About 7 years ago, I worked at a startup that very close-knit. All the coworkers were friends with everyone, the CEO and CTO were fun to be around, so I would make a point to go to all the team outings and lunches. I really liked it there, felt that they were my "family" in some sense.
About 9 months into my job, the company was hit with two lawsuits, and the leaders became very secretive and elusive and started changing rules to save money of questionable legality. For example, a rule was added to state that we had to work 40 billable hours a week.
This doesn't sound that bad, but because of the lawsuits and attempts to settle them, any work done for the plaintiffs in the aforementioned lawsuits was not counted as "billable", and most of that work would eat up multiple hours of my day. This meant that in addition to the eight hours I had to work on a billable client, I would also end up spending an extra three to four hours working on non-billable stuff. This went on for multiple months, I started feeling depressed, but I put up with it because I really liked the company.
Eventually, the company laid off 2/3 of the staff without any notice to any of the workers. I went from "employed" to "unemployed" overnight, and when I managed to get in touch with the CTO, he basically told me "thems the breaks. Sorry". I felt pretty betrayed, because I had spent two months working 60 hour weeks, all to be laid off because I was working on the wrong projects.
After that, I made a bit of a vow to myself to remember that a job is, at its core, a business transaction. You sell your time and expertise for compensation. It's great if you really like your boss and your coworkers, that'll help avoid depression, but remember at the end of the day, a company is not your family, and if they don't think you're creating enough value for them, they will end this transaction.
> After that, I made a bit of a vow to myself to remember that a job is, at its core, a business transaction. You sell your time and expertise for compensation. It's great if you really like your boss and your coworkers, that'll help avoid depression, but remember at the end of the day, a company is not your family, and if they don't think you're creating enough value for them, they will end this transaction.
Yes, paying the bills is absolutely a requirement and should take priority. Don't let that bad experience discourage you from looking for a place that you love to work at though. I have found a few great jobs in my career where I loved and currently love to work. It helps a lot to have leaders that understand the value of keeping their employees happy and where your goals for your position and your career align well with their vision for the organization. Then having a great chain of command sitting above you that is friendly, approachable and easy to reason with can make it even better. You spend a ridiculous amount of your life working, if you can enjoy your job and don't look at it as simply a pay check, I think it can help you live a happier life.
I think there is a proper level of conviviality/cordiality and fun that you can bring to work without getting too personally invested. A lot of first-time employees may have trouble with this balance, but after a tough break or two you learn the ropes.
This is why I strongly believe that you shouldn’t stay at your first tech job for too long (Max 4 years).
As the first job, there is a lot of emotional attachment (totally normal) but it gets in the way of making rational decisions. In particular, most people will harbor somewhat unrealistic career goals while being at the lowest rung of the corporate ladder and thus being the most disposable.
Additionally, interviewing at and getting other jobs makes it so that the process isn’t unknown or scary.
Oh definitely, I'm not saying that you should always act like a utilitarian robot, and being a nice and fun person at your workplace can help you avoid burnout.
I just think that you should always remember that, at the end of the day, it's still a job. If you remember that fact, it hurts less being laid off, and it's easier to quit a job if/when it becomes toxic.
Owners of companies always try to give you an "us" feeling. "We all are the company, we are a big family". Most youngsters fall into this trap, including myself.
But at certain point, it becomes very clear who really owns the company, and who doesn't.
I went through a few years at a startup where sometimes salaries were not paid for months and then payment would be caught up and then it would not be paid again. When I was finally let go I was still technically owed money but the company was more or less folding and I'm not particularly savvy or aggressive from a legal standpoint so I just let it go. It sucked.
Everything in life is a gamble but if your startup is in shaky territory and you do not own a slice of the common stock - and even then it might not be worth it - then always be on the lookout to leave for a different job. This is hard advice to follow because a small team does feel like a little group of friends. Don't be surprised, however, when the founders suddenly go to extremes. It is likely that the company is central to how they perceive themselves and people sometimes do desperate things to protect their sense of self.
Everything in adult life is a transaction, it's half sad but half only, it's a clear embodiement of our social reality. You make everything explicit and on paper to avoid pain (in this case natural disappointment from more fickle than expected bonds). That is unless you have a group of people with a solid notion of human bonds and who can clearly favor humans over business. Not the most common case I believe.
I hate it when people say a job is a job. 10 hours a day is dedicated to my job. I'm awake for 16 hours and 10 of those I spend at work. This is where my friends are. This is where I meet new people. This is where I spend my time. But the reality is... Well yes, a job is a job, and the quicker you can accept it, the better you will feel.
