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Re:Facebook, Google Drop Out of Top ‘Best Places to Work’ List by KingMachiavelli on Wednesday December 11, 2019 @04:54PM (#21767170)
I really can't convince myself to put any stock in this. How can one compare In-N-Out Burger to Google? Aside from a small fraction, most of the positions don't overlap.

Also when really big, recognizable companies have their rating change so drastically, it's obviously reflects more about the PR of the company than it's work environment. If you don't consider ideology, Google didn't actually become a terrible place to work rather it's its employees, by the nature of their demographic, be more informed and apt to oppose certain policy and also feel they have the leverage to cause internal change.

Re:Facebook, Google Drop Out of Top ‘Best Places to Work’ List by kerng on Wednesday December 11, 2019 @05:00PM (#21767230)
Google hasn't become a terrible place to work, it's just not as great as it was 5 years ago. I think most people would agree with that.

Also, why can a burger company not be as good or better then an ad company to work for?

Re:Facebook, Google Drop Out of Top ‘Best Places to Work’ List by downerending on Wednesday December 11, 2019 @05:16PM (#21767358)
One of my measures for whether a tech job is "good" is how it compares to the pizza place that I worked for in college. Ignoring the lower pay, the pizza place wins more often than you'd think.

And as for Google, no not terrible, but no longer good enough that I'd accept a position there.

Re:Facebook, Google Drop Out of Top ‘Best Places to Work’ List by adventured on Wednesday December 11, 2019 @05:48PM (#21767626)
> Ignoring the lower pay, the pizza place wins more often than you'd think.

It only wins because you're excluding some of the most important criteria. Stay at the pizza place for 12 years and see how you feel about what has happened to your life and well-being. Did you buy a house? No, you couldn't afford one. Did you get married and have a family? No, you couldn't afford one. Did you have amazing health insurance? No. Did you save anything for retirement? No, your bills are pretty close to your wages and the pizza place provides squat for benefits.

The only way the pizza place wins is if you work there for a short amount of time, otherwise entropy will particularly badly eat away at you (in every regard). Low paying jobs are brutal on people over long periods of time, living at the line of existence perpetually is very harsh. You can't fix things that break, you can't acquire values that you want.

Re:Facebook, Google Drop Out of Top ‘Best Places to Work’ List by domador on Wednesday December 11, 2019 @06:33PM (#21767927)
What's sad is that if you are right, then some tech companies are only better than a restaurant because they give you more money. It's very, very sad when one's life and career are reduced to just making money.

It's also infuriating because you'd expect these large tech companies, with all their surplus resources, to be able to do better for their employees' happiness and well-being. Yet this would also be a money-focused way of looking at companies. I suspect employees' overall well-being has less to do with money and more with their bosses' attitude and the work environments they create. Many of these tech giants sound hellish to me, with their relationally-unenlightened, cutthroat, misanthropic corporate cultures. The maxim that "A players hire A players but B players hire C players" also applies to the human decency side, regarding the kind of managers a company's bosses hire or cultivate (as well as the policies they establish.) Some of these bosses may be A players on the technical/business side, but are B or C players on the human-decency scale (as with Steve Jobs, for example). Thus their company, though bursting at the seams with money, struggle to provide other things their employees need or want.

Employees who worship their company might be overjoyed that they're one of the chosen ones, but other employees who don't drink the Kool-Aid might not be as happy with the cult's toxic aspects, regardless of the money they're making.

Re:Facebook, Google Drop Out of Top ‘Best Places to Work’ List by fennecfoxen on Wednesday December 11, 2019 @06:04PM (#21767731)
Going back to In-n-Out instead of unknown-pizza-place which I can't look up and may not be on the list of good places to work:

"The typical In-N-Out Burger Store Manager salary is $84,315. Store Manager salaries at In-N-Out Burger can range from $55,134 - $130,157." — Glassdoor.com

That's pretty good for most of the US, particularly so outside of major cities, and especially if you've been making money — even just mediocre money — for 4 years, while skipping student debt.

Re:Facebook, Google Drop Out of Top ‘Best Places to Work’ List by jimbokun on Wednesday December 11, 2019 @05:58PM (#21767686)
"Ignoring the lower pay..."

I think it's just saying if both jobs paid the same, the pizza place would be a more rewarding, fulfilling and pleasant place to work.

Re:Facebook, Google Drop Out of Top ‘Best Places to Work’ List by m0zg on Wednesday December 11, 2019 @05:36PM (#21767532)
How about if Google sweetens the pot with $350K/yr in sweet, sweet cash? Would you still prefer the "pizza place"? I mean, higher pay is pretty hard to "ignore" to folks without a trust fund. This is _five times_ what an European software engineer typically makes, and it's by no means the upper bound.

FWIW, I loved my years at Google, and I think of going back from time to time. Is it an ideal workplace? No. But it's the best I have worked at by quite a margin. Why do I think that? Because Google is able to offer competitive pay and the projects that don't make your eyes glaze over right from the start, with the potential for truly breathtaking pay and world-leading projects with a little bit of effort and moving around internally, if you have the chops. It's not the best paying place anymore (that'd be FB), but not far behind, and on the balance it more than compensates for that by offering more meaningful work and beyond state of the art dev infra.

