Why I Quit my Software Engineering Job at Google
I recently made a video discussing why I left my Software Engineering job at Google if you prefer a visual medium to text.
Last month after almost four years, I quit my Software Engineering job at Google. It took me a bit to gather my thoughts, but deciding to quit my job boiled down to five specific things (I also discussed these same five reasons in a recent video if you’d prefer to watch that).
1. Leaving was Always the Plan
The first reason that I decided to quit my job was simply that that was always my plan from the start. Although working at Google specifically was a goal of mine coming out of college, my end goal for my career has always been to work for myself. In this way, I viewed working at Google as a stepping stone towards that to help me learn the skills to be a talented software engineer and the last stop before I take the leap to build my own business.
In fact, Google wasn’t the only company I was considering joining about four years ago. While I was considering my Google offer, I also had an offer from Uber as well. One of the reasons why I chose Google over Uber was specifically the fact that working at Google had always been a dream of mine and if I had chosen another company over Google I felt I’d always want to double back to Google before setting off on my own (I actually discussed this exact point during a video of mine). Because of this, I knew that if I decided to join a different company, I’d be prolonging the time that it would take to start working for myself and this was something I wanted to avoid.
2. Lack of Passion
While working at Google is one of the best and most interesting opportunities I’ve had in my career at the end of the day it was still just a job. My dad used to always describe work as a four letter word and after the shininess of joining my dream job wore off, work is all it was.
This lack of passion is interestingly something I’ve felt throughout my entire 8 years of working professionally as a Software Engineer in the industry. Earlier in my career, I attributed this lack of passion to not working at particular companies, not working at a specific scale, not being interested in a certain product area, not being paid a certain amount, or just about anything else that I could think of. I continuously told myself that “I would be happy when” some specific thing happened, but each time I was lucky enough to work at a certain company, get promoted, be paid more, work on an interesting product, etc. the lack of passion persisted.
Deciding to be “happy when” is something that’s dangerous and I’d caution anyone reading this against it. It’s a contract you enter into with yourself to arbitrarily decide to enjoy the present less until a shinier “more interesting” future occurs, but here’s the truth:
There’s a very good chance you can decide to be happy now
It’s likely that once you achieve that thing you’ll move the goalposts anyways
Although painful, I’ve internalized this learning now over the last handful of years in my career. As I was continuously lucky enough to accomplish the things I set out to achieve, I realized that they only marginally changed my happiness if they affected my happiness at all.
While I now understand this, this was difficult to discern and pinpoint earlier in my career. Deep down I felt I knew that working for myself is what I really wanted and what would make me the happiest, but it was hard to be sure of this when I had limited experience professionally. Now that I have more data points having worked at many different companies for a handful of years I feel confident that I working for myself truly is what I wanted.
Something I’ve learned over the years is that working for someone else at a company that isn’t mine will always limit the amount of passion that I feel. For me this is difficult as it limits the capacity that I can operate at. Instead of using 100% of my ability or work ethic I feel arbitrarily capped at say 60% due to my circumstances. While there may seem to be nothing wrong from the outside, living in these constraints and being boxed in by these limits drains me.
3. Losing a Family Member
Almost 3 years ago, my dad passed away and ever since then I’ve thought very critically about what I’m doing and how I’m spending my time. While it can sound cheesy, our time is finite and we don’t know how much time we have and since losing my dad this is something I think about daily. To me, it serves as an important reminder to constantly check in and ensure that I’m doing things that serve me and make me happy.
As I continued thinking about this it became abundantly clear that continuing to work at Google didn’t serve me. Earlier in my career, having a job and sticking to the traditional path was a “smart” financial decision, but as the years rolled on I was very lucky that finances continuously became less and less of an issue. (please note that this isn’t meant as a brag, I’m genuinely trying to give insight into my decision making). While staying at a job, maxing my 401k, saving and investing my bonus and paychecks, and living within my means was a good financial decision the marginal utility of each dollar I earned continued to change my life less and less.
Instead, I became more focused on what I was giving up by staying at Google, especially as each additional dollar I earned became less meaningful to me. Slowly but surely staying at my job seemed to actually cost me more and more in terms of what I could be doing otherwise. As I thought about this I realized that I was only staying in my job because it was the “safe” decision. Something I’ve tried to do since losing my dad is viewing my life like a movie and, where possible and within reason, make decisions that make the movie more interesting. And with standing very little to lose quitting my job was definitely a decision that would further progress the plot of the movie.
