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Hi there, I did the exact same thing as you (at Google Sydney), before eventually deciding that I must strike out into the wilderness. In the few years since I

Hi there, I did the exact same thing as you (at Google Sydney), before eventually deciding that I must strike out into the wilderness. In the few years since I left; I worked as a solutions architect managing a team, a team lead, a remote dev, and now in a startup. Front-end, back-end, flip-side, all the ends. So I've been deliberately trying different angles of my career to see what suits. I'd describe this process as grueling, ("challenging" is too friendly). I honestly think I would have been happier staying at Google, farting around, and being social. I agree with a lot of the comments here. However it's a catch-22, because the me that exists now wouldn't choose to go back and overall I think this has been good for me – and not just because of the, er, _character building_ aspect of it. If you stay at Google, make the most of it by progressing deliberately in your social life. If I'd've stayed, I could have comfortably raised some kids with my wife by now - but that's still on the todo list. If you leave, just jump right in. I didn't study anything, I just picked it up as I went along. If you were able to follow Steve Yegge's advice and Get That Job At Google, then I'm sure you're a smart cookie and can fake it til you make it. Basically I'm saying you can be happy either way. If you leave, know what you're getting yourself into. If you stay, don't waste this time but use it on yourself.

joatmon-snoo 7y ago
Current Googler here; my solution to staving off complacency has been constantly asking myself if there are other problems I can and will work on - and they don't have to be problems on your team. (Although, I will say that at a certain point, if you're growing, I think your responsibilities should be shifting from solving problems to identifying/prioritizing the problems.) Every team has a looonnngggggg list of things that they want to do but can't because they don't have the people for it (even if they're not keeping track of it). Frankly there's also a non trivial amount of core language work that's done by people who don't actually work on any of those teams. Getting context can be hard sometimes, but I've done it plenty of times. Am always happy to chat, my username is pretty obvious from my profile.
- foota 7y ago
  Snoo@? :)
  - joatmon-snoo 7y ago
    hm. dropped an email in my profile.
- dmoy 7y ago
  Big +1 to this For a specific idea, come help kythe team build out a new indexer (say, rust or maybe swift).
- apohn 7y ago
  It's amazing to me to learn that you can help other teams solve problems at Google. Every big company I've worked for (none of them FAANG), helping another team is a recipe for disaster. You will get your hand slapped, punished, blamed, and basically make your life much worse. Each team is super insulated and tries their best to hide behind their management chain because of this. It's great that you can feel bored and look for other problems to solve and not just teach yourself something new to stay challenged.
  - blaser-waffle 7y ago
    > Every big company I've worked for (none of them FAANG), helping another team is a recipe for disaster. You will get your hand slapped, punished, blamed, and basically make your life much worse. This. More work, much of which won't improve your review or bottom line. You get a stack rank from your boss and your team, not the guys two offices over. Then, if your upgrades screw up its on you. Apropos of a a saying I'm fond of: "not your circus, not your monkeys". > Each team is super insulated and tries their best to hide behind their management chain because of this. That's what Mgmt is for, and why things can be escalated as "Mgmt Issues" so that the leadership, PMs, etc. can figure it out.
    - jomkr 7y ago
      At Amazon you literally can't get promoted to Senior Engineer (SDE3) without showing influence outside your team.
  - taurath 7y ago
    Those places are the ones who care primarily about tickets being closed, and you probably won't have much ability to be involved in the feature ideation process, and probably won't even have a real way to prototype things before they're all in JIRA. My place right now is in the middle where much of the absolutely most useful work in the company is getting done because people behave autonomously, but the formal review process has had trouble recognizing that work as it can be difficult to put a number to it. Not knowing the 2nd and 3rd order effects means you can't say "I went over and cleared up this team's misconceptions and saved them a month of work" isn't something you can say because you have no way to know you saved them a month of work, so you just say "communicated and collaberated" which sounds suspiciously like you did nothing if the process hard numbers to avoid things like favoritism.
