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Living the Good Life, Leaving Google Behind
inetsee writes with an article in the San Francisco Chronicle profiling seven early Googlers who have left the company, part of a cohort the article claims amounts to 100 out of the first 300 workers hired by Google. For these former employees, all the acclaimed perks of life at the Googleplex can't compete with calling the shots in their own lives. Google's chef is opening his own restaurant, Olana Khan has started a non-profit that makes micro-loans to entrepreneurs in developing countries, and Aydin Senkut has become an angel investor. Others are simply enjoying retirement, making things in the garage shop or skydiving in South Africa.
How do you live the good life while unemployed? How are they going to make a living? What, all 100 of them are millionaires and set for life? I doubt that.
How is this news? They have been at the company 6 years, saw it grow and have ambitions of their own. I am not shocked in the least bit.
If you made multi-million dollars in a start up tech company would you:
1. Leave to pursue your interests.
2. Continue to work at the company until retiremennt.
3. Burn the money in a huge trash barrel and join a Buddist monestary.
4. Hire private detectives to stalk CowboyNeal?
Waltz, nymph, for quick jigs vex Bud.
If you are young, healthy, single, and debt-free, you dont need to be a millionaire to pursue your dream. Ramen noodles, a backpack, and a good attitude is all you need. I don't understand why people think they need to "pay their dues" before doing what they really want to do in life.
You live only once. You are young only once. So, you should do whatever it is you really want to do.
This, of course, is why it is so important to live frugaly and avoid debt -- it can rob you of your freedom. There's nothing worse than some student debt with a side dish of some credit cards, a long-term cell phone contract, and a car lease.
I've done about 10 interviews with them, they went OK (although they don't really seem to know what they are doing in their hiring process...) but after the "on-site" interviews 2 months ago they simply forgot to get back to me with feedback. I imagine this happens with a lot of people, they spend several months being interviewed with google and getting this sucky treatment. Google deals with the hiring process as an investment, and as it seems, so do the job applicants. Part of the people that get actually hired will spend some time in the company and get away for a "promotion" in another company just because they've worked for Google, partially motivated by the way the company dealt with them since the beginning.
Big companies spend about 15% of their budget on advertising, because that's what advertising consultants tell them that they need to spend. That hasn't changed. What happened was that they stopped spending too much of it on untargetted advertising. Google lets them spend it on targetted ads, which even if they don't get clickthroughs still buys them brand awareness among potential customers. Google does this very well indeed, and the question that you should be asking is: how does any other ad-supported service stay in business.
If you were blocking sigs, you wouldn't have to read this.
FTA: "Aydin Senkut has become an angel investor"
Angels have lots of grace, so I guess Aydin is trying to get some of that. Unless he's interested in snow angels, which are ridiculously cheap to manufacture and require only snowfall, a few seconds and a cold/wet backside. Problem is that the ROI is about zero.
Mr. T pitied this fool on 27 July 1992.
i mean, good on em, but really, this is exactly what is wrong
capital isn't going to producers but exploiters
we can all argue about what earning means, truth is tanstafl
some one has to pay
When in school, I attended an Accenture (Andersen Consulting at that time) hiring event in which I was told that I could be VP in 5 years just because almost everyone just quit within the first 3 years (with some money and a breakdown). The funny thing is that they managed to tell this almost as something positive.
Me too. I thank the Lord that Andersen Consulting rejected me - several years later I met a couple of the guys that did get in and they were both depressed and on the verge of leaving. Some of their friends at the company had even had breakdowns.
I've seen the bumperstickers saying "The Worst Day Fishing is Better than the Best Day Working". That kind of sums it up. Even if it's the best place in the world to work, if you don't have to work and can be doing something else, there's a lot of fun things out there.
