How Google keeps employees by treating them like kids (2006) • Hacker News Board

Re: How Google keeps employees by treating them like kids (2006)

#111

Post by cma » Wed, Dec 25, 2013, 4:28 PM UTC

Theodores wrote: post #95

raldi wrote: post #17

A month earlier, Aaron wrote about his experiences working in a more traditional kind of office: http://www.aaronsw.com/weblog/officespace > Gray walls, gray desks, gray noise. The first day I showed up here, I simply couldn’t take it. By lunch time I had literally locked myself in a bathroom stall and started crying. So I'm not sure what kind of office would have ever met his approval.

Actually I think that quite a few offices would have met with his approval. It is not a choice between grey cubes and zany beanbag chairs + silly toys, there are other factors. I spent a while working for the UK civil service - the ultimate in 'grey'! However, our office was above an aquarium, our research was in oceanography and, as a consequence, we had an amazing foyer (the public aquarium) with a fantastic view o…

I can see it now:

How Google keeps employees by treating them like dolphins

Re: How Google keeps employees by treating them like kids (2006)

#112

Post by treenyc » Wed, Dec 25, 2013, 4:29 PM UTC

cromwellian wrote: post #64

I'm 42. Most of the people I work with are in the 30s and 40s and have children. The stereotype of Google hiring nothing but Stanford grads has been over for a while. As much as I like Aaron, here he is guilty of excessive generalization. Even in 2006 the claims don't match reality. I lived through the first dot.com boom in CA, where companies were falling hand over fist to offer perks, many of them financially unsus…

thanks. I also know people who work at Google who are hired straight of college just like described in the article. Can you or anyone provide us with

1. actual % of people in different age group working at google.

2. Please let me know what department you are working in. That might provide some insights.

Occasional Perks is great. However, if the company rely on that to retain its' employees than something rotten.

Google is just a new IBM, Dupon of our time.

I have heard that google will pay employee's family member $2000 every month after their death for 10, 20 years. I think that is great way to make people have great programming skills to stay with the company even if they are not doing anything exciting or creating values for humanities.

Re: How Google keeps employees by treating them like kids (2006)

#113

Post by raldi » Wed, Dec 25, 2013, 4:30 PM UTC

Theodores wrote: post #95

raldi wrote: post #17

A month earlier, Aaron wrote about his experiences working in a more traditional kind of office: http://www.aaronsw.com/weblog/officespace > Gray walls, gray desks, gray noise. The first day I showed up here, I simply couldn’t take it. By lunch time I had literally locked myself in a bathroom stall and started crying. So I'm not sure what kind of office would have ever met his approval.

Actually I think that quite a few offices would have met with his approval. It is not a choice between grey cubes and zany beanbag chairs + silly toys, there are other factors. I spent a while working for the UK civil service - the ultimate in 'grey'! However, our office was above an aquarium, our research was in oceanography and, as a consequence, we had an amazing foyer (the public aquarium) with a fantastic view o…

The Wired office -- the one he found gray -- is actually a lot like the one you're describing. It's in a converted warehouse, and still has the wide bare concrete columns (though now with ethernet cable velcroed to the side) and huge glass-and-steel windows that pivot at the center, and blown-up Wired covers adorning the walls... a room filled with old video games and electronic trinkets that Wired reviewed... a public park right outside the door lined with great little restaurants, a baseball stadium visible down the street... Here are some indoor Street View photos:

http://www.wired.com/gadgetlab/2012/08/google-maps-street-vi...

Re: How Google keeps employees by treating them like kids (2006)

#114

Post by cma » Wed, Dec 25, 2013, 4:34 PM UTC

michaelt wrote: post #97

jsmthrowaway wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would contend that advertising, marketing, and consumerism are not noble causes for humanity, and engineers who devote their lifespan to enabling such things are wasting their precious allotment of time. Google's revenue driver is putting products in front of eyeballs. Imagine a world in which such a thing was not a market. Yes, you need awareness of products for people to buy said products. I get that. But no, you…

Does your assessment of the value of advertising include the things that are funded by adverts? That covers almost all print journalism, a lot of full-time internet content creators (from the onion to full time youtube content creators) not to mention Google Search, Gmail, Google Maps, Chrome and Youtube. If advertising includes everything paid for by adverts, advertising is useful to humanity. If advertising doesn't…

Free market systems rely on informed consumers making rational decisions; advertisers rely on creating misinformed consumers making irrational decisions.

Re: How Google keeps employees by treating them like kids (2006)

#115

Post by dekhn » Wed, Dec 25, 2013, 4:34 PM UTC

pgbovine wrote: post #12

pcvarmint wrote: post #5

I thought it looked creepy, like an adult daycare center. I was approached twice and interviewed twice by Google but I don't think I'd fit that culture. No offices -- just open spaces. A meritocracy where you are evaluated by your peers generally, rather than by a boss or customer for your merits in a particular job. Where you don't even know what you will be working on until you're hired, as if that gives you a choi…

No offices -- just open spaces. not true; plenty of offices around perimeters. Too academic (from Stanford days?) for my tastes. also untrue; googlers are mostly evaluated on quantifiable impact on products, not by their academic research publications. they are explicitly not an academic lab. for details, see: http://static.googleusercontent.com/media/research.google.co...

