Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Google cancels TGIF weekly all-hands meetings

cnbc.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

421–430 of 600 posts

Re: Google cancels TGIF weekly all-hands meetings

#421

Post by kaycebasques »

notadoc wrote: post #51
_8j50 wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Imagine if wikipedia courted specific types of activists. People should take sides but companies should be neutral,and get out of the way of people engaging in political discourse or activism.

Wikipedia is far from neutral and full of activists and people with agendas. It can sometimes be acceptable for a broad overview of a subject, but it's so full of opinion, inaccuracy, and misinformation that it should have near zero credibility for anyone who is seeking truth and bias-free knowledge. Appropriately, it has zero credibility in any credible academic environment BTW.

> The journal Nature says the open-access encyclopedia is about as accurate as the old standby.

https://www.cnet.com/news/study-wikipedia-as-accurate-as-bri...

Re: Google cancels TGIF weekly all-hands meetings

#422

Post by buzzkillington »

rainyMammoth wrote: post #328
hgytr wrote: post #305

First. Thanks to HN for not demanding phone numbers: anonymity allows to say things that cannot be said. Second. Many googlers read HN. In some sense, HN is the extension of the internal forums. CNBC made a good summary and I can comment on each bullet point. Larry and Brin probably stopped attending because nothing important is said on TGIFs. More people -> more leaks -> less interesting information -> less attenden…

> Don't get me wrong. Google is still the best workplace with top notch pay, but as it's got big, it's also morphed into a typical big corporation with typical corporate politics. Sorry but I cannot stand that level of internal koolaid. I guess you also think that Google got the "smartest" people? There are literally thousands of companies working on problems way more interesting and with more stakes and upsides for…

> It is maybe the best place to work if you have no sense of ethics, want to take it easy, work 9 to 5 and maximize your money.

Hey, that's me to a t. Google is not actually that great for that. The pay is average and they make too much of a song and dance about helping people, even if you're working on ML used to ferret out dissidents in China.

The good companies for 9 to 5 casual evil are small >50 man shops which require security clearance to work at.

Re: Google cancels TGIF weekly all-hands meetings

#423

Post by somatic »

buzzkillington wrote: post #422
rainyMammoth wrote: post #328

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Don't get me wrong. Google is still the best workplace with top notch pay, but as it's got big, it's also morphed into a typical big corporation with typical corporate politics. Sorry but I cannot stand that level of internal koolaid. I guess you also think that Google got the "smartest" people? There are literally thousands of companies working on problems way more interesting and with more stakes and upsides for…

> It is maybe the best place to work if you have no sense of ethics, want to take it easy, work 9 to 5 and maximize your money. Hey, that's me to a t. Google is not actually that great for that. The pay is average and they make too much of a song and dance about helping people, even if you're working on ML used to ferret out dissidents in China. The good companies for 9 to 5 casual evil are small >50 man shops which…

>The good companies for 9 to 5 casual evil are small >50 man shops which require security clearance to work at.

Where do I sign up?

(Edit: this is a serious question.)

(Second edit: Mencius.)

Re: Google cancels TGIF weekly all-hands meetings

#425

Post by JDiculous »

OneMoreGoogler wrote: post #367
hgytr wrote: post #346

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you know names of those better workplaces, I'm all ears.

Over 16 years I've worked at only four companies, but one of them was Google, and it was honestly my least favorite. Creature comforts: I have an actual cubicle with >2x the space. Excellent meals are still provided, but now lines are Engineering culture: No more promo or perf review nonsense. There's none of the internal competition / pressure that I felt every day at Google. The org and leadership has vastly less c…

Always interesting to hear these counterpoints. I've never worked at Google, but reading internet comments and such you get the impression that most people consider it some ideal workplace (though to be fair, many people selling you this fantasy are also trying to sell you their Google interview prep courses). Yet when I meet Googlers/ex-Googlers in real life, I never got that same impression. Seems like any other corporate job (I'm personally pretty jaded from corporate), just more prestige and maybe more pay. Also it seems like one's experience will vary drastically depending on what team they get placed on (eg. Google X vs. some internal tool).

