为什么我退出谷歌为自己工作

为什么我退出谷歌为自己工作

https://mtlynch.io/why-i-quit-google/

Transcript

1. 迈克尔· 林奇  为什么我退出谷歌为自己工作  2018 年 2 月 28 日  13 分钟阅读  创业 • 谷歌 • sia 在过去的四年里，我一直在 Google 担任软件开发人员。2 月1日，我辞职了。那是因为他们拒绝给我买圣诞礼物。 好吧，我想它比这更复杂一些。 头两年 两年后，我爱上了 Google。 当年度员工调查问我是否预计五年后会在谷歌工作时，这是 不言而喻的。 博客 回顾展 项目 图书报告 关于
2. 当然，五年后我仍然会在谷歌工作。我被世界上最好的工程 师包围，使用世界上最先进的开发工具，吃着世界上最免费 的食物。 我最近的绩效评级是“大大超出预期”。如果我继续前进， 我很快就会被提升到一个新的级别，高级软件工程师。多么 棒的标题！在我的职业生涯中，我永远可以说：“是的，我 是一名高级软件工程师。在谷歌。” 人们会很感动。 我的经理向我保证，我的晋升已经接近尾声。他觉得我已经 能够胜任高级别的工作了。我只需要正确的项目来向推广委 员会证明这一点。 你的经理不提拔你？ 不可以，Google 的经理不能宣传他们的直接下属。他们甚 至没有投票权。
3. 相反，晋升决定来自由上层软件工程师和经理组成的小型委 员会，他们在决定晋升之前从未听说过你。 您通过组装“促销包”来申请晋升：您的团队成员的书面建 议、您创建的设计文档以及您撰写的用于解释您的工作为何 值得晋升的小论文的集合。 然后，晋升委员会会与其他几个人一起审查您的数据包，他 们会花一天时间决定谁获得晋升，谁没有晋升。 在我两年的蜜月期，这个系统对我来说听起来很棒。当然， 我的命运应该掌握在一个从未见过我的神秘委员会手中。他 们不会被任何偏袒或政治所玷污。他们会看穿这一切，并认 可我的高质量代码和精明的工程决策。 这不是它的工作原理 在我整理我的第一个促销包之前，我从未想过它是如何运作 的。 在我的脑海中，晋升委员会就是这个无所不知且公平的实 体。如果我每天都花时间选择要解决的正确问题，改进代码 库并帮助我的团队高效执行，那么推广委员会会神奇地知道 这一点并奖励我。
4. 不出所料，它不会那样工作。我花了两年时间才弄清楚这一 点。 天真地工作 在那之前，我的主要职责是遗留数据管道。多年来一直处于 维护模式，但负载增加，管道在压力下弯曲。它经常默默地 死掉或产生不正确的输出。它的故障需要几天时间才能诊断 出来，因为自从它最初的设计规范以来，没有人为它写过文 档。 我自豪而深情地使管道恢复健康。我修复了几十个错误并编 写了自动化测试以确保它们不会再次出现。我删除了数千行 代码，这些代码要么死了，要么可以被现代库替换。我在学 习过程中记录了管道，以便我的队友可以使用机构知识，而 不是孤立在我的脑海中。 正如我在晋升时发现的那样，问题在于这些都无法量化。我 无法证明我所做的任何事情都对 Google 产生了积极影响。 指标或它没有发生 管道没有记录很多指标。它确实让事情看起来变得更糟了。 我的错误发现导致整体错误数量增加。管道的故障增加了， 因为我让它在异常情况下快速失败，而不是默默地传递坏数
5. 据。我大大减少了开发人员修复这些故障所花费的时间，但 没有跟踪开发人员时间的指标。 我的其他作品在纸上看起来也不太好。有几次，我一次将我 的项目搁置数周甚至数月，以帮助一个面临启动风险的队 友。这对团队来说是正确的决定，但在促销包中看起来并不 令人印象深刻。对推广委员会来说，我的队友的项目是一项 大型而重要的工作，需要多个开发人员的协调。如果他们怂 恿我帮助他们，那就证明了他们强大的领导素质。我只是一 个无脑的苦工，他的工作是如此无关紧要，以至于它可能会 在某个时刻被抢先一步。 我提交了我的第一个促销包，结果正是我所担心的：促销委 员会说我没有证明我可以处理技术复杂性，他们看不到我对 谷歌的影响。
6. 从拒绝中学习 拒绝是一个沉重的打击，但我并不气馁。我觉得我的表现超 出了我的水平，但晋升委员会却看不到。那是可以解决的。 我认为在最初的几年里我太天真了。我事先没有做足够的计 划来确保我所做的工作留下了书面痕迹。现在我了解了这个 过程是如何运作的，我可以继续做同样的好工作，只是更好 地保存记录。 例如，由于误报，我的团队收到了大量令人分心的电子邮件 警报。老我会刚刚修复这些警报。但现在我知道，要让这项
7. 工作出现在我的促销包中，我应该首先设置指标，以便我们 拥有警报频率的历史记录。在促销时，我会有一个令人印象 深刻的下降趋势的警报图表。 不久之后，我被分配了一个似乎注定要升职的项目。它在很 大程度上依赖于机器学习，这在谷歌过去和现在都是热门事 物。它将自动执行数百名人工操作员手动执行的任务，因此 它对 Google 产生了明显、客观的影响。它还要求我在整个 项目中带领一名初级开发人员，这通常会在推广委员会中赢 得积分。 节日礼物叫醒电话 几个月后，谷歌结束了向所有员工赠送奢华节日礼物的长期 传统，成为头条新闻。相反，他们用礼物预算购买伪装成慈 善的广告适用于贫困学童的 Chromebook。 此后不久，我目睹了两名员工之间的以下对话： 员工 A ：你实际上仍然得到了礼物。像这样的削减增 加了谷歌股票的价值。您可以出售您的股票赠款并购 买您选择的任何礼物。 员工B ：如果我告诉我妻子我不是给她买圣诞礼物， 但她可以用我们银行账户里的钱买她想要的任何礼物 怎么办？
8. 员工 A ：您与 Google 有业务关系。如果你对谷歌没 有像你给你妻子那样用礼物“浪漫”你感到失望，那么 你对这种关系的看法是错误的。 等一等。我与谷歌有业务关系。 我花了两年半的时间才意识到这一点可能听起来很奇怪，但 谷歌在组织内部建立社区意识方面做得很好。让我们觉得我 们不仅是员工，而且是Google。 那次谈话让我意识到我不是谷歌。我向 Google 提供服务以 换取金钱。 因此，如果 Google 和我的业务关系是为双方的利益服务 的，那我为什么要把时间花在为 Google 而不是我自己的利 益服务的所有这些任务上呢？如果推广委员会不奖励错误修 复或团队支持工作，我为什么要这样做？ 优化推广 我第一次被拒绝升职给了我错误的教训。我想我可以继续做 同样的工作，但把它打包成对晋升委员会来说很好看。我应 该做相反的事情：弄清楚晋升委员会想要什么，然后专门做 这项工作。
9. 我采用了新的策略。在开始任何任务之前，我问自己这是否 有助于我的晋升。如果答案是否定的，我没有这样做。 我的代码质量标准从“我们能否在未来 5 年内保持这种状 态？” 到，“这能持续到我升职吗？” 我没有提交或修复任 何错误，除非它们冒着我的项目启动的风险。我摆脱了维护 工作的所有责任。我停止了校园招聘活动的志愿服务。我从 每周进行一两次面试变成了零。 然后我的项目被取消 优先事项发生了变化。管理层将我的项目交易给了我们在印 度的姊妹团队。作为交换，那个团队给了我们他们的一个项 目。这是一个未记录的系统，建立在已弃用的基础架构上， 但它仍然是生产中的关键组件。我被分配将它从我们姐妹团 队的代码中解开并将其迁移到一个新框架，同时保持它在生 产中运行并达到其性能指标。 就我的晋升而言，这是几个月的挫折。因为我没有为我取消 的项目发布任何东西，所以我花在它上面的两个月毫无价 值。我需要几周的时间才能加快我继承的系统的速度，而且 在保持它运行的繁重工作中我可能会失去更多。 我到底在做什么？
10. 这是六个月来我的经理第三次在项目进行到一半时重新分配 给我。每次，他都向我保证，这与我的工作质量无关，而是 高层管理战略或团队人数的一些变化。 在这一点上，我退后一步，从高层次评估正在发生的事情。 忘记我的经理，忘记他的经理，忘记晋升委员会。如果我把 它归结为只有我和谷歌怎么办？我们的“业务关系”发生了 什么？ 好吧，谷歌一直告诉我，在看到我完成一个项目之前，它无 法评判我的工作。与此同时，我无法完成任何项目，因为谷 歌一直在中途打断他们并分配给我新的项目。 这种动态感觉很荒谬。
11. 我的职业生涯是由一个不断变化的匿名委员会决定的，他们 在一个小时的生命中都在想着我。我没有参与的管理决策抹 去了我几个月的职业进步。 最糟糕的是，我并不为自己的工作感到自豪。而不是问自 己，“我该如何解决这个具有挑战性的问题？” 我在问，“我 怎样才能让这个问题看起来对晋升具有挑战性？” 我讨厌那 个。 就算我升职了，那又怎样？流行的智慧说，每次晋升都比上 一次更难。为了继续推进我的职业生涯，我需要范围更大并 且涉及与更多合作伙伴团队合作的项目。但这只是意味着该
12. 项目可能会由于我无法控制的更多因素而失败，浪费了我数 月或数年的生命。 有什么选择？ 大约在这个时候，我发现了Indie Hackers。 这是一个面向小型软件企业创始人的在线社区。强调小。这 些人不是扎克伯格的希望者，而是那些想要建立适度、盈利 的企业来支付账单的人。 我一直对创办自己的软件公司很感兴趣，但我只知道硅谷的 创业之路。我认为成为一名软件创始人意味着我将大部分时 间都花在筹款上，而其余时间则在担心如何吸引我的下一个 百万用户。 Indie Hackers 提出了一个有吸引力的替代方案。大多数成 员用自己的积蓄或作为全职工作的副业来建立自己的企业。
