Last week, TechCrunch re-posted snippets from an email list for former googlers. This article was set up to make an obvious conclusion: Google is not the fairy tale land of employment.
Wait, wait, you mean not everyone loves their job at Google? Shocking! A logical person might point out that what one person loves another person hates and thus, it is physically impossible to have a large company where everyone loves their job.
That being said, allow me to make a few points:
1) Former Googlers are not representative of Googlers.
Imagine if you set up a group for ex-New Yorkers, and then asked why they left New York. You'll probably get an usual number of negative complaints. That doesn't mean that most people hate New York.
Likewise, TechCrunch didn't ask Googlers whether or not they liked their jobs - they took a thread from a list of former googlers. That is, people who didn't love Google enough to stay, for whatever reason. So, you're already starting with a list of people whose feelings towards the company skew usually negative.
2) The Email Thread is not representative of Former Googlers
People love complaining, particularly those who feel that they have been wronged in some way. If you start an email thread with the question "Why'd you leave Google," you're opening the floodgates for those who hated Google. People like me, who genuinely enjoyed their experience at Google, will stay silent. People like complaining more than praising.
3) TechCrunch was unethical in releasing the (first) names of the posters.
Though TechCrunch hid the last names of the posters, they released the first names. If your name is Bob or Mike, your secret might be safe. But, what if your name is "Gayle", or one of the many ethnic or unusual names? Then they might as well have released your full name. Releasing people's names added nothing to the article, but embarrassed - or potentially hurt the careers of - the posters.
4) Almost everyone at Google does like their job.
When I left Google, people were surprised. Everyone (or virtually everyone) likes it there. No one came to me and said "yeah, I want to leave too. I hate it here!" I did have several people admit to me that they were thinking about leaving as well. But, in every one of those cases, they said that they liked it, but wanted to go to a smaller company or to a different role.
5) Why I liked Google (and why I left)
I had a great team. I liked our project. I liked my manager. I was working on cool, interesting stuff.
Google is, in my opinion, the best place to be an engineer. Engineers are given more authority than I've seen at any other company. If you want to work on something new, there's lots of other projects that you can easily switch to. You can work on your own personal pet project 20% of time. How many other companies let you do that?
For my 20% project, I got to teach two courses at University of Washington. It was an enormous time investment, but I loved teaching. I've kept in touch with many of my former students, and it's amazing to see them to become fantastic engineers at Google, Microsoft and Amazon. I really appreciate both Google and UW giving me that opportunity.
Despite Google being a great place to be engineer, I realized that I didn't want to be an engineer anymore. Ironically, the fact that I was so happy with everything about my job at Google made it the decision easier. After all, if everything was right about the job (team, manager, project) and you're still not excited, the issue is probably the job itself.
Though I liked coding and considered myself fairly good at it, I wanted learn a little more about business: sales, marketing, product design, finance, accounting, etc. Google is a great place, but it's not the place to learn those skills. I felt I could only get that education at a start-up, so I left.
"Gayle" is Not Hate Speech
I'm banned for hate speech on WyldRyde. Yup. My name, you see,
has the word "gay" in it, and thus "gayle" is hate speech.
This happens fairly often as it turns out. I've hit this issue on AOL, Microsoft's theSpoke.com, planes with games on their lcd screens, etc.
I have to wonder though. Suppose my last name were "Straighth", would I be banned as often? Why is "gay" considered hate speech?
(PS: I would check if WyldRyde banned "Straighth", but it's banned my computer completely. Anyone want to check any find out?)
has the word "gay" in it, and thus "gayle" is hate speech.This happens fairly often as it turns out. I've hit this issue on AOL, Microsoft's theSpoke.com, planes with games on their lcd screens, etc.
I have to wonder though. Suppose my last name were "Straighth", would I be banned as often? Why is "gay" considered hate speech?
(PS: I would check if WyldRyde banned "Straighth", but it's banned my computer completely. Anyone want to check any find out?)
How Not To Do Customer Support
I recently sent in a support ticket to evite about a pretty huge issue with their site. I can't say what it is - yet - but it's not a little bug. It's a huge, massive, gaping issue.
Anyway, I get the usual "thank you for your email" auto-response. Then, two hours later, I get this:
Funnily enough, this response probably actually works a good percentage of the time out of the pure flakiness of their site.
