Why I left Google
medium.com
medium.com
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qeyt2Mw4sK4
Like the article, it's very honest and personal. It takes guts to broadcast or publish something like that about yourself on the internet and face the music, as is apparent by some of the responses here and on Youtube. Consider thinking about it next time you decide to post a snarky comment or a TL;DR.
The problem here is the millenial-style privilege. It's all so shallow, first-world-problem-ish and child-like in its naivete. So she bought into the lie that having a job is a mystical road to self-fulfillment, discovered it's not fulfilling and set out to live, strangely enough, a lot like a housewife, except without the husband.
It's curious to me that it's so often bankers, techies, and other members of the 1% who find the courage to "strike out on their own."
I understand that injustice is happening all over the world, but isn't it still important to examine your own life? Isn't that basically the goal of being alive: to figure out what you really want to do with your time on this planet?
I don't consider that Millennial privilege. I consider it a good idea.
It is good both for people to help others get up to first world, and for people to deal with first world problems too.
Why is it that someone who is privileged isn't allowed to want something more? True, they have a lot, but that's the way of life at this point, people move up, people's position gets better, that's the story of human history. However, this person is SO well off, that they're not allowed to question or look for something better?
Just because there is suffering in the world doesn't mean I can't want for more for myself and family.
Edit: Nope I lied, I'm not going to ignore the inflammatory bit, fuck you for saying it.
Sure, it would be nice if everybody spent their energy worrying about poverty in Africa or South America, or human rights in China or whatever, but no one is under any particular obligation to devote their energy to those problems, or to prioritize them over their own favorite issues, whatever they may be.
In other comments i've seen often the word "maturity", well, not to be excessively critic, but that's not the first word that came to mind while reading that article.
Perspective is important no doubt. And don't get me wrong, my own take certainly includes a large degree of concern about "big picture" issues. But as somebody who is admittedly a radical individualist whose interest in philosophy tends towards Existentialism, and who realizes that we are all living very short lives in a brutal and uncaring world... I don't have much of a problem with people who choose to focus on their own problems, needs and concerns.
Like I said, it would be nice if everybody willingly chose to focus on poverty, clean water, vaccinations, clean energy, pollution, etc. But if someone chooses not to focus much (or at all) on that, I can understand and respect their stance.
The vagueness is strange. This doesn't feel right -- well people can be manipulated in to making the wrong decision by making that decision feel right and the right decision feel wrong (sales people do this all day.)
However, if you have spent all of your life with tunnel focus on education & then your job, there is a good possibility that you have missed out on a lot of the periphery parts to living. These small things matter a lot more once you reach a higher level of personal achievement. They also allow you to comprehend the rest of the world.
High performance environments, whether in a city like Manhattan or in a 100-hour work week company, breed a whole new set of problems. You don't need to run away from them, but, I do believe some times you need to take a good step or two back. When you return, the actions you take which impact your lifestyle will be more well intended and thought out.
I agree. On my first reading, even I wondered, "why is she trying to solve by quitting a problem that need to be solved with anti-depressants?". But then I realized that her only fault was not articulating her problem properly. I'm sure there are some strong feelings going on there, but I can't seem to make out the reasons.
Nor are most "techies", even if they are fortunate enough to be an exception to the downward trend in real wages (for the moment.)
http://economix.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/01/17/measuring-the-t...
The linked article, states a floor of $8.4 million, which is ~ $9 million.
This was one of the best things I've read on Medium. I liked the writing, I liked the emotion, I liked the imagery, and I liked the self-reflection. It's true that stories of angst over leaving the corporate world are nothing new, but the execution was good. It was particularly interesting to hear about her experience at Google in that light, given their cachet as the be-all and end-all of big corporate tech employers.
She's lucky she's able to listen and respond to her intuition about what's right for her personally. One of the great tragedies of Western society is that consumerism is encouraged over the pursuit of meaningful work.