Disclosure: I no longer work at Google, and hold no positions in its stock. They treated me well when I was there, so I wish them well.

Re:Facebook, Google Drop Out of Top ‘Best Places to Work’ List by roenxi on Wednesday December 11, 2019 @05:47PM (#21767618)
'Best place to work' is different from 'place I chose to work'. Indeed, money sweetening the pot signals that a job isn't at a place that people want to work.

In theory, a place could be so great to work at that people would pay to be there. That would be negative pot sweetening with money.

Re:Facebook, Google Drop Out of Top ‘Best Places to Work’ List by dsd on Wednesday December 11, 2019 @06:24PM (#21767873)
The scientific world may disagree. I work in bioinformatics and take a pay cut to do interesting work. It's not negative, but I'm not making a lot of money. Supply and demand- people are willing to work in a low pay field because the pot is sweet. Academia is pretty sweet gig and pays crap to work on hairy problems. UPDATE- teachers spend money out of pocket on their classes, is that negative income?
Re:Facebook, Google Drop Out of Top ‘Best Places to Work’ List by traderjane on Thursday December 12, 2019 @04:47AM (#21770592)
When teachers spend money out of pocket on their classes, I would estimate they are doing so out of negative feelings, such as the feeling that it's such a shame for kids to fall due to lack of money; but I don't see that as a spiritually sweet place for a teacher to be. That is a response to pain.
Re:Facebook, Google Drop Out of Top ‘Best Places to Work’ List by yters on Wednesday December 11, 2019 @05:59PM (#21767695)
Indeed, I think it was CS Lewis that said salary is often inversely proportional to the inherent value of work.
Re:Facebook, Google Drop Out of Top ‘Best Places to Work’ List by bryanrasmussen on Thursday December 12, 2019 @03:23AM (#21770255)
I think people are different, I work for money and it is such a motivator for me that if it is good enough I don't notice the downsides of a place. I agree in theory, but I think that theory is less likely to apply in my case than others. Maybe though I just don't care about most of the things that other people care about a workplace.
Re:Facebook, Google Drop Out of Top ‘Best Places to Work’ List by m0zg on Wednesday December 11, 2019 @05:58PM (#21767691)
Doesn't work like that if you have a family to support and a mortgage. In fact, it doesn't work like that at all. The probability that you will find interesting work as an engineer at least is directly proportional to how much the employer (or client) is willing to pay. If you're paid half a million dollars a year, chances are you won't be doing something mind numbing that a $100K/yr fresh grad can do. You will be doing gnarly, interesting shit where there's disproportionate ROI. In fact in my current consulting gig, some of my clients insist that I offload bullshit work to their FTEs. I like that. I wish I could do that when I was an FTE. :-)
Re:Facebook, Google Drop Out of Top ‘Best Places to Work’ List by JenrHywy on Wednesday December 11, 2019 @06:14PM (#21767810)
ROI is only half of the equation, though. It will tell you the maximum the employer is willing to pay.

But the wage is determined by the least amount a suitable employee is willing to accept, which is affected by how interesting the work is and how "good" the environment is.

Re:Facebook, Google Drop Out of Top ‘Best Places to Work’ List by m0zg on Wednesday December 11, 2019 @06:29PM (#21767901)
Do you really think Google is "compensating" for its shortcomings as a workplace? I mean, if you do that's great, less competition drives up the wages, but from personal experience that's just not true. They're a great employer (both technically and in terms of quality of employee experience) who also happens to pay really well. That's how they're able to attract the kinds of people they're able to attract: by not sucking and paying well. In fact, if they did suck as an employer, they'd not be able to compensate for it with pay - that only works on poor people. When your brokerage account begins to look like a phone number, you're too far up on the Maslow's pyramid to tolerate such shenanigans.
Re:Facebook, Google Drop Out of Top ‘Best Places to Work’ List by dsd on Wednesday December 11, 2019 @06:28PM (#21767899)
Where/how do you find employers who pay for hairy problem solving and not just another piece of CRUD?
Re:Facebook, Google Drop Out of Top ‘Best Places to Work’ List by m0zg on Wednesday December 11, 2019 @06:31PM (#21767913)
Re:Facebook, Google Drop Out of Top ‘Best Places to Work’ List by klipt on Wednesday December 11, 2019 @06:03PM (#21767725)
> In theory, a place could be so great to work at that people would pay to be there. That would be negative pot sweetening with money.

Then it's no longer a job, it's an expensive hobby / education / retirement activity.

Most people work jobs to support themselves (or others) financially, you can't do that on negative income.

And having more income than you need means you can retire sooner and do more of your desired hobby then, so it absolutely is a pot sweetener.

Re:Facebook, Google Drop Out of Top ‘Best Places to Work’ List by downerending on Wednesday December 11, 2019 @06:30PM (#21767907)
Yeah, as an adult with responsibilities, that pizza place is unfortunately no longer a possibility. And I'm sure it seems better in memory than it actually was.

I've been in the $300s a couple of times, but my ability to get much useful done, joy of workmanship was completely washed out by the fairly nasty politics of the groups I was part of.

(I've never worked at Google, but after reading the internal message traffic surfaced in the Damore lawsuit, it's difficult to imagine enjoying it.)

