Hi and welcome back to another
episode of The Tech Lead. My name is The Tech Lead and I will be the tech lead today. I wanted to talk about why I left my six-figure job at Google because for a lot of people they imagine that once they get into Google, it will be happily ever
after from there on now. Like, it's a great company to work for, it's kind of the life-long
dream for a lot of people and once they get in they imagine they'll just be there forever. They would basically have it made. But that's not actually
how it plays out in reality and you may be surprised to
know that the average tenure of a Google engineer
is like 3.2 years only and that's actually on the high end and for other company's it's even less. Now, I was working as a
software engineer tech lead on the YouTube iOS app and you know, it was a six-figure salary, very good pay, good compensation, very nice benefits, free food everywhere, free drinks, good
parties, occasional trips, like we had annual ski trips and you know, it was great. Now, before I'd gone into Google, I would be one of those people
who would just go like Costco and just get as many samples as I could and that would be my lunch. I would love food samples. And I might go to Trader Joe's and grab their free coffee and I might go to chocolate shops and just get free samples everywhere. And you know, I was just
hungry and starving basically, everywhere I went. And after Google, that kind
of changed me a little bit. Basically, I was able to get as many free samples as I wanted at Google because all the food was free and it was fantastic. And you know, when I first got in I couldn't understand why
anyone would ever want to leave the place. Like, I had worked so
hard to get into Google and it was for me a dream come true. I had been applying to try
to get in for many years and I had failed the interview
process multiple times actually, like three times or something and on my last attempt I remember the interviewers
even telling me, wow, you must really want to get into Google, because our records show
that you just keep applying and I was like, yeah, I
just really wanna get in. And so when I got in I couldn't fathom why anybody would ever
want to leave the company. It didn't make sense to me. There's was no place better than Google in my opinion. And they also allow you
to switch teams too, so if the team or work ever got boring you could just switch to another team. You could even switch to another location if you wanted to. So they had you covered
on all sorts of areas and I think for that
reason the tenure is a little bit longer there than other places and it's a great company
overall to work for. But throughout my time I did
see people on my team leave. And I can tell you a few of
their stories like, one guy had basically gotten into
Google right after college and he just worked for years
at the company after that and he never had the chance to travel. And I can understand that. And so he wanted to take some time off to just travel full time and fulfill his dreams
of going to like Tahiti and going all over the place. And he had money, he had youth
and he just wanted to go out and travel for a few months. And yeah, I think that makes sense. Like, I honestly thought
that was a little silly when I first heard it because I had just
finished traveling myself and I was a little
disillusioned by travel. I didn't really think it was
so cool of a thing anymore. So giving up a career to just, basically, I knew
that he would be back. And within three months he was back, basically asking for his job again. You don't really need
that much time to travel. Like, you think that you can
travel for years and years but in reality, after about
two to four weeks of traveling you're basically done,
like you're exhausted and you want to sit down and rest. But anyway, he's doing fine, he's great. And I think that in order to
get even a few months to go out and travel you may need
to quit your job anyway. Like, I'm not sure if anyone's going to just allow you to stay with a company and just take a few months off, like, even if you can promise you'll be back after that short amount of time. Like, I don't know if they'd do it. They might. I've heard other people
joining companies like Uber. You know, these are unicorn start-ups and it's a shot at making big money maybe, but in reality I'm not sure I recommend that path really either, because I think that these unicorn start-ups, they never really tell you how much money you're actually
getting, how many shares. They just tell you, you
get like, 50 million shares but in reality you have no idea what valuation that's going to be at and what percentage of
the company you've got. So it's really a leap of faith that you're taking for the company and basically I'm not
sure if that's really that great of an option, but it could be, especially because when people from large tech companies
like Google go into start-ups they get better positions
and they can like, you know, maybe get more
control, more responsibilities and develop personally more. So yeah, I think that could
be interesting, actually. Other people I know have gone to other large tech companies
in similar categories I've seen some junior engineers just quit to go run their own start-ups and again, I'm not really sure
that's really a great path because I think it's good experience to basically like, just work in a large tech company like Google and just learn the ropes and the chances of a
start-up succeeding are actually, perhaps far lower
than you might imagine. A few years over at Google
you'll be promoted a few times and you'll salary will probably go up so I think kind of in my mind
like, maybe a junior engineer who got into Google is
taking it for granted and thinking it's easy to do it, but I don't think it's
that easy in reality. Like, at least it wasn't for me. So it took me quite a
while to get in and yeah. One thing to note though, is
if you've gotten in before you may be able to get back
in again, another time. Like, I've heard a few
stories of people who left and then later came back so if people wanna go out
and explore some other route like start-ups or something like that maybe something really promising and then if it doesn't go well they come back. I think that's actually
a fine route, actually. So I think what's interesting