Not really. I didn't read as far to get to the part about authenticity. It's just not the kind of content I expect to find at the top of Hacker News. Many others probably feel the same way.
And please don't bring up the guideline about what is appropriate content for this site. That guideline can be used to encompass pretty much anything.
> Please don't submit comments complaining that a submission is inappropriate for the site. If you think something is spam or offtopic, flag it by going to its page and clicking on the "flag" link. (Not all users will see this; there is a karma threshold.) If you flag something, please don't also comment that you did.
That's why I clicked the link. I still think it belongs on HN because it's something readers here would probably be interested in (not me though).
Simply changing yourself is a stop-gap measure: most people find out that it doesn't actually work long-term, because you can't actually change your true self. You can change your surface behavior, but if those conflict with your deeply-held values, those are going to leak through in times of stress, and you won't be able to do your job effectively. It's better to put yourself in a position where your values and your actions are in harmony: that's why they call it living with "integrity".
Polonius:
This above all: to thine own self be true,
And it must follow, as the night the day,
Thou canst not then be false to any man.
More simply, the only ones that should care about this post are the people who knows her. I don't see here any depth, any earth shattering conclusions or space for parallels with the tragedies of society in the first world.
Again, simply, she matured over time the decision that that place was not right for her, she didn't care about having a career in a big corporation. Just build an alternative and move on, you are not the only one going through this, don't over think/over analyse it. That's what i would have told her.
Anyway the campfire incident resonated with me, and I completely believe it. I recently finished the book "Autopilot" by Andrew Smart, in which he describes a brain center called the "default mode network" (which was new to me). http://www.orbooks.com/catalog/autopilot/
The default mode network works when nothing else is occupying the brain. Hence to "listen" to "yourself" aka DMN, you have to literally be silent and in silence etc. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Default_mode_network
Spoken from experience.
Also, I suspect that most HN readers won't understand the maturity & security in one's own self-worth it takes to walk away from that level of career success, and particularly a company like Google.
Was it well written? Absolutely. Could someone take away something beneficial from it? Most likely. But is it worthy of being on the front page of hacker news? I'd guess not.
Again, though I've seen a drastic decline in the quality of posts in the short time I've been here, which is most likely indicative of the overall decline in quality since combining hacker news and startup news.
If something doesn't interest you, save your upvote, move on. This comment you just made is a perfect example of the decline in quality of posts here - and please don't take this as a personal attack, one of the reasons discussions get poorer everyday is going 'meta' about HN and the thread itself, like what we're doing right now :/
Really? All of us?
Honestly though I didn't mean any disrespect to the author or anyone who got something out of this article.
I was simply pointing out why I thought the majority of the comments were critical of the piece, which the parent seemed to attribute to HNer's [not] understading "the maturity & security in one's own self-worth it takes to walk away from that level of career success" to which I would have to strongly disagree.
Far more likely that it is just the novelty wearing off. A variation of this opinion is actually so common that it is in the rules [0]. A general rule for a "happy stay" at HN is to read and comment on the things that interest you. Partly out of self interest, but also out of respect for those who might like a given story and don't want it filled with vague complaints.
People complain all the time about the quality of stories, but as indicated by the low scores on the new page (at least for anything without a popular keyword) they aren't doing anything about it other than complaining. By that ruining the comments for everyone else.
[0] "If your account is less than a year old, please don't submit comments saying that HN is turning into Reddit. (It's a common semi-noob illusion.)"
But for sites which rely on community moderation like this, the articles that rise to the top are by definition the right articles. We have a different set of people now, that's all. I will say that my tastes, and that of the HN community, have diverged.
Personally I'd rather avoid a judgment mindset, where we debate about whether articles 'deserve' to be on the front page or not. HN isn't some star chamber where you get to say what is and isn't worthy of appreciation by the hacker community, whatever that is.
