Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's endless and it doesn't get to the point.
What is the point?
That the company culture ain't what it used to be.
Three Years of Misery Inside Google, the Happiest Company in Tech
161–170 of 245 posts
Re: Three Years of Misery Inside Google, the Happiest Company in Tech
#162Earlier quoted context omitted.
To me, Google Maps/Earth seems to be one of the most advanced web apps in the world. Gmail and Translate are, indeed, not extremely exciting.
At the time Gmail was introduced, it's hard to overstate how groundbreaking and influential it was. Totally raised the bar for web apps everywhere by making effective use of XHR, which at that time was hardly known even to web developers. An absurdly large amount of storage space (1GB when Hotmail was 10MB, IIRC?), fast and effective search. There's a reason Google was the most loved and respected company in tech for…
But does it really take a coddled genius whose mind runs wild to develop a modern web app and give it lots of storage space? Or was it just a cool idea that a team of regular-old software developers decided to implement?
Re: Three Years of Misery Inside Google, the Happiest Company in Tech
#163My 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…
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…
My BigTechCo experience has mostly been people working a 9-5 shift, and politics doesn't play into it at all. There is a general desire to avoid conflict and not be an asshole, and maybe do some occasional good with spare cycles.
The vocal minority you refer to doesn't influence my day to day or month to month. You get people posting manifestos, and people whining about XYZ, but you only butt heads with them if you actively seek them out and want to get offended.
The idea that there are some kind of political commissars reprimanding me for "whitelisting" features for certain customers, or giving out demerits for using gendered pronouns in promo packets, is a paranoid fantasy.
Re: Three Years of Misery Inside Google, the Happiest Company in Tech
#164Earlier 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 also believing all crap that yellow press and country-level echo chambers produce and then to bring it at someone’s table.
While I completely disagree with a commentor who calls “not interested in politics” an euphemism, as if they were disgusting and uneducated, your set of scary factoids likely falls right into this category.
Re: Three Years of Misery Inside Google, the Happiest Company in Tech
#165My 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…
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…
>>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
In other words, you could end up having absolutely no conflicts about scenarios like these: https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/15/technology/myanmar-facebo...
Or maybe even end up patting yourself in the back at the end of the quarter for outperforming KPI (e.g. ISP marketshare increase) and get a nice bonus while you are at it.
The problem with your reasoning is that your actions at FAAMNG does not happen in a vacuum.
Re: Three Years of Misery Inside Google, the Happiest Company in Tech
#166My 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…
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…
At a certain size, corporate roadmaps and people management are inevitably political. Google modifying their search criteria to participate in China's market.. is political. Google's HR department working towards demographic goals.. is political (I'm not judging its political-ness, but it ended up being political, didn't it?).
Each of the major FAAMG companies has a political/dominance issue of some kind, one that comes to mind more immediately than all the political issues associated with those companies. Taking a swag at it:
* Facebook: privacy - exploitation (personal data exploitation)
* Amazon: automation
* Apple: privacy - enforced (withholding from gov't)
* Microsoft: [I'm not even sure, they're flying low.. perhaps monopolization, or government backdoors?]
* Google: politicization/curation
I would suggest that Google's the clearest "ideation" company here, where censorship/curation is the most core part of their business model (Facebook is social media, Google is a borg-like machine collection all of the Internet and then putting algorithms around access to it), and most prone to politicization crossing the internal/external cultural barrier. [edit:spelling]
Re: Three Years of Misery Inside Google, the Happiest Company in Tech
#167My 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…
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…
Indeed, reading this I have to wonder how some of the characters have time to do the jobs they were presumably hired for.
Re: Three Years of Misery Inside Google, the Happiest Company in Tech
#168My 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…
I'm not really getting your point. Is it: There are people who have it worst, so we need to stop trying to have it better? Because if so, that's a logical fallacy: https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Not_as_bad_as
Or are you saying that, this kind of article will not win us sympathy from the greater populace, and we should adopt a different strategy in that regard?
Or something else?
Re: Three Years of Misery Inside Google, the Happiest Company in Tech
#169As of now the most popular comments here seem to decry the notion that anyone making six figures could ever relay an experience of misery. This is utterly non-sensical. The article, to me, seems to imply that perhaps working at a radically free corporation doesn't yield pure bliss and benefit. Is there some reason this article needs to balance out any possible misery with all the luxurious amenities Googlers enjoy? D…
I have to say, I think the article has a very poor title. Most of the people discussed said they really liked working at Google, most of the time. They felt their jobs were interesting, did important work, and had impact.
The "misery" I think is talking about the company, not the employees per se. None of the employees in the article claimed they were miserable... and as you can see the simple word "misery" has totally allowed the conversation to bypass anything substantive about Google's policies and focus only on feeeeeelings that aren't even in the article.
I think someone could be miserable at Google. Humans have a remarkable capacity for misery in all sorts of circumstances!
Re: Three Years of Misery Inside Google, the Happiest Company in Tech
#170There's algae in the tube feeding the ice machine in my company's break room, multiple wet ceiling tiles all year long, signs telling us to literally not wipe our feces on the walls in the bathroom, shared desks with other shifts, a constant smell of mold and I make 35k a year, no chance of promotion at all without taking on tens of thousands of dollars of debt to get a 4-year degree in literally anything, at a rabid…
If it makes you feel any better, I work at Google, but have found toilets with pee all over the floor and toilet seat and much worse I'd rather not talk about. :-) Googlers are the first to admit we're spoiled. _Most_ of us are conscious of our privileges compared to other workers. But as others have pointed out that doesn't mean we should turn a blind eye to issues of sexism and lack of diversity, attitudes towards…
Actually that makes me feel worse. I've never fully understood that sort of bathroom etiquette, even when it happens in a public restroom at a public park (which is common). But, to hear it happens within Google makes me lose a little bit of hope that we will ever achieve a civil and courteous society.