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Three Years of Misery Inside Google, the Happiest Company in Tech

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Re: Three Years of Misery Inside Google, the Happiest Company in Tech

#101

Post by notacoward »

throwaway77384 wrote: post #85
notacoward wrote: post #50

> To invent products like Gmail, Earth, and Translate, you need coddled geniuses free to let their minds run wild. That statement needs to be challenged. The Montessori method might be great at small scale in an educational context, but that doesn't mean it's a great way to run a company worth most of a trillion dollars. Yes, empowering employees is good. Yes, having a few "coddled geniuses" to drive basic science or…

That statement needs to be challenged. The Montessori method might be great at small scale in an educational context, but that doesn't mean it's a great way to run a company worth most of a trillion dollars. Yes, empowering employees is good. Yes, having a few "coddled geniuses" to drive basic science or radical innovation is good too. OTOH, having every single engineer haring off in random directions all the time mi…

Fair point. To clarify, I think of "coddled genius" as a good-to-have role, not a descriptor of a person. In fact, I think it's even better if multiple people rotate through that role. A permanent division between "people who play" and "people who work" (as I put it at one job) is bad for both groups, and for the product/company. The point I was making was that not everybody should be in that role, but I neglected to point out that it shouldn't be too limited either. Both the percentage of people in that role and the standards to which they are held (different than those in more traditional product-oriented roles) should be intentional, not the result of applying a universal culture or management style more appropriate to an elementary school than to a place of business.

Re: Three Years of Misery Inside Google, the Happiest Company in Tech

#103

Post by tropicalia »

joelx wrote: post #60
high_derivative wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My inside-FAAMNG experience has been that most employees seem to be not interested in the politics and are primarily focused on doing good work (people in their 20s), or on putting in their 8 hours and going home to their families (people >30 mostly, of course they also want to do good work, just have additional new priorities in a young family). Then there is a vocal minority who leverage that no individual's perfor…

I agree completely with this. Keep in mind that true evil is MBS ordering the murder of journalist Khasshogi. True evil is invading and conquering Crimea. True evil is murdering your generals with anti-aircraft guns or watching dogs tear them apart while still alive. Serving banner ads across sites does not even remotely compare.

true evil is...

This is a straw man argument. The critique made of Google is not that has come to embody "true evil". But that it has (by degrees) slouched towards moral ambivalence, and acquiescence of (yes) evil.

Serving banner ads across sites does not even remotely compare.

I think you are perfectly aware that Google is engaged in a lot more than simply the business of serving banner ads.

Re: Three Years of Misery Inside Google, the Happiest Company in Tech

#104

Post by techslave »

andrew_ wrote: post #80

It's disappointing that the author didn't take the opportunity to choose language that didn't provide a distinct slant to the article. An objective tone would have been totally achievable and this would've been marked as a fairly good summation of a rather tumultuous few years for the giant.

that’s not what wired is about. don’t be disappointed at the author.

Re: Three Years of Misery Inside Google, the Happiest Company in Tech

#105

Post by andonisus »

CoolGuySteve wrote: post #81
joelx wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree completely with this. Keep in mind that true evil is MBS ordering the murder of journalist Khasshogi. True evil is invading and conquering Crimea. True evil is murdering your generals with anti-aircraft guns or watching dogs tear them apart while still alive. Serving banner ads across sites does not even remotely compare.

Yes and no, some of the projects mentioned in the article, like Project Dragonfly, involved developing the kind of censorship tools necessary to prop up dictators like the ones you mentioned. That’s not whining imo, that’s standing up to exactly the breed of ‘True Evil’ you define here. We have seen this before in tech: Nazi Germany was probably IBM’s second largest customer at the time. There is a moral imperative t…

My opinion is that someone is going to be providing that service, so it might as well be me (better the devil you know than the devil you don't).

Re: Three Years of Misery Inside Google, the Happiest Company in Tech

#106

Post by jlokier »

chadlavi wrote: post #90
trevyn wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A smaller tech startup only pays better if you pick the right one and it has an exit. One appeal of the big names is exactly that — name recognition. It does a lot for the ego when everyone you meet knows that your employer provides free massages and a sushi bar for lunch.