Mostly, it's just an algorithm. And it's designed to encourage variety, not uniformity - this is why most can upvote, but only a few can downvote.
Lastly - I don't know how you can legitimately accuse her of self-absorption. This article is about a difficult personal decision, so no kidding, it's about her thoughts and feelings. This isn't the totality of everything she's ever done in her life (a life which, by her account, was more about achievement than reflection).
And even if she was a little self-absorbed (unlike everyone else in their twenties), so what? Do you want a gold star for putting her in her place? Criticism is good, but real criticism has analysis. Not just labelling.
I don't really feel like I ought be a critic of anyone's writing (given that I am not one myself) but college boyfriends, wandering away from the campfire to look at the stars... it seems like the author takes a really long route to get to the point.
I expected useful insights in what Google was doing wrong, losing such acclaimed talent, but... nothing. It's all about her wanting to fuck up for once, after a life of unmitigated success. I guess this means Google is actually doing something right by losing her, lest she fucks up the company just because.
Wanted means conscious will: she craves the freedom to do everything she wants, including fucking up. I guess an account manager at Google doesn't get that sort of freedom, which might be a good thing after all.
She had a vague dissatisfaction with her time at the company, and she tried to walk people through how she gradually discovered what it was she didn't like.
The whole point of it is that there wasn't any specific thing about Google she didn't really like; that's what makes it interesting (yet also boring and confusing) to read about.
Not a great reason to get so unkind.
I apologize if her (or anyone's) feelings were hurt by my comments.
Her article was about how you shouldn't care what other people desire, you should figure out what you desire and go after that. After all, they're not the one living your life.
Your comment is about how you read the article because of the Google brand, and that you trusted the upvoting masses on HN to weed this out. Notice the language. "Google brand" - why does the fact that this has the word "Google" in it make you want to read it? "upvoting masses" - you trust the masses of HN more than your own judgment?
Perhaps there was something in this article that's worth reading after all, and you glossed over it?
(FWIW, it was my upvote that put this article on the front page - it had 2 upvotes on the New page and was 10 minutes old when I saw it, and I liked it, and so gave it the 3rd upvote.)
I trust the HN hivemind to do (most of) the filtering for me, absolutely. Otherwise I wouldn't read HN, I'd just subscribe to the gazillion feeds out there and read through each and every headline. Despite evidence to the contrary (the number of replies I've written in this thread clearly show that I don't have a highly-driven, high-achieving life similar to TFA's author), I can't dedicate an infinite amount of time to reading stuff on the internet.
Past that, I trust my own judgement in defining what is actually interesting to me by skimming headlines. Finally, once I've read an article, I'm not doubting my inner-self's ability to judge whether the material is actually interesting or not.
This is one of those few times where the two-level filter (HN + me skimming headlines) failed to weed out uninteresting material, and I assign part of the responsibility to the linkbaiting title. I don't think that's unreasonable on my part.
Of course we're on hn, so there is here a lot more people prepared to this than anywere else but still. I like this kind of post, which reminds us that we should be able to focus on what really motivates us.
Of course I'm still pretty young, it could seems obvious to you or others, but if it's in frontpage I assume that I'm not the only one inspired by these posts.
But that's just what I think he meant.
I really strongly believe as a left-coast culture put a lot of emphasis on amazing out of the ordinary experiences as THE ONLY WAY to get "perspective". But the reality is if we learned more about how our brains work, we'd be able to get that sense of perspective in daily life on a regular basis.
This is why I'm more impressed by people who meditate every day while maintaining their previous life, over people who attend a yearly meditation retreat but don't do anything different. The hardest part is changing your daily life without going highly radical.
Because to make society better, having everyone defect and leave to a monastery is not going to be a good idea. We still need people doing their "normal" jobs and getting things done. I need lunch damnit!
Her point (as I took it) was that she had such a strong habit of living her life entirely in terms of her accomplishments that she was living her life inauthentically without even realizing it. And it took a whole lot of space away from her life just to become aware of it.
