I've been slacking off at Google for 6 years. How can I stop this?

Hi there, I did the exact same thing as you (at Google Sydney), before eventually deciding that I must strike out into the wilderness.

In the few years since I left; I worked as a solutions architect managing a team, a team lead, a remote dev, and now in a startup. Front-end, back-end, flip-side, all the ends. So I've been deliberately trying different angles of my career to see what suits.

I'd describe this process as grueling, ("challenging" is too friendly). I honestly think I would have been happier staying at Google, farting around, and being social. I agree with a lot of the comments here. However it's a catch-22, because the me that exists now wouldn't choose to go back and overall I think this has been good for me – and not just because of the, er, _character building_ aspect of it.

If you stay at Google, make the most of it by progressing deliberately in your social life. If I'd've stayed, I could have comfortably raised some kids with my wife by now - but that's still on the todo list.

If you leave, just jump right in. I didn't study anything, I just picked it up as I went along. If you were able to follow Steve Yegge's advice and Get That Job At Google, then I'm sure you're a smart cookie and can fake it til you make it.

Basically I'm saying you can be happy either way. If you leave, know what you're getting yourself into. If you stay, don't waste this time but use it on yourself.

You remind me myself a few years ago: a talented, but bored slacker who didn't see any point in investing any energy into that project. Turns out I was right: the project didn't go anywhere after I left and investing any extra time would be a clueless thing to do.

So what's changed since then? Have I found meaning in work? No! I've become a professional slacker who knows all these psychological tricks, knows what body language to use to make the desired impression, what to say and what not to say. My managers think I'm a high performer who also makes valuable social contributions to our team and this is reflected in pay rises. I see my mission at work in carefully educating the overly enthusiastic co-workers by dropping a few seemingly random hints or observations that make them think and challenge their beliefs.

Work is just work and unless you're curing cancer, you shouldn't put any effort into making some billionaires richer. Just do the minimum, get your paycheck and appreciate the fact that you don't need to worry about money. Very few people in the world have this level of freedom.

But life is quite a bit more interesting than it seems. Learn applied psychology to understand what drives people. Learn about all these LLCs, corps, trusts and other fun stuff. Talk to a lawyer and try to start your own company. No need to leave your current job: you can use the gained knowledge to hide traces, while still being very legal and very cool. Even if you get caught, use the learned psychology tricks to negotiate: you may even find yourself in a VP position as few people can covertly pull this type of stuff. Even if it doesn't work, there is nothing to lose: 50 years later the only thing you will regret is not taking the risk because of some silly non competes with a company that no longer exists. Learn some Buddhism and some Tiberian phylosophy: it gives a very interesting and different outlook at life. Learn how pilot an airplane: like I said, there is nothing to lose.

I think you underestimate your value to the company.

“All I do is copy code from the internal codebase and patch things together until they work” — this is exactly what established tech companies mostly need from their engineers. They want people with enough CS competence to not fuck things up while patching together new solutions from the institutional code soup that everyone knows how to navigate and review.

If you can do this reliably at 10% of your capacity and don’t have ambitions of applying creative solutions with unproven tech, you’re a real asset. Don’t leave rashly unless you’re genuinely bored or frustrated.

You don't realize how good you have it:

1. you work for a company that is an excellent resume booster outside of the valley. I'm from central texas and most everyone I know in tech has worked at Dell and once complained how boring it was to work at Dell. The moment they decided to move away from Austin their Dell experience made them very hot commodities to non-Austin tech companies. Every day you stay at Google the more valuable you become.

2.you presumably make enough money to not worry about your monthly Bills and probably have enough to save as well. At age 28 you are well ahead of the vast majority of 28 year olds from the last 100 years. Not saying you should be content but still...

As others have said you have a great opportunity to do some new things, both in terms of mental and financial capacity. Nevermind learning more tech stuff...get a hobby. Try different things to make you the kind of person you've always wanted to be. Most people are not able to do that because of stress at work or stress about money. You seem to have neither.

I have three friends at Google who are nice, smart people, but terrible employees. All three of them seem to be doing just fine in their Google careers.

One is very smart, but he's been telling me literally for years that he has zero motivation, to the point where he sometimes won't actually start working until 6PM. He's moved around within Google trying to find something he's interested in, but it's just the same thing on a new team. I've suggested a number of times that he leave and find something that inspires him, but he's too used to the salary, perks, and lifestyle to try something new.

Another friend is very similar - nice guy, but there was a consensus at his last startup that he wasn't really accomplishing very much, and he would have been fired if he hadn't left voluntarily.

Another friend is a nice guy, but the most irresponsible person I know. He's been fired from other jobs for being unable to show up before 1PM, and he keeps making some truly irresponsible life choices (ghosting people, drugs, prostitutes).

I know this is anecdotal, but do other people have this experience with Google engineers? It seems like Google is the kind of environment where (at least if you're an SWE) you can get away with doing the minimum for a very long time.

It's sad and revealing to see the other comments here. Many of them say, don't seek fulfillment in your job, just keep on cruising. What a change from the exciting atmosphere of the 2000s. Seems like software engineering has become a safe, dull career nowadays. Don't listen to them. Your 20s are the time to learn, push yourself and discover who you are. Autopilot is for middle age.

LOL are you me, because that sounds very familiar. I cruised along at Google for many years, got bored, quit to try my own startup idea, didn't work out, now working in some SV startup. (Can't say I'm getting better challenges, but at least I'm tackling them better.)

I think you got enough advice, so I'll just add a few points:

* Challenging oneself to try harder is itself a skill. Don't lie to yourself that you're only using 10% of your capacity - it implies that given the right condition you'll be 10x as productive, but we all know "the right condition" never happens. Truly productive engineers (and I saw a lot of them at Google) bring the right conditions to themselves. At best, you will be something like ~2.5x productive, if you try your damnest.

* Google still has tons of different projects. I don't know how easy it is to transfer internally these days, but at least try to find something that sounds interesting to you. A lot easier than changing the company.

* Googlers have complained that "all we do is moving protocol buffers from one place to another," since forever. That's part of the job: truly interesting stuff doesn't happen that often. And yes, I think the problem is more pronounced at Google, because really interesting problems were already solved by much better people, so you end up moving protobufs. But all other places have similar issues, more or less (see point 1 above).

* If you decide to change places, do NOT look for higher hiring bars. (I'm not telling you to avoid them: I'm just saying they're irrelevant.) Google already has a pretty high bar, and tons of incredibly talented engineers. Having extra hoops during the interview did't motivate anyone, and it wouldn't you, either.

I was at Google for five years, and by the end of it, I'd reached a similar place as you. Alas, my leaving Google was precipitated by us deciding to move, not a well-thought or self-directed intentional impulse on my part. But it turned out to be the best thing ever. For some reason or other, I had the interview day of my life at Square, and got offered a position where they expected a lot from me. It has been wonderful, and I should have switched companies sooner.

Leading up to that, part of my path out of the doldrums was (a) therapy, and (b) going through the list of technical subjects that seemed out -of-reach-wizardly (writing a compiler, writing an emulator), and chipping away at them one plush, cushy Google bus ride at a time until they were working. But the change of scenery — and especially of expectation — was invigorating.

A few miscellaneous comments (“advice is a form of nostalgia”…):

- the feeling that you're only idling at 10% mental capacity will kill you slowly.

- you might want to investigate the idea that you're procrastinating because of anxiety or depression, rather than the reverse

- assuming you're giving programming interviews, and using borg/bigtable/cns/etc/etc/etc day-to-day, you'll be amazed at how much knowledge you've picked up in 6 years. You probably have a practical fluency with distributed and sharded capacity design that most interviewees lack. Depends on where inside Google you landed…

- just preparing for and attempting the interviews at “companies with a higher hiring bar than Google” will probably wake you up a bit. Good luck!