Once, this realization came to me when I worked at a fortune 10. I loved the job and was fascinated by the cool tech we used everyday. One day I came to work only to find out I was fired. My manager was just as surprised to hear it. Obviously it was a mistake, but my team watched as security guards came to escort me out of the building like a criminal.
It didn't matter that they figured out it was a mistake. My coworkers became distant when I came back. When the story blew up, my employer denied I was ever employed there. An ex-coworker later told me that my position and projects have been completely scrubbed out of existence.
A job is a job, if you can focus on your own gains please do. Then spend a little bit of time on this fun Ask HN[1]. We can't all get a job that loves us back, so in the meanwhile find something you love outside the job.
>> 10 hours a day is dedicated to my job. I'm awake for 16 hours and 10 of those I spend at work.
That's the tragedy of wage labor, even highly paid salaried positions. We spend so much of our adult lives in a place that's ultimately transactional and labor to produce profit for someone else. It's bonkers.
And yet it's the best deal most of us are ever going to get without concerted action within and across industries.
Wait, were you fired then hired back? That sounds like an emotional rollercoaster. When security came to escort your out of the building, your team, the people who you made friendships revealed the true nature of the relationship. It's just a business transaction and you should not dedicate more than you are paid for.
Yes, I read the previous HN post you linked in this comment. What was your conclusion for that? I'd like to know too
Yes, I was hired back. I learned my lesson, so I used this time to get all my ducks lined up and left the company in my own terms.
I added a link to that thread because our most important commodity is time. Sure it sounds like promoting laziness, but lots of comments were about automating your job. You get to invest that newly found free time to do something you enjoy.
In this person's case the firing might have been a mistake, but rehiring is not so uncommon. The large (Fortune 500) tech company I worked at at the time laid off a bunch of people - mostly in sales and management - during the 2008 recession. Many of them were re-hired within 12-18 months once things got better.
I agree with your perspective here. But the corrective action should be to have you spend less time at the job. I think the 4 day workweek and other “radical” ideas may address some of this.
Incidentally, I wouldn’t mind spending 10 hours dedicated to work for 2 days a week, or some other such balance. Problem solving requires along stretches of time, limiting it artificially seems counterproductive. It becomes an issue when it takes all the time I have.
Hopefully the author also learned a valuable lesson here - HR is there to protect the interest of the company, not your friend.
As someone who worked in RM(Reputation Management), my team have prevented, or mitigated a significant amount of potential reputation risk from would-be whistleblowers and dissatisfied employees.
It's not a matter of friendship, but of interests.
In a non-critical way I would love to hear you explain your line of thinking in working in "RM". As in, how do you find your job morally fulfilling when your work is to "mitigate risk from would-be whistleblowers"? As an outsider to the industry, this sounds like corporate speak for "make sure that the harm the company causes isn't seen by the outside world"
> It's not a matter of friendship, but of interests.
This is a good point, but missing one of the big things that affect dynamics: there is typically a huge imbalance of power between an employee and employer, so most often if your interests diverge, the employee will lose. The worst case scenario for this can be terrible, even for an employee who has done nothing wrong.
What I don’t understand is how they think sheltering harassers can ever work out in the long run. By enabling them, they are reinforcing the behavior and guaranteeing repeats, and increasing the chances of a major scandal or huge settlements.
The takeaway I get from the comments here is, "HR isn't your friend." Okay, so what should she have done about being harassed? She ignored it for a year. If it's naive to go to HR then what is the "not naive" option? I see 3 options: (1) Put up with harassment, (2) Quit her job (forgoing her salary and stock) or (3) Go to HR. She tried (1) for a year, then tried (3) which ultimately led to (2). What is the "not naive" way to deal with being harassed?
No one has really given an answer besides what you've stated. Personally, I have no idea what the best option is; my cynicism tells me that making it public may be the best course of action, though it's a very scorched-earth approach. By making the harassment known publicly (within the workplace, possibly outside), it forces HR's hand in dealing with the abuser rather than the abused. It also has a chance to backfire spectacularly and alienate the person. It probably would result in alienation even if the abuser was dealt with. There's really no good answer here, just varying degrees of bad ones. Perhaps there needs to be a fine against companies that attempt to silence/remove the victims, that'd create a financial incentive for HR to protect the company by removing the abuser.
She did very well to tell her lead that behavior made her uncomfortable. When it continued, it was time to bring it up with HR or her manager. Looks like the stress of living with it for a year made her want more action than HR provided for a first offence.