Not everything can be reduced down to a three-word "TL;DR."
Edit: It's http://letsmend.com/ - you can find a domain registration page if you search her name and the name of the startup.
Again, the experience she described cannot be reduced to "YOLO." YOLO could just as easily mean "I left Google to do something bigger and more successful." But that's the opposite of what she did. She learned to figure out what she actually wanted instead of what she would get praised for, even if it was an overall less ambitious life path.
Why waste your life doing what doesn't fulfill you? You only live once. Is that not applicable as well? This is precisely my argument. I'm just saying we should be ok with offering critique on style and content, not silencing it around here.
Because it can be extremely difficult to distinguish your own needs/wants from the desires and expectations of the people around you.
No one wakes up in the morning thinking "I'm going to ignore what I want for no reason, and instead do what everyone else thinks I should want." And yet it's an easy trap to fall into, like the author did.
On critiquing: something has gone very wrong when you're making dismissive and snarky remarks about someone's long, personal thought piece. You could do a number of interesting things, like, say, disagree with it or suggest improvements. But if you're idea of a critique is "this is long and boring and I know this stuff", I suggest simply finding other reading material instead.
- you get upset at OP for missing the point and criticizing the author for being too wordy
- you give a neat two sentence summary of the article
- you say sometimes you can't give a nice neat summary of an article
- the massive dose of irony that just happened is lost on you.
The Internet is great at the rapid dissemination of micro-communications. But let's not forget that there's merit in taking your time as well.
EDIT: By rectify I meant upvote haberman, not downvote me :) Well thats fine too, but meant the former.
I feel like the authenticity she refers to is very much a 1st world problem (though I'm sure she's worked hard for her success). Most of us work to pay the bills and don't feel like charlatans if our industry doesn't happen to be our life's dream if we even have one.
BTW, anyone have a link to this authentic startup she's referring to?
Ancient writers of many cultures wrote about living well and how to move towards it. The cultivation of the spirit is neither expensive nor new.
But the point is that there's a certain box smart people today in the 1975-1990 generation are put in.
* Get good grades
* Go to college
* Get job at company (alternatively, start your own company. That's pretty trendy today.)
* Find spouse
* Buy house
* Have kids
...etc.
Why bother? That's a good question. Why not simply drop out and go surfing? What's the point of the job? What's the point of having the money to buy stuff? Why use your intelligence, this intelligence that so many people have complimented, in the same way every other person like you has been doing?
It's a variant on the age old question - who are you, really? Why bother being you as you are now?
Maybe that explains it better. But the article really resonated with me.
Do you agree that we need to do more school? Lots of people indicate that much of American school really isn't about learning to think, it's more about passing the class, fitting in, mixed in with a heap of credentialism.
Can you write a bit about what makes Asia far worse?
One would be to skirt the system, prepare for exams, and basically retain hardly anything.(This happens extremely often now, especially because of the number of smart yet not-so-determined kids who can get away with coasting, but they don't realize that it'll cost them later.
American schools tend to be lenient on the amount of time required to be spent on school work which allows them leeway to pursue things interesting projects if they are so motivated.
The second is to actually learn the material and work your way through it, thus being able to handle the exams well, and getting something out of your education.
The large part of why students pick the first option is most of the time the material is not very challenging and students find it much easier to slack off than take an initiative to go above and beyond the standard curricula.
The flipside occurs in Asian schools, where while the material is not challenging, it does take a lot of time and effort (not mental, but just constant work) to do well, and survive. This albeit crushes the innovative side that students should nurture at a high school level.
http://web.archive.org/web/20080709051840/http://www.lambdas...
^_^
When I was a student here I had a class where you could get an A for submitting a copy of your notes, no test, no homework. A lot more had tests with "fill in the blanks" questions. Then there was the rare few classes which actually made you think, but in my experience these were at the graduate level.
