

It might actually have been spelled "megablox"; it's been too long.

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