thorwagoog

Am I the only person who thought that list was a poem? :) Here is how my mind read it:

  I block ads in the browser, I block their DNS
  I block beacons and the ping attribute in their URLs 
  I block analytics, reporting, and diagnostic logging
  I block programmatic pleas to disable ad-blocking
  I strip query strings from UTM campaign tags 
  I unshorten URLs to avoid tracking hacks
  I stop autoplay for the videos on my feed
  I block all the cookies that your websites don't strictly need
  I block the visibility API on your page 
  I block prompts to install your app in a fit of rage
  I block hidden pixels that track my email
  Which surely gets masked but to no avail
  As I unsubscribe from your mailing list, dork
  And block your address if that doesn't work
  I block and report SMS that have ads
  Phone calls get ignored if not from my contacts
  I pay a company to wrangle data brokers for the win
  And trust me, junk mail goes straight into the bin
  As I unsubscribe from it all when I can
  I block ads, and you should block too, my dear friend

(Written organically, without ChatGPT or the like)

You make good points. I'm not in a rush to ascribe blame to anyone. It's just that sometimes certain culture prompts people of certain mindset to make certain mistakes. Repeatedly and predictably. Is the culture to blame, or is that person to blame (each and every time)? And is it productive to even use the word "blame" in this situation, or should other concepts be used?

Since you're more familiar with the facts of the case, I can contribute nothing more than to offer a different angle to look at this.

And I'll leave the author's self-improvement journey to the author.

ex-googler here, who has had similar criticisms but was able to recognize their own flaws and mistakes, chipping in.

Doesn't the culture, as described, exacerbate certain flaws in certain people while hiding flaws of a different kind in others?

At google it's easy to see how a flawed engineer might suffer from impatience, lack of tact, inability to read the room, poor social skills, not being attentive to details or to everyone's needs. It's easy to ascribe flaws to someone who makes mistakes and, instead of writing a lengthy postmortem and installing a process, goes ahead and fixes them while pleading for everyone to move on and keep shipping.

Yet at the same time, the sins of complacency, cowardice, inability to make decisions or take calculated risks, rigidity, and aversion to hard, uncomfortable work remain well-hidden. Sometimes, they are even elevated to praise! At Google, it's better to waste everyone's time or do nothing, than take a risk and ruffle some feathers (and I'm not even talking about taking externally visible risks here--a decision to build a certain piece of infra or shut down a project).

And the cycle repeats. A brilliant but "flawed" engineer realizes they can't work in that culture. They blow up and move on. Everyone says "eh, they make mistakes, can't read the room, and are difficult to work with. Poor culture fit". Well, for them, a bunch of complacent do-nothings is also extremely difficult to work with. But the do-nothings are in charge, and they are not. So they leave. Rinse and repeat.