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My Google job was tedious and pointless

washingtonpost.com

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Re: My Google job was tedious and pointless

#61

Post by s73ver_ »

georgiedown wrote: post #36
vkou wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As someone who was deeply disturbed by the United States electing a jingoistic, misogynistic racist and abuser, I really appreciated that I got some fucking emotional support from my colleagues. Never mind that he ran on a platform of throwing a significant portion of the company out of the country. Step into the shoes of someone holding an H1B for one moment, please.

If you need emotional support from your work colleagues because the country has elected a president you don't like, you have a problem.

There's a HUGE difference between "a president you don't like" and "a president who's entire platform was removing people like you from the country".

Re: My Google job was tedious and pointless

#62

Post by dkobran »

While the job doesn't sound like it involves "cool things that matter" and paints a pretty believable picture of working at a large corporation, I do find it interesting that this was published by thr Washington Post. Being owned by Amazon, a direct competitor to Google on many fronts (the war for cloud computing market share is/will continue to be huge), it seems suspicious that this is truly unbiased coverage. It strikes me as a possible next iteration of native advertising. This is not an attack on WP -- just something I thought might be worth discussing. The tech giants are becoming increasingly more powerful and this could be a new frontier to assert that power.

Re: My Google job was tedious and pointless

#63

Post by cromwellian »

alex_hitchins wrote: post #49
maxxxxx wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think an executive should ever complain about an election. They should focus on making their company successful and a good work place.

Executives are people at the end of the day, they will have emotions and feelings (hopefully). I'd hazard a guess it wasn't the fact a Republican won, rather than who won. However that is total conjecture on my part.

Most people who dislike Trump don't dislike him because he's Republican, most don't even believe he's a true Republican, or conservative, or evangelical. He was a New York Democrat in the past, supported gun control, abortion, etc, therefore his ideological core is questionable to say the least.

What people dislike, beyond the sheer incompetence and pathological lying and bragging, is a tendency to play to the worst aspects of the crowd, for narcissistic reasons. That is, people are upset because they believe Trump is a person who will stoke up division for no reason other than it gets applause and attention, and often, the "heel" in WWE Wrestling parlance that Trump uses turns out to be the least powerful.

Re: My Google job was tedious and pointless

#64

Post by TheAdamAndChe »

mulletbum wrote: post #25
maxxxxx wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think an executive should ever complain about an election. They should focus on making their company successful and a good work place.

Why not? When the election is making their company have a difficult time becoming a more successful work place? I think it's a company, people can say what they like, if Google doesn't like it as a whole, they can fire said employee.

Nobody is arguing Google's right to express political opinions, but the fact that their culture does so is counterproductive to a meritocratic structure. They seem to be more concerned about virtue signalling than creating an environment that focuses on professional and economic growth.

Re: My Google job was tedious and pointless

#65

Post by foota »

snorkel wrote: post #34
foobaw wrote: post #9

Most of the responsibility, minus the technical interview, seems like it could be done by an AI sometime in the future anyway. No more complaints afterwards!

I found Google's dev interview to be especially difficult, I personally hate doing hours of whiteboard coding (sorry, I tend to code on computers instead, silly me) ... So I wasn't hired, but those who worked as devs there told me that's a blessing because after all the rigorous interviewing bluster they'll assign devs to remedial code refactoring anyway. I'm not a rockstar coder above doing the housekeeping work but…

You leave your interns to do code quality refactors? Seems like something more experienced engineers should do.

Re: My Google job was tedious and pointless

#66

Post by miketery »

untog wrote: post #44
vkou wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As someone who was deeply disturbed by the United States electing a jingoistic, misogynistic racist and abuser, I really appreciated that I got some fucking emotional support from my colleagues. Never mind that he ran on a platform of throwing a significant portion of the company out of the country. Step into the shoes of someone holding an H1B for one moment, please.

This post is being downvoted and I wish it wasn't, because it's a great example of the exact issue at hand. You might say that it is overly emotional, or too reactionary, or that the tone isn't appropriate, but think - really think! - what it would be like to wake up one morning to the unexpected shock that a President has been elected on the very possible platform of kicking you out of the country and ruining the li…

Except, that's the point - people are overly emotional. All this waking up the next morning and the world is different is such a stretch. Nothing has changed.

Re: My Google job was tedious and pointless

#67

Post by steve_musk »

gsich wrote: post #50
untog wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What if the result of an election hinders their ability to be successful and create a good work place? I think there is a fair debate to be had about where the line should be drawn, but pretending that politics doesn't exist if you don't talk about it is deluded. For example, Google employs a good number of immigrants. After the election many of them would have been worried about their future in the country. Wouldn't…

Still no need to cry. One day after the election there is no way to tell for sure what will happen.

For those who were paying attention it was pretty clear what was happening...

Re: My Google job was tedious and pointless

#68

Post by jondubois »

ogre_magi wrote: post #12

I worked at Google in a more technical role but I sympathize with this guy. The culture was awful and empty. It was sugar-coated candies and colors and happy, happy, happy like it was meant for a kindergartener. The politics were thick and covered everything. Executives got on stage at a company meeting and cried about the election. It was a cult, and not in the good way that a startup can sometimes be, but in a stal…

I've worked for big tech corporations a few times before, no matter how much they pay, I can never stay there longer than 6 months. There is so much inefficiency. It's good for 6 months but after that I feel myself getting dumber by the day. Not all corporations are like this but most of them are.

Handing my resignation felt great every time. It's addictive in fact. Just seeing the disappointment in my boss' face and the jealousy in the eyes of my colleagues brings me profound life satisfaction.

Re: My Google job was tedious and pointless

#69

Post by jrs95 »

ianai wrote: post #17
ogre_magi wrote: post #12

I worked at Google in a more technical role but I sympathize with this guy. The culture was awful and empty. It was sugar-coated candies and colors and happy, happy, happy like it was meant for a kindergartener. The politics were thick and covered everything. Executives got on stage at a company meeting and cried about the election. It was a cult, and not in the good way that a startup can sometimes be, but in a stal…

Wait are you saying politics as in D/R covered everything or politics as in the usual workplace sense?

Probably both, if my experiences in this industry in the Midwest are any indicator of how things are at Google...

Re: My Google job was tedious and pointless

#70

Post by s73ver_ »

komali2 wrote: post #47

>Google HR uses the TextExpander program, which populates email templates with salutations, job description links and questions. All we have to do is press two keys (mine are semicolon followed by the letter “C”). There’s also space for fill-in-the-blanks: one for the candidate’s name (“Hey Mark”) and another at the end for the day of the week (“Enjoy your Thursday!”), so the message is personal. This step should hav…

Automated emails are pretty shit, and easy to spot. They also tend to turn off most people, making recruiting more difficult.
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