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My Google job was tedious and pointless

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Re: My Google job was tedious and pointless

#321

Post by dragonwriter »

belorn wrote: post #315
dragonwriter wrote: post #313

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I don't think that stuff has any place at work. Companies are often intensely political; artificially pretending neutrality internally while actively working externally to influence the political landscape to me is more bizarre than being open about politics in the office. If a corporation actually is solidly neutral and inactive politically in it's external actions, then, sure, the internal environment should refl…

If we accept that, should we not also accept religious views in the internal environment? Many religions view unbelievers in a very negative way, and active missionary behavior inside a company would feel very oppressive to those who don't share the same religion as the one being promoted. Personally I would not work at a place which did so, and would consider reporting it to the anti-discrimination department in my…

> If we accept that, should we not also accept religious views in the internal environment?

We (in the US), rather emphatically, do.

(There are some protections against religious discrimination in employment that apply to most employers, but those protections do not extend to prohibiting employers from all internal expression of religious views, or even substantive policy based on religious views. And, in fact, writing additional affirmative protection for employers’ internal expressiom of religious views, even to the extent of making that a basis for exempting them from generally-applicable legal requirements, is a popular trend in the US right now.)

Re: My Google job was tedious and pointless

#322

Post by wils1245 »

Balgair wrote: post #250
wils1245 wrote: post #242

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Um, many employers care very much. This pattern of job hopping is a red flag at many firms.

Man, I wish that were true! I'd love to sit in one place for 2 years. I can't seem to find a job that will last more than 18 months. Some will, but the pay is stagnant and there are no promotions. You must job hop. As one anecdata point, employers all seem to know that diagonal promotions are the standard now and they don't fault you at all. If they did, well then they gave me a red flag, if anything.

It's a good point. The reasoning behind the moves matter. There's a huge difference between switching jobs because a better opportunity is available, and switching jobs frequently for lateral moves.

It would probably be more accurate to say that it's a yellow flag, requiring a bit of explanation but not necessarily a bad thing. I find the pattern of switching every 6 months for (presumably) ~10 years to be pretty extreme and difficult to explain, though. Not to mention exhausting! How many job interviews must that have taken?

Re: My Google job was tedious and pointless

#323

Post by datburg »

khedoros1 wrote: post #297
jondubois wrote: post #192

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I'm a little over 30, and the shortest I've stayed somewhere is a little over two years (and counting...) I can't imagine wanting to leave just 6 months after starting somewhere.

I am an MD graduate and from studies in top notch databases I am waiting for a systemic review to show that my fears are true. Healthcare staff from the president to the hard working orderly, they are doing nothing for nosocomial or hospital associated infections. The ER becomes the reason for an admission. An athlete with a concussion does not need to be left lucid because of the diverse nurses are on smoke break 12. Then by force the medical student learned it from the class before. Do the minimal because you are not responsible as a pupil. The boards book after all will be the reason for the coming plastics beach life. Nobody has time to check hygiene or naps. More? The ICU. They changed the waiting room for rich with no idea about fake double blind studies. Guarantee in intensive care, bugs resistant to every antibiotic. I want to fix a block at least.

Re: My Google job was tedious and pointless

#324

Post by johan_larson »

Asooka wrote: post #284
johan_larson wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If the recruiter is given specific hiring criteria that are hard but not impossible to satisfy, I could imagine looking for people who fit those requirements and persuading them to sign up would be a satisfying job of search, selection and salesmanship. But that's not what these Google recruiters are doing. They are trying to find any vaguely qualified people they can who are willing to dive head-first into the meat-…

Sounds like these recruiters could be replaced by a simple google search...

It's kind of weird they need recruiters at all. There is no more famous tech company than Google. You'd think they would get enough applicants just through their main website.

Re: My Google job was tedious and pointless

#325

Post by jondubois »

kamaal wrote: post #316
notyourwork wrote: post #229

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I feel that 6 months isn't enough time to conclude much. Also, I don't see how you are able to mature your technical skillset in 6 months because a large portion of maturation in software design is reflecting back on how your deliverable performs in future. If I ship a product this year, next year I can reflect back on how the requirements change, how I didn't anticipate a customer use case and learn from this for fu…

Its a huge red flag. Job Hopping every six months translates to 'cant be trusted with any serious work'. In India its more or less a given, that your resume won't even make it past the screening stage.

But if the prospective employer saw the kinds of companies I worked for and heard their reviews, they'd be silly not to try to hire me (especially in the current market). Some companies might think it is a red flag but I wouldn't want to work for such a silly companies anyway - These often don't do very well because they prioritise things like employee discipline over raw performance.

When you job hop a lot, you become very adaptable. I can start contributing high quality code after the first week. I can internalise the coding conventions and all the nuances of the code base straight away because I've seen it all and I understand the different team mindsets and dynamics really well.