13. 他们不回答投资者，当然也不必向匿名委员会证明自己。 当然，也有缺点。他们的收入不稳定，面临的灾难性风险也 更多。如果我在谷歌犯了一个让公司损失 1000 万美元的错 误，我不会承担任何后果。我会被要求写一份验尸报告，每 个人都会庆祝这个学习机会。对于这些创始人中的大多数人 来说，一个 1000 万美元的错误将意味着他们的业务终结和 数生的债务。 Indie Hackers 的创始人让我着迷，因为他们掌控一切。无 论他们的业务是取得巨大成功还是多年停滞不前，他们都在 发号施令。在谷歌，我感觉无法控制自己的项目，更不用说 我的职业发展或团队的方向了。 我考虑了几个月，最后决定了。我想成为一名独立黑客。 离开前的最后一件事 我在谷歌还有未完成的工作。在为升职投入了三年之后，我 讨厌一无所有就离开的想法。距离我可以重新申请晋升只有 几个月的时间，所以我决定最后一次尝试。 在演出期结束前六周，我的项目被取消了。再次。
14. 实际上，我的整个团队都被取消了。这在谷歌已经很常见 了，以至于有一个委婉的说法：碎片整理。管理层将我团队 的项目转移到我们在印度的姊妹团队。我和我的队友都必须 在公司的不同领域重新开始。 我还是申请了升职。几周后，我的经理向我宣读了结果。我 的绩效评级是“极好”，这是可能的最高分，每个周期给予 大约 5% 的员工。晋升委员会注意到，在过去的六个月 里，我清楚地展示了高层的工作。巧合的是，这几个月正是 我优化促销的月份。 但他们觉得六个月的记录还不够长，所以……下次祝你好 运。 我的经理告诉我，如果我再做同样质量的工作六个月，我就 有很大的晋升机会。我不能说我没有受到诱惑，但到那时， 在过去的两年里，我一直听到“六个月内晋升的好机会”。 是时候走了。 下一步是什么？ 当我告诉人们我离开谷歌时，他们认为我一定有一些绝妙的 创业点子。只有白痴才会离开像谷歌软件工程师这样轻松的 工作。
15. 但我确实是个没有想法的白痴。 我的计划是每个月尝试不同的项目，看看它们是否流行起 来，例如： 继续在KetoHub上工作，看看我能否让它盈利 在 Sia 之上建立业务，这是我经常写到的一种分布式存 储技术 花更多时间写作，并寻找从中赚钱的方法 Google 是一个很棒的工作场所，在那里我学到了宝贵的技 能。离开很困难，因为我要学习更多，但总会有像谷歌这样 的雇主。我不会总是有自由创办自己的公司，所以我期待看 到这将我带向何方。 更新 更新（2019 年 2 月 1 日）：我作为独立开发者的第一年 更新（2020 年 1 月 31 日）：我作为独立开发者的第二 年 更新（2021 年 2 月 1 日）：我作为独立开发者的第三年 更新（2022 年 2 月 1 日）：我作为独立创始人的第四 年
16. 当我发布很酷的东西时成为第一个知道的人 订阅以通过电子邮件获取我的最新帖子。 电子邮件地址 仅博客文章 所有帖子（每月回顾、图书报告等） 订阅 Loraine Yow 的插图。 分享    讨论   329 comments Log In J This is what i call spreadsheet management, which if the sheet had the correct numbers on it could work. But like you found out that you had to cut the important work and just do everything to get the best numbers on their sheet others in the company are doing the same (you are not the first to find this) this combined effort of all employees in big companies who just try to manipulate the numbers make everything go off track but they still treat the same sheet similar to the bible. B H8s be h8in man. Just a dragon ? Apr 14, 2021 braindead69 ? May 4, 2021
17. T Thanks a lot for the insight into Google's promo process. After the read I realized it's not any better than MS as some people may suggest. At MS it is very dependent on the manager, experience has taught people that if your manager is working to support you then you don't have to do anything it just happens; but if your manager is working against you then good luck, it won't happen for years regardless how much brilliant work you put in. It's the sad truth. An idea of a more fair evaluation may be just give level appropriate exams/interviews. If you can be hired as a Senior in an interview, then they can hire you as one by giving you a promotion, why not? It will encourage people to do more interviews as well so the company can benefit from attracting/retaining talents. Thanks for reading! Microsoft was my first job out of college, and I had a good experience with the promo process there, though it's hard to compare them because promotions early in your career are easier. I was promoted twice at Microsoft, and it was like you said. I didn't even do anything to get promoted — it just happened. Hard to say whether it was luck, good manager, or just easier at that point in my career. M I really enjoyed reading this. Your promo process experience highly resonated with the experiences of a lot of us here at Amazon. It's useful to know that the grass isn't always greener on the other side. O I can appreciate some of the comments about metrics and the lack of input on reports promo process - I just got done giving a report the bad news their promo was denied by the committee while another was promoted. Both were the same level, had the same metrics, one just made a better case and solicited more peer reviews. Google is a metric driven organization, some folks do great with that, others not so much. It IS 100% a business in all operational disciplines, ESPECIALLY litigation aversion (that's why we