If you re-read the article, it's not clear where Google HR is at fault. The investigation took too long? They didn't make him move his desk, work from home, or take leave?
He was likely told a repeat incidence would lead to termination. She would have mentioned if the behavior continued, and doesn't.
Her peer group/friends thought the behavior was mild, but she wanted Google to punish him for betrayals of her past. A more severe response wasn't warranted for a mild first offence (lots of people like this never reoffend). It wasn't bad enough to change his position, and obviously you can't ask the victim to change teams. Maybe more could have been done to help smooth their relationship, like an apology.
> Maybe more could have been done to help smooth their relationship, like an apology.
Total tangent. I've recently watched a lot of the Dardenne brothers' films, and in one of them, The Kid with a Bike, the kid has assaulted and robbed a man and his son. He's caught, and there's a scene where his foster mom pays restitution directly to the man, but also, the kid apologies to the man he assaulted. (The man's son refuses to accept an apology.)
It struck me as a very humane form of justice, and I think we could do more of that in the U.S.
Not saying she was wrong, but getting help for systemic issues has never ever helped much. There's very little you can do but ignore assholes, or learn how to tear them a new one (you need to become damaged first). Anything in between only backfire and drag you down.
That workplace environment was already dystopia. Realizing it sooner is preferable. There are every option before leaving too. But you rarely win with such people, so you only do it because it's the right thing to do.
It's possible to love a job without letting that job become a part of your identity. That's what it feels like FAANG is to a lot of people, particular this one for whom Google is their first job. It's not about love or not loving, it's about a healthy sense of boundaries between you and your workplace.
This is so important, but unfortunately almost everyone will need a crisis to understand. We are raised to be “something”, “make a living”. When we introduce ourselves, the profession is right there with the name. Of course, we dedicate the majority of our awake time to work, but work is *usually not* what one is proud of at the very end.
To many people, work represents the majority of their identity. After dealing with so many unemployed/retired people you can really grasp the extent of their distress caused by this.
My father retired years ago, but kept working as freelancer. He says he learned from his father that if/when he stops working, he’ll die sooner. This is so sad.
As human beings we do need some kind of activity that provides fulfillment. Most people spend a large part of their lives at the workspace and the only skills they excel at, which are fulfilling are work related. So it’s not too surprising that they would want more of that.
The most surprising element of this article is that the writer was surprised at the outcome. It's 2021--who still doesn't think Google will act like any other large corporate entity? I know the general aesthetic of the Google offices gives the impression of a fun, futuristic, elementary school, but the MBA's managing Human Resources went to the same schools as the ones in every other major corporation. The principals of self-preservation are still the same. No one you work with anywhere is "family". Everyone who has the position of employee, is an expendable expense attempting to secure their fickle, fleeting position. This may be a little dramatic, but do not depend on the initiative of mercenaries. Most people are scared of everything and will avoid whatever confrontation comes out of supporting you (even when you're in the right).
It's not surprising at all. Anyone who worked at Google or Facebook during the decade or so ca. 2005-2015 is aware of the degree to which these companies presented themselves as a totally new and different workplace than the typical corporate employer. Facebook even had a little red handbook that stated on its cover, "Facebook was not originally created to be a company." With on-site banking, laundry, car-washes, dentistry, hobby/interest clubs, etc. they provide a mixed, almost collegiate environment that blended the workplace with a community. Many people who worked at these places fell in love with their jobs, the companies made it easy to. To some degree, anyone who was super cynical about this would select themselves out of the hiring pool.
The writer joined out of college, and perhaps was a previous intern. Again, anyone familiar with the internship program at big tech companies knows how they aim to provide not just a mentored professional experience, but a social one including events with other interns and employees.
Have they stopped handing that out? I just found one the other day when I knocked some stuff off a shelf. It's tied together with string, and kind of useless.
In the 90s IBM began massive layoffs. They were sued in a number of successful class action suits. The plaintiffs claimed IBM had heavily advanced the We're a big family ethos, also had daycares on the campus, dry cleaners, gyms, and even had multi-generational families working there. IBM was found liable and had to make large payments to its former employees
- "joined the company after college in 2015"
- "In high school, I spent time homeless and in foster care, and was often ostracized for being nerdy"
- "What I found was a surrogate family"
Many of us got burned earlier in our career, one way or another. But coming from a truly difficult background, would have meant it was even harder for her to see behind the veil of "good company".
The article mentions that she started at Google in 2015; things may have been different then.