I believe that he meant to keep learning and reaching...not stacking up degrees.
I love the ole' trimtab
> Try reading 1800s literature.
But seriously, why be dismissive (perhaps too strong a word - but mildly derisive at least) of such a wide swath of human culture that many admittedly find interesting to make a point that has nothing to with literature or writing style for that matter?
edit: Of course, coming out of Victorian works and then reading modern works feels like a breath air of simplicity and prose without a hint of purple... perhaps to the detriment of the moderns.
Hi, I wrote that post. I'd appreciate it if you didn't attribute factors like "fatuous disdain" and "twitter-length reading abilities" to me.
My point was not that long passages of writing are a bad thing in every context, ever. That you've extracted that from what I said speaks more about you than it does me. Pretty much every length of prose is appropriate somewhere. My point was that this length of text was not warranted for this story. The extra passages do not add to the story, they detract from it.
"World famous, highly regarded literature of the 1800s was long, therefore no passage of text can ever be too long" seems like a spectacularly self-defeating argument to me.
The subtle thing here is that she's blaming being at Google for her lack of fulfillment when a mature person would look inward first. I'd bet dollars to donuts that a similar thing happened to her ex-boyfriend. No rationale, vague sentiments, very little actual introspection, except what might make her happy.
Real maturity is about character, finding how to be a better person and not what the world can do for you.
That said, I'm sure she'll go far in life. I sincerely hope she lerans to improve herself as a person in order that she can be a fulfilled human being.
Again, she's looking at things from a very immature perspective, that of life owing her a fulfilling career without actually doing what she's claiming to be doing. Introspecting.
I'm not even thirty yet, but I feel like most people within my generation are just spoiled children. It's like we need another world war so people can learn to properly appreciate what they have, again.
It's like we need another world war and then another 60's and 70's, but then no 80's to erase all the lessons we learned.
Most people that I know who are in my generation (millennial) are incredibly self-aware and make life choices according to what they want out of life first and foremost. Sadly that often leaves them stuck without the skills to make a significant impact on the world and on the lives of those around them.
This site is rightly focussed around people who have made or are thinking about making genuine choices, founding or being part of a start-up.
It took me until I was 29 to make my first real choice, and then, and ever since then, I've gone about in the same way.
The key is to create real options that are all desirable, and to make a real choice that is for yourself, your family, and for the societal right reasons, not (just) for others' expectations.
So what I did, and advise people to do, is to prioritise three completely different options areas, such as travel, starting a company and going corporate. Next, work on each of them as hard as you can to make them as compelling as possible.
If you've done a great job, then the three options will be equally good, yet very different, and the choice will be incredibly hard. At this stage it's about refining your criteria and choosing the one that opens the most doors and leaves the least closed.
Set a date to decide by, maximize the value of each option by pushing hard, and then pick one.
And I recommend always having a plan B and C, no matter what you are doing.
That she had the courage to uproot her entire life, despite the pressure, is impressive.
(Granted, you could replace "engineer at Google" with "position X at a top company in field.")
Edit: As noted below, Elle wasn't a software engineer at Google, but an account manager in the media/marketing department. The point stands, I think.
It turns out there's a lot of scope for creativity and joy while keeping the organism alive.
Frankly, as a Google employee, I like that the ads business subsidizes research into other areas that are not economical yet or which people won't pay for. The fact that Google culture overall aligns my my views on intellectual property, progressive ideals, and just not being a douche-bag cancels out any "taint" that the money is made on (IMHO, tasteful) ads.
I used to work at IBM T.J. Watson research. I had no love for the IBM consulting or mainframe business, but I never had to deal with it.
Google's main business might be advertising, but that business is mostly automated, it doesn't take 20,000 engineers to run AdWords.
Finding yourself in that position ... realizing it's not what you want out of life. Then taking the leap of faith, to turn your entire life upside in an attempt to find the fulfillment you're looking for takes a lot of courage.