- docspace 7y ago
  Current Google-ish company person here, and this can be just as dangerous as it is beneficial. I was on this team, more than once, where I’m complacent and no one is asking for more from me... so I started helping. I thought I was moving towards leadership because I was identifying and solving the right problems for others. I felt successful. None of this work contributed to my career path, although it was development work. I felt like a hero, but the people who respected my new work didn’t complete the feedback loop and/or my current leadership didn’t care. It actually stole time from work that would have gotten me promoted/provided more challenges. I felt like I lost my role as SME and instead became a jack-of-all-trades. It was good experience and luckily did not get me fired. When I look back I realize that the problem was the team/leadership’s lack of growth-focus and support. If I had transferred teams or left the company I may have been better off. I say may have, because other than feeling like I wasted a few years learning this, I’ve ended up in roughly the same place I would have been.
  - taurath 7y ago
    2 problems that can cause that, the first of which is by far more common: 1. You haven't developed the skillset to both track and evangelize your impact. 2. The company's review process doesn't properly value out-of-band contributions I find that when I really look into it, #2 is actually rarely a problem if you are good at #1. As I've worked on getting better at #1 I've found I'm far more comfortable at work, it helps my career, and I still get to just do what my instincts tell me and what is best rather than shift that to what will look best.
    - VRay 7y ago
      You guys should quit wasting your time on this BigCo BS and do something that will actually benefit your real career. http://paulgraham.com/lesson.html http://paulgraham.com/lesson.html
cantrevealname 7y ago
> make the most of it by progressing deliberately in your social life Ironically the Bay Area is among the worst places on Earth for improving your social life if you're straight and male. I noticed that you don't live in the Bay Area, you're married, you probably meant a much broader meaning of "social life", so your experiences are likely very different. But the typical clean cut, well-spoken, hard working, respectful, male SWE in the Bay Area making $120K+ a year in his 20s or 30s, who should be a magnet for women, turns out to be living in one of worst places because of male-female ratios among singles (and some other cultural factors). My advice would be work hard, save your money, travel when you can to better locales to improve your social life, but with the eventual goal of permanently moving out when you've saved enough. If you pick your destination within the USA well, dating prospects will improve greatly, and if you look worldwide (and can overcome the language and immigration issues), it could improve dramatically.
- NeverFade 7y ago
  > But the typical clean cut, well-spoken, hard working, respectful, male SWE in the Bay Area making $120K+ a year in his 20s or 30s, who should be a magnet for women, turns out to be living in one of worst places because of male-female ratios among singles (and some other cultural factors). Yes, it's quite simple: there are many more men in the Bay than women, so women have their pick, and they can afford to raise the bar far higher than $120k. Also, $120k can be a nice annual salary in much of the US, but doesn't go far in the Bay where median house price is over $1m. Consider just FAANGs in the Bay. There's probably not enough available single women just for every straight FAANG male employee (who would be making more than $120k/yr). Anecdotally, I know some women in the Bay, working in areas like recruiting and marketing, who are dating VCs and CEOs exclusively and consider dating "plain engineers" to be beneath them. Fair or not, your "male SWE making $120K+ a year" has become the "common guy" of the Bay. The number of women is small enough that most of them can aim higher.
  - deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]
  - whack 7y ago
aladine 7y ago
Which company you are working right now? I almost get a chance to join Google Sydney but failed at the last round. If there is any other company cooler than Google I will definitely want to try to apply.
franze 7y ago