have a lot of FEEL GOOD meetings). If you can navigate this effectively usually it means you're working an average 60+ hours a week (like me) make really great money, but the tradeoff is your time. I have (if I'm lucky) about 2500 weeks left of my life, it's been fun for the last 9 years, maybe I'll call it a day at 11 - too many people have "moved on" and I wasn't able to be there because I prioritized a business relationship. Thank you for your thoughts on the matter. All the best to you and your journey. S Kind of explains why Google's software (and their search engine, definitely their search engine) proceeds at a fact pace into cr*phood. That along with killing standards-based software and services in favor of proprietary solutions (just like Microsoft and Apple before them, except with less competence). They blatantly ignore user feedback while their response to problems is "leave us feedback on our system". Yeah, and I know the "feedback" gets routed directly to /dev/null. Every week they find new ways of being user-hostile. ONE of the various reasons I'm shopping around for a paid 3rd-party email provider to replace my GMail account is that I'm certain they will eventually introduce changes to their email that will fatally break IMAP compatibility. A browser is NOT an email client, and I use Thunderbird for all my email. Just as it is with online shopping (I try to find alternatives to Amazon first, and only buy there when there's no trustworthy alternative) I try to find how to not use Google whenever possible @txs Oct 19, 2021  Michael Lynch @michael Oct 20, 2021 Mostafa Gomaa @mgomaa Oct 28, 2021 Omad ? Oct 30, 2021  SenileOtaku ? Dec 17, 2021 
18. try to find how to not use Google whenever possible. Heck, ironic as it is, between iOS, Android and Windows Mobile, WM was probably more open than the other two (even while MSWin10 locked things down). Thanks for reading! In the last year, I've started migrating away from Google. I've fully switched from Gmail to Fastmail. It's honestly a step down in almost every way, but when there are issues, you can at least talk to humans. O2 Thank you for the article! O Thank you and hope you the best... I understand your POV, HOWEVER I was really asking myself while reading, why so much concerned about promotion, spending 2 or 3 additional years in Google if you are enjoying the work itself and the package is ok - relevant to the new decision- I beleive this can be OK, I don't know... I feel may be the promotion in itself was the target - and it should be a target of course-may be the cause of the entire decision, - which I am not saying it is right or wrong-, but for someone who does not consider the only target may be the decision will be different, hope u the best W Thank you for sharing this! I can definitely relate as I’m currently waiting to hear if my second attempt at promo was approved. I’m dreadin click to show J2 Thanks for sharing your story with us, So, finally, I come to know something about Google as a work place, which I am afraid, didn't like much. All the best for your future Michael, 1 Like Thanks for reading! I do want to clarify that I really do think Google is a great place to work. I wasn't advancing the way I wanted, but I was still personally treated well. I didn't find it a great place for career advancement given my skills and disposition, but I thought it was great place to learn. N Thanks for your honest write-up of your experience at Google. Hopefully a senior manager with some influence will read this piece and see how misguided their promotion practice is and will push internally to improve it. Also, it's unfortunate how Google's promotion system currently discourages stellar talent from doing what's right for the organization and sees its top-performing employees' quality bars go from "best" to "average" once the employees realize that their efforts go unrecognized Google is not the first organization to make this Michael Lynch @michael Dec 17, 2021 Olga ? Feb 5 Osama Yaccoub @Oyacoub Mar 2 Waiting for promo ? Apr 8 Javin Paul ? Feb 28, 2018 mtlynch ? Mar 2, 2018 M NothingKeeps ? Mar 1, 2018 