to consider is that when you first get into one
of these top tech companies you think, oh, it's so great
and you're never going to leave but overtime that actually
becomes your baseline and it's not really the end of a journey it is the continuation of your journey. And basically, you owe it to yourself to see how much further you can go. Whether within that same company or if another company
or another path is going to be for you. As for myself, I hit three and
a half years, pretty similar to say like the 3.2 average year amount that people start leaving companies and I just felt that it was about time to broaden my experience,
take a look around, see what else was out there. You know, basically, once I was able to get into Google,
having that on your resume really helps open a lot of
doors and options for you like the world becomes
your pick, basically. Like anything else that looks interesting to you people will probably
at least give you an interview and talk to you about
whatever opportunities. So I went to Google and I was stunned by all the amazing technology they've got there. Like, it's really like
living in the future there. There are so many cool
internal tools and systems and everything is set up so well and a lot of this is
proprietary internal software that has yet to be
open-sourced or released for public usage. And you know, some of
these may not be released for years or forever, because they're integrated so well with Google's internal tools that basically, some of these
tools may just be inseparable. And so I thought, if I got into Google and there's this whole hidden
secret world of technology just within that company that was not public for anyone else to see and the only way to get access
to see that whole world was to get into the company, I wanted to see what was behind the walls of
other companies as well because I was just so fascinated
by the internal technology that has yet to be released and I wanted to see how other companies where being set up inside
what tools they had. I wanted to see what
their workflow was like, what the culture was like, what their vision is. You know, every company
has its own culture, its own pro and cons, their mission, their you know, like for
example, Google is known as a very engineering-based culture, they have strong processes,
good code reviews, good ownership and they really focus on just like well-crafted solid engineering and that's great. However, one criticism has been that they move a little bit too slowly and that other companies
may have another whole set of different cultures. So it was just interesting
for me to think about all that and for me it kind of got
the best of my curiosity and I started taking a look around and wanting to apply to other companies and see what else was out there. Eventually, I found a company that seemed quite interesting to me and I wanted to see what was
behind the walls, take a look and yeah, that was basically
the path that I took. Anyway, the takeaway I wanted
to get across to you was a lot of people are
trying to get into Google and they can't and I want you to realize that it's not like getting into heaven and then you just live there
happily ever after forever. It's only good for about
3.2 years on average for most people and after that they go on and find some other things. So if your life goal is to get into Google just remember that for the average person after just 3.2 years, they've had their fill,
they're done and they move on and they find some other place to go. Maybe it's a start-up,
maybe it's another company and so there's more than one way to get into these other places, like, if somebody joins Google and after a few years gets into Uber maybe you should just apply into Uber. Or if someone goes to Google and then decides to go to a start-up, maybe you should just apply
straight to that start-up. And you know, that's
kind of like a shortcut. Now, maybe your position
and pay would not be as high but I would say that probably
more than position or pay is just being within the walls of a company that will kind of define
the sort of lifestyle you're going to have. You know, most people
within a company are living very similar lifestyles. They have the same food,
they go in at the same time, they work on the same
problems and all that. And I would imagine
that especially if like, I've seen junior engineers, they come into Google, they work one year and then they're done and they go do their start-up. Like, for those people, maybe what they were
really looking for was just a bit of validation. They just wanted to feel
that they could be certified as an actual software engineer and after that there were other things that they really wanted to do. So I might encourage you to think a little bit longer
term, little bit broader than just getting into a company, like think about the overall lifestyle that you're trying to craft for yourself. And for the average person,
Google is not the destination, it is just one piece of their journey in software engineering. So that will do it for me. I hope you enjoyed the episode,
give it a like and subscribe and I will see you next time. Say hi, Sunny. Sunny, say hi. Hi, Sunny.
I wonder what other reasons why he left google.
When I was using Google I noticed something creepy. Almost every ad or promotional picture of theirs had an Asian female in it and sometimes a white man/x male. An image I saw quite often and a good example was there would be a white man’s hand holding a smartphone or other device with a screen, and it would show a google service and the friend shown would ALWAYS be an Asian woman, called Suzy Wong or Anna Lu, well they were probably called that, with a picture of the AF with a smug smile on her face. This made me feel sick, it seemed deliberate that they were showing a white man’s hand holding the phone and an Asian woman as the friend. I got angry thinking that some geeks at google were doing this, do they have an agenda (definitely). It’s propaganda and it’s designed to brainwash people, but I noticed it, I’m not an idiot google. They do it in their TV adverts too. Next time you see a Google or Facebook ad, count the number of AF you see, you’ll probably see more than any other group, they’re over represented by these companies, why??
In conclusion, Google has Asian fetish.