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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

#171

Post by papsosouid »

amplitwist wrote: post #165
papsosouid wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What on earth provoked that random screed? Who said anything about left or right, or PC socialist or fascist? You scare me because you seem to be mentally unstable.

I think it's pretty obvious what I'm talking about. The comment I was replying to suggested that people would be imprisoned for thoughtcrime. The original comment was disagreeing (slightly) with someone that has a very left-wing view of "social justice" or whatever. People like the person above clearly haven't learned their lessons about censorship, because there is a fair chance that even those with the "correct" po…

It is obvious what you are talking about, it is not obvious why you are talking about it. As I said, there was literally zero insinuation of anything to provoke your response. And I do not illustrate your point at all, as I am neither your "political opposition", not do I view you as evil. You are acting in a manner which is consistent with mental instability. You perceive enemies and threats which do not exist, and respond with unprovoked hostility.

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

#172

Post by sxp »

Jabbles wrote: post #118
sxp wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The allocation policy is something that people are not fans of, but it isn't as bad as you make it sound. When I joined Google, I also initially joined a team that was a bad fit for me. However, I transferred to a completely different team (from enterprise server software to consumer mobile software) after 4 months of near zero productivity, and the new team was a perfect fit. Much of Google's culture is based on bei…

Could you say more about how you arranged to transfer? Others have suggested it is impossible or very difficult, but perhaps they are outliers or victims of older policies. Was it 4 months of trying to be moved, or did you move quickly after trying your assigned role for a while? (I think I would move the other way, into servers :))

It was Others who have run into problems and left might be outliers, but it's difficult to come to a solid conclusion based on anecdotes. People who have bad experiences will have stronger feelings and bring up their experiences whenever possible (E.g. michaelochurch who complains about Google every chance he gets) while those who have good experiences like myself don't mention it as much. I only mentioned my case because it was a counterexample to varelse's case, and this is probably true of many others who have had good experiences and don't bother talking about it.

Just remember that the plural of anecdote isn't data, and negative anecdotes tend to suffer from selection bias because they have a greater emotional impact upon the person.

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

#173

Post by bmelton »

waqf wrote: post #163
bmelton wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Care to clarify?

benatkin means that speech is no longer free if you can't express things that you're afraid to put your name to. (You clarified this even more when you said in another thread (paraphrased) that people could say anything they " should " say.) Free speech means you can say anything . If you want to argue the contrary, that you would prefer some limits on speech, then that's fine, but it's disingenuous – well, it's News…

If that is indeed what he meant, then I should clarify my position.

Free speech may well be 'whatever you want to say', but I might often say things that I don't mean. I also might say inflammatory things that I regret. I also might say things that are insensitive to others, or are completely horrible to all people, depending on my mood. I believe that with the freedom to say 'anything' I want, I also have the responsibility to say the things that are meaningful and, at least to the ability that I can ensure, accurate.

When I mentioned filtering on things I should say, I meant that while I believe I have the right to say whatever I like, I don't feel I should make those same remarks over the internet. Just as I believe I have the right to make racist jokes, I would not personally want to be held accountable as being a racist, so I would not. If I did, I would not make them on a megaphone at a racial harmony rally. If I did, I would expect to be held accountable. While I would not expect to be the victim of violence, I wouldn't be terribly surprised if I did.

In summation, I understand that 'free speech' is not limited to 'free speech with accountability', I believe as a personal choice for myself and nobody else, that it should be. I believe the old trope goes something like "Live your life as though your mother is watching everything you do" is one that I try to live by. It isn't one that I insist upon others, and I don't want my mother peering into the bedroom often enough, but I believe that accountability adds a fair amount to controversial discussions and makes them far more relevant.

Had Martin Luther King, Jr been 'anonymous' and preached with a V mask, I don't believe we'd have made anywhere near the progress we have on racial equality. That doesn't mean that I require all others to relinquish their anonymity/pseudonymity, but I prefer it personally and I find it to be a good choice for others to make.

Thanks for the attempt at clarification.

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

#174

Post by michaelochurch »

brown9-2 wrote: post #126
michaelochurch wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Are you referring to Enron's stacked ranking practice? I don't think Google does anything approaching that.

At Google, "Perv" history is part of the transfer packet, which means that people with average political-success (sorry, I mean "performance") histories become immobile, creating a low-morale underclass that is good for mailing-list drama but bad for the company. It turns average employees and no-fault lack-of-fit cases into problem employees who have to be pushed out. It's disgusting, and people who believe this is okay shouldn't be allowed to make decisions that affect other people. Or drive. Or breathe.

I know that practice is now typical in companies, but it's morally indefensible. Having "Don't Be Evil" as a motto is no excuse. I think Google is a great company in many ways and I have a lot of respect for the engineers I met there, but the people who designed "Perf" belong in jail for the billions of dollars of shareholder value that they torched for no good reason.

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

#175

Post by kevinh »

griftah wrote: post #155

She is building a social network for hobbyist gardeners. Apparently this is what humanity needs more than geek toys like self-driving cars and augmented reality sunglasses.

That's a bizarre critique. It's just more likely she would be working on youtube ad code than self-driving cars or augmented reality sunglasses, which most people would consider less constructive than a social network.

Additionally, I think many people would consider Facebook more valuable than augmented reality sunglasses. If we're going to only build things that humanity "needs", we're going to needlessly limit our scope and put many people out of jobs. After all, our needs are considerably less than our wants.

