I'm no billionaire, but I am an Xoogler and his descriptions of employee entitlement and misaligned incentives are spot on.

Nothing he is saying is wrong, but this is entitlement as a VP : blaming everything on "corporate" rather than accepting your responsibility as a leader to fix those problems.

He is discussing exactly that. That he failed to fix those problems from within.

With his attitude, it's clear why he failed to fix those problems.

I don't believe complaints about covid reductions to perks are unique to tech or well paid jobs however. My father is a slightly above minimum wage factory worker. There was plenty of grumbling in there when they shut down the 50% subsidised canteen with covid too.

Someone earning high six figure salary needs their subsidized food significantly less than someone earning minimum wage.

Just because you're well compensated it doesn't mean you shouldn't be fighting for your perks. Especially when you work for a multibillion corpo which earns 1mil+ per employee.

This "you shouldn't complain if you have it a bit better than others" mindset is a breeding ground for all kinds of corporate exploitation.

Why don't these employees take their high skills, work for $30k/year for 100/hours per week, take no days off and like it?

This guy is hopelessly out of touch. You work to live, not the other way around.

As for misaligned incentives, this is how it is throughout the corporate world - it's not exclusive to Google or other big tech companies. As one of the guys who puts the team on his back and works hard for the users, the reality is that doing a good job does not benefit me in the slightest. My executives care about the number of tickets and new features we churn through. I don't get paid for retention; I don't get paid more for writing good code; I don't get paid more if we get new customers. The only way I get paid more is if I get promoted. What's my motivation to work as hard as I do? My only motivations should be getting promoted or getting a new job.

The only reason any of us work for these companies is for money and benefits. We don't care about your mission statement; and neither do these executives, or they would change the incentives. It's a purely business arrangement: we agree to work X hours per week for Y dollars in total compensation under Z conditions. It's in our interest to reduce X, improve Y and Z. It's the employer's interest to do the opposite - but the employer also cares about other variables, such as retention, total revenue, total profit and costs.

I find the idea that the best paid people in the industry are entitled to be a bit rich.

Clearly there is unmet demand for quality engineers or you wouldn't be paying that much and allowing perks to dictate the balance of life equation so royally.

Maybe we're not paid enough.

It's like you're welcome to pay less, watch the talent dry up and move on.

I'm sure you'll be fine?

Doesn't Google still make roughly 150x what their employees are paid?

Being an IC is very hard if you want to do the job well. The risks are also underappreciated (massive burnout, etc). It should be compensated fairly.

Agreed, I suspect were massively underpaid but companies get away with it because we're also love what we do and are easily take advantage of when we're young and naive

Another billionaire talking about others having entitlement issues.

Insert line about smelling their own.

This blog post is yet another confirmation for me that similar to how we can have infinitely big small numbers, we can have infinitely verbose rambles around small ideas.

The “I’m a passionate guy so I can’t communicate without cursing” part was entertaining.

Ugh, I'm this guy and I hate myself for it.

I've found that I really have to detach from the situation to use less curse words, such as counting to 5 mentally before saying _anything_.

Any other tips for similarly terrible people such as myself?

Detaching and reflecting is a good practice, especially where swearing is a verbal crutch for yet-to-be-refined thoughts. Give it a moment, dispassionately and accurately frame the thought. In the end, what you say will be much more direct, and far more useful to everybody involved.

Also consider swears like farts in a relationship. A well-chosen place and time, dropping one is hilarious. All the time though, you just stink.

Have you tried using made-up or downgraded curse words? Fracked, frelled, dren, sparks, slontz, gorram, jagweeds, cheese&crackers, crackers&toast, etc?

It will probably make you feel silly, but you can meditate on it being literally no sillier than using actual curse words to pepper your ordinary speech.

Just keep cursing. It's not a big deal.

If you are serious about not being able to not curse if you get excited you may be better off talking to a psychologist than asking the internet for advice.

I do have the same issue, but since I work in corporate, I have to think about everything I say or write within company. I still do curse a lot when communicating within closest people in my team(which are mostly developers) and noone minds. We even share the hate for the corporate forced politeness together with some.

I never cursed around my parents, even as I got older, so it's easy for me to switch into that mode

Not giving a fuck.

I worked for a guy like that named Mike Homer. There were Wired articles about “is Homer a jerk or just passionate?”

It turns out he actually had Mad Cow disease (really).

Creutzfeld Jacobs. Please think of the cows.

Dignam from "the departed"

Another chapter in the book of tales from the big tech ivory tower where on some days the cake" wasn't ok but still pretty good". Fair game in a personal blog, although barely newsworthy.

Not sure why everyone is assuming Noam is a billionaire. He mentioned he had little equity, and from what I could find that amounted to single-digit millions out of the acquisition's billion-dollar price tag. Of course, compensation since then and Google's rising market capitalization have surely increased that, but I would bet it's still quite far off from the billion, and even far off from the 9 digits.

Not that it matters — his observations are just as valid regardless of his net worth.

When people say "billionaire" in this line of comments they are trying to point out the perceived hypocrisy that Noam is likely VERY well off... even having a few million dollars can set your family up for life. You are immediately in the top 1% in the US which puts you even higher anywhere else in the globe.

Noam could never pick up a job again and he will have likely made more money than the average US worker will in their lifetime.

His observation of scorn at employees who are well-compensated NOT jumping at the opportunity to work weekends to get something done for users is a sign of privilege (and probably also a sign of his drive, which is commendable) and maybe a little lack of empathy.

Yea, billionaires complaining about millionaires is a phenomenon in valley and vice versa too.