Re:Facebook, Google Drop Out of Top ‘Best Places to Work’ List by m0zg on Thursday December 12, 2019 @02:33AM (#21769998)
Damore is the extreme case. There's a small clique of people there that do "social justice" activism on internal forums and little else. Damore pissed right into their punchbowl.

I'm not 100% sure why Google keeps those people around, but they are fairly easy to avoid: just don't engage, no matter how insane their ramblings are on any given week.

Re:Facebook, Google Drop Out of Top ‘Best Places to Work’ List by downerending on Thursday December 12, 2019 @03:45PM (#21776239)
When it comes to things like threats of physical violence, threats to get someone fired, or even blacklisted at other companies, I expect to see offenders immediately dismissed. That's a basic workplace hygiene issue, and none of the companies I've ever worked for would tolerate it.
Re:Facebook, Google Drop Out of Top ‘Best Places to Work’ List by m0zg on Saturday December 14, 2019 @05:06AM (#21788718)
I agree with you on that one. But as much as this sucks, it doesn't have to suck _for you_. Just come in, do your work, leave, collect $12-20K (pretax) every 2 weeks depending on the level. Google is fine with that. You don't have to engage with this bullshit.
Re:Facebook, Google Drop Out of Top ‘Best Places to Work’ List by vecter on Wednesday December 11, 2019 @05:18PM (#21767382)
Can you explain why?
Re:Facebook, Google Drop Out of Top ‘Best Places to Work’ List by downerending on Wednesday December 11, 2019 @06:20PM (#21767850)
It'd differ by the job I'm comparing to, but in general, at the pizza place, the role and goals were pretty clear, my boss was outstanding, we were rarely idle and never given busywork, occasionally I got to save the day, and we made customers happy (in person!) many times every single day.

My highest-paying jobs generally lacked most or all of those qualities.

Re:Facebook, Google Drop Out of Top ‘Best Places to Work’ List by gabaix on Thursday December 12, 2019 @02:15PM (#21775217)
Thank you for sharing! Fulfillment at work is about many intangibles beyond pay.
Re:Facebook, Google Drop Out of Top ‘Best Places to Work’ List by ryansc0tt on Wednesday December 11, 2019 @10:49PM (#21769124)
Possibly the most thoughtful comment I've ever read on this site :)
Re:Facebook, Google Drop Out of Top ‘Best Places to Work’ List by downerending on Thursday December 12, 2019 @03:26PM (#21776052)
Gosh, thanks for your kind words!
Re:Facebook, Google Drop Out of Top ‘Best Places to Work’ List by taneq on Wednesday December 11, 2019 @06:04PM (#21767736)
Simple part-time job, clear expectations, no pressure to innovate, working with a crew of like-minded individuals. Yeah, I can see how it’d be more fun than a high level professional job.
Re:Facebook, Google Drop Out of Top ‘Best Places to Work’ List by the-dude on Wednesday December 11, 2019 @05:30PM (#21767474)
I'll have a shot : clear boundaries
Re:Facebook, Google Drop Out of Top ‘Best Places to Work’ List by malandrew on Wednesday December 11, 2019 @06:01PM (#21767714)
So much this. With tech jobs I feel like I'm always on because of email and oncall.

With shift work, you have the luxury of turning your brain off work at the end of every shift.

Re:Facebook, Google Drop Out of Top ‘Best Places to Work’ List by CamelCaseName on Thursday December 12, 2019 @12:06PM (#21773714)
Not just that, but even on breaks and during work there would be times where you can just turn off.

It could very well be age related, but I was never more relaxed than when I worked a retail-eqsue job. Even when on vacation.

Re:Facebook, Google Drop Out of Top ‘Best Places to Work’ List by butterfi on Wednesday December 11, 2019 @06:12PM (#21767795)
No one worries that In and Out is eroding our democracy.
Re:Facebook, Google Drop Out of Top ‘Best Places to Work’ List by sjwright on Wednesday December 11, 2019 @05:52PM (#21767641)
Here’s my shot: satisfaction of work performed and stress levels at the end of the day—even if considered relative to remuneration.
Re:Facebook, Google Drop Out of Top ‘Best Places to Work’ List by datashow on Wednesday December 11, 2019 @05:36PM (#21767524)
Another shot: at that time he / she was a college student. Totally different preferences and cretira now.
Re:Facebook, Google Drop Out of Top ‘Best Places to Work’ List by trenning on Wednesday December 11, 2019 @05:33PM (#21767505)
All of these people are responding talking about how it doesn't pay the same at Google yet this site is filled with miserable people making hundreds of thousands of dollars and constant threads about it. Perhaps greed isn't as fulfilling in life as actually enjoying one's self and performing a job that has perceived value.
Re:Facebook, Google Drop Out of Top ‘Best Places to Work’ List by stickfigure on Wednesday December 11, 2019 @05:44PM (#21767602)
...or maybe these people don't remember (or have never had the experience of) working a low-paid job. Or maybe people like to complain. Or maybe there's just a lot of selection bias in the commenter pool. Maybe all the people happily working at Google are just busy working and don't care about HN drama.
Re:Facebook, Google Drop Out of Top ‘Best Places to Work’ List by natechols on Wednesday December 11, 2019 @05:50PM (#21767635)
I don't think it's "greed" to want to work as a software developer instead of flipping burgers (I've done both). However it should probably raise some eyebrows in Google management (among others) that a company in an industry known for slim margins and low pay nonetheless manages to have happier employees overall.
Re:Facebook, Google Drop Out of Top ‘Best Places to Work’ List by thanhhaimai on Wednesday December 11, 2019 @05:58PM (#21767685)
1) Flexible working hours. I can WFH any time I like. No questions asked.

