An enormous thread on alleged Google Facebook collusion • Hacker News Board

Re: An enormous thread on alleged Google Facebook collusion

#301

Post by germandiago » Sat, Oct 23, 2021, 6:16 PM UTC

elgfare wrote: post #166

germandiago wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I did not go into details as to what Google misbehaviors were. But I wonder what "behaving poorly" is. There is legal and illegal stuff. Companies give jobs to people, not only Google. It is natural, yes, natural, logical, to want to pay less to people. It is also natural that people want to be paid more. A salary is never high enough for an employee. A salary is never low enough for an employer. I do not say this fr…

This whole explanation smells of "late capitalism". But even so, we have to judge companies ethically, because how else would new regulation be conceived of?

My point here (I got a rain of negatives, but I got used to, my opinions seem to be very particular) is that we need objetive law to judge.

But the fact of creating laws in large sectors of people's lives creates evil incentives and dependence on people who did not take part in creating wealth for others.

I just find it contradicting.

Re: An enormous thread on alleged Google Facebook collusion

#302

Post by kodah » Sat, Oct 23, 2021, 6:17 PM UTC

paulpauper wrote: post #274

true_religion wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wasn't that the beginning of the end of FAANG's reputation? Having your company put billions into the bank every year because they "don't know what to do with it" while you're not even a millionaire is disheartening. I mean, if they were still paying us all handsomely like stock brokers then I bet popular opinion would be on their side.

This is wrong, many employees rich with stock options and other compensation, plus large salaries

That's not the majority. It mainly applies to a privileged sector of tech from what I've seen.

Re: An enormous thread on alleged Google Facebook collusion

#303

Post by berkes » Sat, Oct 23, 2021, 6:23 PM UTC

smoldesu wrote: post #219

rStar wrote: post #3

if we had a functioning government, and if all the rich republicans in california weren’t pretending to be democrats, we wouldn’t have this problem.

We have a functioning government, it just so happens to hate us and let companies accrue trillions of dollars without social recompense.

Or, differently put: "In a democracy people get the leaders they deserve."

Re: An enormous thread on alleged Google Facebook collusion

#304

Post by dredmorbius » Sat, Oct 23, 2021, 6:24 PM UTC

mattowen_uk wrote: post #71

mikeytown2 wrote: post #2

Thread https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1451619916994396164.html

Thank you! Why DO people insist on posting essays as 1,001 tweets!? The mind boggles.

1. It's where the audience is.

2. Sometimes ... tootstorms just happen.

3. It is ... remarkably like posting a public Zettelkasten. In particular, there are often responses to specific items on a thread and those themselves can prove revealing.

A huge issue with traditional "single entity" documents (books, essays, even longish HN comments as I'm wont to produce...) is that responses tend to be either to the thing-as-a-whole or some irrelevant point. One of the hardest things to get as an author is specific feedback to a given passage of writing, and for all its many, many faults, the tootstream format cracks open that shell.

That feedback may highlight well-written bits, poorly-written ones (where readers repeatedly misinterpret authors' intent), salient or poorly-supported facts and logic, etc.

My usual platform for this is Mastodon, and I've posted a number of longer tootstorms (using the Mastodon nomenclature rather than "tweets"), searchable via hashtag from my present and previous instance homes at

https://mastodon.cloud/@dredmorbius/tagged/tootstorm

I thought there were a few here as well though they're not appearing:

https://toot.cat/@dredmorbius/tagged/tootstorm

Re: An enormous thread on alleged Google Facebook collusion

#305

Post by true_religion » Sat, Oct 23, 2021, 6:29 PM UTC

bluedevilzn wrote: post #240

true_religion wrote: post #178

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Faang salaries are pretty good when you are starting out, but they level of pretty quickly. After say twenty years, my friends on Wall Street are mysteriously richer than I am. Of course the ones who didn’t survive the early treadmill aren’t included, but I guess that’s the trade off. Engineering is fairly stable and well paying, but you don’t get million dollar payouts unless you are a founder.

If you worked at FAANG and survived the treadmill for 20 years, you should be a Principal Engineer/Engineering Director at least. L8 compensation starts at a million dollars per year.

I’m not really a big fan of total compensation numbers when it comes heavily weighted into stock.

After all, if I wanted to be paid for stock performance I would’ve been a stockbroker (and like I pointed out up there, gotten paid way more after 20 year survivorship).

Also, I didn’t think it needed to be said but apart from Apple all the FAANG companies are really young, Google is only 23 years old. Back in 2001, they had less than 500 employees. I’m not one of the golden era. If I were, you’d already know my name and I of course would be a multimillionaire.

