I Quit Google After 10 Years and Moved From California to Austin

• In 2011, following two a long time at Oracle, Jian Jiao commenced doing the job at Google as an programs engineer.
• About 10 several years, he labored his way up to an engineering management posture. Then in 2021, he give up.
• This is Jiao’s story of his time at Google and why he still left to perform for BP, as instructed to Kiera Fields.

This as-informed-to essay is centered on a dialogue with Jian Jiao, the principal details engineer at BP, in Austin, Texas, who still left his work at Google immediately after 10 yrs. This textual content has been edited for size and clarity.

I graduated from Carnegie Mellon in 2008 with a master’s degree in data techniques management. I was learning how to use knowledge to make management systems for companies. 

I did not understand the internship I did at the application corporation Oracle would quick-observe me to a tenure at Google.

Following completing my degree, Oracle presented me an applications-engineer part in its Bay Place place of work. I labored there for two a long time.

My tech guide at Oracle left in 2011 to start a new group at Google and questioned me to sign up for. He launched me to Google’s hiring supervisor, and I submitted my application. 

Finding the provide to do the job at Google was a aspiration for engineers. The Bay Area campus was like a playground.

I started out as an software engineer at Google in March 2011. The very first Monday we bought to the campus, we experienced orientation. Somebody in the human-resources division spelled out to us new joiners that it was more most likely for a person to get in a airplane crash or be recognized to Harvard than to get a job at Google. 

In the early days, I started out between 8 a.m. and 9 a.m. and had breakfast at the business office. I labored on cellular and small business programs of knowledge at the Google data middle. 

I used my mornings coding with other developers. I would get lunch on campus, perform right until 4 p.m., go to the gymnasium, and then work right until dinner, which I might get on campus prior to heading property. 

When I grew to become a manager, I took conferences remotely even though driving to operate. I would not have time to get breakfast. In my mornings, I reviewed patterns and code, then I experienced a group conference. 

Functioning a crew at Google is like jogging a startup. It can be your task to hold the sensible individuals on your workforce motivated and engaged.

I might take my group to a meals truck on campus for lunch, and then I might have conferences with the stakeholders of whatever venture we have been working on.

In July 2021, my family members experienced to relocate from the Bay Place to Austin.

In Austin, I was going to guide yet another software-engineering staff in Google’s legal-infrastructure department. I might been working at Google for 10 a long time and hadn’t regarded as leaving. 

I experienced observed a snapshot of the total

technological innovation marketplace

and how it experienced evolved about a ten years. I watched the corporation mature from 30,000 personnel to around 100,000.

I observed Google advance from a “nerd” organization that only cared about the velocity of its lookup benefits to a enterprise obsessed with user working experience. I saw our target shift to mobile, then the cloud, then device understanding. 

The tradition also transformed from running like a startup to getting a big company. There was a lot more composition and a higher concentrate on effectiveness. I failed to come across this to be a good or damaging improve, just a important just one. 

While I was waiting to relocate to Austin, a supervisor at BP reached out. 

She was looking for anyone to guide BP’s data-engineering staff. I stated, “I consider you have received the improper individual,” because I only realized Google’s technologies and nothing about the oil and fuel field. 

But she was honest, and I experienced spare time, so I spoke with the lady who would come to be my supervisor. At BP, she is the VP of information and analytics, and she formerly remaining her director place at Uber just after six decades there.

She persuaded me to interview. The job interview was conducted by a previous Googler who had also worked at Tesla and an additional BP worker who was once higher up at Microsoft. 

I thought, “What are all these innovators doing at an oil business?” 

For the duration of my profession, I’ve only cared about two items: Whom I function with and what I perform on. I could see there have been people today at BP whom I could discover from, but I required to know what I’d be doing work on. 

I was informed that to reinvent BP into a 21st-century integrated electricity organization, it required digital expertise to develop new techniques, new society, and new do the job procedures, and even to design and style new tech.

At Google, I worked on advanced technology surrounded by people today who were being absolutely aligned with my aims and technical understanding. I was cozy. 

BP gave me the option to have a a lot even larger impact by having a enterprise into a new, far more sustainable era. 

Leaving Google was tougher than I predicted. Was I actually likely to walk away from excellent fork out, great inventory solutions, cost-free foodstuff, a supercool office environment, and just one of the finest tech organizations in the globe to join an oil corporation? 

Of course, I was. 

I felt like I could not see the actuality of what technological innovation looked like from outdoors the partitions of Google. Being ready to see how corporations use technology from a distinctive position of view is significant to advancing as an engineer. 

I required to leave the Google bubble.

BP was a tradition shock in numerous techniques. At Google, everybody labored the very same way, adhering to agile operate to optimize productivity. But it was a harsher, much more competitive environment. 

BP is a ton friendlier and much more folks-oriented, but part of my work is to enable BP adapt to the new electronic market. I have had resistance towards bringing in agile functioning.

Persons talk to me if I wrestle functioning in this kind of a diverse ecosystem, but I see it as an option. Resistance would make you imagine critically about the way you operate and the perform you happen to be accomplishing.

At BP, I get to see how technologies can be applied to electrical-automobile charging and bio fuels — perception into areas I would never have touched in a purely IT company like Google. 

I respect how my new work problems me. I’ve developed a lot more than I would have if I had stayed at Google, and mainly because of that I am grateful for making the modify.