Free massages and sushi bars don't pay rent! And I'm not talking about mythical exit money, I'm talking about cold hard biweekly salary. I make more money at a small startup than it seems I would make at Google, for example.

I think your situation is more unusual than you think.

Small startups vary a lot in what they pay, and in what they can afford to pay. Mostly it's lower than FAANG pay.

Re: Three Years of Misery Inside Google, the Happiest Company in Tech

#107

Post by shrikant »

cj wrote: post #79
joelx wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree completely with this. Keep in mind that true evil is MBS ordering the murder of journalist Khasshogi. True evil is invading and conquering Crimea. True evil is murdering your generals with anti-aircraft guns or watching dogs tear them apart while still alive. Serving banner ads across sites does not even remotely compare.

Did you just compare Google's advertising business to assassination, murder, and war crime?

He literally said they do not even compare.

Re: Three Years of Misery Inside Google, the Happiest Company in Tech

#108

Post by sidibe »

chadlavi wrote: post #89
ggambetta wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Google doesn't even pay well enough to treat people poorly. [...] Meanwhile a smaller tech startup will pay better [...] maybe even not work you 80+hours a week Having worked both at Google and at smaller tech startups, this is pretty much the opposite of reality. I wonder where are you getting these ideas from.

Is google just particularly dogged about salary negotiations, then? The numbers I've seen for someone new to the org don't impress me relative to the competitive baseline. Maybe you have to ask way higher, or you have to come in at a high level already?

Where do you see significantly better salaries? You might be ignoring the stock compensation which is basically like cash for an established stable company like Google

Re: Three Years of Misery Inside Google, the Happiest Company in Tech

#109

Post by kaitai »

Lots of folks here are complaining there's no TL;DR, and I find that many of the comments (including my previous comment here) are essentially irrelevant to the article & simply rehashing the same old things we always talk about on HN... getting to be like old married people here....

So here's my TL;DR, in an effort to refocus the conversation to what I think is interesting about the article.

* First, the article does not discuss personal misery at all, so if you're talking about rich people whining about their problems, notice you're in old-married-people conversation mode, having an irrelevant yet comfortable and reassuring conversation.

* The article is long and has a broad arc, contrasting "don't be evil" with 1) Google's steps and missteps in China, 2) Google's tensions with the US government, and 3) Google's controversies over sexual harassment payouts and the Damore memo (HN's favorite!).

1 & 2) The article alternates employee walkouts over the Trump travel ban (tension with US gov), the initial entry into the Chinese market (tension with the employees and the US gov), the exit from the Chinese market (Google employees in China sad, US employees joyful), the Maven project (working for US Dept of Def, trying to downplay it to employees), the political backlash for dropping Maven (US Gov: Google is evil & unpatriotic), and the Dragonfly project for bringing Google back to China (unpatriotic like I said right?).

* The geopolitical push and pull is discussed in terms of employee opinions and government opinions. The harassment and diversity issues are discussed in terms of employee opinions and media and internet opinions/doxxing/etc. The larger idea is to compare the internal and external forces pushing on Google and Alphabet's C-suite and examine where they're going.

So. Do you think the comparison of internal activism re: Dragonfly & Maven to internal activism re: the harassment payouts is warranted? To what extent should Google be following the lead of its employees, and how should it do that when employees disagree? Do capitalism and "not being evil" fundamentally conflict?

Re: Three Years of Misery Inside Google, the Happiest Company in Tech

#110

Post by CydeWeys »

segmondy wrote: post #32

My eyes are hurting from seeing these articles whining about their misery while collecting hundreds of thousands of dollars each year. Most companies have issues, and these issues are not "Company" issues but PEOPLE issues. Once you're large enough, you are going to have people with differing opinions, beliefs and values. These are going to clash. If you happen to be on the losing side and don't learn to accept it, y…

This is a really bad take.

It's not a valid argumentative tactic to dismiss legitimate concerns as "whining", especially since you haven't addressed the substance of the issue at all, and it's pure what-aboutism and crab mentality to suggest that because somewhere there exist people who have it worse, you shouldn't try to make things better.

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