I tip my hat to her.
If it weren't at Google, then...
... she'd be complaining about the sociopathic politics and "endless email" at Microsoft.
... she'd be thankful to have only 3 conference calls, all within normal working hours, at IBM.
... she'd be fearing the pager (dev) or Wednesday business reviews (non-dev in Retail) and admiring Jeff at Amazon.
... she'd be tired of the arrogance at Facebook (caveat: MANY great people at fb, but there are a few PMs who think they are the second coming...)
... she'd be cursing the exploitation of VC-istan at _[your name here]_ startup.
(This post is from personal experience -- yes, I've worked at each company)
"The caveat here is that studying hard my whole life and saving for almost 5 years afforded me the opportunity to have this time completely off payroll[.]"
I'm of the opinion that if you know what you want to do, you should do that. If you don't know what to do, you should take whatever opportunity will expose you to more opportunities in the future. Saving up money is a part of that.
But in the absence of any useful information about that, why not take the choice that gives you the biggest chance of being able to make more choices later? Picking a job that gives you savings gives you a bunch of options later, should you decide that you hate it, and it also gives you information about what sort of work you like to do. So if your guess works, great, if it doesn't, you have the resources to try again.
Ultimately, living an authentic life is the only thing that ends up mattering. There are many ways to do this, and you don't have to make grand moves to get there, although it can certainly help.
A think a lot of academically gifted folks ultimately can have this problem... you become so focused on what you DO you forget that you're a Human BEING not a Human DOING. (props to my friend who gave me that one)
Great quote from John Scatman's "Scatman's World"
Is it slowing down to enjoy life? Is it finding the things that make you happy and pursuing them? Is it doing what your inner voice tells you to do?
Maybe my inner voice is more confused than most, because mine is simultaneously telling me to get a degree and to drop out of college, to start a company in the hopes of being wildly successful and to find a nice, stable job somewhere so I can spend my free time relaxing.
But an authentic life is doing things that accomplish your values in life. A lot of living like this is wanting to communicate in a clear and "authentic" way so you end up with little communities of this stuff.
As for your problem - the problem is you don't really know what your values are in life. You are letting external requirements drive what you are doing, and you aren't thinking strategically, or agent-y.
I'd suggest checking out the book "Focusing". You will be able to help yourself a lot better after you learn how to what the book describes. Also consider http://rationality.org as well
The modern twist is the fact that the author is a little self absorbed and many people are reacting to that. 8 minute YouTube follow up videos etc. A very long winded story that could be tightened up.
What's most interesting is how little she's really challenging herself by changing her environment. Same field (tech) and same state (SoCal vs NorCal) She saw how a single weekend with people not from her field impacted her life. Why not take that weekend and stretch it into a year! Imagine what could happen then? Right now with this path I'd say 50%+ chance "relative" poverty will set it in 12 - 18 months and she'll be back in the womb of a large technology company again.
You weren't forced to read about her problems. You weren't forced to upvote this post to the front page. Yet all you people do is complain.
The post made it to the frontpage because maybe it hit home for a lot of people here? Perhaps people are fascinated by her very personal story? There could be a number of reasons.
HN gets very tiring very fast because of all the negativity. It's terrible. Stop and reflect and realize that HUMAN BEINGS are on the other side of the words written here.
I've seen people recoil very hard when they are reminded about very deeply buried insecurities. When someone suffers from depression or anxiety, you'll sometimes see the most incredible mental gymnastics to avoid going into therapy and doing a bit of introspection. "I don't like the therapist". "It's boring". "This is pseudoscience". To me this looks like an instance of the same phenomenon; it's more comfortable to reject this premise entirely than to consider that it could also be relevant to your own life.
I honestly think HN needs a 'Be Nice' Policy like Quora. I love writing, sharing and commenting on Quora because people are genuinely warm, cordial, friendly and very very constructive in their feedback. On HN however it seems there is a race to see who can post a more Snarky comment. Sad !