Something that really helped me when I was younger and in a similar boat, was to grit my teeth and throw myself into the work; by that I mean, force yourself to be first in, last out every day, take on literally every task - no matter how shitty - that is available to you, your team, or anyone you know that needs help. Take some work home with you if you can. And keep doing this for 4-6 months. By that time you will probably be heading towards burnout, and you'll need to slow things down for a bit.

But when you do take some slack and reflect, then you will realise that you just learned a ton of really practical things that can help you in your next job. You've also learned the discipline of hard work (which in the long term trumps any deep knowledge of tech because ultimately every job eventually becomes a grind, and tech is ever-changing anyways). Plus you've probably made a good reputation for yourself which never hurts.

You will also be able to decide if you found that last few months energising or if you would rather gnaw off your arm than do it again. And that helps to answer if you should leave the job or not :)

Honestly, start a side project or get a hobby. Take a vacation. Go for long walks on the beach.

I really doubt any other tech company that pays as well as Google will be any more interesting. And most people eventually get bored with their jobs. There is no job that isn't repetitive to some degree.

Also, you seem to be downplaying your experience and what you've learned but I highly doubt you'd have kept your job if you were truly slacking. Odds are you just got efficient at doing your job and are getting bored.

Anyhow, there is something to be said for a stable, well-paying job, so go figure things out in your personal life before you shake up your professional life.

Switch teams, ideally to something entirely different than what you’re doing now. Google makes it easy and painless (in most cases) for a reason. I stayed at my first team at Google for years longer than most people do, and though I started strong, by the end I found I was feeling similarly to what you describe. I took that as an impetuous to switch teams and moved to doing something very different, and now a year later I’ve got my fire back and I’m learning tons every day. I’m sure at some point I’ll get comfortable and complacent here again, but now I know to keep an eye out for it and take that as a signal that it’s time to move forward again.

I am not kidding: you are all set to be CTO or dev lead (mind: only if there’s actually a team so you don’t have to do much development) at some late-early stage funded startup, that wants a long-time Google alum on their staff, in leadership. Without even a change in your work ethic. Not even slightly a joke.

How can you keep yourself accountable? What motivates me is to focus on the other, instead of on myself.

If you're doing the minimal amount of work, does that mean that the users are suffering? If you had put in more effort, would they be able to get more out of your software with less effort? The drive to make the best experience for my users motivates me to learn everything I can about design.

What about your fellow programmers? Does anyone else have to deal with the code you wrote? If so, is your code sloppier or harder to maintain than you could have made it, had you put in more than 10%? The drive to make code a joy to work on, for others and myself, motivates me to learn.

What about Google? Are they getting their money's worth out of you? This is a bit harder to sympathize with, being that now we're talking about a rich company instead of particular people. But think of it as a test of your honesty. Did you agree to work a certain number of hours but are really working a fraction thereof? Don't get me wrong, no one that I know can code for 40 hours a week, 50 weeks a year, without burning out. But I think your managers, if they understand programming, expect some reasonable fraction of your day to spent working hard, doing your best, etc.

If you're looking to have kids eventually, your job situation is perfect for that: good salary and low stress.

If you're having issues with dating and work at Google HQ, the problem may be that you're in an area over-saturated with your demographic (nerdy 20-something men). Strongly consider seeking a transfer to another office, any(?) of which will have more favorable area demographics for dating.

I’m in the same boat as you. I’ve been working at the same tech company for 6.5 years making around 500 (used to be 1.2 but my stock grant ran out). I only show up one day a week to have lunch with friends and do nothing. My advice is to keep the money flowing and do something else on the side.

> it's almost like I've been using only 10% of my mental capacity for work (the rest was on dating/dealing with breakups/dealing with depression/gaming/...)

I think that could give an indication of what might be wrong here, I can relate (somewhat!). I work for a top-flight tech firm, straight out of school, for about 5 years or so, and for a long time I felt just like that: I focused for a very long time on achieving the next goal - passing an exam, getting into University, getting that job, and not really focusing on what that was all for, not really focusing on my personal life etc. Once I got my job I was like “what is all of this for?”

So I changed tack, I rotated positions at my job, I tried to “live with purpose”, do something with a super-high impact, and not put myself under such relentless pressure to succeed. It may not feel like you have a super-high impact, but I’d say you do - the services you run help to improve literally millions of people’s lives. Try to think about it like that, instead of “I’m not living up to my potential”, think about the enormous impact you already have. If you just don’t find the work interesting, talk to your manager about the possibility of a secondment to another team.

I’d also advise that relationships are hard, and it is OK to feel miserable when they end. But one thing I only realised recently is that if your misery extends by more than a two months, it could be indicative that you need to see a doctor. Depression is a terrible condition that’s still (IMO unfairly) stigmatised and it’s often hard to disentangle from the rest of what goes on, but it is not a weakness to admit that we all need some help sometimes. If you need an impartial but sympathetic ear, you can find my email in my profile. Good luck! :D

A) I saw “boss as a service” on HN some months ago. This might teach you diligence and accountability by rote. B) Jumping ship won’t change this problem. This IS actually about you, and guess what, until you address it, it will go with you everywhere you go.

Or you can become a skillful slacker as some here have mentioned. That personally wouldn’t work for me; maybe it will for you.

I have been at this situation at Microsoft for four years straight out of college. I would achieve notable things without putting too much into the work. Then I figured out what kind of a role and technology area I wanted to work on, changed ship and jumped to Google —now still happy after three years.

Since you are new grad employee, I assume your comp wasn’t competitive as it could be. 6 years at L4 also probably indicates you are at/below median comp for that level/location. You might be due for a change if you want more money.

In my opinion, Google is still an amazing place to practice all sorts of different technologies. Internal education programs and mobility between teams would let you work anywhere in the company that’s interesting to you. I suspect unless you find that passion, this might repeat anyhwere you go.

......I don't know what to say. I know a few people are like this too. On the other hand, I think I do a lot of things for my employer and constantly learn/challenge myself, but don't make anywhere near FAANG SWE. I am trying hard to pass onsite FAANG interviews, and still failing. So I'm still Leetcoding now.

But hearing stories like this just kinda demotivates me and confuses me more. Most non FAANG companies have no interest in keeping people who wants to stay purely technical like me, so in the end I'll have to end up at FAANG/unicorns to get better compensation. But on the other hand, joining FAANG seems soul crushing.

I thought about this over the weekend, and I have two comments. First, to commenters, this kind of dead end happens at all large companies, so it's unfair to criticize this individual or Google without taking into account that the same thing happens at Apple, Microsoft, Walmart, IBM, Siemens and any other big organization that will survive its founders. While the large corporation participates in a market economy to make revenue, internally it is a command economy, and to my mind resembles an assemblage of regiments, directed by commanders who have different marching orders, rationally designed by the executive to head off competition for both the core business and the future business. The number of people required to make the core business work is absurdly small. The odds against the success of any of the speculative projects are absurdly high. So most people working at a big company are working as bench players in the core business, or on fanciful, doomed projects. This has to be the case -- we're in the business of automation after all.

Second, it's immoral for an individual contributor to resign themselves to this fate. The lost opportunity is terrible for both the individual and society. Be where the action is!

I was in a similar situation, but even though I have an engineering background I was in GTech.

I thought I was doing meaningful work at first. But after 7 years of the grinding it took its toll, I burned out and I left in September.

I'm not sure our situation is comparable, but I'll share some of my experience.

I was very well paid and that kept me on the job longer than it was healthy for me. Still I can't tell you if I made the right decision or not. My job was not stressful at all and not demanding, but I had some periods that I slacked too much and that took a toll on my perf. A bad perf made internal movements harder.

I wish I could have stayed longer for the money, I wish I had better scores that internal movement was possible. In the end I just got up one day and quit, and I don't regret.

I'm taking my time now to rest, travel and work on some side projects before restarting my career. I lived a pretty scrappy life in the bay that I can now not worry too much about money for some time.

