Google ran an experiment: "We are surrounded by stodgy, calcified software firms. Can we build a company that isn't like that and is also successful?"
For a long time, they succeeded. But I think that experiment has run to a conclusion and they've discovered for themselves why their competition became stodgy and calcified (it wasn't because that's what they wanted to be; it's because the larger you get, the more diverse work you're doing, the more you're rewarded for being reliable and efficient, not scrappy and disruptive).
Cue Amazon's efforts to stay away from 'Day 2'...
I'm not sure I'd give them that much credit in executing on any strategy.
Google sat on perhaps the biggest moat any recent company has known. They had cash to burn for decades and to their credit put a lot of that towards employee happiness.
But I'm not sure they ever really got anything off the ground for the "post" search era.
Honest question (this is really not a challenge), care to share where? I always thought of the FAANGs (collectively) giving the best compensation in the business. Which companies are paying more than Google but with more stability?
I can't answer where pays better than FAANG, but companies in the bay (eg. Uber) are starting to approach the salary. Even smaller no-name bay companies are starting to match on base salary (equity+bonus is harder to match).
FWIW- I see a lot of places with matching or better base than FANG, but it's precisely because the equity at FAANG is so high.
The only places I see with meaningfully higher pay than FAANG + hot tech companies of the day (ex. Doordash, Datadog, ...) are hedge funds. Curious if there is anywhere else
I’m curious. Does this mean you’ve left Google and returned multiple times at the same level while having better jobs elsewhere?
Not to be critical but why? (I ask because I’m considering returning to old places down/equileveled after being laid off somewhere and curious your reasons)
So doing a few jobs as an L4 is what’s unexpected because after experience at another role, and additional knowledge gained, etc ideally they’d be able to return as L5+.
I feel a little bit bad because I very much used their benefits and then left again to go to a more appropriately leveled job. But going back to L4 at a megacorp was kind of mind numbing, and the compensation got so bad after the stock drop and location based pay cuts that I couldn’t justify staying any longer.
Thus, I'm going to be a little skeptical when I hear about people taking higher paying jobs with more stability elsewhere.
edit: Ah, he's counting start-up equity as not worthless. That's definitely one way to value it.
I've never worried about compensation details so much, and instead tried to find projects with interesting technical problems that bring intrinsic value to humanity, and a company of people worth spending my life with. My first job out of school, my salary was 40k below other offers I had. It just seemed like the best use of my time and energy. In time it brought me what I can only describe as an embarrassment of riches. My coworkers on the self driving car project at Google were perhaps the most brilliant people I've ever met. To paraphrase Zipline's CEO, they want employees doing the best work of their lives, and it's a marathon rather than a sprint. I have countless examples of the company, its employees, and its management going above and beyond. We're literally saving lives, too.
Of course, this was a few years back, I'm not sure if the landscape has changed now for better or for worse.
After the massive layoffs that dwarfed any previous ones at Google (combined), that's no longer a pull to joining Google over other major techs.
What specific services and products are you thinking of there? How do you know they were profitable?
Consider, eg, shutting down their (Stadia's) game studio before the release of their first game. First release was scheduled a few months later, with no significant delays having occurred. Nevertheless, shutdown.
No one would expect it to have made a profit without a release. But apparently there was no way they could be profitable enough to warrant keeping.
In the late 2000's/early 2010's, google was pictured as the "fun" place to work. In part due to their coding competitions and the various other events they held for students throughout the year. Everyone I knew wanted to work for google. Now? everyone sees FAANG just the same as any other company.
Most of the people I know who wanted to work at google, and a few that worked at google, now have higher paying, more enjoyable, and more stable jobs elsewhere.