Today its hyper-information, hyper-jobs, hyper-success, hyper-sugary foods.
And what is success? What is living? Why is there one ice-cream stop in every town instead of every town having its own ice-cream shop? This new generation wants to understand themselves and how they fit within the spaces they frequent. They don't want to live inside a commercial anymore.
Rather than condemn the author for being a narcissist, people should take the opportunity to study this excellent example of human introspection. I think a lot of people would benefit from having a close look at their goals and motivations. Seems like every other week I see a post on Hacker News about depression or burnout which could have been avoided if the author was able to look at him/herself from a distance.
In other words, it's called being a twenty-something.
With the former, at least you don't feel the pressure to stay because everyone wants to work there.
Quite surprising it wasn't even remotely refered to at least once.
-- Left her wonderful boyfriend. Boo hoo hoo
-- Left her wonderful job Boo hoo hoo
Jesus Christ. The insulation is a thousand miles thick around this person. Is she really not aware that the universe is full of genuine horrors that don't involve her silly quest towards self-actualization or what-the-fuck-ever she's trying to express? Absolutely pathetic.
Then again, kudos to her for making a tough decision that made her life better. Now I sincerely hope that her increased freedom will allow her to develop a less unhealthy perspective on life than what transpires from her blog post.
(Not sure why I'm taking the time to react in what is obviously not a constructive way; maybe I'm just trying to make the nausea go away.)
Congratulations, and I wish you all the best!
The comment regarding a recurring dream was something I also experienced.
"recurring dream that I was being chased, jumping through windows and doors, but never getting further away from my chaser"
I had been running from myself.
This realization had the effect of me going into business for myself, leaving a high paying job, and struggling for quite awhile before I began to be successful.
Today I work longer hours than I ever did for that high paying employer, but the difference is that I enjoy what I do, and I get to choose the projects that I pour my efforts into.
Too many are content to remain in their respective comfort zones, and this stifles innovation...
You go, girl!
The sun sets in the East?
I've never understood this weird form of condescension. So because there are many people in the world facing extremely serious personal struggles, we're not allowed to discuss our own, less serious personal struggles without being accused of marginalizing everyone else? What, is "feeling alone" somehow not a valid emotional response unless you're impoverished?
And really, WTF does youth have to do with this? I see people in all walks of life talking about their personal struggles.
I referenced youth in two senses. First, young people have the luxury of time, and two, this lack of self-awareness is more prevalent in younger people.
I think I see what happened here. Her family and friends are astonished that she left Google so she wants to explain herself. It's unfortunate she broadcast it to the world, because she opened herself up to critique by people who don't get the context.
This is a personal journal. She did not corner you at a party and harangue you for 20 minutes.
This woman seems to have every life opportunity handed to her in a silver plate since the day she was born that all she had to do is work hard and not fuck it up. I know people who are brilliant and work immensely hard but just do not have the socioeconomic status and/or luck to even get an interview.
She just threw away something that millions of people would literally kill for. Something that I, as recently as 4 years ago, would literally kill for.
Just because you can't seem to fathom how someone might leave behind a cushy job does not give you the right to be judgemental. World is a suckier place when people can't seem to see the world without their tunnel vision.
I am sure that you had some big difficulties in your life and you achieved your goal anyway - it must have been very hard and I admire you for that. But you should try to understand her - her problems are very different than yours but I can imagine that those might be even harder to deal with.
Please stay away from Joshua Tree and other wilderness areas.
are you fucking kidding me? rich princess complaining about something most people would kill to have - a comfortable life.
The post is not about Google but author's personal life.
Paradox.
I've been there. One tends to have such 'realizations' after working at a job like hers and banking 100k or 2. This type of freedom is not the general condition for human beings, is usually fleeting, and is almost always bought with a lot of money.