> If you stay at Google, make the most of it by progressing deliberately in your social life. If I'd've stayed, I could have comfortably raised some kids with my wife by now - but that's still on the todo list. Uh oh. Unseen Risk Fallacy Just because you don't experience risk, doesn't mean it does not exist. The company just hides risk from you, but it's still there, culminating without feedback. As raising a child is a 19+ year project and the OP has already a few years of not stellar performance and risk - if not dealt with - grows exponentially (risk factors attrackt more risk factors). So the stay in place is actually a very risky proposition. One huge bet, without much feedback. As the OP is Young and doesn't have kids or other major spendings a much safer strategy would be to try different gigs. With his resume then (Google, lots of other gigs) he can prop. return to a low maintenance job at a big company at one point anyway.
- marmaduke 7y ago
  > Uh oh. Unseen Risk Fallacy a bit off topic, but couldn't identifying fallacies in arguments be automated? how much better would the discussion be if comments were labeled with likelihood of fallacy?
  - TheGallopedHigh 7y ago
    This would be a tall order for any NLP algo. I would hazard a guess and say no, not yet.
  - contravariant 7y ago
    Given that this thread is the only instance of the phrase "Unseen Risk Fallacy", I'm not too sure that it will work as well as you'd hope. Fallacies are subtle and even in the best of cases only point out holes in someone's argumentation, which doesn't tell you much about the conclusion. If anything automatic labelling of fallacies just risks running foul of the fallacy fallacy.
- scottishfiction 7y ago
  Speaking of fallacies, how about the one where parenthood increases your risk of underperformance 'exponentially', or is in any way a 'risk factor'. Check your bias. Parenthood is as likely to make you better at your job.
thrownaway954 7y ago
"If you stay at Google, make the most of it by progressing deliberately in your social life. If I'd've stayed, I could have comfortably raised some kids with my wife by now - but that's still on the todo list." THIS all the way. When we are young, we think that we will be remembered by the company that we worked for and the people that we worked with. The sad truth is that in 99.9999% none of those people will remember you the second you walk out the door. The family you raise will remember and love you though. I'm in my 40s and got fired a very cushy job like OP has. The reason was cause I wanted to challenge myself and I worked myself into early alcoholism which resulted in my dismissal. My co-workers don't call, the company doesn't call, they don't care. My marriage broken up cause of the job and me wanting to pursue my so called dream. I'm alone and will most likely die alone this year by my own hand since the pain is too much bare sometimes. I miss my wife and my little Pomeranian terribly. OP... if you want challenge in your life, challenge yourself to being a good partner to someone in a marriage and raise some kids, get a Pomeranian :) Have something in this world that will truly appreciate and remember you when you are gone. "I never saw a tombstone that read. 'If I had only worked more'"
- lordgrenville 7y ago
  I encourage you to reach out to others in the same place - r/SuicideWatch/ is a good place to start. I don't know you or what you've been through but I am certain there are things in your life that are still worth living for.
- bixcoito 7y ago
  Just the act to say loud everything you got trough and what you think is a step to move forward. Be strong and the light to share the others what you did wrong and find the path to make you happy. Hanging in there buddy :)
- jc174 7y ago
  Sending you a lot of love, friend. There are a lot of resources for help out there just to have someone to talk to: http://suicidepreventionlifeline.org http://suicidepreventionlifeline.org for example.
- 7y ago
balladeer 7y ago
I have been in two such developer roles - combined around 8 years. I am currently at the second and every morning I struggle with the idea of not going to office and quitting but this job is what puts food on the table. I don't even want to be in the software field. Whenever I have tried to think about it, write it down, brainstorm I have come to one vague connotation that I'd be interested in something that's a combination of art/history, architecture, product, UX. I have tried finding masters, PhD in fields that would appeal to me, tried to search for jobs and I have found none. There are some (very remote) - but at my experience level they either look for experience in the field of higher education. I have to leave this job and I am planning to move to some other software company - preferably some big org where I can look for something that's a fit for me or something closer. But I won't even know whether I should do that. Some evenings I just try not to think about it.

