Why I left Google

This is a note-to-self, in case I ever forget, why I quit Google.

TL;DR: I quit my job to travel, and Google does not allow travelling while working long term. Later, I may well apply to go back to Google!

Aside: Day to day work

I actually enjoyed my work. It was mentally taxing sometimes to put together a detailed design doc and make sure everything would work and get approvals from all my teammates before I coded it up. But actually coding felt great. At the same time I understand the rest is an intrinsic part of working with a team in a large code base, and it feels great to be a part of something.

The work life balance was quite good as Google has a reputation for, except that so many things got in the way that sometimes it made it hard to get a full day of coding in, so I felt pressure to keep up in that situation. Some of that time was lost to waiting for late gBusses, doing what we called "community contributions" required for promo (which I satisfied by reviewing fellow engineers' TypeScript code for style), and helping my teammates think through problems. (We actually kept meetings to a minimum!) Sometimes coding was annoying because the most basic coding editor functionality often didn't work (such as "go to definition"). Then, to avoid running myself into the ground working 8 hours straight, I'd go to the gym in the middle of the day. It was a great way to refuel, but between all these things it was hard to find large blocks of time to focus on coding. Making this especially hard was my bus ride being 90 minutes long. There's no way 90 minutes each way is coming out of my personal life, so I use that time to work. But that means being interrupted two more times a day when I get to my stop and have to pack up my work and get off the bus. And a third daily interruption was needing to take a bus home at a specific time to avoid traffic, because sitting down for more than 90 minutes is uncomfortable and unhealthy.

In the future, I hope to work remotely or accept a job where I actually live. That will give me the flexibility to stay late at work occasionally so I can actually get work done, and then leave early on other days to balance that out.

None of this has much to do with why I quit, except maybe for the 90 minute bus ride. But even then, I could've just switched to a team that's based where I live.

Work flexibility negotiations

The main reason I quit is that all my life I wanted more vacation days, yet more was never enough. All my paid time off went to family vacations, and I had to ask for favors from managers to do my own vacations. I subconsciously accepted it as fact that I wouldn't ever have time to travel. I didn't really realize what I wanted until I was forced to think about it more when things at work got tough. For a small amount of time, I couldn't bear going to work because of the monotony of my routine. I don't even remember what it was exactly, but it did eventually resolve and a lot of this was thanks to getting permission to work from home one day per week in the middle of the week. But also during that time I investigated what further flexible work options there were. Unfortunately things like working remotely full time was not much of an option in the company as leadership values face-to-face interactions. Working nomadically (moving rather than working remotely in one place) was even less of an option because of payroll and tax reasons. Working 80% part time wasn't an option for my specific team, although it would've been nice for me since I could make more trips with more 3 day weekends. It's possible that I could've gotten more vacation if I asked for it, but that would've been a short term solution anyway.

Pursuing digital nomadism

During my investigation of flexible work options, I discovered the concept of digital nomadism - travelling while working remotely.

I think this would work perfectly for me because I want to get out more, but I don't like traditional vacations where you go somewhere, check into a place, and spend the whole day doing things and looking at all the things there. I don't like it, okay?! I can't be bothered to look at the things all day.

I want to go somewhere and just live about my regular life, make some friends, learn the language and absorb the culture passively yet immersively.

This would also be a great time to take up my friends on their offers to hang out -- especially people who I've had stay at my place! I was a couch surfing host for a while when I moved to San Francisco. I hosted people from all over the world who were in the city and weren't about the hotel life. More than half the time, I got offers form them to host me later if I ever visit their country! I also hosted Esperanto speakers via an Esperantist-only couch surfing service (La Pasporta Servo), and I hosted animal rights activists in the area during the Animal Liberation Conference. So, I know a few people I could stay with. I never would've imagined getting two weeks to go visit some random friend I made in another country, but with digital nomadism that is a real possibility.

I hope to take 3 months off to relax. Then I hope to work on maintaining and improving my software skills up to 12 months from now. After 12 months I hope to restore a sustainable income. I have been compiling a list of lists of nomad friendly software engineering companies.

At first during my travels, I will stay with friends and rent Airbnbs or Vrbos with long term discounts. If that goes well, I may try out the van life, maybe boondocking, or perhaps backpacking and staying at hostels, or even work-stay / work exchange options, especially at vegan communities or farms. I've been also been compiling a list of places to stay and different housing options.

Coming back to Google

I may well discover that nomadism is not for me. In that case, I may return to Google. If I rejoin in one year, I don't have to re-interview, but just find a manager that likes me.

I may hope to join in the San Francisco office so I can still be involved with one of the largest animal rights communities right next door in Berkeley. Since Fuchsia OS is mainly developed in SF, I would try to work on that. How cool to work on a new operating system backed by a company like Google!

I'd also enjoy working from different Google offices for a few years each. Perhaps I could join a team in the London office for a few years and then switch teams to another office. Then I could have the consistency of a 9-5 job sitting in person with my teammates while still not getting bored of living in one place for very long. However, 2 years is near the minimum of how long one should stay on a team to make an impact that's worth the ramp-up.

I do have some mixed feelings however due to the censored search engine that Google is developing. I hope that Google search would always indicate if it's filtering results, or reporting your search queries to the government. Not indicating that results are filtered could make them think that they know the truth about something when in fact the truth is being hidden from them on purpose, and that is suppressing their freedom. Ratting out activists and whistle-blowers to the government could mean death for those activists, and as an activist myself I view this as a human rights violation. Making such a compromise may be nice in the short term for people who don't have access to a high quality search engine, but it further roots those people in a dystopian society. There are a LOT of people who deserve freedom but don't have it, and even if they don't get that freedom soon, I hope children will have it. I think freedom for these people may also be essential for other issues that are important to the well-being of the entire world. We need everyone to speak up about environmental issues as we are already in a climate emergency. And we need everyone to stand up for animals in all countries because animals can't stand up for themselves, yet most of them live their entire lives in human captivity under squalid conditions.