Taking calculated risks and making decisions that make the movie more interesting is also something that can be very beneficial to you throughout life. As you learn to take calculated risks, especially earlier in life ideally, you learn how to wield that skill and the decisions you make can compound over time.
4. Conflicts of Interest
When you work at large tech companies there’s a very small scope for what you’re allowed to do outside of work. For example, when signing my Amazon contract years ago, within my contract there was a clause that had you acknowledge the fact that Amazon is a global company that operates in virtually every product area. Because of this, virtually anything you do outside of work hours and on your own hardware can be seen as a conflict or interest or as a breach of a non-compete agreement.
This is a problem I ran into at Google. I’ve always loved working on my own ventures outside of work, but this was problematic according to Google. Being told what I’m allowed to do and not allowed to do outside of work became exhausting to me. I didn’t like or appreciate that what I could do on my own time was limited by a company that I worked at.
To me, this felt like being put in a box — similar to how I felt limited passion about working at someone else’s company. What I was allowed to do was only what was confined to that particular box even though there were many other things I wanted to pursue outside of those bounds. This was especially frustrating since some of those ventures that I was told I could no longer work on or participate in were developed by me prior to even joining Google and were even mentioned on my inventions list when signing my contract to join the company.
Eventually I grew tired of being contacted by lawyers or HR internally at the company about things I did outside of my 9-5 job. I didn’t like being told to delete certain things, to avoid certain topics, or being informed that I was required to give away equity in specific ventures. This was also largely ironic to me as I was asked internally on multiple occasions to collaborate with Google on content. It felt a lot like big brother watching over me in a way that I didn’t feel comfortable with and as time went on I felt I had to tailor my actions and voice to a filter that had been created by my employer. This lead me to the realization that working at my company and pursuing the things I wanted to outside of work couldn’t coexist helping me realize that I had to leave my job.
5. 9-5s Won’t Achieve my Goal
The final reason I decided to quit my job was internalizing the fact that the path I was on wouldn’t land me where I wanted to be. The truth is that any 9-5 job statistically wouldn’t help me achieve what I was after. Once I realized this, quitting became much simpler since no matter how long I stayed I’d never arrive at the place I wanted to be.
Everyone has different goals and the end goal I’m after, statistically speaking, isn’t made possible by working for someone else. Both from a monetary perspective and from a fulfillment perspective, what I’m after is achieved by creating something on your own. This epiphany helped solidify that the only way to get where I want to be is by quitting my job and venturing off on my own.
While I have no idea if this will actually work, another thing I strongly believe is that I’ll never regret trying. Instead, I’d only regret being too afraid to try and never giving it a shot in the first place. The beauty of the situation I’m in as well is that this decision is a two-way door decision as my friend Steve always says — if I decide to go off and work for myself, this is a decision I can easily reverse. Worst case, if whatever I try crashes and burns I feel confident I can always return to a 9-5 Software Engineering job to pay my bills and support myself.
As I’ve mentioned in a previous article, the path I’m on will never intersect with what I’m after. The two lines of where I am and where I’d like to land run exactly parallel to one another. Because of this, the only thing I can do is pursue something such that one of the lines bends to eventually intersect the other — quitting my job and pursuing something on my own is the only catalyst that will accomplish this.
A final thought experiment I went through when deciding to quit my job is how much I’d pay to simply know the answer to: “Will working for myself be successful?”. After a lot of pondering, I realized that I would pay a pretty astronomical amount of money to magically know this answer. Realizing that this number was larger than the amount that I’d make by staying an entire year at Google helped me rationalize that leaving my job for at least a year and pursuing self-employment was well worth it.
As a closing note I’d like to mention that I feel very lucky for the opportunities that working at Google and other companies has afforded me. I am very thankful to Google for teaching me a lot of what I know as a Software Engineer and for taking a chance on me 4 years ago. I also feel extremely lucky for the opportunities I’ve stumbled into across my career and the platforms I have online. Nothing that I’m working to pursue would be possible without people like you reading this article supporting me and my content and for that I am forever grateful.
Where you can find me online:
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Love the idea of making the movie of your life more interesting!
Well you quit and someone can pay an astronomical amount of money just to have a chance to work for Google .