He left Google to pursue work he enjoyed, not escape it

Transcript

Transcribed by machine (Whisper) from the episode’s audio, so a word may be off here and there.

1. 27:45

   meeting like other nerds and stuff how's your experience quitting google and doing your own thing full-time i think in my case um i really enjoyed what i was doing so it was a lot easier for me. I have a lot of people reach out that Like they don't really enjoy their jobs, but they don't really know what else they want to do either. I think that's a lot harder. For me, it was just that I liked algorithms and doing things around that, whether it was like building my site or making YouTube videos.

2. 28:13

   And I just kind of leaned into that. And that's been working out for the past few years. And more recently, I've been trying to like expand into other areas and stuff. But I guess what I've learned is that like, I guess passion really matters. and it's like if you're passionate about one thing that doesn't necessarily mean you'll be passionate about everything but um yeah i think it's i've definitely had no regrets i think it's been a success for the most part um but yeah it's not it's not like perfect i wouldn't reckon necessarily recommend like every person out there needs to quit their job or do their own side hustle or whatever i don't like buy into a lot of that stuff do you ever miss google a lot like i miss like I can afford food now but I still miss the free food for some reason I don't know if you

3. 28:59

   had that experience because they really like make it like in a way that you'd miss it if you weren't there like especially the free coffee and stuff because I'd always get like a latte um but anyways but um yeah I miss um I mean the one thing I miss is the culture because I could like add my neat code and like I could hire a bunch of people and kind of create my own culture and it's really nice that you have like the freedom to do that but i'm not really like a culture builder i'm more of like a person that just does things or solves problems or whatever like i don't consider myself a manager but i've had to do that a lot the last couple years and it's it's been a learning experience you mentioned what you miss about google but what is it that you hated most about working at google that's a good question i think it's just

4. 29:46

   really slow like urgency and like speed doesn't seem to matter which is fine I guess the reason that's a problem because some people would see that and think like oh it's like a work-life balance paradise you can kind of just chill and do whatever you want which is which is true because there's that side to it but the other side is that like if you're ambitious or you're trying to like get your project delivered sooner or you're trying to get promoted or just anything you're gonna be fighting against like all that like work-life balance culture because you're trying to get somebody else to do something and like you don't want to like put too much pressure on them you don't want to like mess with their work-life balance because then they're going to mess with yours and like yeah it was just really slow if you're a technical person you you want to

5. 30:26

   be there because they're not going to probably at google like cut too many corners but sometimes you wish they would because it just goes so slow and like like they prioritize processes over actually like making a like an impact for like a customer like getting a project delivered it's It's just like, yeah, they care too much, I think, about like what the engineers think and like what they feel rather than like actually trying to serve like customers.

6. 30:49

   So it's like the opposite of Amazon, I'd say, in that respect.