There are lots of people out there who "love their jobs", but in reality it's only relative. They love their jobs, when compared to other jobs. If you don't have to work, there are lots of other things to do out there.
http://www.khaaan.com/
if you are single with no family and want to work all your life and spend most of what you earn on outrageous housing costs, higher taxes, and urban sprawl then google is the place for you. Just like most of northern cali/simi valley/san fran the culture is also secluded and anti-social. how many couples walking on the sidewalks do you see? or people walking their dogs? heaven forbid i get a flat tire or run out of gas. i'll be walking to the gas station on my own.
if you have a family and they are first in your life above anything else(including work), want to save and not throw money away on outrageous housing costs and want privacy without having to drive one hour one way to work then google is not the place for you even if you could get a job there.
more people are figuring out that they dont want to work 50 or 60 hours a week because they want to do other things, stay healthy and just have a life outside of work. most people dont want to work where they feel like they live in China and Japan, where workers typically work 70 hour weeks, but of course their country works and thats all it does, yet where is the reward? It's hard to enjoy rewards in life that you earn if you are too busy working. Our culture has turned into the mindset slowly and on a different scale of china. that to be successful we have to work all the time and nothing else comes before it, including family. I am not sure where or when this trend started.
there is a reason why we have weekends and a reason why most people dont work more than 40 hours a week. its to take a breather from work so we can refresh. its also a reason that people have burnout and productivity decreases. In google's case there are enough people that want to work for them that have the mindset that google is their life and that is why google provides things like laundromats, bringing your pets to work, 3 gourmet meals and swimming pools. if people just wanted to go home for lunch and promptly go home after 5 or 6 pm then what would the need be to offer all these ameneties? think about that one for a moment.
I know that they have offices in NYC and Seattle as well as sporatic jobs here and there but NYC and Seattle is the same as Simi Valley/Mountain View -- that is heavy traffic, no privacy(unless you want to drive 1 hour one way to work), up to the sky housing costs and taxes and living in a culture where everyone wants to work their whole life and thus they think their employees should have the same attitude. Trying to not to sound too stereotypical i am sure there are other smaller places in these areas that at least offer stable working conditions.
In Seattle's case i dont know how in the world all these tech companies keep people in that area. Traffic is still heavy but most of all for me i just cant bear the thought of at most 3 months of sunshine and cold rainy winters. I was there in november 2 years ago and the sun did come out 2 days out of the week(the rest of the week it was raining) but you still couldnt see the sun because it was so overcast. Maybe theres a reason why it's the #1 suicidal city in the country.
Maybe the advertising collapse happened because one company owns the entire market?
.. ;)
Yea, Google is the new Übersoft
"I'm just pondering here not seriously implying anything, but that sounds similiar to something MS did with OS's and media players/browsers etc"
Considering people have a choice as to what search engine to use and Google don't have a desktop monopoly I don't think it is at all similar. No doubt once Microsoft embed search directly in the apps that anomaly will soon be corrected.
was: Re:Unemployment? (Score:5, Interesting)
davecb5620@gmail.com
Actually:
(498.39-5) * 2000)= $986,780.00 which is nearly $1 million.
(The 500% seems to refer to the increase since the IPO, not the option grant since the hypothesis was in the $1-$5 per share range)
Leave Google behind? I don't think so. Google will always find you. Google knows everything. Does this make Google God. Maybe the ancients screwed up the spelling?
Reading the stories of those retired millionaires, it sounds like Google is slowly turning into another big bureaucratic tech company like IBM or Microsoft. Stories about suits roaming the hallways and ingenious ideas for server consolidation being shot down due to risk doesn't exactly make me feel enthusiastic about the companies future.
I just hope that Google's management is careful about managing it's growth, and doesn't allow the bean counters to take over and end the era of free gourmet lunches and time for creative side projects.
daisy chain
The real story isn't that 1/3 of the first 300 employees left Google... Its the fact that 2/3 of them STAYED even after having the wealth to do whatever they want. That is a pretty strong endorsement for Google that they can keep people working and happy, even when the people don't NEED the job!
Even with all the many perks at Google, you just can compete with freedom. Doing only what you want to do, and doing it the way you want to. That's something worth more then money.
But you need money to get there, it's the truth. Live below your means and you will get there. Live above your means and you never will, no matter how much you make.
Since when is it surprising to see entrepreneurial people leave an entrepreneurial company to pursue entrepreneurial interests?
In other unbelievable news, thirsty people choose water to quench their thirst. Tonight, at 6...
I'm a lot better off living in a 1250 square foot old house a mile from work where I have a set schedule and almost no stress. My wife works nearby too so we both go home during our hour long lunch break and play with the dog every single day. Our neighborhood isn't a bunch of cookie-cutter houses full of cookie-cutter people, every single house is unique and everyone we have met is friendly and looks out for each other.
