There are what like 20,000 or 40,000 people who work at Google? One of them leaves and feels compelled to write an article about it and then post it themselves to HN? What else was there in this article? You're going to work on Android apps because of some professor who inspired you, wonderful.
You know if I was to self-post something to HN, I'd at least try to mention something I'm working on, or some technology I'm using or some idea I have. There's nothing like that here. There's nothing here.
I don't understand what the upvotes are for? Moral support?
This is a very mean thing to say. An unfortunate example of the sort of comment I have in mind when I say that while the articles on the frontpage of HN are roughly what they've always been, the comments are meaner. And worse still, it got net 18 upvotes.
Would you say this to someone if you were talking face to face? I hope not.
So chances are this was a mean commenter in the earlier days too. But it would seem back then it was unusual and unacceptable enough to get the account banned, whereas now the meanness is more common place.
On balance though, as someone who lurked for a long time before signing up to contribute, it is still one of the most supportive communities anywhere that I've had any involvement with personally.
I think the upvotes are by people in similar situations that are mentally cheering her on.
Good for her by the way, upvoted. Let's see who is next to strike out on their own.
HN is all about start-ups, this lady is going to do one that makes it worth following her adventures, there will be lessons to be learned for lots of people in what she goes through and that starts at the moment she made the decision to quit, which can be surprisingly hard when you're in a cushy job.
Golden handcuffs, no key. You have to break them first.
Moreover I think it says something of interest about Google - while she is trying to be positive, you can read it closely to see some organisational issues - projects being cancelled despite staff enthusiasm, and an environment that feels too "safe".
I think these things speak to other topics that have proven of interest to HN, such as the lower appeal of Google to new talent, and whether Google will be a platform for innovation in the future.
Projects getting canceled is the flip side of being able to try new and risky things in a small team without a heavyweight approval process. There's no way that Google would be able to bring to market every single idea that comes out of engineers heads. So they let them experiment a bit in the early stages and then pick the winners once the teams have had a chance to survey the territory.
It's probably my biggest annoyance with working at Google, but I accept it because I know the alternative is worse. If you never canceled projects, then the only things you'd be allowed to work on are Big Important Things blessed by some VP high up, things that are too big to fail. That's how many other big companies work, and they usually end up with idiotic projects where it becomes apparent to everybody (except the VP) that the project is a waste of time, and yet they keep going because some executive staked his career on it.
BTW, startups face this problem too. The equivalent to a canceled project is a failed startup - there're only so many new products that the market can bear, so consumers choose to put their dollars into the products that are most useful and let the others die. The difference between this and the Google model is:
1.) You get to decide when to quit (or the market decides for you, if you run out of money).
2.) You don't get paid for the time you spend deciding.
For many people, this is a bargain worth making, but you should know that's the bargain when you take it. I've been on both sides - I took a pretty nice job in a financial software startup for a couple years out of college, then founded my own company, then folded it up and went to Google, and won't rule out eventually founding another company. The advantage of letting someone else make the decision of when to quit is that these people have had lots of experience picking winners, so once my head was primed with a few failures, I figured it might be a good idea to watch some folks who've actually had some successes and see what they do differently.
If the project was for instance 'wave' then I can easily understand how having it terminated is a pretty gruesome experience. If you have been given the impression that a project has staying power and the carpet gets yanked out from under it before it gets under way I'm not quite sure how I would respond to that but it certainly would not make me happy. (and if the project wasn't wave then I'm really curious what it was).
I have no idea, and if I looked it up, I wouldn't be at liberty to say.
Most project cancellations are things that haven't launched, or if they have launched they might get a TechCrunch article and then are forgotten. There's a lot that goes on in just general infrastructure or search quality that has no UI at all, it just feeds into better ranking algorithms or higher capacity. A lot of this work is experimental, done under the charter of "Let's see if this makes things better, and if it doesn't, we'll have you work on other things."
Why so negative, btipling? The OP's striking out on her own, and that's exciting. She's not pimping a new thing, just trying to convey her feelings. Lighten up, dude.
I agree it's hard to be negative about someone striking out on their own but I think he does have a point that unless you know Jean personally why would you care when the sum total of the content was "google is great but I want to do my own thing"?
I think people often look for contrarian takes. That's not a bad predisposition really, because they often tell me something new--- something like "Why I Love Being A Janitor" might have something interesting in it, while "Being A Janitor Isn't For Me" is basically what I'd expect, so probably wouldn't read it unless it had some particularly unique take on why being a janitor isn't the best job in the world.
That said, this article didn't tell me a whole lot about why Google might not be as great a place as you think, except the stuff I expected (it's a big company, you're not really in control, etc.).
You know if I was to self-post something to HN, I'd at least try to mention something I'm working on, or some technology I'm using or some idea I have. There's nothing like that here. There's nothing here.
I don't understand what the upvotes are for? Moral support?