Well, we wouldn't move forward if we don't complain, right?

The whole thing is one red flag after another, but the biggest standout to me is the author being annoyed coworkers are taking personal days.

That’s what they’re there for! When I don’t want to work, I use the benefit that lets me not work.

Try managing a team where people take last minute personal days all the time, without having to give advance notice or a reason.

> Try managing a team where people take last minute personal days all the time, without having to give advance notice or a reason.

Try getting a job where they advertise a benefit, then complain when you use it.

Never heard of benefit called "taking free days last min is no problem"

That's what "personal days" are for.

Vacation days are days that are long planned.

Sick days are last-minute days for when you are ill.

Personal days are last-minute days for when, say, a pipe breaks in your apartment and you have to spend the day dealing with the mess. Or any other non-medical reason you have to be a person and not an employee for a day.

Generally people don't have to use those last minute days often and I don't think that's what OP meant.

It seems like people just were abusing it.

I have often heard personal days are to be used if say, you can't get to work due to transportation issues or if your child is home from school. If they aren't to be used that way how do they differ from vacation days?

Generally people don't have to use those last minute days often and I don't think that's what OP meant.

It seems like people just were abusing it.

To be honest, if people are not told they need to give advanced notice for using their time off they often won't - especially when nobody else does.

Obviously, it's not always possible to give advanced notice (illness or other unforseen circumstances), so most employers require a brief explanation when advanced notice isn't possible - "Sick kid," "car trouble," "illness," etc.

These are normal policies, but they must be formal policies and communicated to employees.

If those policies are in place and you have people violating them - then it becomes an HR issue, with formal reprimanded, so a low level manager shouldn't have to complain about it.

I mean, are the employees required to give advanced notice if possible? Are absences expected to be explained? You can't hold employees up to an expectation without telling them that it's an expectation.

Are your deadlines so tight that any time off, even planned time off that corespondents to the employee's allotted vacation days would put you behind? If so then it's an indication the issue is with the project being understaffed or not staffed with the proper personnel, or the deadlines being unrealistic.

Are you requiring Herculean effort and unpaid overtime regularly? If so your employees are going to eventually breakdown and need a day to recharge. Sidenote: I've noticed some people are happy to work optional paid overtime but unhappy to work mandatory unpaid overtime.

Are your employees regularly missing so many days to the point they are regularly taking leave without pay and not getting prior approval? That is an upper management/HR issue.

I mean, there’s an upper bound on how often that can happen (how many personal days people have). Those days are intended to be used at short notice. So if people using them is a problem for the team, imo the team is not correctly matched to the workload.

I do think we often undersize our teams by ignoring the impact of vacation and personal time in taking on work ... but that’s not the fault of the people using the time they are entitled to as part of their compensation.

I'm pretty sure it has nothing to do with leave days and team sizes; those things are probably perfectly fine.

The issue is:

> I don't believe long hours are a badge of honor but I also believe that we have to do whatever it takes to win, even if its on a weekend.

but, also...

> Yes, there is a challenge of how to compensate when there is no equity upside...

The complaint here is that people don't have 'skin in the game', so they dont care if the product succeeds, because it makes to difference to them; so they're taking personal days in a way that disrupts the (probably totally arbitrary) timelines and plans they have.

...so I mean, it's probably fair to say that if people are taking leave in a way that is disruptive, then that's more of an indicator that the team culture is totally screwed up than that there aren't enough people.

If one person wants to 'win' and everyone else a) doesn't care, b) that person has no power to punish them if the product doesn't 'win', c) there's no benefit to them personally if it does 'win'... well, its never going to work out for that one person in the long run.

Sick days are compensation?

They are where I live. The number of sick days required by law is zero.

Jesus fucking hell. And you guys get your panties in a bunch over orange man bad vs sleepy Joe? Talk about not seeing the forest in the trees.

You guys don't even see it do you?

Uh. I mean. I see it. I’m not from here, I just live here. I came from the EU where 20 vacation days was the minimum to a state in the US where no vacation or personal time is required. I’m still blown away by what companies advertise as “generous”.

Maybe calm down with the assumptions and generalizations too though.

If you're running deadlines so tight or your bench is so shallow that any employee ducking out a day here and there is causing big problems, you have a planning/staffing problem.

The spontaneous employee vacation days are just making that problem more obvious.

If you treat people like resources I imagine its hard when they dont function like you want them to, consider treating them as humans (like you and me!) and you might just understand that they need some unexpected time off now and then.

Your job as a manager should be to ensure that things don't fall apart if people get sick. If there is a critical process managed by a single person then you failed as a manager.

If your team is hemorrhaging personal days left and right, the issue is not with personal days, but with how your team feel.

TBH, who cares? Waze is a traffic mapping thing, right?

It's not like they're managing a nuclear reactor or staffing an ER.

Tried, worked well, built a successful amazing product that's still successful and amazing.

And all that with European PTO benefits across the team!

I've got a chronic illness and I have personal days. I don't plan when I can't work. Deal with it, don't give me personal days, or fire me.

In every single work I was at people sometimes took a day off next day. It is not like everyone would had infinite amount of days off - it was never a massive problem.

Once in a while someone is missing. Typically, rest of team moves on through their day normally.

Unless they interfere with scheduled meetings, I can’t see why this would bug you as a manager. Pair programming, counting hours for clients, or sprint planning are the only other things that could possibly conflict with last minute personal days. It doesn’t really seem to bug the managers at my organization if there are no calendar conflicts.

If there are calendar items that have to be rescheduled, I think the onus is on them to find an alternative time