I don't share the Google hate so common in this forum, I think it's a wonderful company to work for. A lot of opportunities, great people and comp. I blame only myself for my mental health deteriorating and affecting the quality and balance of my work. I'll work on getting that in order before finding a new job, and if I get back to Google I'll feel lucky.

This was more a rambling than anything. But to summarize my advice would be to prioritize your mental health, that's a lot more important than you realize. If you feel like the grinding is affecting you seek help or quit and find something else more fulfilling. If you feel you are ok maybe try an internal transfer and stay longer, add a side project if you need a challenge. If you do decide to quit give yourself a quarter to rest at least.

And lastly you're probably better than you think you are, impostor syndrome is real and affects everyone.

Make sure you save up the money, pay off all your debts. Start doing stuff at work "properly". Then once you got yourself back upto "match fitness", start looking around.

Honestly, if I were you I'd just keep chugging along and collect as much money as possible. Start investing, and make yourself financially independent. After that, you can quit and do whatever you want.

Clearly you're not very interested in the work you're now doing at google. So the question is, is it this particular job that you're not interested in, or is it that you're just not that interested in programming? Probably the best way to find out is to try a different job.

P.S. -- there would be no need to 'keep yourself accountable' if you were genuinely interested in what you were doing.

There may be good reasons to try going to another company rather than Google. If you've only been promoted once in six years, especially straight out of college --- that's not a normal career trajectory, and so it's probably obvious to your manager and your colleagues that you have been slacking.

On the other hand, going to another company may or may not help that much either, and for two reasons. First, depending on where you are inside Google, the technologies which you have picked up may not be all that useful outside of Google. More importantly, and you've pointed that out for yourself, if you don'y have habit --- and the curiosity --- to deeply learn new the technologies you are working with, you're probably going to struggle wherever you are.

Spending a month for each new technology that you think you need to learn is not going to be enough to deeply become an expert in any of them. Also, it sounds like you have some not-so-great work habits, such as not doing the best possible job you can with any assignment you have been given. Shaking those is also going to be helpful for you, no matter where you are.

So... here's what I would suggest for you. First, spend as much time working on yourself as you so working on "new technologies". Try reading books such as Steven Covey's The Seven Habits of Highly Effective people. I found listening to books such as Brian Tracey's Success Audio Tapes to be helpful in my early career. If you are more spiritually minded, some of Og Mandino's books are old classics.

Secondly, try to bump your performance review ranking at least one level each cycle, until you are getting strongly exceeds expectations. Not because you necessarily want to stay at Google, but because of the self-confidence that this will hopefully help you gain. And tell your manager that (a) you feel that you've been slacking, and (b) that you want to do better. If your manager is any good, they will want to work with you. Try to get promoted at least once more at Google. Why? Because if you are going to try to strike out at some other company, people who understood Google's performance levels will not necessarily be impressed if you have been at Google for six years, and are still a SWE III.

Finally, once you have a string of good ratings so it will be easier for you to try moving to another teams, you might want to consider working at some team which has contact with outside customers, especially in the Cloud PA. This will give you a lot of contact with external technologies, since customers will use a variety of different software components.

Please do keep in mind, first and foremost, that it's all about how you can add the most business value, no matter what company you happen to be working at, and no matter which customers you are trying to help. It's that work attitude which is going to be the most important, which is why I started this by suggesting that you work on your soft skills as much as your technology skills. In addition to listening to various success tapes while I was commuting to work, I also made sure I knew how to read a balance sheet and monthly income/expense reports. I also took supplementary classes in management (which my employer paid for) for subjects such as "Law for the I/T Manager" at the MIT Sloan School. This is all going to be super useful, especially if you think you want to leave Google; at large companies, you can get by just being a technology specialist, but if you are working for yourself, or at a small company, being a well-rounded employee who can understand various business and legal issues will stand you in good stead.

The bottom line is you need to wake your curiosity to learn as much as you can in a wide variety of subjects; not because you want to get a good/interesting job elsewhere, but for its own sake. And you need to develop good work habits and have the internal drive to do the best that you can no matter where you are. Jumping ship to some other company isn't going to change who you are; and you may find that it is much more about you than your environment.

If you want to discuss this more, look me at at Google and I'm happy to chat some more. My ldap is the obvious one at google.com.

>all I do is copy code from the internal codebase and patch things together until they work.

this is... a big and important thing (and difficult... a lot of people re-implement rather than trying to understand what is there.) when dealing with a giant big corporate codebase. This might be, the primary SWE job at big corporate? I mean, there's a lot there, and to understand what is there well enough to actually do something with it is not nothing.

All that said, 6 years is a long time to spend at your first job. There's nothing wrong with seeing what else is out there. Don't quit until you have the next job in the bag, and keep in mind, when you quit, that you might want to come back.

Interesting jobs are, kind of by definition, hard at the beginning: Many interesting and clever things are already in place that you have to learn in a short period of time: not just the big technologies, but a lot of smaller things like tools, environments and a lot of culture.

Inevitably you run out of cool things to learn, and very few jobs can keep challenging you mentally all the time. Almost by definition a job must get more boring over time.

You can do some learning and growing on your own, but that only goes so far: You can write a script and look up stuff and apply it at your job, but can't quite break out a sample project in the new framework.

Almost by definition, the person who can handle coming in at that kind of job and grok it all, can't be the one who does the job for years on end. Enjoy the ebb and flow of the job lifecycle - after a hectic start, settle in and enjoy it for a while.

But then: leave! If the company is smart, they'll put you on a new challenge if you ask. Most likely you'll have to quit and apply somewhere else. Then you will be on 100% of your mental capacity again in no time :)

I'm not employed as a programmer per se, but I work with a lot of programmers and other kinds of engineers. I wonder if you're talking yourself out of the value of your work. A great deal of engineering is not creating fundamentally new components, but organizing and arranging things, fitting them together, and so forth. Is this a bad thing?

As businesses and their products get more complex, "systems" behavior becomes a larger part of making things work, until you might only need a few people working on components, and everybody else on fitting those components together in different ways. There's hardly any loss of honor in doing the 90% of the work that needs to be done and makes the business successful.

I think you can do two things. First, look into new technologies that you'd like to dive into. Second, start to rehearse your elevator speech about how great your present work is, until you begin to believe it yourself, because it might be true. Doing great work and looking for better work are not mutually exclusive.

Google of today sounds a lot like the IBM of the early 90s. There were many clock watchers who came in, read the newspapers and left for the day - with a long lunch break in-between. A big chunk of these people were kicked out by the crisis that hit IBM in 1994.

I'm currently an engineering manager at Google (in the US, though not in the Bay Area), and I'm sympathetic to everything you've written here; I've done my time in Larry and Sergei's Protobuf Moving Company. Being in my 40's (fairly old for tech!), if I were in your position, I'd try to find my Sustaining Passion outside of my day-to-day work. That might mean picking a 20% project that excites you, or it might mean finding something meaningful outside of the company that doesn't require a new job. It might also mean finding a new team within Google, or even a new role (e.g., move to SRE, TSE, DPE, etc). With one promotion in 6 years, I'm assuming you're hitting CME/EE every cycle -- which is good -- so I'd position that as a good thing: for many roles, consistency and stability are a feature.

It's hard to know how to answer without knowing more. I slack off when I don't love the work. Whereas when I am building something that I think is really cool, you can't keep me away from the keyboard. When I'm a cog in the machine, I struggle to do more than the 10% you are doing.

First question I'd ask myself would be: "Why do I think this would be better elsewhere?" Is the issue Google, or is the issue you/the profession?

Depending on the answer it seems like there are a few reasonable landing zones: 1) find a new job at google that addresses the perceived issues at google. 2) jump to a new job at a new company that addresses the perceived issues at google. 3) approach your current job with a new attitude to work harder and do more. maybe set your sights on next promo. 4) embrace your slacking, saving money to prepare for a career change.

