Sunday, January 18, 2009

More people speak on leaving Google

An interesting compendium of opinions from people who worked at Google. A lot of negativity which is perhaps natural for the "former" team.

http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/01/18/why-google-employees-quit/

Still, I had a feeling that a lot of it is driven by the misunderstanding of Google psyche.

Google is not your typical software company - it is an advertising company. It is very much in the nature of advertising to tell the truth in a way that makes the advertiser looks as positive as possible.

It reflects in a way that the software is written, it reflects in compensation.

For example, when Microsoft tells you that they will pay for X (for example, moving you to/from a locale) they mean that the net economic effect to you will be X. Which means grossing up the taxes. The fact that they had to pay more is an implementation detail that is hidden from the user.

When Google tells you that they will pay for X (for example, a subsidy for buying a Prius), they mean that the net economic effect to them would be X. What you will get is really .6X - after taxes.

And so it goes ;-)... People who do not read the small script are bound to be disappointed.

It's not at all that the company is evil - far from it. Google tries to work very hard to appeal to the employees. It's just the advertising nature that show no matter what you do :-).

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Google made it perfectly clear to employees that the $5000 is taxed. Yeah, they could have said it's $3000 and grossed it up to $5000, but the end result is the same to the employee.

I think that people who complain about these things are trying to feel better about their decision to leave (or better about getting asked to leave).

DzembuGaijin said...

How about free food? Free munches? Why these people complain? They AGREED and pick the job and they are all FUKCING GROWN UP individuals. Was Sergey or Larry holding gun to there head? They sounds like babies: I was consumed by BORG. What the fuck? You do not like, you leave. No need to explain much: some thing was not rubbing you right, who cares?

Google is just yet another IT company, that is, yeah, duh... *IS* different from M$ or Apple or some small start up. So fucking what ? :-)

I liked your Google review much better : it was packed with interesting details and my be that is why it made to Slashdot ! :)