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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

#361

Post by chii »

greenyoda wrote: post #182
jjwiseman wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Exactly--I didn't quite say it explicitly, but part of the problem was my naiveté about working for a large company after a career of mostly startups. (And my summary of the project may have been overly short. It was a week of full-time work, with a plan of making it an ongoing 20% project.)

I don't think this is a large company vs. startup thing. In most companies, large or small, you're hired to fill a particular job opening (that's described as part of the recruitment process) and usually interviewed by the group of people who you'd be working with. Does anyone know of any other companies that do this kind of random assignment the way Google does?

I wonder why google would choose to randomize assignments instead of recruiting for a particular skillset for a particular project/role.

If they are afraid of leaking information about what projects they are up to based on their job openings, that's actually easy to solve - advertise heaps and heaps of openings for many, varied and niche skill sets. Of course, only some of these adverts are real openings, but no one but outside google will know which ones are real openings. Hence, your competition cannot sniff your job openings to see what you are working on. This simply costs fees in administration and you reject every fake advert application.

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

#362

Post by eli_gottlieb »

spartango wrote: post #299
GuiA wrote: post #288

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A (very naive) friend of mine started programming in Haskell for a job interview because he thought it'd show the interviewer that he was creative, liked to learn things out of the beaten path, etc (after all they said 'your favorite language'). Needless to say the interviewer was very confused and irritated, and asked him to switch to Python/C++/Java after 15 minutes. He didn't get a followup interview (this was wit…

One mistake (of his): The point of these programming tasks is not to show off your prowess; most of the time the interviewer is trying understand your thought process and maybe some basic programming abilities. Think of it like a sanity-check. Showing off turns people off because it can lead to negative team behaviors. Being creative to make life better is good, but there's a line between that and being too clever to…

It's only showing off if you think Haskell programmers are better than everyone else ;-).

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

#363

Post by lcargill99 »

jrockway wrote: post #254
mattvanhorn wrote: post #252

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He's in the pocket of big tobacco, wall street and the health insurance industry, for one thing. http://shameproject.com/profile/malcolm-gladwell-2/

That link certainly seems reliable, well-researched, and unbiased.

There's a general "smear" feel to Project Shame. YMMV. I don't find the information at the link compelling.

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

#364

Post by eli_gottlieb »

krichman wrote: post #321
eli_gottlieb wrote: post #258

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As with most communications distances, that depends entirely on where the other person is sitting. I never use monads, for instance, and only use type-classes when they look really applicable. Still, if the person I'm talking to has never heard of a map() primitive outside of MapReduce, that causes issues. And then the #1 thing that really causes friction is recursion. Most people interviewing on behalf of BigCo's se…

I write tail-recursive functions in C using gotos sometimes. I figure why bother with recursion when the function call would be two jmps, register spills, and stack growth? I'd say you are doing it right, it's just too bad the companies you had these experiences with don't understand you are a solid candidate.

It's really not that bad. I ended up back in academia getting a funded MSc, and at this level I'll be interviewing in summers or at the end of my degree for industrial positions that are more in line with what I want anyway. Why not walk to the door that says, "Research and Development Engineer" rather than "Generic Software Engineer N+1"?

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

#365

Post by michaelochurch »

erre wrote: post #351
michaelochurch wrote: post #269

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Actually, my reason for spilling on Google is that someone from Google did something unethical after I left and Google refused to investigate (knowing they'd have to fire the person if they did). If Google had done the proper investigation and canned the person, I would never have said a word about them. I'm pretty much over it by this point, but I still think the terrorists who thought it would be fun to destroy Goo…

"If Google had done the proper investigation and canned the person, I would never have said a word about them." I don't get this. The faults you mention here and elsewhere (closed allocation, lousy managers, unfairly rating expectations, 20% dooming you etc) have nothing to do with Google investigating unethical behaviour, right? So, does Google really have none of these faults, but you say they do because they refus…

or do the really have these faults, but if they had investigated your claim, you would have kept quiet and let everyone think that it's a fantastic place (as far as you were concerned)?

Disparaging an ex-employer in the public, even if the ills disclosed are minor-- which in Google's case, they are-- can do considerable damage. Or it might not. It's hard to measure the cost of lost opportunity (in this case, lost recruiting). In any case, it's a move to take seriously, because it involves downside risk for both employer and whistleblower and the upside is quite minimal. It's not something to do just because you have a negative experience, because 3/4 of work experiences are pretty negative (by which, I mean they get less out of the job and the company than they should) for most people. If a company is going to get a public smear, it has to earn it.

If Google had done the right thing and investigated, then terminated the person, I probably would still have warned my friends about the death of "Google culture" but I wouldn't have leaked Perf and the death of 20%T to the public.

