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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

#191

Post by humanrebar »

kaitai wrote: post #169
LMYahooTFY wrote: post #94

As 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 total…

> None of the employees in the article claimed they were miserable

Not in so many words, but many quit for cultural reasons and (at least perceived) retaliation. Others are engaged in lawsuits, presumably not out of pure joy.

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

#192

Post by ryanmercer »

jlokier wrote: post #99
ryanmercer wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm LDS (Mormon) and we have BYU which is well respected, there is a program called BYU-Pathway ( https://byupathway.lds.org ) where for the first year you drive to a local location and take some basic classes, that aren't accredited (so you can't get loans) but do convert to credit at BYU that I've been thinking about doing when the next round starts up here in a month or two, assuming there are enough local applica…

Those are tight circumstances, but you sound really well organized, with a good plan. The inability to get even a $1200 loan when you have a sensible plan, sucks. Since you are LDS, famed for church community... is that something your church, friends or family might help out with? In my experience, that's an amount friends lend each other if they've known each other a long time and can do it. Sometimes, with the unde…

>is that something your church, friends or family might help out with?

Yes, but I don't like asking for help. Worst case (hopefully they take card) I can put it on a card and then balance transfer to another card to buy some interest free time.

What chaps me is I fund a 529 (10-15$ a month over the past few years, figuring if I ever have kids I could transfer it to them) which would cover the first semester BUT since the first year isn't accredited... it's a non-qualified expense which means if I take the money to pay it I get hit with tax and penalty.

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

#193

Post by humanrebar »

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.

But half-credit for the summary of Demore's views. It was surprisingly even handed about that other than saying he thought women were per se neurotic.

Tonally, it is telling that some personalities had descriptions of their emotional states (from what source?) while others only had their actions and opinions described.

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

#194

Post by jvagner »

humanrebar wrote: post #182
Maximus9000 wrote: post #174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Microsoft is the oldest of them all. Microsoft had its own "teenage years" problems... maybe it has less problems these days because it's more mature?

The article mentioned participating with China in state surveillance and censorship.

Yes, but, they're not taking as much public heat for that as other companies, I would say.

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

#195

Post by humanrebar »

kaitai wrote: post #109

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 doe…

The only thing the article conspicuously omits is that the controversies were regularly hashed out on HN, Reddit, etc. A Martian reading the article might assume the controversy mostly stayed on Google internal platforms and right-wing corners of the internet. As you point out, that was clearly not the case.

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

#196

Post by humanrebar »

jvagner wrote: post #194
humanrebar wrote: post #182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The article mentioned participating with China in state surveillance and censorship.

Yes, but, they're not taking as much public heat for that as other companies, I would say.

True, if we're talking about PR problems and not just moral and ethical issues, Microsoft seems to be faring relatively well at the moment.

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

#197

Post by ryanmercer »

seren wrote: post #158
option_greek wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't understand why people are down voting you. Your post rings 100% true for a lot of folks out of silicon valley bubble.

My impression is that it is a bit not very self-aware > I find it extremely difficult to feel any sympathy for these folks because they have it much better than I do, and extremely better than millions of people in the United States and billions of people worldwide. If you are living in the US, and making 35k, you are in the top 1% income worldwide. So it is a world 1 percenter complaining about not being in the US 1…

>So it is a world 1 percenter complaining about not being in the US 1 percenter, and saying by extension, they do not care about people who have it better.

In my original comment I say:

>I find it extremely difficult to feel any sympathy for these folks because they have it much better than I do, and extremely better than millions of people in the United States and billions of people worldwide.

Much better than I, extremely better than billions worldwide implying I'm well aware I have it much better off than a notable percentage of the global population as 'extreme' is more drastic than 'much'.

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

#198

Post by weberc2 »

rmellow wrote: post #138
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…

Suffering is always relative and it's a slippery slope to dismiss as whining. By this logic, 99% of issues in the US are "whining" because other countries have it much worse. Anyone in Sierra Leone could claim to a US citizen: "Sugar lobbies are meddling with public school meals and making children diabetic? Lucky you, my country doesn't have public schools and children are starving". This of course doesn't invalidat…

I think critics of preferred pronouns would argue that there are virtually no Americans who have problems as trivial as the pronoun issue; that it’s a contrived problem. In other words, it’s not that suffering is relative—everyone agrees on that—the disagreement is about the ordering.

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

#199

Post by rmellow »

9q9 wrote: post #172
rmellow wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Suffering is always relative and it's a slippery slope to dismiss as whining. By this logic, 99% of issues in the US are "whining" because other countries have it much worse. Anyone in Sierra Leone could claim to a US citizen: "Sugar lobbies are meddling with public school meals and making children diabetic? Lucky you, my country doesn't have public schools and children are starving". This of course doesn't invalidat…

Talmudic question: what's the average fertility rate of the clientele worrying about misgendering, and how does that average relate to civilization progressing through time?

(please google Talmudic questions before downvoting parent - they're asking for consistency in my example and that's fair)

The utility of the example I gave depends on your moral values [1], which admittedly was crafted for the perceived majority of the HN crowd.

The example for me is a sign of respect for the freedom to be who you want to be, in contrast of imposing your morals on others. It's a sign of advancement to me that individuals feel comfortable with themselves, instead of wasting energy hiding trying to conform to an arbitrary standard. I spend less energy calling people how they like to be called than they would spend by being uncomfortable with themselves their whole lives. I won't get into the accounting of energy wasted, take my argument or leave it.

I'm sorry you're being downvoted without explanation - cold shoulders divide people even further.

[1] Moral values change according to time and place: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mores

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

#200

Post by dang »

terminalhealth wrote: post #187
dang wrote: post #179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This kind of flamebait is not ok on HN. We ban users who post like this, as well as the comment which you've since deleted. Please don't add any more of this kind of thing to HN. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Could you explain what exactly makes this flamebaiting? I find the lack of modesty in the West at times appalling, so I can empathize with cultures with strict levels of modesty. It is also quite clear that women tend to behave more childlike and are less willing to take on responsibility. So it's not oppression, but cultural adaptations to biological realities. That's all.

Gender and religion are two of the issues that people have the most painful history with and the most passionate feelings about. If you make pejorative general statements about those topics, you're certain to provoke others into quick and hostile replies. That's flamebaiting.

It sounds as though you believe you're simply describing facts, but that is bewilderingly far from true. To most readers here, saying things like "women tend to behave more childlike and are less willing to take on responsibility" is an extreme provocation. It's also a strangely limited and limiting statement, since we all know many people who would sooner make such a statement about men than about women.

You mentioned empathizing; my guess is that with a bit more empathizing, you wouldn't want to say such things any more. There's too much opportunity to hurt other people and start highly reactive, zero-communication arguments with them—especially on the internet, where the lack of any mitigating information (like tone of voice, gesture, or pre-existing relationship) guarantees that people will project into your words the worst and most monstrous interpretation they can bear, whether you meant them that way or not.

Would you mind taking a look at the site guidelines at https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html? I think you'll find that several of them apply to threads like this, especially this one: "Comments should get more thoughtful and substantive, not less, as a topic gets more divisive."

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