It's difficult when going to work and doing work doesn't feel like work. When copying files and patching stuff together is what they expect you to do but that only requires a little bit of mental capacity, welcome to corporate reality.

What you choose to do is completely up to you, but know that a lot of people would give up their right arm and a leg for this kind of job and the job security that entails.

That said, as long as what you are doing is keeping you relevant in the job market and you are building competency you should be fine.

Don't worry. Go to job interviews when you can, this is to ensure that your knowledge and persona are still relevant. If they give you an offer you are in a good situation to use that information to either improve your current position or change job. Don't forget you work to live, don't live for work.

You sound depressed, I think it takes one to know one. Working at Google in the US is a dream 99% of the world can only dream of make sure you value it.

Also as others have said, don’t expect that your job will fulfil you completely, unless you’re curing cancer it’s just a job, talk to your manager about a different role or a bigger challenge but don’t give up a job at Google because you’re bored.

And get some counselling, it’ll be the best thing you did in 3-6 months.

The question you asked, "how can i stop this?" is commonly not possible to tackle directly. If you didn't care about the company before, there likely isn't much for you now.

I think you've got the right mentality - that staying where you are isn't the best long term move at your current stage of life.

Ask yourself what is it that you want to try? ML, FE, BE, Full stack? and simply build a project out of it. Dabble and dabble. It'll likely be hard at first since there's a mental rut, but at some point, something will pique your interest.

From there it's just diving deeper and deeper until you're ready to jump ship. You may even find it at the current company through a transfer.

I don't recommend jumping ship until you're sure. You've got a fantastic backstop.

What about joining a startup so you’re forced to do some real work?

I’ve done the startup scene before, and I can tell you, you will be doing 3 different jobs and using 100% of that mental capacity. You will be making changes that wouldn’t be possible without director-level oversight at larger companies. You will feel like you’re making a difference.

Does anyone else feel like a 3rd or 4th class citizen reading posts like these? How is someone supposed to "compete" financially or socially when there is a magic gate with so much privilege on the other side?

Your current behaviour should mark you for fast track promotion.

https://www.ribbonfarm.com/2009/10/07/the-gervais-principle-...

You’ve lost your edge. This is actually pretty common amongst technical fields. You lack the inspiration required to achieve more either from life or work factors. Look after yourself as a priority and ground yourself. Your job is clearly stable enough to help you correct your foundations.

HN isn't the best place to ask for this since we can't really give actionable feedback. Look me up internally (jtgans) -- I've been at Google off and on for about 8 years cumulatively now. Happy to talk over VC if you'd like.

Have you been on the same team the whole time? I’ve found that how I feel about my work and my productivity has a lot to do with what kind of team I’m on. I don’t like being the superstar (too much pressure) and I hate being around a real superstar (all my code gets rewritten by the superstar so why bother writing it in the first place). When I’m with people at roughly my own level I have a ton of energy and actually enjoy my work.

I would love to know what Brin, Page or Pinchai would think about this entire thread? I have a friend who joined Google a couple of years ago, and he said that working at Google has killed his love of coding. He comes into work, does minimal work, and then goes and works out. So this sounds like a common theme. I'm curious how the founders and CEO would feel if they saw this or if they think this is just an aberration?

It sounds like you need someone who you feel accountable to. You mentioned depression. I’m not sure if you mean clinical depression, or post-breakup blues. But either ways consider talking to a therapist [0]. If it turns out your mental health is fine, consider a career or life coach to help you meet your goals.

0: I can personally recommend TalkSpace. Fixing my anxiety and ADHD has made my work life nearly immeasurably better.

Whoa there... you've got a blessing in disguise... use it wisely before you scamper off.

I've had two of these in my career - extended stays in a role which is "naturally prestigious" but had minimal actual challenge or operational responsibilities. They're fantastic...

The first one (at about your age) I used to court my wife and read / think EXTENSIVELY about business and life. It let me get my shit straight before the next leg up.

Rolled off that into a super-intense turnaround role and fatherhood (also super-intense) which took about 5 years. At the end of that, wound up as an "executive caretaker" managing group with instructions not to disrupt anything while they sold the company. So 3 - 4 years of sideways action with no meaningful opportunities for promotion.

Which turned out to be a MASSIVE gift. My bosses basically didn't care what I did with my time, so I learned how to code (full stack + database management) on company time and leveraged that into a successful side business. They funded me through the low-return slog of learning a new industry and starting a new business....

THANK GOD they didn't make me a fucking VP....

If you can not only survive at Google but slack along well enough to get promoted once on "10% of your mental capacity" I'd stay right where you are. You aren't going to find a better place to earn money for equivalent effort and it sounds like you've already adapted to the ecosystem. Sounds like you need an interesting side project or just a meaningful hobby.

Don't go looking for the missing sense of fulfillment you have at work, either for Google or any other company. Crack some classic literature and take some long walks, figure out what you haven't been doing.

I've fallen into slumps, and it can be hard to get out of them. However, what worked for me was putting my sights on something new, sometimes related sometimes not. I found I'm better at devops stuff, and it's more interesting to me than building CRUD services.

You might try deep diving into Linux. Buying a book and studying for the RHCSA is a great way to get started with an achievable and valuable goal (disclaimer: I work for Red Hat and have the RHCSA). It is mostly applicable to all Linux, maybe 5 to 10% is RH specific.

I also bought some Great Courses on philosophy and that has been stimulating. I can highly recommend the courses from David Kyle Johnson.

You may also try starting a new project. That is the best way I've found to really learn BE/FE. Elixir is an incredibly fun language, and it's gaining traction. Get the Dave Thomas book first, then the Chris McCord Phoenix book. Being at Google there's probably lots of great people to ask for advice too.

Just my thoughts. I'm no expert at this, just sharing what worked for me.

Real talk: if you haven't kept yourself accountable for 6 years, you probably won't now.

I say quit your job, but don't have a plan; figure things out afterward. Catapulting yourself out of your comfort zone is the best way to get to know what you really want to do, and force yourself to care about what it is you want to do. Nobody here can tell you what that is.

Humblebrag much?

I spent the first 7 years of my career in the public sector. Talk about a career killer.

If you are concerned about getting a job elsewhere, just study and do online coding exercises like crazy. That should land you a job at most companies with whiteboard interview at your seniority level.

If you are concerned about actual learning, most of my professional growth has been on the job.

I spent a long while doing 'proactive learning' where I would study new techs and frameworks. It turns out that all of them, either I never had to use, or when I had to, I needed a refresher, since I forgot most about it. Lately I have been doing more 'reactive learning', where I learn new things as I need them, or studying general topics that can be broadly applied.

Long story short, look for positions that will stretch your abilities, you'll be fine.

We are highly lucky to be in a time where it is very easy to switch among high paying jobs across various companies. If you are able to get by with 10% of your mental capacity, I am sure you would be able to land up a lot of jobs. I would recommend you apply to many places, and take it from there, depending on the interviewing experience.

I don't think you really need to learn anything special for job interviews. There is no necessity to understand special technologies, as most good companies are fine as long as you have any experience with similar things.

I would also recommend you read books on programmers. I recently read "Masters of Doom", and it might open your eyes into goal driven programmers and their impact on the world.

Also, out of curiosity, which companies do you think have a higher hiring bar than Google?

Grass is always greener on the other side. I work in Deloitte as a Java developer and I feel the same that I'm not using my knowledge what we learnt in Masters. But you work at Google. Guys like me are still trying to get out of this rut and try to get offer at companies like Google. But People like me are so into this routine life that it's hard to again go back and brush up skills. I just got married and I'm planning to change company. And I'm scared but optimistic that I can catch up. It's very confusion from where to start. There is so much to learn nowdays. JavaScript, node, angular, react, aws, Dockers. Then again problem singing skills for that again algorithms. There is so much to learn.

Then what about AI machine learning.

Life looks so difficult now.

> it's almost like I've been using only 10% of my mental capacity for work

I believe this kind of "we need the brightest engineers to spit out HTML via JS" is the major reason for the ridiculous amount of yak shaving around web development.