19. the employees realize that their efforts go unrecognized. Google is not the first organization to make this mistake and, sadly, it won't be the last. Best of luck in your future endeavours! 1 Like Thanks for reading! The problems with the promotion process are pretty well-known within Google. Many people have had experiences similar to mine. They're working on fixing it, but it's hard to design a system that gets all the incentives right and scales well to 70k+ employees. I've heard from commenters still at Google that in just the past few weeks, they've changed the process for Senior Software Enginner promotions so that there aren't packets or committees anymore, and it's all done in a more lightweight way. Looks like I applied about 6 months too early. : / They changed it only for L3 to L5, L6 and up are the same as before. M2 This is a great read. It seems google has grown to be a big company filled with bureaucracy. Reminds me of my days at Microsoft. Its better to join startups if you are looking for strict meritocracy or startup something of your own. S2 Great read. Most of these big FAANG companies fall in similar bucket. Thanks for reading! M3 One of the problems you find in Corporate America is that executards divide work into "female work" and "male work". Helping other people succeed, interviewing candidates, and doing the stuff that's important but not measurable is "female work" and it doesn't get you rewarded. In fact, it erodes your status. You're seen as a "nurturer", not a "doer". It's stupid and a bit offensive, but it's how these sorts of people see it. What they treat as "male work" is the stuff that helps executives and runs the economy off a cliff. What they view as female work is the stuff that brings a company or country back together after the alpha-male doers fuck everything up. You didn't spend enough time on the "male work" and, when you did, you got unlucky. So, no promotion for you. It's not your fault. You legitimately did what was good for the company. You just lost out to people who "managed up" better; that is, did what was better for them. Wow "cut through the crap" cut to the chase point blank eyeball to eyeball mtlynch ? Mar 2, 2018 M  Cezary Piekacz ? Mar 3, 2018 C Madhur ? Feb 28, 2018 Sweety Sam ? Feb 28, 2018 mtlynch ? Mar 2, 2018 M MichaelOChurch ? Feb 28, 2018  Robert Neighbors ? Mar 1, 2018 R
20. Wow, cut through the crap , cut to the chase, point blank, eyeball to eyeball. I'm honestly saddened by your rhetoric. His post is a well rounded story about how the promotion system within Google needs to be redone, and how it didn't mesh with what he valued. There is no hate, no blame. You, on the other hand, turned it into a hate filled rhetoric on your belief that male vs female work exist and determines your ability to succeed. In reality, a system like Google has rewards popularity and people able to fabricate numbers and show progress, ignoring maintenance as a vital part of projects and something a Senior tech might need to be involved in. All you've managed to do it put your hate fueled rhetoric into a well constructed, unbiased opinion. Do us a favor, keep your hate away from post like this, okay? It doesn't do anyone a bit of good. "Hate fueled" is a bit hyperbolic. As a feminist, female, and Xoogler, I have to agree with @MichaelOChurch on this one @raredevices1:disqus Really? As a male who is convinced that modern feminism is toxic, but has never worked at Google...I can't help but find his explanation, albeit offensive, to be rather descriptive as well. I think it's wrong