Re: An enormous thread on alleged Google Facebook collusion

#306

Post by lovecg » Sat, Oct 23, 2021, 6:30 PM UTC

rileymat2 wrote: post #291

syngrog66 wrote: post #279

Earlier quoted context omitted.

US intel community assessed that Wikileaks was a thin front/wrapper for Russian intelligence operations intended to harm the US and allies. A kind of "launderer" at best for docs that Russian hackers or agents would steal or forge. Assange was the key guy behind Wikileaks. Therefore, Assange is... neither credible or honorable.

“steal or forge” There is a huge difference between those two. Would be interesting to know how much was “forged.” At one point I thought they tried to vet the dumps pretty well to maintain credibility.

Even assuming it’s 100% legit documents. In an environment where all parties do bad things, but country A selectively exposes parts of country B’s dirty laundry in a way that would benefit country A and uses Wikileaks as the tool to achieve that - well it’s hard to see Wikileaks as this neutral party that does unequivocal good for the world. I’ll change my mind when Wikileaks publishes oh I don’t know, details on Putin’s palace maybe.

Re: An enormous thread on alleged Google Facebook collusion

#307

Post by bandyaboot » Sat, Oct 23, 2021, 6:36 PM UTC

germandiago wrote: post #145

TaylorAlexander wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah I don’t think people understand the extent to which public relations influences our beliefs. Google was able to maintain a polished image in well known areas while silently behaving poorly in others and we believed it for a long time. I remember about ten years ago meetings Eric Schmidt had with US military generals. That didn’t even register on mass media so most people probably never heard of it. I wonder how…

I did not go into details as to what Google misbehaviors were. But I wonder what "behaving poorly" is. There is legal and illegal stuff. Companies give jobs to people, not only Google. It is natural, yes, natural, logical, to want to pay less to people. It is also natural that people want to be paid more. A salary is never high enough for an employee. A salary is never low enough for an employer. I do not say this fr…

From the very beginning Google’s public ethos was “don’t be evil”, not “don’t break the law”. They essentially asked for their behavior to be judged subjectively.

Re: An enormous thread on alleged Google Facebook collusion

#308

Post by lovecg » Sat, Oct 23, 2021, 6:36 PM UTC

paulpauper wrote: post #274

true_religion wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wasn't that the beginning of the end of FAANG's reputation? Having your company put billions into the bank every year because they "don't know what to do with it" while you're not even a millionaire is disheartening. I mean, if they were still paying us all handsomely like stock brokers then I bet popular opinion would be on their side.

This is wrong, many employees rich with stock options and other compensation, plus large salaries

Funny how the salaries suddenly exploded after this collusion scheme was brought to light.

Re: An enormous thread on alleged Google Facebook collusion

#309

Post by rajup » Sat, Oct 23, 2021, 6:38 PM UTC

dls2016 wrote: post #268

heavyset_go wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Google from 12 to 16 years ago was found guilty[1] in an antitrust suit of colluding with other industry leaders to keep tech employee compensation artificially low. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-Tech_Employee_Antitrust_L...

Also they were giving employees haircuts. Having been in the military and watched enough documentaries on the subject… any group that gives you a haircut is probably a cult.

This is false: they have vendors come onsite to give haircuts, but employees still pay for it. Had to point this out, since you jump from one false statement to a completely absurd conclusion.

Re: An enormous thread on alleged Google Facebook collusion

#310

Post by dredmorbius » Sat, Oct 23, 2021, 6:38 PM UTC

paulpauper wrote: post #272

scarmig wrote: post #213

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you work for Google as a SWE for a decade and aren't well over a million in net assets, you're doing something wrong.

a decade...how many ppl work at google for so long?

Note that longevity statistics are also affected by growth.

A high-growth company will, by definition, be a short-tenure company. Ironically, it's at shrinking companies that relative tenures often increase, especially as those who cannot (or feel they cannot) compete elsewhere remain.

For a company increasing headcount by 35%/yr, half of all employees will have been hired within the past two years, even with no attrition.

Statistics under conditions of rapid change are ... counterintuitive. And you'd probably want measures that better indicate length against hire date, or at departure date, or similar factors. In some ways this is similar to the challenge of identifying disease mortality during early phases of emergence as not all cases will have reached conclusion and identification of all infections or instances is likely to be incomplete.

Not that I can think of any phenomena where this might be exhibited in the past few years....