I never work more than 40 hours in a week. I never sit in traffic on my way to or from work. I never have a boss screaming at me about a deadline. I have never had a request for vacation rejected, in fact every time I have had to leave work for an emergency no one has batted an eye.
I know I could earn a hell of lot more if I moved to the Bay, but it just isn't worth it. Most of the added pay would get eaten by the increased cost of living and the quality of life wouldn't be nearly as good.
The thing is, in Googleplex they have a fishing pond.
I'll say it:
Fuck. Lucky bastards.
I agree with you. I did exactly that during my 20's. I spent all my time pursuing what I really wanted to do and when that didn't pan out I became a sysadmin........
All points of time and space are connected.
Yeah, but if there's one thing that makes it much easier to make money, it's money. It's certainly possible to start your own business with nothing, and build it all from scratch and be successful. But you're not guaranteed success, you're going to have to work very hard, and probably get a little lucky.
Working somewhere else and saving some money before heading out on your own is no guarantee of success either, but it's likely to put you in a better position, as not being on the verge of starvation can be less stressful. Many businesses do not start out making money on day one.
Finally, there are just some fields where you cannot just go it alone from the very beginning. The reasons may be practical, or they may be legal, or both. You can't just decide one day that you're going to be a doctor and open up your own hospital in your extra bedroom. You can't suddenly decide that you want to be an architect and start designing office buildings.
One time I threw a brick at a duck.
Your forgot "and have the ability to see into the future." Otherwise, I'm not sure how you can determine you're going to still be healthy in 6 months, 1 year, 5 years, etc. How many people do you know with a health problem that you would have considered "healthy" six months before it was diagnosed? I know plenty. Plus, there's accidents. By their very nature, they come at you out of the blue. Try having an accident without health insurance - like maybe wrecking your bike and breaking your jaw (happened to a friend) or falling and cracking your head open (again, someone I know).
I'm not saying don't pursue your dreams and live on the edge. I'm just saying, be aware that you are taking risks and you may crap out.
Interest on a million would barely pay property taxes on a new home in the area.
Nobody is ineterested in reading about your sad lonely pathetic life, you little shit-smelling skunk.
As Robert Mondavi once said: "Find a job that you love and you'll never work a day in your life."
If Murphy's Law can go wrong, it will.
Unfortunately for me, the consulting company I joined (Accenture's biggest competitor) failed to mention this until Orientation.
"Welcome to Initech! We got you, you dumb bastards! Ah ha hah ha!"
"It's not whether you win or lose, it's how drunk you get." -- H. J. Simpson
I prefer the inverse of that:
"Find a job that you don't love and you'll work a day in your life."
Because if you don't, you can easily find yourself with your dream fulfilled - but years behind where you need to be in able to get a job, let alone fund your retirement. Fulfilled dreams don't put a roof over your head or food on the table. (Unless you hit the jackpot and write a bestseller about your experiences and spend a couple of years on the talkshow and lecture circuit.)
Don't forget the other 600,000 starving programmers working in startups exactly like Google but who are never going to get the financial jackpot. It's so rare to hit the jackpot, you can't take it seriously.
The chance of making ends meet as a computer programmer is a lot, lot higher than if you were employed in another industry. The most interesting example that comes to mind is the one of tennis, one of the sports usually associated with super-rich players. The fact is, of all the professional tennis players in the world, only about the top 350 have cracked the million dollars in prizes over their careers. See link here. And when you scroll down to the players ranked 1000 or lower, you'll see that the money they made in a career is comparable to what we make in a less than a year. The situation with the female tennis players is even worse. So the old cliche that staying in school will increase your chances of making a career holds up pretty well. Besides, working at a startup is a higher risk with a higher reward potential. If you are risk-averse, work for the government (pretty good deal for many).
As far as working hours, I put in 40-50 hours per week, and that is as much as I'm expected to do. I've worked longer than that on occasion, but it was special circumstances. Sometimes I get in the groove and stay until 9pm or whatever, but that's my choice. I *want* to do that. And you know what? I don't have to worry about missing dinnner. I have no problem putting in whatever time is needed to get my job done -- and that's all you have to do. Nobody expects you to work yourself to the point of burnout.