Google is going downhill, the day I finished my internship I sweared I'll never in my life work on any money-making, no-challenge project. A bunch of engineers do enjoy what they do, they work on the cool projects, that's enough to keep it going; the rest is just cattle, work for the cash, enjoy the free food and the reputation of working at Google; I'm still sick of being bombarded with the "changing the world" nonsense. Change projects/company, find a mentor and/or a mentee, build new stuff; find your purpose, unleash your intellect. Don't fall for the "changing the world" lie.

In my experience, most medium to large size companies are primarily comprised of people doing what your doing. Most places you could lateral to would get what they expected. I think it’s totally fine to do that and let the rest of your life be the more important thing.

Now, if pushing your career forward is what you really want, people in a new company will start to notice once your putting in the effort and communicating what you accomplish. There’s no trick to it, just putting in the effort on the tasks you take on and being thoughtful about how to accomplish them in a way that is focused on the company’s goals.

This also sounds like a bit of imposter syndrome. I’m sure it will be fine and that you’ve actually picked up more than you realise. You should definitely leave and try something new. It seems obvious that you are not happy with the current situation, just sitting off time at work.

Don’t start prepping to much, just do it. Jumping in is the best way to get moving.

In these situation, I always tell myself (or if it is the board of directors / leader group at my company that is being a bit too risk averse): ”Ingen minns en fegis” (Swedish, more or less “No one remembers a coward”)

Have you considered simply finding things to work on that you'd actually find interesting? They don't have to be projects that are officially sanctioned. I'm doing mostly backend coding on a legacy app, but certain parts of the app and our infrastructure make that harder. So when I identify something I don't like, I've started chipping away at making it better: logging, deployment, testing, builds, etc. Surely something at Google is suboptimal. You can seek it out and make it better.

OP if you wouldn't mind going into it, what are these companies with a higher hiring bar than google?

I'm in engineering management at Google. In my org, we're actively trying to improve how we give performance reviews, motivate people, measure the projects people work on, and relevant to this topic, manage out low performers.

The days when people can coast forever at Google are coming to an end. I had to let one person go because they basically never did more than the bare minimum (and got 3 Needs Improvement ratings in a row), and I know many more (some under me, some not) who are approaching a PIP.

I personally hate working for big companies. Your are just a little cog in a very dysfunctional machine. The 10% without anyone noticing sounds about right. Makes you wonder how much effort your colleagues are putting in...

Go work for a small company, at about 6 to 20 people. Your work can actually make a difference there. 10% or 100% at a big company won't really be noticed as x10. At a small company, it makes a huge difference, at about x10. And for me personally, much more gratifying.

I started out somewhat similarly - but in my case I just wasn't very good right out of school so I started focusing more on my social life. What changed it for me was having a job where my boss fucked up and was fired, and me being given his role. I learned that having people count on me was the best motivator for me. (And having people not really care that much one way or the other about what I'm doing is, to this day, an excellent DEmotivator for me.) I eventually went on to work for a startup that grew really quickly (yes, THAT one) and was given an enormous amount of responsibility - something that, by that time, I would never have dreamed of shirking.

I'm not sure how this might apply to your situation, but hope it will give you some helpful perspective. You can take the exact same slothful person and put them in different circumstances and end up with a stellar worker - the game-changer for me for me was to be accountable, in a big, meaningful way, to someone besides just myself. If this resonates, maybe you could volunteer your tech skills to a small nonprofit or something, and see if you feel more engaged with that work.

BTW, I think it's possible to have a great home life and a great career, but THAT takes REAL work.

Motivation comes from three things, provided you're in a creative role and money's not an issue: Autonomy, Mastery, and Purpose. You need to be able to decide how to get the job done, you need to be able to get better and better at your job, and you need to understand why your job matters in the scope of something larger than yourself. Figure out which is missing, decide if you can find it, and if not, go somewhere that can give it to you.

It appears you don't really want to work at Google anymore. If you are thinking of jumping ship then do it. We must always be 100% engaged and mentally connected to what the company is doing. If the fire burned out, then it's time to leave, no matter if you're at Google or not. I stayed at a company for years after my fire burned out. Never again. We must always seek what makes us fulfilled. Always.

Quit.

I worked at Google for eight years, and fell into a funk, because I picked up new challenges and moved teams, and learned a whole lot, but I also worked on backend infra projects, not shippable features, and you know how well that goes over with the perf review and promo committee.

So, I left for a startup. It was trial by fire, because Google does thing the Google way, and everyone else uses other technologies. Gone were borg, stubby, tap, and in came Kubernetes, REST, Jenkins. It took a long time to learn how the rest of the world works, and Google wasn't my first job, I started there after already working for fifteen years, but in eight years, the world changes a lot.

Now, I'm the main tech lead for a large startup on the verge of success. It's been a crap ton of work, grueling, I've probably made 30% of the income I would have if I stayed at Google in the years that I've been gone, but I've also worked with the best people I've ever encountered - better than at Google, and I feel professionally successful, albeit not financially.

Knowing more or specific technologies isn't what makes someone a good engineer.

Practice identifying problems, taking full ownership of them and fully thinking through and delivering solutions.

This is way easier if you find a problem that you're interested in.

If you're not able to sink your teeth into any good problems, at least pay attention to people around you who do this well so you can copy them in the future.

Get an internal transfer at Google.

Or find ways to challenge yourself outside of work = learn to fly a helicopter, set a goal to run a marathon or ironman, learn ballroom dancing, learn how to sword fight/fence, whatever... push yourself outside of the comfort zone, sign up for 5 "intro to" classes to avoid procrastination and see what clicks.

Either:

- invest yourself in a project to learn as much as you can - start or join a project at home that you believe in. It doesn't have to be code; community outreach, gardening, repairing a car, taking some moocs, making wine or soap or beer or whatever

But most importantly, save up the money you're making there (it should be pretty good) and then take time off for yourself to decide what you want to do. When you're financially secure, your options are open.

By "financially secure" I do mean having money in your savings to sustain yourself for at least a few months or years. Speaking from personal experience, it's a load off of your shoulders when you can sit down and really decide on what you want to do without financial pressure. You can ask to work on 4 days a week, join a movement, travel the world, work on opensource or that contraption in the garage, learn something new, whatever.

The credo that I work by, and advise to everyone even those who report directly to me, is to work for your resume/CV. What this means is to take up challenges, formal or informal, to make yourself more attractive to a future employer.

After all, you're ultimately responsible for your own progress in your career.

Paul Graham's recent essay <http://www.paulgraham.com/lesson.html> should speak to you. You've learned how to hack the test: Big companies don't reward you for doing great things, serving the users, etc. They reward you for pushing particular buttons, and you've learned how to push those buttons, and while that's freed up your time and given you financial stability, it's rotting your soul.

Quit. Join a small company, where you'll have the freedom to work the way you want, the inspiration to do so, and the certainty that you'll be judged properly. It'll lead you to do great work again, work you're proud of and that makes you feel good and that really makes a difference.

Work smarter not harder. Your brain should be sweating not your fingers.

I worked at a Big Corp, and would often spend the day surfing or training for ironmen, and coding at the cafe shop between sessions.

My reviews came back nearly the top ranking consistently. My “secret” if anything was jumping into the hardest technical problem available to me and taking it on largely myself.

The folks that were promoted faster were the ones that put out business critical fires and spent 80 hour weeks debugging customer issues. Which was well deserved imho.

Google is a huge company, with tons of opportunity. Your risk adjusted return there is probably higher than YC. If you can’t figure out how to hit homeruns at Google you are likely to fail everywhere else.

Your managers job is to tell you what you need to do to become a “critical” employee that’s on the fast promotion track.

Moving to a role with more impact might be motivating and fulfilling. Check out 80,000 hours [https://80000hours.org/] - they're a non-profit that researches how to best use your career to help others.