2) Free buffet style breakfast, lunch, and dinner. The quality is not as good as it was, but still better than anything in&out would give, no?

3) Clear ladder and career growth. While in in&out you would be lucky to move up to any job higher than $22/h

4) Much more interesting job. Say what you want to say about how bad Google is, I can't imagine how working in a burger shop would be more rewarding than working at your desk in Google, with all interesting challenges, good resources, and the smart people to learn from.

Google has problems, but this list is not a good list if it puts in&out over Google. It's misleading at best.

Re:Facebook, Google Drop Out of Top ‘Best Places to Work’ List by MuffinFlavored on Wednesday December 11, 2019 @06:04PM (#21767737)
> 1) Flexible working hours. I can WFH any time I like. No questions asked.

How many of your team members are fully remote? If the answer is 0, it sounds like there are some "questions asked".

Re:Facebook, Google Drop Out of Top ‘Best Places to Work’ List by lucasmullens on Wednesday December 11, 2019 @06:07PM (#21767756)
I think "questions asked" was referring to questions about why you WFH, not about conversations you missed.
Re:Facebook, Google Drop Out of Top ‘Best Places to Work’ List by jhatemyjob on Wednesday December 11, 2019 @06:04PM (#21767738)
> still better than anything in&out would give, no?

Blasphemy! I'd eat In-N-Out every day if I could.

Re:Facebook, Google Drop Out of Top ‘Best Places to Work’ List by ericd on Wednesday December 11, 2019 @05:19PM (#21767389)
Well, there's the small matter of a couple hundred thousand dollars difference in comp.
Re:Facebook, Google Drop Out of Top ‘Best Places to Work’ List by Digory on Wednesday December 11, 2019 @05:39PM (#21767558)
Maybe google has to pay more to make up for the being a bad place to work.

Which is a bit of hyperbole, but higher pay is one way to get people to accept years of schooling, and soul-crushing busywork. You’re not paid for virtue or happiness.

Re:Facebook, Google Drop Out of Top ‘Best Places to Work’ List by Rebelgecko on Wednesday December 11, 2019 @06:02PM (#21767720)
In-N-Out managers make more than the median salary of Californian software engineers ($160k vs $120k)
Re:Facebook, Google Drop Out of Top ‘Best Places to Work’ List by wuliwong on Wednesday December 11, 2019 @06:40PM (#21767972)
According to glassdoor the avg salary for In N Out managers is ~84k [0].

>The typical In-N-Out Burger Store Manager salary is $84,315. Store Manager salaries at In-N-Out Burger can range from $55,134 - $130,157. This estimate is based upon 11 In-N-Out Burger Store Manager salary report(s) provided by employees or estimated based upon statistical methods. When factoring in bonuses and additional compensation, a Store Manager at In-N-Out Burger can expect to make an average total pay of $114,271 .

Not sure what the "total pay" means exactly but that averages 114k. Still way below the 160k you quoted which I think was from this article: https://medium.californiasun.co/in-n-out-store-managers-earn...

The California Sun article gives no sources for the claims of an average salary for in-n-out managers of 160k. Which is amusing as the article does reference Indeed.com for the "architect" salary it compares to in-n-out. According to Indeed.com the average salary is 42.8k [1]. I also saw that the story was picked up by USA Today, so I'm sure most people will forever more think In-N-Out store managers are making 160k on average, truth be damned.

[0] https://www.glassdoor.com/Salary/In-N-Out-Burger-Store-Manag... [1] https://www.indeed.com/cmp/In--n--out-Burger/salaries/Manage...

Re:Facebook, Google Drop Out of Top ‘Best Places to Work’ List by Rebelgecko on Wednesday December 11, 2019 @07:05PM (#21768136)
According to that Glassdoor link, the average base salary is $84k and the average extra pay (bonuses?) just about doubles that. I'm not sure if I'm reading it right since like you said they describe the average total pay as $114k
Re:Facebook, Google Drop Out of Top ‘Best Places to Work’ List by FernandoTatisJr on Wednesday December 11, 2019 @09:30PM (#21768794)
Glassdoor says the salary average is based on 11 reports. 5 reports included a bonus averaging $82,701 (and 2 reports included profit sharing averaging $10,345). The question is why only 5 of the 11 reported a bonus; or more specifically, did the others receive bonuses that they didn't report? If Glassdoor assumes that the other six didn't receive bonuses, then the average total pay of $114K makes sense.

    84,315 + 82,701*5/11 + 10,345*2/11 = 123,787
The simple way I see to count these doesn't match the $114K, but it's close enough that I can buy that that's a big part of it. But the question is still whether the assumption (that nobody else received bonuses) is correct. It's plausible that many people fill out only the base salary figure, even if they have other compensation. If everybody gets a bonus, then the $160K figure reported in the other articles could be justified.
Re:Facebook, Google Drop Out of Top ‘Best Places to Work’ List by ericd on Wednesday December 11, 2019 @06:44PM (#21768000)
Sure, and that's a great salary, but the median Google engineer makes more than the median CA software engineer, and a much larger percentage of Google workers make the types of salaries we're talking about than In-n-Out workers.