This was also her first job out of school, and I'll admit I, too, fell for the hype at my first tech job, before learning all the obvious-in-retrospect things being discussed here.
Yes. I had friends who were TVCs and met a few while I was an FTE there. Google (and even some Googleras) treats their TVCs like dog shit. Cant even eat at the cafeterias.
it takes time and experience to overcome that naiveté, especially when you're young. I have a friend in a similar situation who is now coming to terms with the fact that jobs are jobs and don't have to be your whole life.
Remember the X Files... "I want to believe". Her only "crime" was she was a greenhorn, and needed belonging and purpose.
I feel truly sad for her, because while my cynical older self knows the ending what was in the cards, is it so WRONG to be hopeful, a little naive and earnest? Where were the people who were supposed to protect that?
At least when you join the military and you become part of that family, everyone noncom at least believes in it. Even if the greater structure can toss you out, your brothers/sisters will attempt to come to your aid. No such luck in corporate america.
I don't understand why acting like a large corporate entity is such a bad thing. It just is. Corporations are mortal entities and fear death. The first priority is to continue to simply exist.
Young people, I don't know if this is universal, associate bigness with badness and making money from trade with exploitation.
The natural order is that some people need these companies to do something for them, that is why they exist. The utility of that system (creating things that people need) gets suffocated by our preoccupation with fairness. So people can only join these companies because they believe they are genuinely different...when no company is different because they all have the same function which largely depends on consumers, not staff.
It isn't because of the MBAs or because of the need to cut costs or whatever. It is to do with the employees too. If you start a company saying that you are very idealistic, you attract idealistic people (and btw, most companies say this because it is what young people want to hear). But the reality of being a human is that we have a habit of believing in our own honesty/goodness, whatever the actual content of our actions. Another good example was Obama (or perhaps Blair in the UK)...this kind of euphoric self-regard happens in other non-corporate contexts. Being human is thinking that "everything has changed now" , until you get old enough to realise nothing ever changes, and then the people who are saying "everything has changed now" again think you are too old and decrepit to listen to. It is eternal (this kind of fraud is a necessary component of capital markets).
The stuff around Google is, however, particularly funny. The founders rhetoric is totally empty (Larry Page appears to be someone whose only distinguishing feature is supreme and total self-confidence). They have a rapacious monopoly which, by exploiting defects in corporate governance, they use to fund a bureaucracy of pet projects/niche interests of academics. You can dress it up any way you want (I can see why academics wanted to love Google, free money with no oversight) but it is still ultimately based on poor ethics (weak corporate governance, no oversight, stealing money from shareholders). Classic SV (wanting the luxury of making tons of easy money very fast AND the moral high ground).
There is a bunch of sad things in the story. But, not being FAANG engineer, there is something technical/financial in there I did not understand.
Specifically: "When I didn’t get a promotion, some of my stock grants ran out and so I effectively took a big pay cut." - I think I roughly get what it means, but not specifically. Could some insider explain this?
Answers you got from
astuyvenberg and eugenekolo are incorrect. That's not how it works.
The way it actually works is that when you join, you get a starting grant that vests over next 4 years, and then every year, you get a so-called refreshers, each of which is roughly a quarter of your original grant, which also vest over 4 years. This means that in year 4 of your employment, you get a (last) quarter of your original grant, along with a quarter of each of the 3 refreshers you received in the next 3 years. Then, in year 5, your original grant is gone, and you only get a quarter of each of the 4 refreshers you got in past 4 years.
Depending on the size of your original grant, and the size of refreshers, this can result in some pay cut in year 5. This pay cut can be bigger or smaller, depending on the size of your original grant, size of refreshers (which are driven by your performance rating/promotions), stock price in year 5 etc. However, other than some special circumstances where you get some additional discretionary stock grant, after year 5 you kinda reach a steady state, and your the value of your stock compensation can go down pretty much only if the stock price goes down (assuming constant performance over time).
You've identified the biggest cause, but there are other factors as well.
For example, refreshers are always granted at the end of the year and are only granted to employees that have been with the company a set amount of time. What this means is that new employees starting in the summer don't get a refresher until they've been with the company for ~18 months. So when their initial grant runs out, there's actually a gap of ~6 months where they are only earning equity from three grants while they would need four grants to fully match the equity they were earning during the prior period.
Also promotion at Google is not easy to get. The competition is stiff, the standards are high, and you have to manage to get assigned to the kind of tasks and projects that get you promoted. I saw great people sit at one level the whole time they were there.