joatmon-snoo 7y ago

Current Googler here; my solution to staving off complacency has been constantly asking myself if there are other problems I can and will work on - and they don't have to be problems on your team. (Although, I will say that at a certain point, if you're growing, I think your responsibilities should be shifting from solving problems to identifying/prioritizing the problems.) Every team has a looonnngggggg list of things that they want to do but can't because they don't have the people for it (even if they're not keeping track of it). Frankly there's also a non trivial amount of core language work that's done by people who don't actually work on any of those teams. Getting context can be hard sometimes, but I've done it plenty of times. Am always happy to chat, my username is pretty obvious from my profile.

foota 7y ago
Snoo@? :)
- joatmon-snoo 7y ago
  hm. dropped an email in my profile.
dmoy 7y ago
Big +1 to this For a specific idea, come help kythe team build out a new indexer (say, rust or maybe swift).
apohn 7y ago
It's amazing to me to learn that you can help other teams solve problems at Google. Every big company I've worked for (none of them FAANG), helping another team is a recipe for disaster. You will get your hand slapped, punished, blamed, and basically make your life much worse. Each team is super insulated and tries their best to hide behind their management chain because of this. It's great that you can feel bored and look for other problems to solve and not just teach yourself something new to stay challenged.
- blaser-waffle 7y ago
  > Every big company I've worked for (none of them FAANG), helping another team is a recipe for disaster. You will get your hand slapped, punished, blamed, and basically make your life much worse. This. More work, much of which won't improve your review or bottom line. You get a stack rank from your boss and your team, not the guys two offices over. Then, if your upgrades screw up its on you. Apropos of a a saying I'm fond of: "not your circus, not your monkeys". > Each team is super insulated and tries their best to hide behind their management chain because of this. That's what Mgmt is for, and why things can be escalated as "Mgmt Issues" so that the leadership, PMs, etc. can figure it out.
  - jomkr 7y ago
    At Amazon you literally can't get promoted to Senior Engineer (SDE3) without showing influence outside your team.
- taurath 7y ago
  Those places are the ones who care primarily about tickets being closed, and you probably won't have much ability to be involved in the feature ideation process, and probably won't even have a real way to prototype things before they're all in JIRA. My place right now is in the middle where much of the absolutely most useful work in the company is getting done because people behave autonomously, but the formal review process has had trouble recognizing that work as it can be difficult to put a number to it. Not knowing the 2nd and 3rd order effects means you can't say "I went over and cleared up this team's misconceptions and saved them a month of work" isn't something you can say because you have no way to know you saved them a month of work, so you just say "communicated and collaberated" which sounds suspiciously like you did nothing if the process hard numbers to avoid things like favoritism.
docspace 7y ago
Current Google-ish company person here, and this can be just as dangerous as it is beneficial. I was on this team, more than once, where I’m complacent and no one is asking for more from me... so I started helping. I thought I was moving towards leadership because I was identifying and solving the right problems for others. I felt successful. None of this work contributed to my career path, although it was development work. I felt like a hero, but the people who respected my new work didn’t complete the feedback loop and/or my current leadership didn’t care. It actually stole time from work that would have gotten me promoted/provided more challenges. I felt like I lost my role as SME and instead became a jack-of-all-trades. It was good experience and luckily did not get me fired. When I look back I realize that the problem was the team/leadership’s lack of growth-focus and support. If I had transferred teams or left the company I may have been better off. I say may have, because other than feeling like I wasted a few years learning this, I’ve ended up in roughly the same place I would have been.
- taurath 7y ago
  2 problems that can cause that, the first of which is by far more common: 1. You haven't developed the skillset to both track and evangelize your impact. 2. The company's review process doesn't properly value out-of-band contributions I find that when I really look into it, #2 is actually rarely a problem if you are good at #1. As I've worked on getting better at #1 I've found I'm far more comfortable at work, it helps my career, and I still get to just do what my instincts tell me and what is best rather than shift that to what will look best.
  - VRay 7y ago
    You guys should quit wasting your time on this BigCo BS and do something that will actually benefit your real career. http://paulgraham.com/lesson.html http://paulgraham.com/lesson.html

cantrevealname 7y ago

> make the most of it by progressing deliberately in your social life Ironically the Bay Area is among the worst places on Earth for improving your social life if you're straight and male. I noticed that you don't live in the Bay Area, you're married, you probably meant a much broader meaning of "social life", so your experiences are likely very different. But the typical clean cut, well-spoken, hard working, respectful, male SWE in the Bay Area making $120K+ a year in his 20s or 30s, who should be a magnet for women, turns out to be living in one of worst places because of male-female ratios among singles (and some other cultural factors). My advice would be work hard, save your money, travel when you can to better locales to improve your social life, but with the eventual goal of permanently moving out when you've saved enough. If you pick your destination within the USA well, dating prospects will improve greatly, and if you look worldwide (and can overcome the language and immigration issues), it could improve dramatically.

NeverFade 7y ago
> But the typical clean cut, well-spoken, hard working, respectful, male SWE in the Bay Area making $120K+ a year in his 20s or 30s, who should be a magnet for women, turns out to be living in one of worst places because of male-female ratios among singles (and some other cultural factors). Yes, it's quite simple: there are many more men in the Bay than women, so women have their pick, and they can afford to raise the bar far higher than $120k. Also, $120k can be a nice annual salary in much of the US, but doesn't go far in the Bay where median house price is over $1m. Consider just FAANGs in the Bay. There's probably not enough available single women just for every straight FAANG male employee (who would be making more than $120k/yr). Anecdotally, I know some women in the Bay, working in areas like recruiting and marketing, who are dating VCs and CEOs exclusively and consider dating "plain engineers" to be beneath them. Fair or not, your "male SWE making $120K+ a year" has become the "common guy" of the Bay. The number of women is small enough that most of them can aim higher.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
- whack 7y ago

aladine 7y ago

Which company you are working right now? I almost get a chance to join Google Sydney but failed at the last round. If there is any other company cooler than Google I will definitely want to try to apply.