to use the terms "male work" and "female work"; perhaps "building work" and "nurturing work" would be better terminology -- and both are crucial for a company to succeed, and to maintain their success. And Google's process is apparently geared toward valuing the "building work" and overlooking the "nurturing work". Thus, because Google's promotion process rewards "builders", but ignores "nurturers", it's going to drive away people who value nurturing, male and female alike. Furthermore, as females have a greater tendency towards nurture, and males have a greater tendency to build, it's going to be more difficult to find women who prosper in Google culture. As a male with leanings towards nurturing, I don't think that I'd prosper well at Google, if this is their method for promotion. I don't think you got his post. Maybe you are unable to see through your lense of being offended, but the point is not about females or males - they are just words to represent types of work. Saying "male work" and "female work" is just to exaggerate the point. Grady Calhoun ? Mar 1, 2018 G  DoomedNY ? Mar 1, 2018 D Ellen ? Mar 1, 2018 E dcdashone ? Mar 1, 2018 D2 snowfarthing ? Mar 16, 2018 S3  Mercutio ? Mar 1, 2018 M4 Dimitry Dushkin ? Mar 1, 2018 D3
21. And probably it is all meat eaters fault! D4 The whole "wait 6 more months", I get that as an indy hacker too. I thought I could launch an in-depth animation software suite that would rival AAA studios in 6 months, then another 6 months, then for about a year, it felt as close as next month. Now, 2+ years into the project, I've resigned future thinking, merely putting in as much work as I can per day, and it'll launch when it launches. (it's soon though! [ oh how I haven't learned my lesson ]). I'm happy though, because it's mine and I own it, even if it's not launched yet, even if I got rid of my car in a city that isn't designed to be carless, isolated from bigger cities' tech scenes, in a small town where rent is cheap, etc sacrifices. When it launches, it'll be worth it. I think most people get lured into entrepreneurship because of lottery thinking ( not you, but most people ). They think they'll one day have the prize ( money, freedom, whatever ). They don't realize, that it is a grind, just of a different sort. To win as an entrepreneur is to think, 'this work is as hard as I can handle it, and it's going to keep happening for 20 years, I'll be most successful if I can be on the edge of my comfort zone, working hard and grinding, almost to exhaustion, for 20+ years'. I look at the word business (BUSY-ness), being busy. If you found a way that you can keep busy, that you enjoy, that is extremely difficult but you do it anyway, you've won. ^^BTDT Hey, any way to get notified when your project gets released? I'm just curious about it (was into animation as a hobby), and I admire solo projects like this a lot. Yes. There's a sign up at http://schuwing.com (http://schuwing.com) for launch updates. Cheers! Thanks for reading, Dan! I can relate to that feeling. I've done a lot of side projects that feel like they'll take a weekend or two and stretch out into months. I don't mind that kind of waiting so much though because it's me who's setting the timeline. I've done fairly sizable side projects before, maybe 6 months or so. Compared to this, those felt like a camping trip where I got lost, and eventually got rescued(used the side project to get a job). This time, I feel like I'm crossing the alaska/canadian wilderness by myself. It's not that food isn't plentiful in this wilderness, but living is by no means easy, and it is not settled territory. I feel so far from other people, (both in breadth and depth of the expertise this requires[and money], help is not imminently forthcoming), with so much workload that's all on me to get through ( the distance left to travel ). I've gone too far to turn back, and I'm definitely much closer to the other side ( I think ), but it really has squeezed more out of me than I'd have ever imagined before starting, and I tried to be very thorough in my cost- counting("who among you would build a tower without first counting it's cost, lest you get halfway up and cannot finish, and everyone turns to mock you" - no, I tried to count the cost of this tower). It should be worth it though ( when I get to.. alaska or the continental states.. depending on the direction of my dan ? Mar 1, 2018  dcdashone ? Mar 1, 2018 D2 Lcq92 ? Mar 1, 2018 L dan ? Mar 2, 2018 D4 mtlynch ? Mar 2, 2018 M dan ? Mar 2, 2018 D4 
22. metaphor, lol ) ( or when the tower is built and I can move into the penthouse, if you're using the other metaphor ). That sounds really intense. The longest I've spent on a side project before showing it to users was 4 months or so. It was tough because I had a nagging doubt all along of "what if I finish and nobody cares?" But then there are stories like the guy who created Stardew Valley where he worked on it by himself for years before anyone played it and it became a huge success. Good luck! I hope you make it to any and all of Alaska, the lower 48, and the penthouse! Thanks brother, that game does look pretty cool. I think that guy probably saw himself as his own customer, and just waited until he had a game he wanted to play. I'm doing pretty much the same thing. Before I started, I realized I loved to animate, but using animation tools left me wanting, and it would burn me out, and therefore animation wasn't a part of my life. My MVP is when I have some software that is so user friendly, so natural, that I start to animate again. Call it the worlds worst case of animators-block(like writers block), having to write a giant app just to get amused. Dan: just curious: how do you make money? Do you have another job? I work about 3 hours a day freelancing. It's steady, so I'm not distracted by finding clients, etc. The first 6 months, I was spending a lot, then I got scared, cut my lifestyle a lot, moved to my hometown where it's cheaper, and started freelancing. I stabilized ( went into a few grand debt ), and now in 2 months I should hopefully be debt free again. Most of my focus is on the app, but I'm setting up my finances so that I would be able to retire even if I only freelanced. At first I was not careful about my budget, but over time I got more disciplined. Nice work. Learning to be careful with money is a skill which I only learned after my income and savings approached zero too. It was tough at the time, but once I had a regular income again, it made a huge and positive difference to my way of thinking. I went through a period of having debt and not having good income ( before I got obsessed with programming ) 5-10 years ago. I had to dig myself out of debt with a small shovel(income), and was very tight for a very long time. Then when I got my first programmer job and tripled my income, I (stupidly) took a break from budgeting, because I had so much extra money anyway. This proved to be a regret, because looking back I could have saved way more, and relaxing on the budget really hurt when the money stopped coming in. It still took me another 6 months after I knew my finances were broken before I got back on a budget. The lesson I learned was that next time I start making lots more money ( when my app launches ), I'm going to stick to a budget, even if the budget gets looser, I'm still going to look at my money at the mtlynch ? Mar 2, 2018 M dan ? Mar 2, 2018 D4  Marya ? Mar 2, 2018 M5 dan ? Mar 2, 2018 D4 bsa ? Mar 4, 2018 B2 dan ? Mar 4, 2018 D4 