It's weird to make a list flat out ranking In-n-Out as an overall better place to work.

Re:Facebook, Google Drop Out of Top ‘Best Places to Work’ List by rconti on Wednesday December 11, 2019 @06:14PM (#21767809)
It seems like you should at least compare software engineering managers.
Re:Facebook, Google Drop Out of Top ‘Best Places to Work’ List by CobrastanJorji on Wednesday December 11, 2019 @05:31PM (#21767490)
Although I'm guessing that both may provide free meals.
Re:Facebook, Google Drop Out of Top ‘Best Places to Work’ List by ericd on Wednesday December 11, 2019 @06:49PM (#21768033)
Heh I wonder how long it'd take me to get completely sick of eating In-n-Out.
Re:Facebook, Google Drop Out of Top ‘Best Places to Work’ List by jstummbillig on Wednesday December 11, 2019 @05:40PM (#21767564)
Are you comparing flipping burgers at one company to software engineering at the other?

Because I can't see how else you'd end up with that number.

Re:Facebook, Google Drop Out of Top ‘Best Places to Work’ List by ericd on Wednesday December 11, 2019 @06:06PM (#21767747)
Well, I'm pretty sure that's the median job at each. But even if you wanted to compare software engineering at the two, I'm guessing that the comp differential still holds.
Re:Facebook, Google Drop Out of Top ‘Best Places to Work’ List by bashinator on Wednesday December 11, 2019 @06:21PM (#21767854)
Related, there was a really interesting article going around a few days back, on how Chick-fil-A provisions bare-metal K8s clusters to every single remote branch. Not all the innovation is happening in the FAANGs

https://medium.com/@cfatechblog/bare-metal-k8s-clustering-at...

Re:Facebook, Google Drop Out of Top ‘Best Places to Work’ List by ericd on Wednesday December 11, 2019 @06:34PM (#21767930)
Oh, very cool!
Re:Facebook, Google Drop Out of Top ‘Best Places to Work’ List by filoleg on Wednesday December 11, 2019 @05:13PM (#21767334)
It can, if you are comparing between similar positions. Comparing the environment of an In-N-Out engineer to a Google engineer is valid, and so is that of an In-N-Out cook to a Google cook. But I don't think that knowing whether life of an average Google employee is "better" or "worse" than that In-N-Out is gonna be useful or illustrative of anything at all to an average In-N-Out employee.

It's like making a lawyer compare his workplace to that of a surgeon at a private practice, you are comparing apples to oranges. In part, because the chosen field in itself affects the workplace environment, and there isn't really a good way to separate the effects of the field vs. the individual workplace environment for the purpose of that chart.

Re:Facebook, Google Drop Out of Top ‘Best Places to Work’ List by esoterica on Wednesday December 11, 2019 @05:22PM (#21767416)
Because the burger place pays 1/10th as much.
Re:Facebook, Google Drop Out of Top ‘Best Places to Work’ List by avocado4 on Wednesday December 11, 2019 @05:17PM (#21767364)
At Google you get amazing benefits, giant salary, world-class talent as peers, luxurious offices around the globe, first-hand knowledge of unparalleled technical systems, flexible schedule, ability to work on innovative products from healthcare to drone delivery, and the most prestigious alumni network in the world should you leave it.

At In-and-out, you don't get any of those things. Not that I don't like I&O - their burgers are great, and I'm sure work environment is better than other fast food companies. But it's just not comparable to Google.

Re:Facebook, Google Drop Out of Top ‘Best Places to Work’ List by DevKoala on Wednesday December 11, 2019 @05:31PM (#21767485)
If you are a talented and accomplished engineer, do you really want to work for Google or Facebook? It seems that the answer is not clear anymore. That is all. The surveys are collected from employees, a lot of them with different work environment experiences.
Re:Facebook, Google Drop Out of Top ‘Best Places to Work’ List by dmitrygr on Wednesday December 11, 2019 @05:33PM (#21767507)
Unless you are already in possession of fuck-you money, your choice of employment may be easily predicted and is likely highly correlated with comp. C'est la vie
Re:Facebook, Google Drop Out of Top ‘Best Places to Work’ List by mc32 on Wednesday December 11, 2019 @06:07PM (#21767764)
The big tech companies have not become lousy places to work for from one year to the next.

What has happened is two distinct things:

1. They are now regular companies (due to ubiquity and staff size). So there is lots of boring ordinary work—but with great perks.

2. In a subset of the staff, mostly idealists realize that they’re just another company, albeit high tech., but they are not creating the paradise cities that Japanese futurists thought up back in their heyday.

Re:Facebook, Google Drop Out of Top ‘Best Places to Work’ List by tenpies on Wednesday December 11, 2019 @07:07PM (#21768148)
I don't think number 2 is precise enough. For some of us it's not just that you're not building something good, it's that you're actually helping a company who is quite likely destroying society.

At worst, you're quite helping a totalitarian regime's intelligence apparatus.