Re: Google cancels TGIF weekly all-hands meetings

#426

Post by sneak »

jtolmar wrote: post #261
drewg123 wrote: post #107

As an Xoogler (left in 2015) I find that news highly disappointing. I think that without honest, regular Q&A at events like TGIF, the company will become more and more out of touch. When I was there, TGIF was watered down, but we still asked uncomfortable questions of management. I remember asking a question of Sundar when he was head of Android when the Nexus 6 came out questioning our chasing Apple into the high en…

Having left more recently (mid 2019) - TGIF had been increasingly sporadically scheduled from 2016 onwards, to the point that many of us had thought it was cancelled a few times between then and now. In my local office, snacks got rescheduled and shuffled around to be further away from where the live stream happened and sometimes start at the same time as the broadcast. The writing was on the wall for a long time. A…

I get the impression (as a total outsider) that Google went from being a cohesive "us" that had clear inside/outside communication, to a collection of disparate groups (code monkeys/execs, for lack of a better term, as well as others) that do not feel aligned/allegiance to each other. Is that in any way accurate? That the internal unity got balkanized (primarily by senior management)?

Re: Google cancels TGIF weekly all-hands meetings

#427

Post by buzzkillington »

somatic wrote: post #423
buzzkillington wrote: post #422

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It is maybe the best place to work if you have no sense of ethics, want to take it easy, work 9 to 5 and maximize your money. Hey, that's me to a t. Google is not actually that great for that. The pay is average and they make too much of a song and dance about helping people, even if you're working on ML used to ferret out dissidents in China. The good companies for 9 to 5 casual evil are small >50 man shops which…

>The good companies for 9 to 5 casual evil are small >50 man shops which require security clearance to work at. Where do I sign up? (Edit: this is a serious question.) (Second edit: Mencius.)

You need to know a guy, I met mine when I was running a 3d printing course for an astronomy group of all things.

Re: Google cancels TGIF weekly all-hands meetings

#428

Post by 1986 »

trynewideas wrote: post #354
geodel wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Advertising agencies are lot smaller than 100K employees. Also if there are very big agencies they are distributed and individual country/city offices are responsible for clients. Beyond corporate functions there are no business "best practices" to be enforced by headquarters.

WPP alone is 130k. There are a few at that scale, just like the vast, vast majority of tech companies aren't Google's scale.

WPP is a holding company for a number of smaller agencies - having previously worked for a holding company-owned agency (holding companies dominate the advertising agency space), no one considers themselves e.g. a WPP employee, and culture is very much set at the individual agency level.

Re: Google cancels TGIF weekly all-hands meetings

#429

Post by somatic »

buzzkillington wrote: post #427
somatic wrote: post #423

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>The good companies for 9 to 5 casual evil are small >50 man shops which require security clearance to work at. Where do I sign up? (Edit: this is a serious question.) (Second edit: Mencius.)

You need to know a guy, I met mine when I was running a 3d printing course for an astronomy group of all things.

I'll be on the lookout, but quite frankly I despair. I've always wanted to be in a spooky line of work. Oh well.

Re: Google cancels TGIF weekly all-hands meetings

#430

Post by fooker »

darkwizard42 wrote: post #393
fooker wrote: post #202

RIP I'm one of those people who go work at Google once every few years. The transformation of culture from about 2013 onwards has been somewhat sad to experience. Interestingly, most people who have been continuously employed there have not felt the very slight gradient. However, the changes in culture, freedom, food quality, etc are fairly obvious when one returns after ..say.. 18 months. Here are some semi-concrete…

which doors you are allowed to enter from is a security protocol... badging in for meals is for IRS tax purposes... The two things you facepalmed are absolutely easily explainable.

Yes, all of this is explainable. So is cancelling TGIF. Was that your main takeaway here?
Post reply on HN