23. g g g g g g g y y beginning of the month, and decide what to spend on paper(or everydollar.com (http://everydollar.com)) before I do it. Last time I was flush, I probably only saved about 1/3 what I could have, if I would have just looked at my money. Dan, it sounds like you might not be utilizing your time in the most effective way. Realize that the perfect is the enemy of the good. To put it in other words, at some point you have to shoot the engineers and ship the product. 😉 Why should you do this? A. You don’t necessarily know what features your customers are going to want until they tell you (or they validate your ideas). B. Having a product out there - even a beta - is a good way to start getting ‘mind-share’ and customer feedback. C. With customers used to beta releases and frequent upgrades, this shouldn’t affect your reputation (unless you really screw things up - like losing or corrupting their existing data). D. The tenets of extreme programming (or agile or whatever they’re calling it nowadays) include: • Constant customer feedback - this tells you both which bugs are highest (and lowest) priorities and which features are most/least desired so you can spend your effort on that code that provides the most value to your customers. Successfully managing project scope is the best predictor of project success [BTW, limit your product’s functionality to the original feature set. Do NOT go continually adding new features that one or two ‘possible customers’ might want (unless they’re willing to pay you for them up front, of course). That said you DO need to listen to what features the majority of your potential customers - or, more importantly, *your target market* are asking for.] • Frequent release cycles (to accomodate customer bug reports and feature requests); • Develop the tests *from the customer’s perspective* BEFORE you start writing ANY code. Only when you’re sure that the test fully measures the desired feature accurately do you start coding. Constantly run the test against your code. Once your code passes the test, STOP. It’s finished. Next feature. If you find a bug, FIRST go fix the *test* so that it catches the bug, THEN fix the bug in the code. • Pair programming (if possible) is a simple way of providing constant code reviewing (a practice whose benefits are greatly underestimated); • Solve today’s problems today. Adding “future flexibility” only adds complexity to the code making trouble-shooting harder and the code base more brittle for features that may never be implemented; • The corollaries to this are to always remove excess code, especially code added for unneeded flexibility, and to • constantly revise the code structure to keep it maximumly maintainable. I have worked on too many projects where the code base was so unbelievably convoluted because of band-aids and work-arounds that noone could effectively modify it. The last project I worked on, we were literally only able to get the critical new features to work by adding completely independent data paths to circumvent the existing architecture. (3 completely independent new data paths on a million line code base!) W2 This is a problem that almost all the corporations in the world have in common. You may have a brilliant idea, but by the time you follow all required processes, and review it with all the stakeholders, and get your executive team to buy-in, there’s a good chance that it may not even resemble what you started with. An alternative to your decision, for my point of view, would have been to keep working with Google, stick to their agenda and in the meantime develop your side project. Whenever your side project takes off, I would have left them. You know, just to have your back covered until you see the right numbers. Thank you for sharing, anyway, great read. And best of luck with your new working adventure! That's hard because legally Google would own his side project unless he got it exempted in advance. ktrimbach ? Mar 19, 2018 K  Whistl3r ? Mar 1, 2018  Antonio D'souza ? Mar 1, 2018 A
