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Google Internal Comics

goomics.net

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Re: Google Internal Comics

#211

Post by gonehome »

pydry wrote: post #208
gonehome wrote: post #206

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You should have some perspective. If your complaint is “what? Sushi again?!” then you should shut up (imo). That’s just a subset, others take an overly adversarial stance to drive attention to themselves as activists - rather than have in-good-faith discussions about stuff.

>If your complaint is “what? Sushi again?!” None of the cartoons were saying that though, were they? >You should have some perspective. Should my perspective expand to include straw men?

It was a direct quote from the article I linked: https://paygo.ghost.io/why-did-i-leave-google-or-why-did-i-s... - not a straw man I made up [0].

The 'You' wasn't you personally, but the general 'you' (similar to what you used in "you should... shut up?")

I'm sensing snark, but I'm genuinely not being snarky and I'm not really interested in fighting over this.

[0]: "After being acquired by Google, we had a “fun day” at the Google campus where we were shown around, wide eyed, to see the facilities. We had lunch in the cafeteria and while on line, a Googler ahead of us was overheard saying “What? Sushi again???” which became our inside joke around entitlement."

Re: Google Internal Comics

#213

Post by klipt »

galoisgirl wrote: post #189
klipt wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The comics suffer selection bias because "this thing is great" doesn't have as much humor potential as "this thing is broken". Talking about how awesome Google's main search page is? Not very funny. Making fun of Google's endless list of failed chat apps? Much funnier.

I find this funny: https://rodgersnotes.wordpress.com/2010/10/25/google-and-app...

I think that still counts as a "this thing is broken" joke though.

Re: Google Internal Comics

#214

Post by colinmhayes »

Xorlev wrote: post #209
colinmhayes wrote: post #198

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Drive/docs absolutely contributes to google selling ads since it brings you to their home site. I'll give you cloud and nest though.

How do you figure? There's no offramps from Drive or Docs into Search as far as I know. Are you saying that because they're subdomains, it somehow works to get you to ads? Docs and Drive want to sell you storage and collaboration capabilities. Not ads.

Any product that leads to people spending more time on the internet increases the number of ads google sells.

Re: Google Internal Comics

#215

Post by CRConrad »

pydry wrote: post #208
gonehome wrote: post #206

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You should have some perspective. If your complaint is “what? Sushi again?!” then you should shut up (imo). That’s just a subset, others take an overly adversarial stance to drive attention to themselves as activists - rather than have in-good-faith discussions about stuff.

>If your complaint is “what? Sushi again?!” None of the cartoons were saying that though, were they? >You should have some perspective. Should my perspective expand to include straw men?

In comic #6, from 2010-07-27 ( https://goomics.net/6/ ) two street demonstrations -- one of Google employees -- run into each other, and the following conversation takes place:

> Hi there. Why are you demonstrating?

> They're laying off one in four workers in the hospital. You?

> They're taking away our M&Ms from building 42's microkitchen.

> Wow, that's harsh.

So apparently the author of TFA didn't think a scenario like this was all that much of a strawman... Either.

Honestly, you're really bending over backwards in defense of privilege here. Why?

Re: Google Internal Comics

#216

Post by CRConrad »

whoisjuan wrote: post #55
bscphil wrote: post #13

I'm not saying this with the intent of harshly criticizing the author, but I admit it's surprising to me that someone (who had other options) would work for 14 years at a company they clearly came to believe was making the world a worse place.

Believe it or not, there’s people who just want to write code and get paid well. In fact I know more people like that, than those who are lofty about their goals. He hints that’s the way he feels in this comic: https://goomics.net/309/

Isn't what he hints at here actually more that even he does have a limit where "the price of his soul" will exceed his compensation, and the job won't be worth it any more?

(And squinting at the dotted continuations of the red and green lines, looks like he even estimated when that time would come pretty well. EDIT: But yeah, maybe not all that amazing, since it was only a year or so in advance.)

Re: Google Internal Comics

#217

Post by CRConrad »

pydry wrote: post #169
dasil003 wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you are good, the best thing you can do is go leave and go work for a company doing things a better way. If you are not good the best thing you can do is stay and incrementally dilute their talent pool. If you actually want to have more impact than that as an IC you could try your hand at internal activism, but I'd say you have a dramatically higher chance of damaging your career than creating any real change at a…

Internal activism has demonstrably achieved a noticeable amount in steering the company to act a bit more morally. As far as I can tell all of the people quitting have achieved precisely fuck all. Not a single example to the contrary I can think of. Not at a big tech company (at a startup maybe). Interestingly every time this topic crops up there's a chorus of "just quit if you feel that way about it" as if the exact…

> As far as I can tell all of the people quitting have achieved precisely fuck all. Not a single example to the contrary I can think of. Not at a big tech company (at a startup maybe).

The thesis being, AIUI, that then they weren't good enough. Because if they had been, the competitor they started after leaving would have buried their original employer.

Re: Google Internal Comics

#218

Post by KoftaBob »

29athrowaway wrote: post #35
bscphil wrote: post #13

I'm not saying this with the intent of harshly criticizing the author, but I admit it's surprising to me that someone (who had other options) would work for 14 years at a company they clearly came to believe was making the world a worse place.

If Google didn't exist, then Baidu, Tencent or Alibaba would be mining your data instead. Is that what you would prefer?

Baidu, Tencent, and Alibaba wouldn't exist in their current form without companies like Google and Amazon to take heavy inspiration/copy from.

Let's be real here, China's tech industry revolves around mimicking American/European/Japanese/Korean tech, they rarely ever innovate and create first of their kind things.

Re: Google Internal Comics

#219

Post by CRConrad »

gonehome wrote: post #122
tolbish wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There once was a day, long ago in the before time, when the leadership at Google was held to a higher ethical standard than Mark Zuckerberg.

They're in the same business - not sure why you'd expect them to have different incentives. Both are trying to do things at massive scale and dealing with the problems associated with that. I think both do things I don't agree with, but are generally unfairly vilified most of the time by their failing competition (the press mostly) and weirdly some of their employees. The sense I get from this is it's mostly politica…

Well, a large part of the difference in how they are treated is probably down to how Facebook didn't spend their first decade or so claiming to live by a motto like "Don't be evil".

Re: Google Internal Comics

#220

Post by pydry »

CRConrad wrote: post #215
pydry wrote: post #208

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>If your complaint is “what? Sushi again?!” None of the cartoons were saying that though, were they? >You should have some perspective. Should my perspective expand to include straw men?

In comic #6, from 2010-07-27 ( https://goomics.net/6/ ) two street demonstrations -- one of Google employees -- run into each other, and the following conversation takes place: > Hi there. Why are you demonstrating? > They're laying off one in four workers in the hospital. You? > They're taking away our M&Ms from building 42's microkitchen. > Wow, that's harsh. So apparently the author of TFA didn't think a scenario…

You inadvertently stumbled on precisely the point. TFA isnt exhibiting a sense of entitlement the OP complained he was. TFA is instead making fun of it.

OP thinks complaining about the company's terrible behavior and complaining about the lack of M&Ms are more or less the same thing and that if you are bothered about the former you should quietly quit coz hey, not everybody gets sushi twice a week.

I'm not defending privilege. I'm attacking the notion that you should STFU and fuck off when you see injustice because YOU personally happen to be comfortable.

To port it to another context, for instance, Oscar Schindler could have given up his privilege (he was quite privileged!), quit his job and begged on the street for scraps of food and many would have honestly argued that if he was that bothered by what he saw that he should have.

Should he though?

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