"Some special circumstances" can also mean where stock prices go down low enough to bring employees below their compensation target. It doesn't happen much lately at tech companies because the stocks are soaring, but it used to be more common. In those cases, many employees can receive more stock to bring them up to target. It puts a real and meaningful floor on stock price risk and is a nice fringe benefit for companies that do this.
...okay, uh, except for when what they explained is exactly how it works.
Lots of people, at lots of companies, Google and Facebook included, get meaningful add-on grants, often larger than their initial ones.
These are frequently timed to the 4-5 year mark and especially handed out alongside promotions, for the exact reason that, otherwise, the employee will suddenly have a much lower annual payout and will be less 'aligned' with the with the company's future interest.
I'm not claiming that what you said does not also happen, but what the others said certainly does too, and there's no reason to phrase this as some sort of definitive-exclusive thing.
At Google you start with an initial large grant that vests over 4 years. For example, let's say you get 400k as stock that vests over 4 years and 100k as salary to make math simple.
So you get 200k the first year, and at the end of the year you get another stock grant that vests over 4 years. Let's say you get 80k.
The second year you get 220k (100k salary + 100k stock from initial grant + 20k from first year's grant). Let's say you get the same 80k again.
If this process continues, the fourth year you get 260k, but on the fifth you will get 180k. Typically what happens is that unless you get promoted 2 times in those 4 years, your salary will decrease substantially on your fifth year.
I've simplified things a bit, but that's the general gist of it.
But given this math, everyone will always see a drop after the 4th year. You can kinda level off the drop if you get promoted exactly as your initial grant runs off, but that's mostly coincidence. If you get your promo grant a year sooner or later, you'll get different drops and hikes.
The author trying to connect the 5th year cliff, which is a common issue, to the lack of promotion, seems a bit misleading.
Typically you get a signing bonus that vests of a period of X years. Once those X years are done, you are relying on additional stock grants from past performance reviews or promotions to keep your comp at its previous value.
If you perform well or get promoted you should see your compensation increase, but without that you are left with your base salary and no additional stock grants and can take a pay cut as a result.
Its one way FAANG weeds out lower performing engineers.
My guess is they had stock grants whose value went up as the share price rose. As a result they were being paid more than their level and performance rating would typically dictate and to sustain that level of pay they would have needed a promotion. When that didn’t happen, their pay fell to what their intended pay grade was, but in relative terms it amounted to a pay cut.
When you sign on at a FAANG - you get a sign on package. This includes stock grants that vest over time. After that time runs out, if they like you, they will promote you and give you a new batch of grants. If you don't think you are great, no promotion and no new stock grants. So while you are not demoted, your actual pay drops sometimes significantly.
There is a good reason for this. It allows them to drive increased turnover at higher levels in the org where it's normally hard to transition folks out. They just don't refresh equity or promote with a new equity grant.
Anyways, the poster did what anyone should do - quit and find somewhere else to work.
I was a little confused by that. Unless she had a very large signing bonus grant, she should have been getting stock grant refreshes yearly specifically to prevent that kind of drop off in total pay.
Especially with high performance ratings, she should have been getting bonus over target and extra stock.
It sounds instead like her manager screwed her over on stock grants to get her to leave.
> Especially with high performance ratings, she should have been getting bonus over target and extra stock.
In these companies each level has a compensation bracket. With high rating it’s easier to hit that upper limit and without timely promotion total compensation can take a nosedive when initial grant dies out.
You typically get stock on a 4 year vesting cycle. After the 4 years a few things can happen: you get another 4 year stock vesting cycle, you get no stock, you get something else.
Most offers for FAANG companies include salary and stock compensation, that vests over 4 years.
So if you were granted 400k in stock over 4 years, you'd get 100k per year in stock (which you can keep or sell, but it's real compensation).
After those 4 years, the company will either give you another stock grant over another 4 years, or they will decide to show you the door - and not offer you anything.
This is incorrect. At FAANG companies, in my experience, you will be given an initial large grant and an additional grant every year thereafter. However, if you aren't seeing upward performance, those annual grants may not fully match the compensation you received from the initial grant, resulting in a dip at year 4 that some folks call "the four year cliff."
This is complicated by the fact that earlier grants tend to be from when stock was worth less, so the are a comparatively high number of shares. So your comp will gradually inflate over 4 years because the value of the stock has gone up, meaning you are taking home more than the company 'intended' to pay you.
That’s the feeling that companies seek to exploit. I like my job, my profession and the mission associated with it, and have a certain level of pride.
