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Why I Left Google

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Re: Why I Left Google

#281
post #259

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why would I not want to share my personal information with advertisers. I certainly don't want to be marketed feminine hygiene products if I am a male. I also don't want to get offered oracle integration products if I am a Microsoft SQL shop. Targeted advertising is fine by me.

Just because you're ok with it, doesn't mean other people are.

Those people could, you know, not use Google. But I bet there aren't/won't be many of those in practice.

Re: Why I Left Google

#282

Earlier quoted context omitted.

1. Perf is different from your personal profile or snippets. Were you even at Google long enough for Perf? 2. "I didn't pay attention." there you go :)

1. Of course. Otherwise what I submitted ticket for? 2. I said I didn't pay attention to the links if there were no emails to remind me. Please, at least read what you reply to.

"That being said, if there is anyone gets delusional, it is you."

"Please, at least read what you reply to."

Why isn't this guy getting down-voted? Personal attacks and a sorry attitude shouldn't be tolerated on HN.

Re: Why I Left Google

#283
post #245

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why is integration a problem? It's working pretty well for Apple.

Because Apple sells products. Google sells YOUR personal information that you do NOT want to share to advertisers. Big difference.

This is not true. Google does not sell personal information; no advertiser ever learns anything about you. Google learns about you and it learns about the advertiser, and then uses that information to match ads and users. Yes, we make money from that. But it's a huge leap from that to "selling your personal information".

The privacy policy says: "We will ask for your consent before using information for a purpose other than those that are set out in this Privacy Policy," and selling your information is not listed there. Read it for yourself, it's pretty short!

Re: Why I Left Google

#284

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Huh? You didn't see those links on the left? You missed those emails that told you Perf is completed and please go in and check your reviews?

Guys, it sounds like he worked for Google China. I don't know how tech works between different Google entities (as I don't/never have worked for Google), but its possible that Google China wasn't using the same system as Google US at the time edwardw was working for them.

It's possible, yes, but highly unlikely as he uses all the US terms. What is possible was that he was a contractor rather than employee, and then your compensation has nothing to do with your Google managers, it's up to your contracting company.

Re: Why I Left Google

#285
post #282

Earlier quoted context omitted.

1. Of course. Otherwise what I submitted ticket for? 2. I said I didn't pay attention to the links if there were no emails to remind me. Please, at least read what you reply to.

"That being said, if there is anyone gets delusional, it is you." "Please, at least read what you reply to." Why isn't this guy getting down-voted? Personal attacks and a sorry attitude shouldn't be tolerated on HN.

Personal attacks and a sorry attitude

How come? Your interpretation of what I said amuses me, sir. And the way you do it, quoting single sentence without context, seriously?

Re: Why I Left Google

#286

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Actively preventing"? How?

By not allowing users to share directly from their plus.google.com interface, to twitter/facebook.

That's passively preventing. (YouTube lets you share to Facebook and Twitter, so the lack of this ability from G+ is a lack of a feature, not one of Google's design goals. Code takes a long time to write and everyone wants a different feature. Eventually we will have them all, but right now, not enough code has been written :)

Re: Why I Left Google

#287

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Guys, it sounds like he worked for Google China. I don't know how tech works between different Google entities (as I don't/never have worked for Google), but its possible that Google China wasn't using the same system as Google US at the time edwardw was working for them.

It's possible, yes, but highly unlikely as he uses all the US terms. What is possible was that he was a contractor rather than employee, and then your compensation has nothing to do with your Google managers, it's up to your contracting company.

Those are mostly irrelevant to this thread. Except as a matter of fact I was an employee. A googler, you say.

Re: Why I Left Google

#288

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That "something about the product" was that cooler people were on it. Facebook started with the ideal situation of seeding its initial users with the most exclusive club at Harvard. From there, it spread to all of Harvard, then all of the Ivy League, then all elite colleges, then all colleges, then all college and high school students.

"cooler people" - classist much? Perhaps have a look at dynah boyd's research on the class divisions between Facebook and MySpace. http://www.danah.org/papers/essays/ClassDivisions.html Additionally, MySpace killed itself by pursuing the wrong objectives. Facebook didn't kill MySpace, MySpace killed MySpace.

It's absolutely classist. I saw the research when it came out and found it quite interesting.

Thing is, class divisions are a fact of life. If your goal is to pursue a more just society, it's worth trying to minimize them (though even then, you need to acknowledge them before you can do anything productive). But if your goal is to get maximal user uptake for your new social network, it's worth exploiting them. They aren't going away, and if you don't, someone else will.

A lot of Web startups have actually had the byproduct of significantly lowering class divisions, eg. Google gives important information to people who would not otherwise have had it, Twitter lets people organize who would otherwise have been divided & conquered by oppressive regimes. But to get there, they need users, and one powerful way to get users is to be seen as a status symbol that makes one cooler than their peers.

Re: Why I Left Google

#289
post #207

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You mischaracterize the slotting process, which is now largely gone anyway (and you should know this so I'm not sure why you're bring it up as if it were a present problem) I said that they got rid of it, but I think the fact that such an obviously bad idea could get in the door in the first place is symptomatic of out-of-touch managers, and the same people are still there-- just coming up with new bad ideas (like th…

>This is the era when Google decided to get "real managers" and they hired a bunch of executives from places like Oracle, IBM, and Intel. Wrong. The problem with Google started with the new CEO. The decision to focus on Facebook, the Motorola acquisition, Google+, integration across all Google products and services,etc. these are not mid-level management decisions. These are decisions made by Larry Page. The problem…

I think those decisions are totally right. It is very clear that social network is important. It is very clear that google needs really good phone/tablet products that other manufactures can not provide.

Google+ is a new product. Don't make a judgement so early. It is getting better everyday.

Re: Why I Left Google

#290
post #240

To understand why Google isn't what it used to be, one has to understand what happened in 2009-2011. This is the era when Google decided to get "real managers" and they hired a bunch of executives from places like Oracle, IBM, and Intel. If Google had told them to wipe their fucking feet off before tracking shitty culture into the place, it might have survived. It didn't. Google has an immense amount of talent "under…

> * Google is resistant to any change that might improve engineer productivity beyond the rather plodding rate it has now. C++ and Java are the real house languages; Scala's not even on the table. Python is listed as a house language so Google can still hire people but it's rarely used and nearly deprecated in production. Google is developing Go precisely to improve engineer productivity, so this claim is rather susp…

And, there are plenty of languages that are first-class citizens with respect to tool support. The reality is that most engineers and teams are happy with Java and C++, and only those that really want to do something different do something different. It's decided at the team level what language to use; if everyone wants to write Haskell, congratulations, you're now on a Haskell project.

Java is unproductive when you are a startup with one developer, but it works rather well at Google. Each change has to be manually code reviewed before submission anyway, so you aren't saving much time by using Python instead of Java. Agreeing on one language means that it's easy to switch teams; if you did Haskell and another team used OCaml, it would be hard to switch. If you both use Java, though, the barrier to moving is smaller and that means you can switch projects without losing productivity. And that's a good thing.

(Remember: Java at Google is not the same as Java at Bank of America. The toolchain is better, the libraries are better, the culture is better, and the codebase is better. There's really very little I hate about Google-style Java, and that's after hating Java with a passion for about 10 years.)

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