You might be to harsh on yourself and what you have accomplished. Six years at Google is a great achievement in itself. Have you considered impostor syndrome?

Maybe do a side gig and build something that you find interesting, could be a game for kids, a dating app, a music app,...

There is so much important and inspiring work to do in the world. It might take some energy to find it, but I think it will be rewarding if you do. It sounds like you have an amazing opportunity to find this work because you have a financial cushion to fall back on. So good luck in finding it! You could start by just seeking out people to talk to who you think are doing important work. Maybe don't worry about whether there's a job in it or if it even feels related to technology. Chances are those conversations could inspire you to do something you can't picture yet. Maybe an entrepreneurial opportunity. Everything needs technology these days after all. Good luck!

I had a different experience than you had when I was working in Google Brazil. I was the first AdWords Product Specialist in the office - also, the office only had 50 people; it really felt like a startup in 2006.

At the bottom of my heart, I always wanted to build my own startup or work with startup so eventually I left Google.

Now, during that time, I did my work as many other Googlers would do but the difference is that I was in a position to access huge amount of training materials, design docs, 3rd party research materials, etc. In my "spare" time, I just went through and read, absorbed as much as I could; so at the end, I did learn a lot but outside from my usual scope of work.

Here is my philosophy in life.

"Make it a ride and become a passenger."

I mean we are all going to the same place in the end. Nothing really matters.

Have a comfortable job. And positive outlook but never plan for anything. Its so much fun. Life happens all around you and you just observe.

Sounds like you have a pretty good work-life balance. ;-)

In my experience, once you have enough money then friends, family, social life, and pursuing your own interests are a lot more important than working for a company, and far more deserving of your time and attention. As they say, nobody on their deathbed ever says "I wish I'd spent more time at the office."

I don't like the idea of checklists of technologies to learn.

Instead, I like the idea of thinking about important problems that you would like to solve and then investigating technologies that might help you to do so.

I would also consider looking for some more interesting and fun work within Google.

The way I deal with that is by experimenting. Not taking the fastest/easiest route but instead trying to do something interesting.

There are some downsides to that of course. I mean, I am purposefully reinventing the wheel. Sometimes, it fails, and short term productivity takes a hit, but I consider it a long term investment. Because next time I see the problem, I know what not to do, and why.

This presuppose you are not at 100%, because you sometimes need to catch up with your mistakes, but since you are at 10%, that shouldn't be a problem ;) Being at 100% is a bad idea anyways, because you can't take a step back.

You need to leave. You need to go somewhere else immediately. A small company where your contribution will be necessary enough that you will not be able to do what you are doing now.

This is a very dangerous and destructive behavioral pattern, not unlike what happens with people when they are on government support and don't have to worry about earning a living. It's destructive for you and those around you.

Print this in a large font and place it on your monitor and wherever you spend the most time at home:

"Your focus determines your reality" (Star Wars, Phantom Menace).

There's a great deal of depth in that simple five word sentence.

I would never understand this "bored at work" thing. To make it interesting you have side projects and things outside work. If you are working for someone then the "boringness" is something that you have to deal with. Every job that you will have will become boring at one point or another - there will be repetitive tasks but it doesn't seem logical to keep switching every few months. If I was in your shoes and this was my situation, I wouldn't jump ship and rather get involved in the interesting opensource projects or work on the interesting stuff of my own.

Why not work for yourself instead of getting hired? After 6 years at Google you probably have some cash in the bank. Also, consider the possibility that maybe you don't enjoy programming just because you're good at it. What do you daydream about? You mention dating/breakups/depression and gaming (arguably a form of escapism), so it sounds very much like you have some unfilled emotional need. If that's family based you need therapy of some sort, but you also need to find something to do that satisfies you rather than hoping a partner will fix you somehow.

I haven’t been there so.I have no idea, but you certainly sound like you hate the current state of affairs.

My advice: try to find the root cause of your slack-off mentality and adress it. If you figure out that you need to place yourself beyond a point of no return in order to get going, do it.

This however could potentially all happen while still staying at google. The mind is a powerful thing and just a change in perspective can change a lot in your life.

I always enjoyed building things — but they have to have some sort of meaning to me. Do the things you build have any meaning to you? If not, which things would?

If I were you, before I would do anything, I would first go to therapy and work with a therapist. That or pick up a good CBT book.

To me, it sounds like you have a lot of questions to resolve first. I would do that before you change anything. For example why do you think you are doing a minimal amount of work and does that actually mesh with reality? How do you define and measure work output anyway?

You mention dealing with depression for example. In my experience dealing with depression itself is a full time job. That you held down a second job during that experience is a major accomplishment. Go easy on yourself.

Remember above all that your thoughts create your emotions. Ask yourself why do you feel that way. What thoughts underlie the feelings. Question those thoughts.

If you are in Mountain View or the bay area, I'd recommend going to the Feeling Good Institute. I'd also recommend reading Dr. David Burns book Feeling Good.

Consider CBT as a set of tools for your brain and human operating system. I would start by learning those tools first.

Go anywhere else if you are bored, most companies will hire an ex-googler. Or lead a stable / boring life like people will tell you to do, its not like this is the only life you have or something.

Whatever my assignment is, I pick 1+ stretch goals for myself every day, and try to over-deliver above and beyond what my team expects. They are usually super-impressed and love it. Try that.

My two cents: Consider starting some side projects on your spare time.

Choose topics in which you have genuine interest, use tech you're not familiar with, adopt different architectural styles, make it public (ex: GitHub) and share progress with developer friends / team mates.

Before you know you will feel more confident with your tech skills, may start seeing opportunities to apply recent learnings into your daily tasks and even if you really decide to jump ship these projects may come in hand while interviewing for other positions.

Choose to challenge yourself. With Google on your resume you’ll have a pretty good safety net via pedigree. Choose temporary discomfort. Make Linux a viable desktop platform or something. ;)

Have you figured out if it's Google or software engineering as a whole? I think the safer option, if it's available for you, is to change to a different team in a different part of Google.

Google is huge and if, for example, ads is boring to you, try Google Brain or any of their X projects (self driving cars?). That way you have more data points around what's causing you to slack. It's not necessarily the case that when you do find personal alignment that you won't regress to slacking off.

Sometimes changing teams helps. Another possibility would be to see if you can take a leave of absence. Maybe combine them, take a leave of absence and then start fresh with a new team?

You may think you are ripping off your employer, but in fact it is the other way around in my opinion. This company has so much money, that their strategy now is to hire all the engineers in the world on retainer (that's you) so the hiring pool for the competition is diminished. That will raise the amount a smaller company (potential competition) has to pay (and ultimately make them unhirable). Maybe you should go find another job, but you might get a pay cut.

Hiring hiring bar is generally a bad sign. Any company that thinks it needs to be more selective (in technical ability, at least) than Google is probably kidding themselves.

Do you intentionally work to 10% of your capacity, or do you try to work better but can't?

If it's intentional then I don't understand why you'd do that, it seems to me like it'd be horrible to wake up knowing you'll be slacking all day...

If it's not, I'd suggest first of all changing teams while you learn other technologies for a different job.

edit: there are so many things broken with Google products, there has to be something you're interested in fixing...

I started writing about my own experiences with boredom at work, and it evolved into a blog post. I'll spare you the details.

My advice for you: just apply to other companies anyway and wait for an offer that excites you.

The worst thing that will happen is you'll get rejected and the particular interviewers will think less of you. You can always re-apply later.

Meanwhile, start watching Google Tech Talks during your spare work hours and tell your boss's boss that you'd like a challenge.

Some of the advice from David Graeber's book "Bullshit Jobs" seems appropriate. Although you seem to still fulfill a useful function at Google, I found myself using some of the same strategies too.

