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No, I still don't want to work for Google

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Re: No, I still don't want to work for Google

#31

Post by ajross »

varelse wrote: post #28

I worked at Google for a short stint. I found the tech interview easy and I wasn't asked anything particularly ridiculous. I received a job offer shortly thereafter and accepted. As someone who regularly interviews prospective engineers at my current gig, I see no problem with expecting candidates to arrive prepared to answer algorithm questions or questions about their strongest programming language. Ditto for someo…

I don't follow why being an "expert" in D would make you "bored" of Q. If Q is simply a boring field to you, that's one thing (and the appropriate response is to quit and find something better). But it's not your employer's job to give you your dream assignment. If they need Q geeks and you're available, then that's what you're stuck with. That's what being an employee is all about.

Re: No, I still don't want to work for Google

#32

Post by Kylekramer »

eumenides1 wrote: post #21
NegativeK wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd call that more justifiable anger than bitterness.

I agree. Google should have done their homework before contacting a past employee (including contractors). Google as a large organization should know why people left their company and the context of situations around it. Some employees aren't vocal about it, but I don't think this is the case.

At risk of being callous, why should they? If an employee already dislikes a company to the point that a recruitment letter angers them, why should the company go out the way to accommodate them? The amount of effort it would take to throughly research every recruitment letter recipent seems like it would be a largely pointless endeavor with minimal returns. Most people aren't going react negatively to an email feeler and the ones that do are already a lost cause.

Re: No, I still don't want to work for Google

#33

Post by bmelton »

darklajid wrote: post #6
bmelton wrote: post #4

I tried, but I found that I can't really identify with the plights of some. Thankfully (for reasons I'd rather not be challenged to justify, except to say that it's apparently good as measured by others) I'm a fairly normal white guy with no marginal traits that might cause me to have different viewpoints than I currently do. This means that I support the notion real names on Google Plus, and I also believe that all…

We're all entitled to our opinions. This boring / average white guy here thinks that real name policies are very, very bad and unacceptable, while I do support limitations in free speech (Europe, Germany -> We've got a number of cases where free speech is limited and I support these in principle, while avoiding the slippery slope thing. In fact, I'm typing this while wearing a 'Zensursula' (Zensur, censorship + Ursul…

I feel like I unintentionally stirred things up with my commentary on empathy, so I'll skip responding to that part for now except to say that yeah, I know they're just my opinions, and they were formed from a position of relative safety.

Obviously, autonomous cars are in their infancy, but I think that to trivialize them at this point because of that is to ignore their farther reaching steps. When the light bulb was invented, it would have been easy to categorize as a more expensive candle for the rich, but it clearly brought about much more and changed conditions for the world at large.

Autonomous cars have the potential to completely reshape the commute, traffic, how and where cities are formed and function and travel. It's a bigger project than just throwing a GPS and LIDAR onto a Prius.

Re: No, I still don't want to work for Google

#34

Post by dpark »

paganel wrote: post #20
bmelton wrote: post #4

I tried, but I found that I can't really identify with the plights of some. Thankfully (for reasons I'd rather not be challenged to justify, except to say that it's apparently good as measured by others) I'm a fairly normal white guy with no marginal traits that might cause me to have different viewpoints than I currently do. This means that I support the notion real names on Google Plus, and I also believe that all…

> I am ignorant to how much they would matter in real life. I am neither queer nor gender-queer, so while I am empathetic to their struggles, I just can't identify with what are possibly very real concerns about losses of anonymity, and as I've met people who are public with their genderqueer status who haven't been assailed or assaulted, I can't help but wonder if the fear isn't simply perceived fear or not. I live…

I think you chose an exceptionally poor reason to downvote him. You downvoted him because you disagree with his views ("view things through very narrow lenses"), which is different from downvoting him because you disagree with him only in phrasing.

Downvotes should be for comments that do not add to the discussion. Considering that most of the comments here are in response to him, his comment clearly added to the discussion.