End of the day, I have a contract and meet my side of it to the best of my ability. The company does the same, until it doesn’t. My family, my personal life is why I work.
A big part of the push of a bullshit mission is to make you pause your life. People end up not having kids because they waited till they were 38 because the big “mission” taking priority.
Readit News
About 9 months into my job, the company was hit with two lawsuits, and the leaders became very secretive and elusive and started changing rules to save money of questionable legality. For example, a rule was added to state that we had to work 40 billable hours a week.
This doesn't sound that bad, but because of the lawsuits and attempts to settle them, any work done for the plaintiffs in the aforementioned lawsuits was not counted as "billable", and most of that work would eat up multiple hours of my day. This meant that in addition to the eight hours I had to work on a billable client, I would also end up spending an extra three to four hours working on non-billable stuff. This went on for multiple months, I started feeling depressed, but I put up with it because I really liked the company.
Eventually, the company laid off 2/3 of the staff without any notice to any of the workers. I went from "employed" to "unemployed" overnight, and when I managed to get in touch with the CTO, he basically told me "thems the breaks. Sorry". I felt pretty betrayed, because I had spent two months working 60 hour weeks, all to be laid off because I was working on the wrong projects.
After that, I made a bit of a vow to myself to remember that a job is, at its core, a business transaction. You sell your time and expertise for compensation. It's great if you really like your boss and your coworkers, that'll help avoid depression, but remember at the end of the day, a company is not your family, and if they don't think you're creating enough value for them, they will end this transaction.
Yes, paying the bills is absolutely a requirement and should take priority. Don't let that bad experience discourage you from looking for a place that you love to work at though. I have found a few great jobs in my career where I loved and currently love to work. It helps a lot to have leaders that understand the value of keeping their employees happy and where your goals for your position and your career align well with their vision for the organization. Then having a great chain of command sitting above you that is friendly, approachable and easy to reason with can make it even better. You spend a ridiculous amount of your life working, if you can enjoy your job and don't look at it as simply a pay check, I think it can help you live a happier life.
As the first job, there is a lot of emotional attachment (totally normal) but it gets in the way of making rational decisions. In particular, most people will harbor somewhat unrealistic career goals while being at the lowest rung of the corporate ladder and thus being the most disposable.
Additionally, interviewing at and getting other jobs makes it so that the process isn’t unknown or scary.
I just think that you should always remember that, at the end of the day, it's still a job. If you remember that fact, it hurts less being laid off, and it's easier to quit a job if/when it becomes toxic.
But at certain point, it becomes very clear who really owns the company, and who doesn't.
I went through a few years at a startup where sometimes salaries were not paid for months and then payment would be caught up and then it would not be paid again. When I was finally let go I was still technically owed money but the company was more or less folding and I'm not particularly savvy or aggressive from a legal standpoint so I just let it go. It sucked.
Everything in life is a gamble but if your startup is in shaky territory and you do not own a slice of the common stock - and even then it might not be worth it - then always be on the lookout to leave for a different job. This is hard advice to follow because a small team does feel like a little group of friends. Don't be surprised, however, when the founders suddenly go to extremes. It is likely that the company is central to how they perceive themselves and people sometimes do desperate things to protect their sense of self.
Once, this realization came to me when I worked at a fortune 10. I loved the job and was fascinated by the cool tech we used everyday. One day I came to work only to find out I was fired. My manager was just as surprised to hear it. Obviously it was a mistake, but my team watched as security guards came to escort me out of the building like a criminal.
It didn't matter that they figured out it was a mistake. My coworkers became distant when I came back. When the story blew up, my employer denied I was ever employed there. An ex-coworker later told me that my position and projects have been completely scrubbed out of existence.
A job is a job, if you can focus on your own gains please do. Then spend a little bit of time on this fun Ask HN[1]. We can't all get a job that loves us back, so in the meanwhile find something you love outside the job.
[1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26721951
That's the tragedy of wage labor, even highly paid salaried positions. We spend so much of our adult lives in a place that's ultimately transactional and labor to produce profit for someone else. It's bonkers.
And yet it's the best deal most of us are ever going to get without concerted action within and across industries.
Yes, I read the previous HN post you linked in this comment. What was your conclusion for that? I'd like to know too
I added a link to that thread because our most important commodity is time. Sure it sounds like promoting laziness, but lots of comments were about automating your job. You get to invest that newly found free time to do something you enjoy.