I also have no trouble walking the dog. I live 5 miles from work, and there's a park right behind me. My neighborhood is probably 85% families, and there is a near-constant flow of pedestrians. The wife and I are walking distance to a grocery store, a nice pub, some restaurants, etc. It's a little sleepy for some types, but it suits us more than living in the big city. There are four gas stations within 2 miles of my house. Housing prices are not all that much more than they were in San Diego. Sure, it's way more than like in Nebraska or someplace, but then again so are the wages. There are also a lot more job prospects out here if I ever decide to move on and find something new.
Have you been to silicon valley? Do you know anyone who works at Google? Because it sure sounds like you really have no idea what you're talking about.
-B
Ash and Hickory, straight-grained and true, make excellent bludgeons, dandy for the cudgeling of vegetarians.
In my own experience what is unacceptable is the long process that lasts months while you might be unemployed. (It took them 4 months to prepare my contract after being offered a position, which is absolutely ridiculous.) It is also that after a bunch of interviews, you might fail a stupid question (or give an answer not in their book) and be forgotten, no reason given. It is that if they decide not to hire you, in most cases they don't have the decency to get back to you with some feedback (they are afraid of being sued, go figure). It is that they are so disorganized that you might get the same questions more than once. It is that they often lose applicant's documents like transcripts and you have to provide them again. In summary, it is treating people like shit and humiliate them because they can.
I went through the whole bloody interviewing process with Google. More than 6 months of waiting and stress. I was hired and quit after less than a year. I basically couldn't cope with the disappointment I felt once inside. People is socially handicapped and arrogant. They are usually smart but not necessarily competent. Also, everything inside Google is about to collapse. HR, finance, travel, etc. is filled with incompetent people. They can take 6 months to pay you back expenses. They often "forget" to pay people. The systems are also a mess. I still don't understand how a small C++ program can generate a 300 MB binary. Well, I know, that happens when the dependency system is broken. But they cannot be bothered fixing it. They have more important things to do, like adding images to ads.
In short, I was very very unimpressed with what I saw inside. It was all a huge waste of time.
Wealth and poverty are just a matter of perspective, when you come down to it. At least above starvation level. Back in elementary school, I went to a fairly non-wealthy school and thought my family was rich. Most of the people at my school didn't have a father who bought a different used Porsche/Ferrari/whatever every year because he got bored with the old one. My dad knew enough about cars that he didn't actually lose that much money, though, because they didn't go that much down in value over the course of the year, but most families still didn't have that much spare capital to invest in basically, a toy. Then I went to a high school where the rich kids were the people who owned 1/3 of Bangladesh, or the daughter of the CEO of some major public sports equipment company, hell if I remember what. And I was one of the poorer students. I think the only kids who had less money than my family were the scholarship students, actually. I would say it knocked me down a peg or two, but I was mostly relieved. I hated being thought of as the rich kid. Over a lifetime, agreed, a million dollars isn't that much. But over a year or two, it's a hell of a lot.
You are simply wrong. Even if you're making just minimum wage in the US, you likely have a place to live, a car, maybe some health care, definitely food on your table three times a day every day, and a reasonable expectation of not dying a violent death or having what little you do own stolen from you in the near future. You probably have a cell phone and a television and a computer with an internet connection. You've had access to free public education for at least thirteen years of your life. If you do manage to lose you job, the government will provide you with some tiny handouts for a little while so you don't starve to death.
Put together, this means you are insanely rich. You are better off than nearly every human who lived before you and well over 90% of the people alive today. If you actually have a high-paying job and a retirement plan and good health care and you own your house, then you are in the top 1% of wealthiest people on the planet. Just because some vapid idiot celebrity can afford diamond-studded cellphones, it does not mean that you are "poor".
You've convinced me... If I were one of your friends I would take out insurance too! ;)
Ramen noodles might be all you need for a while, but that is pretty bad for your health. If you look at the food related health problems back in the 1600s, you will notice something: poor people were susceptible to disease because they lived mainly on grain (which happened to have more nutrients back then than it did now), while the rich were susceptible to other diseases because they only ate meats and drank booze.