Re:Facebook, Google Drop Out of Top ‘Best Places to Work’ List by djtriptych on Wednesday December 11, 2019 @06:15PM (#21767818)
As someone who interned in 2005 and worked full time in 2013, I have to say the changes were obvious.
Re:Facebook, Google Drop Out of Top ‘Best Places to Work’ List by awinder on Wednesday December 11, 2019 @05:52PM (#21767645)
You’re not reading the metric right. You’re trying to make it a statistic about what the best place _for you_ to work is, or for _a given position_. This is a metric that would describe overall happiness in different workplaces. There’s no problem measuring this across company types or position types, it’s speaking more to culture anyways, and if you want a different metric, you can totally find it elsewhere.
Re:Facebook, Google Drop Out of Top ‘Best Places to Work’ List by elicash on Wednesday December 11, 2019 @05:11PM (#21767320)
It's based on employee ratings, so I do think there's still value if you use this the right way.

So, if one way you support what companies to give your business to is based on how well they treat their employees, then sure, maybe this list makes me 5% more likely to frequent In-N-Out Burger (if they ever set up shop in DC).

Or, maybe this data is interesting to investors, I don't know. Not because you're comparing the #1 slot to the #5, but just to say that anything in the top 10 is a sign of something positive that can be added to other factors you'd analyze.

So there could be useful ways to use it. But it wouldn't make me quit my job to work at Hubstop, either.

Re:Facebook, Google Drop Out of Top ‘Best Places to Work’ List by Wohlf on Wednesday December 11, 2019 @04:59PM (#21767223)
I can't speak for In-N-Out, but I know Chick-Fil-A treats their employees quite well.
Re:Facebook, Google Drop Out of Top ‘Best Places to Work’ List by itake on Wednesday December 11, 2019 @05:06PM (#21767276)
Chick-Fil-A's engineering office is in middle of nowhere south Atlanta. You either have a long commute from midtown and above or you're living in some sketchy neighborhoods.

According to this article[0], they have trouble retaining employees, because their office location is so bad.

[0] - https://www.bizjournals.com/atlanta/news/2019/10/19/chick-fi...

Re:Facebook, Google Drop Out of Top ‘Best Places to Work’ List by saagarjha on Wednesday December 11, 2019 @05:11PM (#21767316)
Most Chick-Fil-A employees are probably not engineers.
Re:Facebook, Google Drop Out of Top ‘Best Places to Work’ List by cloudwalking on Wednesday December 11, 2019 @05:15PM (#21767349)
Which is why the comparison is pointless.
Re:Facebook, Google Drop Out of Top ‘Best Places to Work’ List by wuliwong on Wednesday December 11, 2019 @06:47PM (#21768012)
>According to this article[0], they have trouble retaining employees, because their office location is so bad.

No, nothing in the article says that.

Re:Facebook, Google Drop Out of Top ‘Best Places to Work’ List by itake on Wednesday December 11, 2019 @08:28PM (#21768548)
> The decisions are based on the battle to recruit and retain top talent. More of those companies are moving to the Beltline.

The fourth paragraph.

Less directly, they quote a spokeperson:

> This new office space will allow us to grow while inspiring new and existing talent Christina Coleman, director of campus planning and operations for Chick-fil-A

[dead]
Re:Facebook, Google Drop Out of Top ‘Best Places to Work’ List by echelon on Wednesday December 11, 2019 @05:50PM (#21767633)
> Basically you're saying people shouldn't work there because they'd have to live around poor blacks instead of high rise condos with rich whites.

> South ATL isn't all bad but your implied racism is.

He didn't say anything racist! This is a baseless attack.

I wouldn't want to live or work in college park either. It has one of the highest violent crime rates in the entire state [1].

The parent poster even mentioned working around midtown, which is incredibly diverse.

Don't be like this. It's harmful to our community. Even if you did think he was racist, there are better ways to approach the issue than with venom.

You don't even know this person's race anyway. Way to assume.

[1] https://www.neighborhoodscout.com/ga/college-park/crime

Re:Facebook, Google Drop Out of Top ‘Best Places to Work’ List by creddit on Wednesday December 11, 2019 @05:27PM (#21767450)
In-N-Out does as well. In-N-Out location managers make serious money and the company is known for promoting from within, good benefits and positive employee experiences.

Interestingly, both Chick-Fil-A and In-N-Out are highly religious organizations.

Re:Facebook, Google Drop Out of Top ‘Best Places to Work’ List by Ill_ban_myself on Thursday December 12, 2019 @07:43AM (#21771354)
True conservatism can be appealing when every new thing is a means to strip away rights, money, and privacy.
Re:Facebook, Google Drop Out of Top ‘Best Places to Work’ List by chrisseaton on Wednesday December 11, 2019 @05:00PM (#21767229)
Is there anyone in the universe voluntarily quitting their job at Google to go to work at In and Out Burger? No? So in what sense is it a better place to work? Clearly not empirically.
Re:Facebook, Google Drop Out of Top ‘Best Places to Work’ List by Ill_ban_myself on Wednesday December 11, 2019 @05:08PM (#21767289)
If pay weren’t a consideration I would have been working at a coffee shop years ago.

I love working with a complicated temperamental machine and cranky demanding sometimes charming people.