Re: My Google job was tedious and pointless

#326

Post by jondubois »

mnm1 wrote: post #290
nejenendn wrote: post #266

Earlier quoted context omitted.

18 months is a lot different than 6 months. You can’t even ramp up fully on a codebase in 6 months, arguably.

Having worked at over a dozen places in my career, I've never encountered a code base that takes longer than three months to master let alone ramp up on. This includes shitty code, overly complex code, and well written code. I'd say the challenge is staying interested and challenged after three months.

The more you change projects, the faster you are able to ramp up to new code bases. It takes me 1 or 2 week to understand the code base well enough so that I can start contributing - This is pretty standard for many contractors like me. Adapting to unfamiliar code bases is a skill on its own.

You don't need to master the whole code base in order to make high quality contributions but you need to be aware of what you don't know and focus your efforts on the parts that you understand really well while learning more about the parts that you don't understand. You can learn as you go throughout for the first 3 months.

If you're already familiar with the framework that the company is using, that's already a big step. Peer review can help as well.

Most good companies have similar coding styles and follow similar practices but they might have different requirements when it comes to testing, security, scalability, Agile/Scrum, etc...

Re: My Google job was tedious and pointless

#327

Post by DarronWyke »

komali2 wrote: post #141
DarronWyke wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yep. Any time I see a recruiter try to automate initial contact using a tool like Jobdiva or some such, it's an instant disqualification. Most of the time it's just plain shotgunned out and I never hear anything beyond the initial email. I had one recruiter, after doing that, call me and inquire -- I told him no, and explained to him that I don't do business with those who willingly use spamming tools.

I get why it's frustrating, but one way or the other the job has to get filled. When I was a recruiter I'd blast out emails as well, but only to candidates I actually thought were qualified. Knowing that of 20 people the recruiter knows that are a good fit, only 2 might be available, what would your preferred method be of them going about their job?

Don't use a blast. It lacks the personalization. If it looks like a form letter, I assume you did keyword matching (which is the case 90+% of the time) and you're just playing a recruiter game of Glengarry Glen Ross.

Be upfront and honest is another one. I see lots of recruiters try and be sneaky and play phishing games. There's a reason why my current employer isn't listed by name on my resume. Plenty of times recruiters have contacted me, promising a job, but it's only to grill me about my current position to find other people there they can hit up, or contacts within HR, etc. Or it's just a plain ol' resume-sending event and they want nothing more than me to bulk up their database.

With that upfront and honesty in place, be willing to provide key information to the candidate upon initial contact -- it'll save you and them a lot of time. I want, as a minimum (and usually no more), the client, the location (may need specifics depending upon the city, for example "Dallas" isn't very descriptive as Dallas is huge), and the employment type/term.

Re: My Google job was tedious and pointless

#328

Post by untog »

baumy wrote: post #277
untog wrote: post #177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

“Donald J. Trump is calling for a total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States until our country's representatives can figure out what the hell is going on.” https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/post-politics/wp/2015/12... Trump's threats were far from contained to illegal immigrants.

> Otherwise, please cite a video/audio source of him actually saying he wants to kick out all the legal immigrants. I am no Trump fan, but you have failed to do this. Temporarily (or indefinitely) curbing a specific subset of legal immigration is not equivalent to deporting people already in the country.

The OP edited their post to add that line after I replied, so I wasn't actually responding to it.

> Temporarily (or indefinitely) curbing a specific subset of legal immigration is not equivalent to deporting people already in the country.

Is it really that different? If a legally immigrated muslim left the country they would not be allowed back in again. Call me old fashioned, but I feel like a legal immigrant should be allowed to travel.

Re: My Google job was tedious and pointless

#330

Post by Balgair »

wils1245 wrote: post #322
Balgair wrote: post #250

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Man, I wish that were true! I'd love to sit in one place for 2 years. I can't seem to find a job that will last more than 18 months. Some will, but the pay is stagnant and there are no promotions. You must job hop. As one anecdata point, employers all seem to know that diagonal promotions are the standard now and they don't fault you at all. If they did, well then they gave me a red flag, if anything.

It's a good point. The reasoning behind the moves matter. There's a huge difference between switching jobs because a better opportunity is available, and switching jobs frequently for lateral moves. It would probably be more accurate to say that it's a yellow flag, requiring a bit of explanation but not necessarily a bad thing. I find the pattern of switching every 6 months for (presumably) ~10 years to be pretty ext…

> Exhausting

No kidding! Here I am complaining about 18-24 month moves and the OP was moving in 1/3rd to 1/4th of the time. Whatever uppers he's taking can't be good for you. Either that or he has the best spouse in history.

Still, honestly, it's a yellow flag. If the guy is good, 6 months may be just fine. But it's a cautious interview I'd think.

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