In this person's case the firing might have been a mistake, but rehiring is not so uncommon. The large (Fortune 500) tech company I worked at at the time laid off a bunch of people - mostly in sales and management - during the 2008 recession. Many of them were re-hired within 12-18 months once things got better.
Edit: reworded
Incidentally, I wouldn’t mind spending 10 hours dedicated to work for 2 days a week, or some other such balance. Problem solving requires along stretches of time, limiting it artificially seems counterproductive. It becomes an issue when it takes all the time I have.
As someone who worked in RM(Reputation Management), my team have prevented, or mitigated a significant amount of potential reputation risk from would-be whistleblowers and dissatisfied employees.
It's not a matter of friendship, but of interests.
Dead Comment
This is a good point, but missing one of the big things that affect dynamics: there is typically a huge imbalance of power between an employee and employer, so most often if your interests diverge, the employee will lose. The worst case scenario for this can be terrible, even for an employee who has done nothing wrong.
"Corporate Confidential: 50 Secrets Your Company Doesn't Want You to Know---and What to Do About Them"
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B003K15PC4
How do you typically do that?
She did very well to tell her lead that behavior made her uncomfortable. When it continued, it was time to bring it up with HR or her manager. Looks like the stress of living with it for a year made her want more action than HR provided for a first offence.
If you re-read the article, it's not clear where Google HR is at fault. The investigation took too long? They didn't make him move his desk, work from home, or take leave?
He was likely told a repeat incidence would lead to termination. She would have mentioned if the behavior continued, and doesn't.
Her peer group/friends thought the behavior was mild, but she wanted Google to punish him for betrayals of her past. A more severe response wasn't warranted for a mild first offence (lots of people like this never reoffend). It wasn't bad enough to change his position, and obviously you can't ask the victim to change teams. Maybe more could have been done to help smooth their relationship, like an apology.
Her career unravelling comes after this.
Total tangent. I've recently watched a lot of the Dardenne brothers' films, and in one of them, The Kid with a Bike, the kid has assaulted and robbed a man and his son. He's caught, and there's a scene where his foster mom pays restitution directly to the man, but also, the kid apologies to the man he assaulted. (The man's son refuses to accept an apology.)
It struck me as a very humane form of justice, and I think we could do more of that in the U.S.
So yes, an apology I think can go a long way.
That workplace environment was already dystopia. Realizing it sooner is preferable. There are every option before leaving too. But you rarely win with such people, so you only do it because it's the right thing to do.
Don't ask what you should do. Do.
To many people, work represents the majority of their identity. After dealing with so many unemployed/retired people you can really grasp the extent of their distress caused by this.
My father retired years ago, but kept working as freelancer. He says he learned from his father that if/when he stops working, he’ll die sooner. This is so sad.
The writer joined out of college, and perhaps was a previous intern. Again, anyone familiar with the internship program at big tech companies knows how they aim to provide not just a mentored professional experience, but a social one including events with other interns and employees.
Have they stopped handing that out? I just found one the other day when I knocked some stuff off a shelf. It's tied together with string, and kind of useless.
And the seasons, they go round and round,
And the painted ponies go up and down.
We're captive on a carousel of time...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quotations_from_Chairman_Mao_T...
Many of us got burned earlier in our career, one way or another. But coming from a truly difficult background, would have meant it was even harder for her to see behind the veil of "good company".
This was also her first job out of school, and I'll admit I, too, fell for the hype at my first tech job, before learning all the obvious-in-retrospect things being discussed here.
I'm young and realize that no matter how many sweet nothings companies whisper in your ears, at the end of the day it's a business relationship.
I feel truly sad for her, because while my cynical older self knows the ending what was in the cards, is it so WRONG to be hopeful, a little naive and earnest? Where were the people who were supposed to protect that?
At least when you join the military and you become part of that family, everyone noncom at least believes in it. Even if the greater structure can toss you out, your brothers/sisters will attempt to come to your aid. No such luck in corporate america.
I don't see this as bad- just the natural order.
The natural order is that some people need these companies to do something for them, that is why they exist. The utility of that system (creating things that people need) gets suffocated by our preoccupation with fairness. So people can only join these companies because they believe they are genuinely different...when no company is different because they all have the same function which largely depends on consumers, not staff.
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The stuff around Google is, however, particularly funny. The founders rhetoric is totally empty (Larry Page appears to be someone whose only distinguishing feature is supreme and total self-confidence). They have a rapacious monopoly which, by exploiting defects in corporate governance, they use to fund a bureaucracy of pet projects/niche interests of academics. You can dress it up any way you want (I can see why academics wanted to love Google, free money with no oversight) but it is still ultimately based on poor ethics (weak corporate governance, no oversight, stealing money from shareholders). Classic SV (wanting the luxury of making tons of easy money very fast AND the moral high ground).