Which is why I went with my 2nd choice: programming

Re:Facebook, Google Drop Out of Top ‘Best Places to Work’ List by nilkn on Wednesday December 11, 2019 @05:08PM (#21767297)
My understanding is that it's just based on employee satisfaction with their workplace. The implication is that In-N-Out Burger might be a better place to work relative to other options for its employees than Google is relative to other options for its employees.
Re:Facebook, Google Drop Out of Top ‘Best Places to Work’ List by TylerE on Wednesday December 11, 2019 @05:10PM (#21767310)
I bet lots would if the pay was the same.
Re:Facebook, Google Drop Out of Top ‘Best Places to Work’ List by shantly on Wednesday December 11, 2019 @06:57PM (#21768097)
God, if pay for all jobs were equal I'm not sure software development would even make my top 100 list of jobs I'd like to do.
Re:Facebook, Google Drop Out of Top ‘Best Places to Work’ List by saagarjha on Wednesday December 11, 2019 @05:08PM (#21767298)
As an engineer?
Re:Facebook, Google Drop Out of Top ‘Best Places to Work’ List by president on Wednesday December 11, 2019 @05:18PM (#21767381)
Not sure about Google but regarding Facebook, there is something to be said about your work culture when one of your engineers commits suicide [1] by jumping off a building at your HQ. I would imagine things like this would lead to a lower score on that top list.

[1] https://www.cnbc.com/2019/09/27/facebook-employee-death-was-...

Re:Facebook, Google Drop Out of Top ‘Best Places to Work’ List by baroffoos on Wednesday December 11, 2019 @05:20PM (#21767399)
When you have a huge number of people working there its not unlikely that at least one person will do this and there is probably nothing you can do to stop it. What would be interesting data is if per person there is a higher rate than the general population.
Re:Facebook, Google Drop Out of Top ‘Best Places to Work’ List by compiler-guy on Wednesday December 11, 2019 @05:24PM (#21767429)
Right. When you have 10,000 employees, then you are quite likely to experience something only one out of 10,000 people would do. Multiply that over several years, and low probability events happen with surprising (at first glance) regularity.

The classic example of this is that on Google's main campus there are tens of thousands of workers. That's the size of a small town. So one should expect medical emergencies at about the same rate as a small town--which is to say, several every week. You should expect ambulances and fire trucks and what not else regularly, not unusually.

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Re:Facebook, Google Drop Out of Top ‘Best Places to Work’ List by mffnbs on Wednesday December 11, 2019 @05:31PM (#21767492)
How dare you assume that this is something we can change! These men are discussing numbers and figures and you’re out here with ideas that defy statistics!
Re:Facebook, Google Drop Out of Top ‘Best Places to Work’ List by ggggtez on Wednesday December 11, 2019 @05:07PM (#21767277)
Exactly. It's really pointless to compare a $20k/yr position to a $200k/yr position, especially based on things like "having flexible schedules". The worker pool and expectations are leagues apart.

Consider: The In-And-Out worker would need 10 sick days to equal the pay of a single sick day for the tech worker.

Maybe it's a nice place to work compared to McDonalds, or other similar places... but trying to imply that people are happier working there than FAANG is just silly.

Re:Facebook, Google Drop Out of Top ‘Best Places to Work’ List by shadowgovt on Wednesday December 11, 2019 @05:37PM (#21767535)
Happiness is only partially correlated with money; depending on how the people who answer the survey evaluate their personal happiness, it's completely possible for the job to offer fulfillment through avenues other than income.

FAANG employees get paid way more than In-N-Out employees, but some of them are also expected to carry pagers that wake them up at 4AM. That's never an expectation of an In-N-Out employee.

Re:Facebook, Google Drop Out of Top ‘Best Places to Work’ List by saagarjha on Wednesday December 11, 2019 @06:12PM (#21767792)
I'd think that the work hours of an In-N-Out employee are generally a lot less flexible than that of most engineers.
Re:Facebook, Google Drop Out of Top ‘Best Places to Work’ List by JumpCrisscross on Wednesday December 11, 2019 @06:11PM (#21767786)
> How can one compare In-N-Out Burger to Google?

By splitting the question "which do I prefer" into "which job pays more" and "which job would I take if money weren't an object".

This survey measures the latter. Pay, with output requirements, measure the former. We each hybridize these factors differently--attempting to isolate them is valuable.

Re:Facebook, Google Drop Out of Top ‘Best Places to Work’ List by ronilan on Wednesday December 11, 2019 @05:37PM (#21767542)
> How can one compare In-N-Out Burger to Google?

You can’t.

But on the other hand, in most tech companies, the on-site interview process is like Five Guys.

Re:Facebook, Google Drop Out of Top ‘Best Places to Work’ List by wuliwong on Wednesday December 11, 2019 @06:55PM (#21768078)
I don't get it. But I want to.
Re:Facebook, Google Drop Out of Top ‘Best Places to Work’ List by ronilan on Wednesday December 11, 2019 @07:09PM (#21768158)
No free peanuts.
Re:Facebook, Google Drop Out of Top ‘Best Places to Work’ List by ronyeh on Wednesday December 11, 2019 @05:07PM (#21767285)
Obviously it's difficult to compare companies in completely different industries, so I wouldn't worry much about minor differences between #1 and #11.