I'm not saying you can't live if you don't have much cash; I'm just saying that instant ramen isn't the way to do it. There are lots of other reasonably priced foods that have lots of nutrients compared to ramen (beans and potatoes, to name two simple ones).
personally i would do nothing. i would sit on my ass all day and do nothing.
If you delay pleasure infinitely, the pleasure will be infinite. (YM)
I don't see any one around me doing the 20% open source project (but I am not in MV). People is sufficiently and stressed doing day to day stuff as to add another project on your plate. I work at Google and would say the 20% project is a myth.
Internally, many areas of Google are about to collapse. HR demonstrates day after day not to have a clue of what is doing. Payroll might be even worse, with constant errors, missing payments, etc. It is not rare that Travel takes many months to pay back trip expenses. I could go on and on. There are many technical aspects of Google that work very well (but not all), but internally, Google is a disorganized and messy, very far from the company that people think from the outside.
I'd rather get my dream fulfilled than get a job I dislike.
Well I suppose if the less talented people among our species find their own means to survive, most people here on slashdot shouldn't have a really big problem even if they started to focus on earning "real money" a bit late.
Don't quote me on this.
People think they need to pay their dues because they need a way to pay their bills. You can go ahead being malnourished only owning what can fit in a backpack with your good attitude. I will continue to enjoy "paying my dues" while I live in a nice apartment overlooking Lake Michigan posting on Slashdot from my fast computer and watching TV on my 40" LCD.
My point was not to brag about my things since there are plenty of people with a lot more than I have, my point was that I enjoy the lifestyle I have and don't mind paying my dues to enjoy it. I'm 23, and believe it or not people have different ideas about what they want to do in life. I prefer to live mine in a comfortable place with gadgets that I enjoy playing with and eating good food.
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So I'm curious...anybody have any good tips about figuring ouw what job you would love? I ponder it day and night and I can't figure it out.
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Uhh... "Our high school guidance counselor used to ask us what you'd do if you had a million dollars and you didn't have to work. And invariably what you'd say was supposed to be your career. So, if you wanted to fix old cars then you're supposed to be an auto mechanic." ;)
If Murphy's Law can go wrong, it will.
At 23 years of age, how much of your apartment, computer, TV is paid?
Anyone can get a computer easily, a TV is a couple of months salary at worst. A house is something else. How long have you been paying for it and for how much longer will you have to work to finish paying it?
I've started three businesses to your zero, and please allow me to assure you that persistent action is the one key factor in making a successful business. And will you be more persistent if your next meal depends on it? Heh heh. You're goddamn right you will. Will you take that risk when you have a family to support, a nest egg to worry about, a high credit score, etc.? Heh heh. You tell me.
It's amazing how having $100 to your name lights a candle under your ass to go sell more, go produce more. The most successful businessmen I know started with nothing but a dream and dogged determination. Having the "heat" set at 50 is one hell of a motivator.
They don't grade fathers, but if your daughter's a stripper, you fucked up. --Chris Rock
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A statement which is known as a false choice, or more commonly as a strawman.
I suspect most people here on Slashdot would be in for a rude awakening if they tried.
I ask you because I did the math once and figured out I would need to save 10 years pay to afford a good house (i.e. on a quiet neighbourhood with plenty of space). I guess this is reasonable considering the time vs number of people required to build a house. I am leaning for a house away from the city rather than an apartment because I think these have a better bang for the buck.
The good neighbourhoods in central places seem to cost 5-6x more. Sure I could save on transport by being there and using public transport or walking. I would also save a couple of hours stuck in transit I could otherwise be working and making money. That is, I could save on transport if I planned to not own a car. Which will limit my choices of where to work more than I want to.
Having to pay a bank loan sucks. Giving all that money to the bank. Renting sucks even more because I would own nothing in the end. If I had no house I get a loan I could afford by myself if I lived like a pauper plus a 6 months money cushion. Then buy a central apartment close to something like a subway station, merge the kitchen with the living room and rent that extra room, plus at least one other room.
Yet I can live with my parents. I did the math and this allows me to save like 30% more of my income than I could otherwise. I plan to sink those earnings into improving my education and bootstrapping my own business. I would rather sink it trying my own failed business than into someone elses by playing in the stock market.