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

#366

Post by chii »

GuiA wrote: post #304
spartango wrote: post #299

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One mistake (of his): The point of these programming tasks is not to show off your prowess; most of the time the interviewer is trying understand your thought process and maybe some basic programming abilities. Think of it like a sanity-check. Showing off turns people off because it can lead to negative team behaviors. Being creative to make life better is good, but there's a line between that and being too clever to…

Yup, that's basically what I told him. What's sad is that he wasn't really showing off— he's just one of those computer scientists who loves to geek out and doesn't really think how other people could interpret it; and I guess he was hoping the interviewer would just start nerding out with him, that they'd start talking about how GHC handles lazy evaluation, and that everything would be perfect.

And the interview did its function properly - the position isn't a good fit for that person. If nerding out during the interview about lazy evaluation and purity isn't happening, then its probably all for the better that the interview failed, then to have a disfunctional team with the odd language nerd.

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

#367

Post by _pferreir_ »

vidarh wrote: post #355
_pferreir_ wrote: post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If a growth rate of 0.5% for the EU is not a good indicator of an economic slowdown, then you must be talking about Europa, Jupiter's moon. I know that EU Yes, I know some countries are doing better than others and that in some places unemployment is even decreasing, but taking into account the fact that Spain is on the verge of bankruptcy and countries such as France and Italy are being hit by austerity, I see no re…

Averages across hundreds of millions of people easily mask that substantial areas and sectors are thriving. Yes, it sucks if you're in low level jobs in the weaker markets. If you're in other sectors and markets you will instead be hounded by recruiters. The place I currently work, we have to be lightning quick when hiring these days, because the candidates we want get snapped up within a couple of days.

And does that make the european crisis a localized thing? If any, such anecdotal evidence shows us that it is possible for a company to thrive even in the worst of scenarios (which is a positive thing, I agree), but extrapolating any macroeconomic data from that makes no sense.

Even considering that there are sectors that don't suffer as much (or even get some benefit) from this crisis and that you're working in one of those, everyone will be worse off in the long run. Or is your job the only thing in the economy that influences your well-being?

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

#368

Post by chii »

btilly wrote: post #282
sxp wrote: post #172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 should note that you probably made that decision before you had a negative perf in your record. If you had waited you'd have been less likely to have had a good experience. (I'm another who got dropped into a "poor for me" role. I waited too long to think about transferring. The site director said that I shouldn't have made that mistake. A co-worker on the same team who was in a similar situation at an earlier stag…

> I should note that you probably made that decision before you had a negative perf in your record.

where would such a negative perf come from? And what is that sort of record's nature? Is there any managers here who could clarify how this whole shebang works?

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

#369

Post by chii »

michaelochurch wrote: post #226
jjwiseman wrote: post #177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

This is essentially correct. 3.4 is fine, but 3.0-3.1 means you are dead and may not even know it. It's utterly immoral, because a lot of employees at 3.0-3.1 think they're doing fine. Their managers are just giving them low scores to keep them captive. What's amazing to me is that employees don't know their rights. If your manager deliberately interferes with your work performance, that's illegal (harassment law). I…

> Their managers are just giving them low scores to keep them captive.

From reading these comments in this thread, it seems that this score is used to evaluate whether to allow the said employee to transfer.

Now, a manager has incentive to keep the best people in his/her team. Is this 3.0-3.1 score something they do so that a good programmer but is somehow "bored" with the crappy work (and face it, there is always crappy work) don't try to all leave?

IF that is the case, then there is something wrong.

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

#370

Post by michaelochurch »

chii wrote: post #361
greenyoda wrote: post #182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think this is a large company vs. startup thing. In most companies, large or small, you're hired to fill a particular job opening (that's described as part of the recruitment process) and usually interviewed by the group of people who you'd be working with. Does anyone know of any other companies that do this kind of random assignment the way Google does?

I wonder why google would choose to randomize assignments instead of recruiting for a particular skillset for a particular project/role. If they are afraid of leaking information about what projects they are up to based on their job openings, that's actually easy to solve - advertise heaps and heaps of openings for many, varied and niche skill sets. Of course, only some of these adverts are real openings, but no one…

Blind allocation is about grunt-work roulette, not secrecy.

Google wants to collect smart people, but it's impossible for a company to get to that size and have only smart-people work, so blind allocation is their way of getting PhDs to work on apps for HR-- the kind of work that a lower calibre of engineer would happily do for a Google salary, but Google just refuses to hire at-level for that kind of work when they can hire above-level and roulette someone into it.

That's also why it's frowned upon to transfer before the 18-month mark.

My issue with it is not that they expect 1.5 years of grunt work. That's fairly typical. Unpleasant, but common. What's worse about it is that people who land on grungy work for their first projects tend to keep getting bad work because they can't transfer to the good stuff, because they're competing against people who had better projects and could actually accomplish things. If the model was, "do this for 18 months, and then the company is open to you", that'd be one thing. The problem is that people suck it up for a year and a half, thinking things will get a lot better, but then when they get to the 1.5-year mark, they don't actually have the degree of optionality and autonomy that they were promised.

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