My Google job was tedious and pointless • Hacker News Board

Re: My Google job was tedious and pointless

#201

Post by trgv » Tue, Oct 17, 2017, 6:31 PM UTC

hsod wrote: post #105

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 noticed a TON of conversation on HN lately about how emotional/hysterical anti-Trump people are. Aside from the obvious fallacy (being emotional doesn't make you wrong), I think it's part of the anti-anti-Trump phenomenon: most people can't bring themselves to actually defend Trump but they are so annoyed by liberals that they devote their political energy to mocking and minimizing his critics. My take: bad thin…

It's not always "anti-anti-Trump."

I'm anti-Trump but I'm also anti-politics-at-work. There's no contradiction there.

Re: My Google job was tedious and pointless

#202

Post by steve_musk » Tue, Oct 17, 2017, 6:31 PM UTC

weberc2 wrote: post #143

steve_musk wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe for you, but for a large portion of America it was definitely like waking up in a new world. Its easy to call people overly emotional when you aren't living in a world where the President of the United States was elected by stoking the hate and fear that a large portion of your fellow citizens have against your race/religion/culture/etc...

I'll be the first to celebrate when Trump leaves office, but all of this "he ran on hate/etc" is at best dramatically overstated and at worst completely fraudulent. There's lots of valid criticism for Trump and his supporters; no need to make things up.

No one is making anything up. No, Trump does not come out and say that he hates Muslims, Blacks, etc. But you are either not paying attention or purposefully remaining ignorant if you believe that Trump does not exploit the racism and hate that a large portion of Americans have.

Re: My Google job was tedious and pointless

#203

Post by fixermark » Tue, Oct 17, 2017, 6:31 PM UTC

bmomb wrote: post #152

cc81 wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What is the root of the problem?

A fair distribution of resources and opportunities. I believe that if we do not address this problems soon enough we will be (soon) living in a cyberpunk dystopia.

How would one decide what a fair distribution of resources and opportunities looks like, if not via bickering about politics?

Re: My Google job was tedious and pointless

#204

Post by wheaties » Tue, Oct 17, 2017, 6:33 PM UTC

bkeroack wrote: post #117

cromwellian wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Google has lots of polite disagreement internally, just look at Steve Yegge's memos.

Counter-example: Michael Church (who was also aggressively banned from HN, not coincidentally)

One uses sock puppet accounts and has been banned from Wikipedia, the other does not...

Re: My Google job was tedious and pointless

#205

Post by s73ver_ » Tue, Oct 17, 2017, 6:34 PM UTC

jrs95 wrote: post #72

s73ver_ wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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".

I didn't realize Google employed illegal immigrants.

Trump campaigned on far more that illegal immigrants. Muslims and LGBT people were also targets of his.

Re: My Google job was tedious and pointless

#206

Post by majewsky » Tue, Oct 17, 2017, 6:35 PM UTC

jondubois wrote: post #192

nejenendn wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Jealous after bailing after six months? Are you sure it’s not pity? How many times have you quit in a row?

I'm almost 30, the longest company I worked for was almost 2 years; it was a startup and they're doing very well now - I would have stayed even longer but I wanted to move to Europe. Other than that I never stayed longer than 6 months at a company and I'm really glad because most of these companies were stagnant or failed. I've quit my job probably about 10 times now. Employers don't care at all how often you change…

Is your username your real name? Just asking for your future employer.

Re: My Google job was tedious and pointless

#207

Post by alexasmyths » Tue, Oct 17, 2017, 6:35 PM UTC

nradov wrote: post #74

snorkel wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I don't work at Google, but code refactoring is critically important in the real world. It's not intern work.

Re-factoring is probably 80% of the job.

New projects are rare, so very few are writing a lot of code from scratch.

Re: My Google job was tedious and pointless

#208

Post by [deleted] » Tue, Oct 17, 2017, 6:36 PM UTC

jondubois wrote: post #192

nejenendn wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Jealous after bailing after six months? Are you sure it’s not pity? How many times have you quit in a row?

I'm almost 30, the longest company I worked for was almost 2 years; it was a startup and they're doing very well now - I would have stayed even longer but I wanted to move to Europe. Other than that I never stayed longer than 6 months at a company and I'm really glad because most of these companies were stagnant or failed. I've quit my job probably about 10 times now. Employers don't care at all how often you change…

[deleted]

Re: My Google job was tedious and pointless

#209

Post by s73ver_ » Tue, Oct 17, 2017, 6:36 PM UTC

fav_collector wrote: post #132

s73ver_ wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This narrative that only engineers deserve to have interesting and fulfilling jobs needs to end. It's nothing but elitism, and adding the "#firstworldproblems" doesn't do anything to help your cause.

I read the OP post as "not everyone deserves an interesting and fulfilling job" rather than "only engineers deserve an interesting job"

Me too, but they definitely skewed toward "those that deserve an interesting and fulfilling job are engineers".

Re: My Google job was tedious and pointless

#210

Post by alex_hitchins » Tue, Oct 17, 2017, 6:37 PM UTC

cromwellian wrote: post #63

alex_hitchins wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Agreed, my comment was intended to reflect your statement exactly. It's the fact someone so abhorrent with no respect for anything other than himself is in charge.