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I worked at Google for -10 days

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Re: I worked at Google for -10 days

#131

Post by [deleted] »

TheRealPomax wrote: post #107
no-2-wk-notice wrote: post #23

This is why I suggest not giving two weeks notice when leaving a job for another. Instead send a resignation email the morning you start at the new company. This seems fair and reasonable given that companies are willing to pull offers.

Why would it be fair and reasonable to the company that didn't pull the offer? Seems pretty bizarre to justify being a jerk to someone yourself because a completely unrelated party is a jerk to you (or, in your scenario, you don't even know whether they'll be a jerk to you, making it even weirder). All you're doing is making it impossible for your own company to start the process of spreading the loss of an FTE, and…

[deleted]

Re: I worked at Google for -10 days

#133

Post by nailer »

I ended up in London (moving from Melbourne Australia) after a similar (but not quite the same) situation with Facebook in 2008.

At the time, I worked for IBM's dedicated Linux division, and before then had worked for Red Hat. Facebook wanted an SRE, and I had 10 interviews between Melbourne and Palo Alto all about SRE topics - Linux, iptables, sockets, systemtap, VLANs, DNS, python, etc. They were tough questions which I loved, and I tried my best to answer, always getting to the next round. Interviews were often at unsociable hours but I didn't mind.

The final stage was to leave Australia, travel to London, and "meet the SRE team and start work". This was a cursory check to make sure I was a good fit, but they were already ordering a machine - did I want Mac or PC? - and a big monitor.

The "meet the team" interview with the other "SREs" consisted of"

- Why don't you have a CS degree (I have a business degree obtained in my teens)

- We mainly fix badly written PHP? Do you code PHP?

- Here's some maths, convert it to code (I didn't know what a particular symbol meant)

Literally nothing SRE related, and nothing like the Palo Alto folk (which were actually much harder interviews) were looking for.

I ended up in London in September 2008 with no job and no life in Australia to go home to. I ended up making it and I hope this person does too.

Re: I worked at Google for -10 days

#135

Post by 0xDEF »

It is interesting how much Google's reputation has been damaged by how they did layoffs despite being one of the best paying and highest ranked workplaces in the world. So much multi-year effort ruined in a few months.

Re: I worked at Google for -10 days

#136

Post by mschuster91 »

ajcp wrote: post #112
onion2k wrote: post #10

Having an offer rescinded for 'business reasons' is unbelievably annoying, and the author has my sympathy. That said, it's kind of understandable too. Things happen. The landscape changes. Some people will be affected. You kind of have to roll with it sometimes. I wish the author the best of luck finding something else quickly. What I find truly incredible though is that it took a full year to go from application to…

I'm always astonished at the incredibly slow, inefficient, and bureaucratic hiring processes of what are held to be the most capable companies in the world. I imagine it's also incredibly expensive and -from what I've read- doesn't seem cut down on the cases of false positives it's supposedly there to prevent. I wonder why these companies don't try and emulate something like what a military does: take in the willing…

> I wonder why these companies don't try and emulate something like what a military does: take in the willing and motivated, give them all the basic skills valued by the organization, asses their existing capabilities, and then place them where needed after more targeted training.

This was how many German giants operated. You got in with 16 as a trainee/apprentice and rose up the ranks.

The problem is, employers risk taking up duds with that, and paying the fees for the dual-education schools ("Berufsschule") and exams isn't cheap either, so they went for requiring university degrees as a proxy instead. Bonus effects for employers:

- the government picked up the tab on running the university, which means that employers can save on that as well and only provide new hires organization-specific knowledge

- you can't be a complete moron if you managed an academic degree

- it weeds out normally-protected classes such as people with mental health issues or, frankly, poor and immigrant people as well because belonging to either (or multiple) of these categories is closely correlated with lower success ratios in academia.

Nowadays, almost all the apprenticeship trainees come from small tradespeople-style companies, at a lot of expense to them, and the big companies come in and sweep the freshly exam'd people with sometimes twice or thrice the tradespeople's wages. Understandably the small companies are pissed at that, but they can't do anything.

Re: I worked at Google for -10 days

#137

Post by tazjin »

pc86 wrote: post #20
Laaas wrote: post #5

Is there any legal basis for suing Google? This seems beyond egregious.

In what jurisdiction? The author doesn't live in Britain and Google doesn't appear to have offices in Russia according to their office page.

Google closed its office here in Moscow last year, but they have very recently (in the last weeks) started business in Russia again (at least YouTube in Russia has ads again, and for Russian companies). Who knows :)

Either way, unlikely to work in any case.

Re: I worked at Google for -10 days

#138

Post by nailer »

FredPret wrote: post #85
TideAd wrote: post #54

Remember in the hot 2021 hiring market when Coinbase revoked offers because of a layoff? I remember deciding they were on my blacklist after that. I thought their leadership and recruiting were too disorganized to trust with my career. Of course you can lose your job at any time, but letting a candidate quit their old job and relocate and then get laid off is not something that should ever happen. And now it's layoff…

Keep growing that blacklist and put it online. The cornerstone of the free market is that you have to exercise your power of choice in intelligent pursuit of your best interests

If you buy a nice domain and add references to the list it would definitely end up on front page of HN.

Re: I worked at Google for -10 days

#139

Post by zinclozenge »

jmye wrote: post #80
tyingq wrote: post #17

I've heard several stories about companies rescinding offers in a timeframe where it's obvious the candidate would have already made irreversible decisions. Funny thing is that the same HR people will tell their own stories about candidates backing out with huge eyerolls, distain, etc. I suppose the more common it becomes, the less the "offer" process will mean in practice. Candidates will hedge their bets. Edit: If…

> I suppose the more common it becomes, the less the "offer" process will mean in practice. Candidates will hedge their bets. My partner was shocked I was still interviewing after accepting an offer - this kind of story is generally why. Sucks for the hiring managers, I guess, but I care more about my mortgage/income/whatever than their time.

I will one up you, I don't put in notice until I'm 1-2 weeks into my new job. Don't really have any justification except for paranoia, which is only getting more validated from other anecdotes in this thread.

Re: I worked at Google for -10 days

#140

Post by petercooper »

xooglechoogle wrote: post #56

Entities with massive wealth, such as Google, should always use money to soften the blow of their mistakes. Giving this person a small chunk of cash would make me respect Google so much more than just screwing this person's life up and saying "Whoops, you're fired, lol!" But it's been a long time since Google was a cool company.

I agree, but as 'Bill Gates' said on The Simpsons: "I didn't get rich by writing a lot of checks."
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