By contrast, I've had pretty good experience with customer support at other companies:
Anyway, I get the usual "thank you for your email" auto-response. Then, two hours later, I get this:
Thank you for your patience. The issues you have experienced have been corrected, and you may now create, edit, and manage your invitation as desired. If you experience any further difficulties, you may alleviate this by deleting the cookies and clearing your browser’s cache, as they may still contain the error page information. We regret any inconvenience this may have caused you. If we can further assist you, please contact us.Uhh, no, it hasn't been fixed. In fact, judging from the non-sensicalness of the response, they didn't even read my email. What this means is:
- They have an auto-response, on a time delay, saying that they've fixed the issue when they haven't done squat.
- Some minion clicks a button to say that they're fixed issues when they haven't done squat.
Funnily enough, this response probably actually works a good percentage of the time out of the pure flakiness of their site.
By contrast, I've had pretty good experience with customer support at other companies:
- Facebook: Once Seattle Anti-Freeze exceeded about 1500 members, we could no longer send messages to the group or invite the group to an event. Facebook employees Luke Shepard and Paul McDonald got those limits raised. Thanks guys!!
- Pingg: I've written in feature / bug requests. Their support team has promptly responded with well thought out responses.
- MyPunchBowl: After I posted about MyPunchBowl, the founder emailed me - within hours.
- Zoji.com: I have exchanged numerous emails with the founders.
Google App Engine - Caching and Downtimes (Rant)
Google App Engine:
g caching for an hour - your app will operate as normal".
If you've used App Engine, you know how ridiculous that is. You can't operate an App Engine site without lots and lots of caching.
App Engine takes your generous daily quota and divides it up into tiny little minute or second long quotas. Their logic is something like this:
Now, Google could have mitigated this by removing the absurdly small quotas temporarily. CareerCup would have run slowly, but at least it would have run. Instead, though, users get punished for expensive-ish queries, with no chance to avoid it. Not cool.
This brings me to my next point:
Google, if you're going to take down people's sites, can you pick a better time than 9am - 10am? Try, perhaps, 2am - 3am? I know you don't want to come into work at 2am. I know it's not really Google culture to tell a team that they have to be at work and away from their families 2am. But you have to. You have real users operating real businesses, many of which are a whole lot bigger than CareerCup. We depend on you to keep our websites up.
Google: Don't act like taking down memcache doesn't disable our sites. And don't disable our sites at 9am when you could've done this 2am.
"We will be taking memcache offline tomorrow morning from 9-10am PST (GMT-8) for routine maintenance. Calls to the memcache API will *not* throw exceptions but will instead return false for set() calls and None for get() calls (just like any other cache miss.) Your app should continue serving normally during this period, andGoogle writes this as though it's "no biggie - we're just disablin
we'll keep you updated on our progress."
g caching for an hour - your app will operate as normal".If you've used App Engine, you know how ridiculous that is. You can't operate an App Engine site without lots and lots of caching.
App Engine takes your generous daily quota and divides it up into tiny little minute or second long quotas. Their logic is something like this:
- You can eat 2000 calories in one day.
Hurray! That's a lot of food! - It's good to pace yourself and not eat it all at once.
Absolutely. You wouldn't want to pig out on breakfast and not be able to eat anything else all day. - Therefore, we will only let you eat 1.4 calories per minute.
Well, f*ck. Pass me two thirds of a tic tac?
Now, Google could have mitigated this by removing the absurdly small quotas temporarily. CareerCup would have run slowly, but at least it would have run. Instead, though, users get punished for expensive-ish queries, with no chance to avoid it. Not cool.
This brings me to my next point:
Google, if you're going to take down people's sites, can you pick a better time than 9am - 10am? Try, perhaps, 2am - 3am? I know you don't want to come into work at 2am. I know it's not really Google culture to tell a team that they have to be at work and away from their families 2am. But you have to. You have real users operating real businesses, many of which are a whole lot bigger than CareerCup. We depend on you to keep our websites up.
Google: Don't act like taking down memcache doesn't disable our sites. And don't disable our sites at 9am when you could've done this 2am.
Talkinator & The Value of Feedback
I've been using Talkinator, an embeddable chat program for websites, for a few months now.
I realize I might be the only post-1995 site to want a chatroom, but it's actually rather useful. For example, when people are discussing, say, Microsoft Interview Questions, they'll jump in the chatroom to discuss problems. This use was expected.
The more interesting use-case was simply feedback. People hesitate feedback via email, or even through anonymous forms. They will, however, jump in a chatroom and complain. I've discovered a number of bugs this way.
Nifty.
I realize I might be the only post-1995 site to want a chatroom, but it's actually rather useful. For example, when people are discussing, say, Microsoft Interview Questions, they'll jump in the chatroom to discuss problems. This use was expected.
The more interesting use-case was simply feedback. People hesitate feedback via email, or even through anonymous forms. They will, however, jump in a chatroom and complain. I've discovered a number of bugs this way.
Nifty.
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