franze 7y ago

> If you stay at Google, make the most of it by progressing deliberately in your social life. If I'd've stayed, I could have comfortably raised some kids with my wife by now - but that's still on the todo list. Uh oh. Unseen Risk Fallacy Just because you don't experience risk, doesn't mean it does not exist. The company just hides risk from you, but it's still there, culminating without feedback. As raising a child is a 19+ year project and the OP has already a few years of not stellar performance and risk - if not dealt with - grows exponentially (risk factors attrackt more risk factors). So the stay in place is actually a very risky proposition. One huge bet, without much feedback. As the OP is Young and doesn't have kids or other major spendings a much safer strategy would be to try different gigs. With his resume then (Google, lots of other gigs) he can prop. return to a low maintenance job at a big company at one point anyway.

marmaduke 7y ago
> Uh oh. Unseen Risk Fallacy a bit off topic, but couldn't identifying fallacies in arguments be automated? how much better would the discussion be if comments were labeled with likelihood of fallacy?
- TheGallopedHigh 7y ago
  This would be a tall order for any NLP algo. I would hazard a guess and say no, not yet.
- contravariant 7y ago
  Given that this thread is the only instance of the phrase "Unseen Risk Fallacy", I'm not too sure that it will work as well as you'd hope. Fallacies are subtle and even in the best of cases only point out holes in someone's argumentation, which doesn't tell you much about the conclusion. If anything automatic labelling of fallacies just risks running foul of the fallacy fallacy.
scottishfiction 7y ago
Speaking of fallacies, how about the one where parenthood increases your risk of underperformance 'exponentially', or is in any way a 'risk factor'. Check your bias. Parenthood is as likely to make you better at your job.

thrownaway954 7y ago

"If you stay at Google, make the most of it by progressing deliberately in your social life. If I'd've stayed, I could have comfortably raised some kids with my wife by now - but that's still on the todo list." THIS all the way. When we are young, we think that we will be remembered by the company that we worked for and the people that we worked with. The sad truth is that in 99.9999% none of those people will remember you the second you walk out the door. The family you raise will remember and love you though. I'm in my 40s and got fired a very cushy job like OP has. The reason was cause I wanted to challenge myself and I worked myself into early alcoholism which resulted in my dismissal. My co-workers don't call, the company doesn't call, they don't care. My marriage broken up cause of the job and me wanting to pursue my so called dream. I'm alone and will most likely die alone this year by my own hand since the pain is too much bare sometimes. I miss my wife and my little Pomeranian terribly. OP... if you want challenge in your life, challenge yourself to being a good partner to someone in a marriage and raise some kids, get a Pomeranian :) Have something in this world that will truly appreciate and remember you when you are gone. "I never saw a tombstone that read. 'If I had only worked more'"

lordgrenville 7y ago
I encourage you to reach out to others in the same place - r/SuicideWatch/ is a good place to start. I don't know you or what you've been through but I am certain there are things in your life that are still worth living for.
bixcoito 7y ago
Just the act to say loud everything you got trough and what you think is a step to move forward. Be strong and the light to share the others what you did wrong and find the path to make you happy. Hanging in there buddy :)
jc174 7y ago
Sending you a lot of love, friend. There are a lot of resources for help out there just to have someone to talk to: http://suicidepreventionlifeline.org http://suicidepreventionlifeline.org for example.
7y ago

balladeer 7y ago

I have been in two such developer roles - combined around 8 years. I am currently at the second and every morning I struggle with the idea of not going to office and quitting but this job is what puts food on the table. I don't even want to be in the software field. Whenever I have tried to think about it, write it down, brainstorm I have come to one vague connotation that I'd be interested in something that's a combination of art/history, architecture, product, UX. I have tried finding masters, PhD in fields that would appeal to me, tried to search for jobs and I have found none. There are some (very remote) - but at my experience level they either look for experience in the field of higher education. I have to leave this job and I am planning to move to some other software company - preferably some big org where I can look for something that's a fit for me or something closer. But I won't even know whether I should do that. Some evenings I just try not to think about it.