What IS notable to me as an engineer, is how Google is ranked #11 but Amazon isn't on the list at all. Are the horror stories about working at Amazon true? ️

Re:Facebook, Google Drop Out of Top ‘Best Places to Work’ List by gdulli on Wednesday December 11, 2019 @05:21PM (#21767412)
> Are the horror stories about working at Amazon true? ️

Back around 2007 I was considering moving to Seattle and read up on working there. At the time their first round of bad press hadn't yet hit and I started with no impression about them.

It's too long ago to remember the details, but from searching around I remember being definitively turned off from considering them an option.

And then a few years later I think it was, it broke into the mainstream. It wasn't a one-time thing, there was a consistent story told about it for years. The central theme was a culture of terrible treatment of people. Nothing specific to engineering.

They've had years now to do damage control. I have a friend whose husband works there and she says that there's a culture of treating people in such a way as to never allow any further bad press. (Which is subtly different from treating people well.)

She says he's on pager duty a certain number of nights/weeks per month and gets calls regularly overnight. That's not related to the narrative of bad treatment of people, just a fact of life in engineering that she called out as being stressful for them. Since she got regularly woken up too.

And she said the benefits aren't great, he doesn't even get a free Prime account. There's a culture of non-competitive benefits because you're supposed to feel privileged to work there, to see that as its own benefit.

Re:Facebook, Google Drop Out of Top ‘Best Places to Work’ List by CobrastanJorji on Wednesday December 11, 2019 @05:36PM (#21767528)
I remember from my stint at Amazon many years ago that everyone at Amazon, including me, felt that surely our total compensation was higher than our peers at other companies to make up for the lack of benefits. Otherwise everyone else would have left, right? Long story short, we were wrong. There was nothing better about being at Amazon than the other top tech companies.

That said, I didn't find the work as bad as some others experienced it. My team's pager only went off once a day or so at most.

Re:Facebook, Google Drop Out of Top ‘Best Places to Work’ List by jimbokun on Wednesday December 11, 2019 @06:05PM (#21767743)
"She says he's on pager duty a certain number of nights/weeks per month and gets calls regularly overnight. That's not related to the narrative of bad treatment of people, just a fact of life in engineering that she called out as being stressful for them."

That's a fact of incompetent engineers who can't keep their code operating reliably without human intervention.

Re:Facebook, Google Drop Out of Top ‘Best Places to Work’ List by rconti on Wednesday December 11, 2019 @06:16PM (#21767830)
It's a very narrow world of people who carry pagers and are directly responsible for how often they go off.
Re:Facebook, Google Drop Out of Top ‘Best Places to Work’ List by saagarjha on Wednesday December 11, 2019 @06:13PM (#21767807)
Can you?
Re:Facebook, Google Drop Out of Top ‘Best Places to Work’ List by shadowgovt on Wednesday December 11, 2019 @05:39PM (#21767557)
Depends on the horror story and what employees factor into their happiness.

Steve Yegge (former Amazon and Google employee) once had to walk back a flippant remark about "dread pirate Bezos," in which he explained that while the work was fulfilling and he was successful at it, the background message he perceived of a consistent drumbeat of "Be useful to the company or we'll fire you" weighed on him psychologically.

https://www.bizjournals.com/seattle/blog/techflash/2011/10/g...

Re:Facebook, Google Drop Out of Top ‘Best Places to Work’ List by KingMachiavelli on Wednesday December 11, 2019 @05:18PM (#21767369)
Possibly, but it's far more likely that it's the non-tech/engineering employees who have well publicized subpar to inhumane working conditions that are skewing Amazon's rating. There are some reports of that culture permeating into it's cloud/tech business areas but it's difficult to know the relative ratio (both # of user reports and rating effect size) between the two.
Re:Facebook, Google Drop Out of Top ‘Best Places to Work’ List by bduerst on Wednesday December 11, 2019 @05:37PM (#21767541)
>Are the horror stories about working at Amazon true? ️

Anecdotally I've heard mixed accounts, where some ex-Amazon employees say they never had issues, but still some others have some pretty bad stories to tell.

Recently Bezos said he only wants "to hire missionaries, not mercenaries", so take that statement as you will.

Re:Facebook, Google Drop Out of Top ‘Best Places to Work’ List by akhilcacharya on Wednesday December 11, 2019 @05:15PM (#21767353)
They aren’t.

Disclaimer: I turned down higher paying/more prestigious companies for Amazon so YMMV

Re:Facebook, Google Drop Out of Top ‘Best Places to Work’ List by MrZongle2 on Wednesday December 11, 2019 @06:14PM (#21767814)
How can one compare In-N-Out Burger to Google?

One facilitates a surveillance state, and the other makes burgers?

Re:Facebook, Google Drop Out of Top ‘Best Places to Work’ List by NeoBasilisk on Wednesday December 11, 2019 @05:12PM (#21767323)
Don't employee surveys factor heavily into these evaluations?
Re:Facebook, Google Drop Out of Top ‘Best Places to Work’ List by wuliwong on Wednesday December 11, 2019 @06:53PM (#21768061)
It was posted by glassdoor so I'm assuming it is from glassdoor reviews.