Being conscious of the demotivating aspects of a job that has too low expectations is described very well in this book.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bullshit_Jobs

I'm staggered by the mysogyny in this thread. A good relationship isn't based on how attractive you are, how much money you make or whether you behave arrogant or not. This implies that women are helpless, will-less creatures that just flock to the peacock with the biggest feathers. A good relationship is based on mutual respect and love.

If you think that your paycheck is a factor in finding a woman I have news for you: you get the women you deserve.

I have come to realize this past year some of us in IT have moved into the domain of true Subject Matter Expert. I personally proved my worth to my clients and based on that they more than happy to keep me on 'retainer' adding nothing new, but ensuring that current systems to fark up... I work from home doing nothing but attending meetings. I am on the peak of the efficiency curve.

A higher hiring bar than google? Damn, I really am behind the curve.

Did you think about just chilling, getting a hobby, and treating your job as a means to an end?

There s enough cynicism in this topic for the whole year. No matter how you spin it, slacking and wasting your talent is neither healthy nor good. Sure, it's hard to admit it when your salary depends on it, but it seems the megacorp's tactic of outpaying everyone is working, because they don't seem to be facing any new competitors anymore. they got a big golden cage

if the learning/enjoyment/motivation curve flattens you have choices.

either accept it and settle at an employer, or change jobs. often this happens around 5-6 years in if not sooner.

its ok to settle at an employer and just be happy wiht your life. if it sucks the life out of you i'd suggest finding a new challenge. with a resume of longer term employment at a big corporate like google , finding a new challenge should be doable.

perhaps you enjoy a startup, its a lot more dynamic and versatile, though often pays less atleast initially. personally i hate that, and try to challenge myself in my current work rather than looking for different jobs. but then again i don't have issues with my job being a bit boring / stale as i try to find things outside of work to fufill me which can also help a lot to fight depression / stress etc.

in the end you sound like you need some thing you are passionate about to work on to feel good about yourself, this is normal, but it doesn't have to be your job which gives you this.

Why don’t you start showing up and working harder at google to see what you can learn and do?

You’ll certainly be able to see higher and further from a place that has supported you for this long than starting from scratch elsewhere.

If you don’t learn to make the most of any place you’re presently in, there’s no guarantee you’ll do it anywhere else.

Can you start

1. Consulting on the side? Surely you being G employee will open lots of doors.

2. Side project/your own startup .

I think you are getting a great value for 10% of your capacity. I would just keep milking it till you get something on side get started.

PS: I don't think 'deeply learn the FE/BE technologies' is good investment of time.

If I were you, I would stay at Google but try a different type of SWE. Like switching to mobile or something.

If this is anywhere near the norm, it explains why Google has so many people yet kills so many projects.

Well, here's how Karl Marx put it:

"What, then, constitutes the alienation of labor? First, the fact that labor is external to the worker, i.e., it does not belong to his intrinsic nature; that in his work, therefore, he does not affirm himself but denies himself, does not feel content but unhappy, does not develop freely his physical and mental energy but mortifies his body and ruins his mind. The worker therefore only feels himself outside his work, and in his work feels outside himself. He feels at home when he is not working, and when he is working he does not feel at home. His labor is therefore not voluntary, but coerced; it is forced labor. It is therefore not the satisfaction of a need; it is merely a means to satisfy needs external to it. Its alien character emerges clearly in the fact that as soon as no physical or other compulsion exists, labor is shunned like the plague. External labor, labor in which man alienates himself, is a labor of self-sacrifice, of mortification. Lastly, the external character of labor for the worker appears in the fact that it is not his own, but someone else’s, that it does not belong to him, that in it he belongs, not to himself, but to another. The worker’s activity is not his spontaneous activity. It belongs to another; it is the loss of his self."

You’re in a rut. Take a long vacation aka sabbatical. Don’t fill your day with activities, let your mind wander. Climb mountains, go skydiving perhaps.

At some point what you want should come into focus. Don’t be too quick to quit the job, save up first and buy some income investments.

You're making good money by not working that much. What's the complaint? Use the free time to work on side projects, learn a new language and enjoy the fact you're making more money than many, many people who work low-pay jobs for longer hours.

You are lucky that you can identify what is wrong with you.

My only suggestion would be: Pick 2-3 technologies you have been using most and which are popular (in terms of finding jobs) and really spend time mastering them. Otherwise, good luck finding a more senior job.

Use this time to spend your mental energy on projects that you're really passionate about while enjoying your great (i'm sure) Google salary. I think you underestimate what an amazing position you're in right now.

"I'm considering companies with a higher hiring bar than Google."

I'm genuinely intrigued and curious about this one. Care to elaborate please? :) What are the other companies with a higher hiring bar than Google?

Companies with a higher hiring bar than Google? You mean the CIA, NSA or what?

Ask where do you see yourself in a few years, are you gonna achieve that by slacking like that? Can you leverage work and doing great work help you get there? Is slacking off worth the time wasted?

My advice: Milk that cow as long a you can. Save and invest massively. Start some side businesses. Spend that extra work time reading some e-books or taking online courses.

You can set yourself up for life.

If you're still interested in technology for its own sake, quit your job (assuming you have the savings, mental health, and self-discipline to do so), or get a job at a company that doesn't think it owns all your work on your own time (unlike Google), and originate or (nontrivially) contribute to an open-source project. If it gets adoption, that could help you find more interesting gigs in the future. If you're really ambitious, you could try to start a company around your project (but that's not good advice for most people).

Otherwise, find a non-tech hobby as others have said, and remind yourself just how good you have it compared to 99.99999999% of the rest of the world.

I thought Google paid developers to slack off and date and get depressed and game.

Maybe your next career move should be to make YouTube videos about the days in your life as a developer.

> Especially since I'm considering companies with a higher hiring bar than Google.

Google isn't the most stringent? I thought only the quant firms had higher bars.

Could you take advantage of Google's geographic reach to try working from different offices (potentially on the same team, or different team)?

I don't think I could survive any coding job... with out knowing that at the job was just a means to allowing me to work on my side projects.

This sounds exactly like my last job :P I wonder if software development tends to become like this in general after a certain amount of time?

I seriously doubt you can “slack off” and keep your job. I think your probably being to hard on yourself. Imposter syndrome happens to many

Are you looking for job satisfaction or happiness? If the former then look for another job, but the grass isn't always greener.

Are you one of those college graduates that sets high bars when interviewing candidates at google? :)

PS: Never interviewed myself, just read stories.

It’s unfortunate that OP has found themselves in such an unfulfilling position. May they find meaning and joy in their life.

How do we confirm that you are not actually just a manager looking for solutions to motivate lackluster employees?

IMHO, its not that great to work at a IT company than working at a Software Company like Google !!!

The crux of this post would make a great long-form article in the Atlantic or Vice or something.

Using about 10% of your mental capacity for your job is absolutely a good thing, if you're still doing what your company expects from you. This means that you still have 90% for yourself, and that's awesome.

If you don't feel challenged enough, seek intellectual activities (of ANY kind, as long as you enjoy it. Code, study, read, play an instrument, whatever) outside of your job. They will be much more satisfying, because you will have complete control over when and how do you engage in them. I've been doing this for many years and it's one the most satisfying aspects of my life, if not the most.

Also, being kind of a veteran (35yo), let me tell you this: be careful what you wish for. You seem to be enjoying a job that doesn't stress you or burn you out. If you start working at a company where you don't have that any more, there is a very good chance that you will miss the sustainability (in terms of mental health) of your current one.

TLDR: if your job pays the bills and doesn't offer challenges, great. Look for challenges in other areas of your life to maximise happiness.

Take 6 months and hire a coach or go to therapy to figure out what you really want.

beat me in the number of cognitive science books and studies read and learning to apply....

Yes, seriously even! The count is n ow almost 100 books and studies only including the CS AI part not other CS parts and whole lot of neuroscience

Don't worry, keep at it and you will be president of Stanford.

I would say, keep your head down, save and invest, retire by 35.

Why name the company?

Cant change deparmentd easily at google ?