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

#176

Post by rohern »

Jabbles wrote: post #83
utopkara wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

LOL. Google is still a company, and the employees are hired to deliver stuff that the executives decide is important. It is not a college or grad school where you can switch between majors or research topics at will. Usually you have to stay for about 18 months in an assignment before you can successfully change to another group. Otherwise, there's always the door; which almost everybody prefers, considering how easy…

Interesting. I thought the various groups inside Google competed for engineers? To the extent that there are posters advertising working on Chrome/Android etc. Given that it is "easy" for people to leave, I would have thought the policies would be forced to change?

> "Given that it is "easy" for people to leave, I would have thought the policies would be forced to change?"

I wish this were true. Certainly, if people were more careful about how they spend their lives, this would be true.

However, you need to consider the average (or even above average) young engineer and how he makes decisions. Sit in a computer lab at a major engineering university and start a conversation with the CS and EE students to see what kind of work they want to do. They have no idea. These kids work themselves raw to get perfect grades in EECS programs that require all-nighters to get the work done, but at the end of the day, they are as confused about The Good Life as anyone.

Most of these kids have had heavy pressure from their families to do well in school, and that same pressure pushes them into a "prestigious" company like Google. Recruiting flyers actually use the word "prestigious" (same for recruiting flyers for the various engineering student groups and fraternities), which I think must be specifically targeted as Asian students' cultural background.

A lot of great minds I have studied with simply shrug when asked what they want to do for a career. Hence Google has its pick.

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

#177

Post by jjwiseman »

sxp wrote: post #172
Jabbles wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Could you say more about how you arranged to transfer? Others have suggested it is impossible or very difficult, but perhaps they are outliers or victims of older policies. Was it 4 months of trying to be moved, or did you move quickly after trying your assigned role for a while? (I think I would move the other way, into servers :))

It was Others who have run into problems and left might be outliers, but it's difficult to come to a solid conclusion based on anecdotes. People who have bad experiences will have stronger feelings and bring up their experiences whenever possible (E.g. michaelochurch who complains about Google every chance he gets) while those who have good experiences like myself don't mention it as much. I only mentioned my case be…

I think this is something that varies by office and by manager. I was told that maybe they could let me transfer after a year, but that even a low "meets expectations" score would mean zero chance of being able to transfer.

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

#178

Post by seanmcdirmid »

barrkel wrote: post #156
phillmv wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a matter of resource allocation. If you hire lots of, I don't know, compiler specialists but you allocate them to write web apps we're all possibly worse off. The issue is, and what you're not cottoning on to, is that in a company the size of Google there's probably a team working on x for all values of x that could maybe use another member. They're only tolerant of their resource allocation scheme because they…

If you hire lots of [...] compiler specialists but you allocate them to write web apps we're all possibly worse off. Speaking from direct experience, faced with the job of developing a framework for web data entry apps, what I ended up doing was writing a dataflow language for data binding. Another ex-Delphi compiler developer, Danny Thorpe, ended up co-creating Google Gears. IMO compiler development is a great basis…

Speaking as another compiler guy (ok, more into PL), there is a reason many of the top engineers at Google are PL/compiler guys (e.g., Jeff Dean, Sanjay Ghemawat)...think of MapReduce. However, we are also sort of dangerous as we see many problems as PL problems, and if the problems require specialized domain expertise beyond grunt programming, we really aren't that effective (e.g., machine learning) without being paired with those domain experts.

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

#179

Post by Jabbles »

sxp wrote: post #172
Jabbles wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Could you say more about how you arranged to transfer? Others have suggested it is impossible or very difficult, but perhaps they are outliers or victims of older policies. Was it 4 months of trying to be moved, or did you move quickly after trying your assigned role for a while? (I think I would move the other way, into servers :))

It was Others who have run into problems and left might be outliers, but it's difficult to come to a solid conclusion based on anecdotes. People who have bad experiences will have stronger feelings and bring up their experiences whenever possible (E.g. michaelochurch who complains about Google every chance he gets) while those who have good experiences like myself don't mention it as much. I only mentioned my case be…

Thank you for sharing. I had imagined Google was a place to "shop around" for a good fit. Whilst they seem much further from this than, say, GitHub, I'm glad someone came up with a counterclaim to the immutable blind allocation.

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

#180

Post by DanBC »

rayiner wrote: post #133
DanBC wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> a silly question like, "how many golf balls could you fit on a bus." Why is it a silly question?

Because it makes all sorts of assumptions that are outside the scope of what you really want to test. First, it assumes familiarity with golf balls. I have friends who grew up in Manhattan who have never seen a golf ball. They may have seen one on TV, but that doesn't let you really gauge the size of something. Second, it assumes familiarity with buses, and assumes the interviewer and the interviewee are talking abou…

The desired result is not "X golf balls will fit in a bus" but the process of how the interviewee approaches the problem.

Are they entirely baffled by the question? Are they stuck, with no idea about how to proceed? Or do they ask for more information from the interviewer? Interviews are not about quizzes; they're a discussion. This question is a great way to start a discussion with someone.

"Well, I've never played golf, but I do play squash. So, I'll use a squash ball as a start."

"I have no idea how big a bus is. Let's assume a cuboid of let's say 10 ft by 10 ft by 30 ft."

"Really this question has some sphere packing stuff in there. Being honest, visualising that kind of thing is not my strong point. I'm much better at things like $TOP_THREE_HERE. So, I'll use a weak version first to get a ballpark figure. Let's just line the balls up in a grid (as if each ball is a cube), where each ball touches 6 other balls, or the some other balls and the floor, sides, or roof of the bus."

If anyone is using the question as you've suggested then yes, it's a bad question and they've failed. But you've missed the point of the question.

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