This isn't completely correct, although you used enough qualifiers that I'm ok with it.

I work at Google as an engineer, do blue-sky scientific research in biophysics, and publish it; those publications (which are unrelated to Google's core mission) are part of my performance evaluation:

See, for example: http://scholar.google.com/scholar?as_ylo=2013&q=author:%22de...

for a couple recent papers I published with academic scientists based on blue-sky academic research carried out at Google by Visiting Faculty (see this page for a list of the Visiting Faculty and their projects: http://googleresearch.blogspot.com/2012/12/millions-of-core-...)

That said, I really am a unicorn by the definition of your recent post, and there aren't very many of me at Google. After completing work on Exacycle (and handing it off to a team of scientists to play with), I've moved to a new project to apply my skills to something that is completely consistent with the hybrid approach. But our hybrid approach is not limited to computer science.

Many of us who do some kind of research at Google worked in academia, and many also worked in the fabled research labs of the 60s like PARC or Bell Labs; we learned the lessons those labs taught us, and are now applying at high speed and skill to challenging new problems.

As for the term "infantilizing" that's just absurd linkbait.

Re: How Google keeps employees by treating them like kids (2006)

#116

Post by laureny » Wed, Dec 25, 2013, 4:38 PM UTC

choosewisely wrote: post #59

jrockway wrote: post #43

I guess on some level this is true. Is there some place where you can work and get money for doing whatever you want, and defying authority whenever you want? If so, sign me up! Over in the real world, working for an employer like Google is a risk hedge. If your idea for a project this quarter turns out to not be useful, you don't run out of money and end up living in a cardboard box. You learn from your experience,…

>> At the same time, I feel like I'm doing impactful work, with some very smart people. Ah, you must be one of the stars getting people to click on ads, even more. No matter how you spin it, you make money by what can rightfully be characterized as fraud (1,2,3), or confusing ads with unbiased content(if there's still a thing like unbiased content at Google) while ripping your users off. But whatever makes you feel b…

Bitter much?

Re: How Google keeps employees by treating them like kids (2006)

#117

Post by walshemj » Wed, Dec 25, 2013, 4:43 PM UTC

treenyc wrote: post #112

cromwellian wrote: post #64

I'm 42. Most of the people I work with are in the 30s and 40s and have children. The stereotype of Google hiring nothing but Stanford grads has been over for a while. As much as I like Aaron, here he is guilty of excessive generalization. Even in 2006 the claims don't match reality. I lived through the first dot.com boom in CA, where companies were falling hand over fist to offer perks, many of them financially unsus…

thanks. I also know people who work at Google who are hired straight of college just like described in the article. Can you or anyone provide us with 1. actual % of people in different age group working at google. 2. Please let me know what department you are working in. That might provide some insights. Occasional Perks is great. However, if the company rely on that to retain its' employees than something rotten. Go…

Death in service benefits are not exactly new and are very common in large UK companies.

Re: How Google keeps employees by treating them like kids (2006)

#118

Post by cma » Wed, Dec 25, 2013, 4:44 PM UTC

cyphunk wrote: post #63

cyphunk wrote: post #55

Google is a mammoth. Generalising it would be similar to doing the same of a whole country. I do not work there but know many that have that speak so highly of its foundations. Like some sort of new form of knowledge discovery and expansion of thought. While it may be infantile this could just as well be seen as an advantage, at least for a while to come. It is one of the frontiers of innovation for company building…

Another 2c: Google[x] might be the founders way to avoid the sloth of a mammoth structure but it may also be the one thing that turns them into Xerox. To prevent that expressly avoid the patent-chest-trap and future reliance on this over innovation in product based wealth. If your investors cant give up on future patent wealth secretly plow efforts into reducing the effectiveness of patent-chests for all.

The laser printer patent developed at PARC supposedly paid for PARC a hundred times over.

Re: How Google keeps employees by treating them like kids (2006)

#119

Post by smtddr » Wed, Dec 25, 2013, 4:55 PM UTC

I thought HN's algo drove controversial stories off the front page. This is generating a bunch of arguments and yet it's still here. There are other stories I've commented on that get knocked off the front page with less drama than I'm seeing here.

Re: How Google keeps employees by treating them like kids (2006)

#120

Post by maximumsteve » Wed, Dec 25, 2013, 5:02 PM UTC

icambron wrote: post #83

I don't work at Google and from where I sit now, it's hard to imagine myself wanting to work for Google, but this complaint that it's infantalizing its employees is ridiculous. Making your own food and doing your own laundry are not substantial life challenges. Growing up is not about learning to do chores you don't actually have to do. (When you make enough money to pay someone to mow your lawn, are you back to bein…

Perhaps not everyone feels this way, but I think that there are a large amount of employees that feel like they've failed by not being completely self-sufficient(i.e. contract or own their own business). They can still be easy to work with, productive, etc., but they may view their job trying to feed them and do their laundry as an encroachment on their personal life and perhaps even a vie for more of their time by 'no longer having an excuse'. Of course, this goes unsaid because 'they're just providing services you're too good to do yourself.'

In addition, expecting someone with administrative aspirations to play in a ball pit could be considered downright offensive, thanks to its perceived condescension and lack of any real interest.