Do something you actually like! :)

I recommend becoming a marxist, the concept of alienation is exactly that most people in capitalism are paid to work on stuff that is profitable to rich people but not socially meaningful and so it isn't intrinsically motivating and becomes soul sucking. This even applies to comfy software developers.

This won't give you more work motivation but it will make the rest of your life more interesting.

Wow, this sounds eerily similar to my situation, though I was only there about 3 years.

I left to join an AV startup and it's amazing how much more I've learned and accomplished in a few months versus the time at Google. Things at Google move slowly, and the amount of work per person is relatively limited. Also, all the complicated infrastructure or codebase decisions were already made for you, or is being handled by someone L+2 at least and outside of your purview.

Edmond Lau's The Effective Engineer talks about this, except to the extreme that he wanted to do and learn everything at Google, and even then he left after ~2 years after he felt his growth was slowing.

I think for many, being at Google for a few years will give you invaluable experience, but then severely diminishing returns on growth and practical experience unless you're one of the lucky ones who gets promo'd every year or two.

For your actual question, though: >Now that I'm thinking of jumping ship to other interesting companies, I'm having serious doubts that I really learned what I should have learned during all those years.

Having Google on your resume always helps get people interested. Having experience working on big teams with big codebases is also something not everyone in this industry has, and there's value to it, even if you'll initially scratch your head at how to build without Blaze.

>Especially since I'm considering companies with a higher hiring bar than Google.

Curious why you're confident in that statement. I've found that Google has a much higher hiring bar to the actual required skill -- they basically seem to hire as though everyone will work on GWS, when in reality many are just copy-pasting CSS and BUILD rules from another project.

On the flip side, many more interesting companies have lower hiring bars relative to the job requirement. It's harder to hire good talent when you're not FAANG with a pipeline right out of the Ivy League.

>How can I keep myself accountable while I'm still at the company to deeply learn the FE/BE technologies to be better prepared for other companies? Should I start by preparing a checklist of technologies and dive into each of them for a month and continue from there?

Well, I would focus LeetCode, tbqh. That's still the standard. But whatever you want to do, focus in on technologies used in that industry/job role. Do some side projects. Maybe take some online classes. I think you'll find the practical experience requirement to be lower than you think. People can generally learn the right technologies, and companies know this. It won't be a big deal unless you're a frontend-only SWE who suddenly wants a ML role or something.

Lastly -- feel free to DM me, I use this handle on twitter and gmail, happy to help, especially if you're curious about where I ended up.

What's FE/BE?

Start a side business

Hilarious advice and thread. Thanks everybody :)

Just do it

Quit and start your own startup.

Or maybe you are perfectly adapted to your circumstances according to "The Gervais Principle, Or The Office According to “The Office”"? https://www.ribbonfarm.com/2009/10/07/the-gervais-principle-... "The Sociopath (capitalized) layer comprises the Darwinian/Protestant Ethic will-to-power types who drive an organization to function despite itself. The Clueless layer is what Whyte called the “Organization Man,” but the archetype inhabiting the middle has evolved a good deal since Whyte wrote his book (in the fifties). The Losers are not social losers (as in the opposite of “cool”), but people who have struck bad bargains economically – giving up capitalist striving for steady paychecks. ... The difference between [upwardly-aspiring Ryan] and the average checked-out Loser is illustrated in one brilliant scene early in his career. He suggests, during a group stacking effort in the warehouse, that they form a bucket brigade to work more efficiently. The minimum-effort Loser Stanley tells him coldly, “this here is a run-out-the-clock situation.” The line could apply to Stanley’s entire life. Stanley’s response shows both his intelligence and clear-eyed self-awareness of his Loser bargain with the company. He therefore acts according to a mix of self-preservation and minimum-effort coasting instincts. ... The career of the Loser is the easiest to understand. Having made a bad bargain, and not marked for either Clueless or Sociopath trajectories, he or she must make the best of a bad situation. The most rational thing to do is slack off and do the minimum necessary. Doing more would be a Clueless thing to do. Doing less would take the high-energy machinations of the Sociopath, since it sets up self-imposed up-or-out time pressure. So the Loser — really not a loser at all if you think about it — pays his dues, does not ask for much, and finds meaning in his life elsewhere. For Stanley it is crossword puzzles. For Angela it is a colorless Martha-Stewartish religious life. For Kevin, it is his rock band. For Kelly, it is mindless airhead pop-culture distractions. Pam has her painting ambitions. Meredith is an alcoholic slut. Oscar, the ironic-token gay character, has his intellectual posturing. Creed, a walking freak-show, marches to the beat of his own obscure different drum (he is the most rationally checked-out of all the losers)."

If you want to change Google into a better company or alternatively build or find a better place to be, here is a reading list I've put together which might help: https://github.com/pdfernhout/High-Performance-Organizations...

Since you mentioned depression, see especially the related health sections.

All the best and good luck!

P.S. Something I wrote in 2008 on ideological challenges inherent in Google inspired by contradictions in the "Project Virgle" April Fools joke: https://pdfernhout.net/a-rant-on-financial-obesity-and-Proje... "Even just in jest some of the most financially obese people on the planet (who have built their company with thousands of servers all running GNU/Linux free software) apparently could not see any other possibility but seriously becoming even more financially obese off the free work of others on another planet (as well as saddling others with financial obesity too :-). And that jest came almost half a century after the "Triple Revolution" letter of 1964 about the growing disconnect between effort and productivity (or work and financial fitness) .... Even not having completed their PhDs, the top Google-ites may well take many more decades to shake off that ideological discipline. I know it took me decades (and I am still only part way there. :-) As with my mother, no doubt Googlers have lived through periods of scarcity of money relative to their needs to survive or be independent scholars or effective agents of change. Is it any wonder they probably think being financially obese is a good thing, not an indication of either personal or societal pathology? :-( ... Google-ites and other financially obese people IMHO need to take a good look at the junk food capitalist propaganda they are eating and serving up to others, as in saying (even in jest): ... "we should profit from others' use of our innovations, and we should buy or lease others' intellectual property whenever it advances our own goals" -- even while running one of the biggest post-scarcity enterprises on Earth based on free-as-in-freedom software. :-( Until then, it is up to us other ... "semi-evil ... quasi-evil ... not evil enough" hobbyists with smaller budgets to save the Asteroids and the Planets (including Earth) ... from financially obese people and their unexamined evil plans to spread profit-driven scarcity-creating Empire throughout every nook-and-cranny of the universe. :-("

If I were in your spot, with the benefit of the hindsight, I'd continue riding the gravy train until asked to leave. Don't fuck up too badly, do your job, just don't worry about it too much. Get off the promo treadmill. Spend bare minimum of effort on work. Put the rest of the efforts into your hobbies and relationships.

There's really no rational reason for you to worry about obscure corporate bullshit which will be gone and forgotten in 3 years. It pays the bills, but beyond that it's not your "life", so don't treat it as such. That's one of the benefits of being an _employee_ rather than, say, an _owner_: you get to leave work at work.

What you _think_ Google wants from you and what it actually wants might be two different things. For as long as they choose to employ you (and moreover, promote you), you can be sure they're getting a good deal as far as their requirements are concerned.

Wait, is this why we can never seem to get past 3% GDP growth?

B/c a huge percentage of our smartest people are utilizing their smarts to figure out how to coast as lazily through life as they can while optimizing their "observed personality"?

This explains a lot. But, it is not something I haven't suspected.

What would it take to change this? To allow productivity, growth, and proper compensation?

It is not just software engineering where this is a very common scenario, btw.

Just get out.

Six years at the same place with only one promotion means that you're not really advancing.

Fake it 'til you make it.

If you do stay in place, get yourself promoted again and complete a graduate degree.

Clean your damn room :) Recommend reading Jordan Peterson's 12 Rules for Life

Post your real name here and then email this posts link to your PM.

Then, once you lose your job, you will no longer be slacking at Google. This will definitely push you a bit.