Specifically: "When I didn’t get a promotion, some of my stock grants ran out and so I effectively took a big pay cut." - I think I roughly get what it means, but not specifically. Could some insider explain this?
The way it actually works is that when you join, you get a starting grant that vests over next 4 years, and then every year, you get a so-called refreshers, each of which is roughly a quarter of your original grant, which also vest over 4 years. This means that in year 4 of your employment, you get a (last) quarter of your original grant, along with a quarter of each of the 3 refreshers you received in the next 3 years. Then, in year 5, your original grant is gone, and you only get a quarter of each of the 4 refreshers you got in past 4 years.
Depending on the size of your original grant, and the size of refreshers, this can result in some pay cut in year 5. This pay cut can be bigger or smaller, depending on the size of your original grant, size of refreshers (which are driven by your performance rating/promotions), stock price in year 5 etc. However, other than some special circumstances where you get some additional discretionary stock grant, after year 5 you kinda reach a steady state, and your the value of your stock compensation can go down pretty much only if the stock price goes down (assuming constant performance over time).
For example, refreshers are always granted at the end of the year and are only granted to employees that have been with the company a set amount of time. What this means is that new employees starting in the summer don't get a refresher until they've been with the company for ~18 months. So when their initial grant runs out, there's actually a gap of ~6 months where they are only earning equity from three grants while they would need four grants to fully match the equity they were earning during the prior period.
...okay, uh, except for when what they explained is exactly how it works.
Lots of people, at lots of companies, Google and Facebook included, get meaningful add-on grants, often larger than their initial ones.
These are frequently timed to the 4-5 year mark and especially handed out alongside promotions, for the exact reason that, otherwise, the employee will suddenly have a much lower annual payout and will be less 'aligned' with the with the company's future interest.
I'm not claiming that what you said does not also happen, but what the others said certainly does too, and there's no reason to phrase this as some sort of definitive-exclusive thing.
So you get 200k the first year, and at the end of the year you get another stock grant that vests over 4 years. Let's say you get 80k.
The second year you get 220k (100k salary + 100k stock from initial grant + 20k from first year's grant). Let's say you get the same 80k again.
If this process continues, the fourth year you get 260k, but on the fifth you will get 180k. Typically what happens is that unless you get promoted 2 times in those 4 years, your salary will decrease substantially on your fifth year.
I've simplified things a bit, but that's the general gist of it.
The author trying to connect the 5th year cliff, which is a common issue, to the lack of promotion, seems a bit misleading.
If you perform well or get promoted you should see your compensation increase, but without that you are left with your base salary and no additional stock grants and can take a pay cut as a result.
Its one way FAANG weeds out lower performing engineers.
I believe you.
And without any judgement on her specific case, I can also believe it is a way for "The Company" to discourage "confronting" the structure
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There is a good reason for this. It allows them to drive increased turnover at higher levels in the org where it's normally hard to transition folks out. They just don't refresh equity or promote with a new equity grant.
Anyways, the poster did what anyone should do - quit and find somewhere else to work.
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Especially with high performance ratings, she should have been getting bonus over target and extra stock.
It sounds instead like her manager screwed her over on stock grants to get her to leave.
In these companies each level has a compensation bracket. With high rating it’s easier to hit that upper limit and without timely promotion total compensation can take a nosedive when initial grant dies out.
So if you were granted 400k in stock over 4 years, you'd get 100k per year in stock (which you can keep or sell, but it's real compensation).
After those 4 years, the company will either give you another stock grant over another 4 years, or they will decide to show you the door - and not offer you anything.
That's what seems to have occurred here.
This is complicated by the fact that earlier grants tend to be from when stock was worth less, so the are a comparatively high number of shares. So your comp will gradually inflate over 4 years because the value of the stock has gone up, meaning you are taking home more than the company 'intended' to pay you.
I guess I am trying to understand whether this is causation or correlation relationship.
Yep, it is always just a job.
End of the day, I have a contract and meet my side of it to the best of my ability. The company does the same, until it doesn’t. My family, my personal life is why I work.
A big part of the push of a bullshit mission is to make you pause your life. People end up not having kids because they waited till they were 38 because the big “mission” taking priority.
Then don't spend 1/2 your waking life on it. Stick to a 40 hour work week, and don't do weekends.