24. Yep, that's correct. Google has a pretty well-defined process for getting copyright releases, though. It does kind of limit the projects you can do. I got KetoHub released because I was pretty confident Google had no interest in ever launching a keto recipe aggregator. But I never proposed any projects on top of Sia because it's a decentralized storage platform, and I suspected they'd view any projects I build on it to be competing against things like GCS/GDrive. One of the most unexpectedly pleasant experiences I had post-quitting was just creating a new Github repo without asking anyone's permission or filling out any paperwork. Can I suggest that you make an Alexa skill for KetoHub? After getting an Echo View as a gift, I wish there was a repository of Keto recipes that I could quickly search and use on the View in the kitchen. The inability to run a proper web search on the device is detrimental. I should be able to find a recipe and scroll through it without needing to unlock my phone every minute. Make a SIA client for Windows that makes SIA as usable as Dropbox or any of those. I'm thinking about drag and drop and such. Make SIA look and feel like any cloud storage and you have a winner. I will be first subscriber to something like that. Sign me up. I didn't know. I thought that policy wouldn't apply if you would have created something outside your work. Search for California Labor Code 2870 yeah, that only works for stuff Google will never have an interest in. Thanks for reading. I did consider sticking with Google while I developed a project on the side, but as others have said, it's difficult to do that. I can get permission from them to release copyright, but that generally was a turnaround of a few weeks. I had to re-request permission if the scope of my project changed (not an unusual even for an experimental side project), so it felt too limiting. I had enough savings to just try on my own full-time, so I figured why not. mtlynch ? Mar 1, 2018 M  CageGuy ? Mar 3, 2018 C2 Bjørn Are Solstad ? Mar 6, 2018 B3 Whistl3r ? Mar 1, 2018 W2 Xiang Zhang ? Mar 2, 2018 X Antonio D'souza ? Mar 2, 2018 A mtlynch ? Mar 2, 2018 M  Dev Urandom ? Feb 6 2020 D5
25. Hi @mtlynch:disqus I'm not that good with USA law, but are you telling me that your employer - Google, would own rights to something that you have developed, on your own, in your free time, at your shack or wherever? That is unthinkable and illegal where I live. Good read, btw, i kinda have the same feelings, lots of committees makes you a resource not a valuable employee nor a person, so to speak. Yeah it's bs. I'd negotiate that as part of my sign on agreement if I were to work there. J3 This was a great read. Thanks for sharing. Thanks! And thanks for reading! M6 Great read, good luck on your new adventures. R2 If you have the runway, rock it brother. Freedom to control your own destiny is incredible. Freedom isn't free though. Knowing that, you can click to show J4 As one of those former Googlers who jumped ship back in 2013 to take my projects solo, welcome to the club. The first couple years might be rough, but if you come out of it it'll be a great feeling :-D Thanks, that's encouraging to hear. D6 Shared feelings. I have also some similar experiences while working as a software engineer though my grudge would be of not having a fair an click to show M7 You’ll be much happier now. The value of being content and independent is priceless. click to show Dev Urandom ? Feb 6, 2020 D5 bigmouthjim ? Feb 6, 2020 B4 Jeffrey Hawkins ? Mar 1, 2018 mtlynch ? Mar 1, 2018 M miguelcruz ? Mar 1, 2018 Rafael Hernandez ? Mar 1, 2018 Jason Grishkoff ? Mar 1, 2018 mtlynch ? Mar 1, 2018 M Divyanshu ? Mar 1, 2018 Morgan Davis ? Mar 1, 2018
26. click to show Show more replies ... 用 ❤️ 在马萨诸塞州西部制作。· © 2022
27. 本作品采用 知识共享署名 4.0 国际许可协议进行许 可。  