Re: No, I still don't want to work for Google

#35

Post by michaelochurch »

varelse wrote: post #28

I worked at Google for a short stint. I found the tech interview easy and I wasn't asked anything particularly ridiculous. I received a job offer shortly thereafter and accepted. As someone who regularly interviews prospective engineers at my current gig, I see no problem with expecting candidates to arrive prepared to answer algorithm questions or questions about their strongest programming language. Ditto for someo…

I futilely attempted to get reassigned to something close to field D (really, B, C, E, or F would have been just peachy) and that seemingly got me flagged as trouble internally.

"Meets Expectations" ranges from 3.0 to 3.4, and employees in this range have no idea where in that interval they landed, even the career effects of the numbers are dramatically different. 3.4 is above average, while 3.0 is fatal to transfer and promotion, even years later, but unlikely to get someone actually fired. There are several managers who've been caught using 3.0-3.1 to keep people captive but unaware of the fact that they've been internally blacklisted. It's disgusting but it happens.

Whoever came up with the "innovation" of making review history part of a transfer packet (and that has nothing to do with Google; it pre-dates it) is a domestic terrorist and should get the same treatment that all the other terrorists get. It's a horrible system that eats companies from the inside. Enron's cultural decline (leading in macroscopic ethical lapses and bankruptcy) has been established to be a direct result of its globally-visible, mobility-destroying review system.

Google's Perf is a play-for-play copy of Enron's PRC, but Google probably won't go the way of Enron for extrinsic reasons. A lot of Enron employees had nowhere to go (for geographical and specialty reasons) and had to make ethical compromises to beat PRC, whereas a lot Googlers leave for greener pastures when that happens.

Re: No, I still don't want to work for Google

#37

Post by hnhg »

ajross wrote: post #31
varelse wrote: post #28

I worked at Google for a short stint. I found the tech interview easy and I wasn't asked anything particularly ridiculous. I received a job offer shortly thereafter and accepted. As someone who regularly interviews prospective engineers at my current gig, I see no problem with expecting candidates to arrive prepared to answer algorithm questions or questions about their strongest programming language. Ditto for someo…

I don't follow why being an "expert" in D would make you "bored" of Q. If Q is simply a boring field to you, that's one thing (and the appropriate response is to quit and find something better). But it's not your employer's job to give you your dream assignment. If they need Q geeks and you're available, then that's what you're stuck with. That's what being an employee is all about.

It reads like the parent got brought in as an expert in D, not Q, and then got told to work on Q, which wasn't their expectation. You'd be unhappy at that happening to you, right?

Re: No, I still don't want to work for Google

#38

Post by [deleted] »

rmrfrmrf wrote: post #24

One thing I can't stand is "recruiters" who invite you to come interview with them. Oh, great, you "invite" me to come torture myself for months on end just so I can have a snowball's chance in hell at getting a job? This is 2012. If you want to learn about me, go on my website and read my blog posts, look at my current projects, and download my resumé. If you think I'm so great, make me an offer. Don't spam my inbox…

[deleted]

Re: No, I still don't want to work for Google

#39

Post by LaRakel »

rmrfrmrf wrote: post #24

One thing I can't stand is "recruiters" who invite you to come interview with them. Oh, great, you "invite" me to come torture myself for months on end just so I can have a snowball's chance in hell at getting a job? This is 2012. If you want to learn about me, go on my website and read my blog posts, look at my current projects, and download my resumé. If you think I'm so great, make me an offer. Don't spam my inbox…

I get loads of "opportunities", by HR people from employment agencies that never even had contact with the company they'll be presenting me to. By comparison, companies doing the same thing isn't that bad.

Re: No, I still don't want to work for Google

#40

Post by josefresco »

ajross wrote: post #31
varelse wrote: post #28

I worked at Google for a short stint. I found the tech interview easy and I wasn't asked anything particularly ridiculous. I received a job offer shortly thereafter and accepted. As someone who regularly interviews prospective engineers at my current gig, I see no problem with expecting candidates to arrive prepared to answer algorithm questions or questions about their strongest programming language. Ditto for someo…

I don't follow why being an "expert" in D would make you "bored" of Q. If Q is simply a boring field to you, that's one thing (and the appropriate response is to quit and find something better). But it's not your employer's job to give you your dream assignment. If they need Q geeks and you're available, then that's what you're stuck with. That's what being an employee is all about.

"it's not your employer's job" It's in their best interest however to do so, as replacing him costs money.
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