But you need to deal with jerks. There's lots of them out there, often in management positions.
He says this made him "very depressed" and working there was "completely and utterly ruined" -- an on over-reaction. Toxic leadership is bad but you shouldn't let it control you to this extent.
This is one of the problems with the way their hiring is marketed. They are depicted to be asking hard CS and algorithm based questions, and a culture of a workplace is being sold which is based on a merit process along the lines of 'programming abilities'.
The reality in every people structure one will every work at, politics is how the world works. People optimize what's best for themselves. The bosses are often stupid, because bosses that exist never want smart people to grow up and become a competition to them. Money is always attached to hot projects, so bulk of the career growth, bonuses and other juice comes when you work there. Regardless of whatever the merits of that project are.
The same applies to projects too. Once a company has 2 - 3 cash cow projects, the executives won't let new set of rivaling products emerge and become a competition to their fiefdom. Most of the times the competition is killed in plain sight, but other times its back room political sabotage. Only a few days back some one mentioned how Google is a place where $100M revenue opportunities pop up and die all the time.
The same case with that 20% extra time projects. Who is going to let this happen? I'm pretty sure anybody who dares to do these projects will be marked to be a trouble maker by the very managers they report too.
In short once you have more than 2 layers of management at your company, politics is how thing will work. And its perfectly, OK. Because that's how world is.
What is problematic is if the people at the top, Larry Page and Sergey Brin don't know are too naive to understand that its happening in their company since years. Inability to deal with everyday politics can kill companies.
It's not all sunshine and rainbows, but to say you understand the internal dynamics of Google and the decisions that Larry and Sergey make is certainly some kind of delusional.
> In short once you have more than 2 layers of management at your company, politics is how thing will work. And its perfectly, OK. Because that's how world is.
The problem is people see "the political system" and "politicians" and think wouldn't it be great if we could do away with that, never understanding these are just examples of normal human behavior taken to extreme levels because of the competition, scale and stakes.
Politics is always present, because it's just a word to describe human power dynamics.
Company politics becomes obvious when different people want different things, and some people exert power and influence to affect outcomes, in subtle or not so subtle ways. It's as inevitable at a small company as a big company, the only difference is that it may not be as extreme and it may take a while longer to show up.
The mistake is people considering working at a company of tens of thousands of people and thinking that somehow normal human behavior doesn't apply here.
Red Hat. It is siloed and can be (increasingly) bureaucratic, but I have never experienced rivals or petty managers and it's the least political place I've ever worked.
Even if Red Hat is amazing for you it might not be for other people. No company is immune to human nature.
Again I feel for the author. Sounds like "Greg" was jerk. But it's not cosmic injustice, it's more a feature of humans working in collectives, IMHO.
Say one was promoted twice in an year- it's always easy to believe that it happened because you deserved it, than to believe it happened to you because the managers like you.
1) He accepted a salary (115K) lowered than what he thought was fair
2) Design occurred in silos, there was no unity or cohesion
3) His 2nd manager was "political" and "in love with bureaucracy"
4) An exec on a rival team tried to quash his idea
5) Managers often just wanted to slap their name on his work
6) He worked all night to satisfy an angry coworker the night his grandmother died, while coworker partied then rescheduled mtg
For No 1: if you don't think a salary is fair, don't accept it.
Nos 2-5: these happen at almost every medium-large sized company I've ever worked at. If you know a place that isn't political, bureaucratic, siloed and filled with rivals and petty managers, let me know so I can give you my resume.
For No. 6, if you feel a deadline or meeting time is unfair, say so. If you have a sick family member, say so.
He sent this email to his boss:
> "Greg, I had to work most of the night because of Jim, and he canceled our meeting because he was partying with our competitors. In my book, this is totally unacceptable. What am I supposed to do?"
It's never a good idea to send this. It's not going to help you, even if you're in the right. Canceling a meeting is not a gross injustice and if an employee parties afterhours that's his or her business.
I sympathize with the author. Sounds like a good dude. But you have to try to roll with the punches, no workplace will be perfect, I promise you.