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

aaronsw.com

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

#141

Post by wpietri »

rodgerd wrote: post #131
wpietri wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We happen to currently fund some things via ads. But that's an accident of history. If we didn't have ads, there's no reason to think we wouldn't have found another way.

There are rather a lot of industries that are all ears for yor alternatives.

Now that we have ads, they're hard to get away from. You're removing a problem people notice (having to pay) and causing problems they mostly don't (wasted time, wasted money, suboptimal purchases). This path dependence doesn't make ads good, though.

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

#142

Post by mwfunk »

coldtea wrote: post #140
cromwellian wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Stating facts to correct erroneous claims isn't evangelization. What is the moral of this story anyway? That your workplace shouldn't offer you free food, or have fun areas with cool statues, because a replica of SpaceShip One will "infantilize you"? And this is supposed to scare people into going to a "grown up" workplace and grey suits and expensive shitty food? I used to pay high prices to eat lunch at IBM Cafeter…

> I used to pay high prices to eat lunch at IBM Cafeterias, and it was terrible food. But this infantilized me less? Well, obviously yes. At least you knew you were in a employee -employer relation, not a "nice person giving you nice food" relation.

I'm pretty sure he understands that Google is his employer and not just some nice person giving him stuff.

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

#143

Post by hanspeide »

choosewisely wrote: post #79
jsmthrowaway wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Google is by no means a 100% perfect actor but some of your claims found their way into tinfoil territory. And no, fraud does not account for most of Google's income. Google is a public company and you are more than welcome to review those figures yourself. And in my limited experience at Google, I found that most people are very prideful about what they are doing. It's just unfortunate that most things Google are do…

And no, fraud does not account for most of Google's income. Google is a public company and you are more than welcome to review those figures yourself. Fraud: saying from every top of the mountain that we serve results best for the users, we serve unbiased results, you can't buy a top rank on Google etc etc etc and then showing barely distinguishable (from content) ads on top and in many case showing almost all ads. T…

I'm sure a lot of people would welcome a free alternative without ads. Now go code it. Oh, wait...

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

#144

Post by prodigal_erik »

rgbrgb wrote: post #89
jrockway wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I work on Google Fiber. You give us money, we give you an Internet connection. I'm glad you made an account just for this, though. What a great community HN can be.

Is that a profitable business in and of itself or are you actually part of the ad revenue funnel? For some reason I thought Google was doing that at a loss to increase ad placement opportunities.

Why should the investment pay off after mostly wiring just one city? The first house certainly didn't pay for all development work and physical plant, and nobody would expect it to.

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

#145

Post by mwfunk »

ryandrake wrote: post #127
derwiki wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm surprised at how polarizing no offices vs open offices is. My first job at IBM, I had an office with two co-workers. They were great, but on days they were out it was sooo isolating. When I quit and took a job at a start up in SF with an open office plan, I loved it immediately. I could look across the room and see if the systems guy was there or getting coffee, instead of pinging into the Sametime void. So, I'm…

I've worked in cubicles and in an open office most of my life. I'm now working for a company with offices with doors, and I have to say, offices are pretty much the worst. In an open office (and to a lesser extent, places with open cubicles), you can have constant interaction with other people. You can scan the room quickly to see who's busy, who's concentrating, who looks available for a quick chat, etc. You can hea…

"In an open office (and to a lesser extent, places with open cubicles), you can have constant interaction with other people. You can scan the room quickly to see who's busy, who's concentrating, who looks available for a quick chat, etc. You can hear all the technical conversations going on and are able to jump in at any point if needed. Someone's sketching something out on a whiteboard, anyone can just glance it over if they're curious or feel they can contribute."

This is exactly why people don't like open office plans. People can and will pester you all the time when you're deep into writing really difficult code. In lines of work which involve more interpersonal communication (and don't require long stretches of uninterrupted concentration), designing the workspace to encourage as much face-to-face talk as possible is an advantage. However, in my line of work (systems programming, and this probably applies to most programming jobs), it's a huge disadvantage.

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

#146

Post by pvdm »

madaxe_again wrote: post #134
luu wrote: post #15

Funny, my experience is the opposite on literally every concrete assertion about people and motivations. Looking at my team, and the broader team under my director, only one was hired "straight out of college". Well, if you consider fresh PhDs to be "straight out of college", there are a few, but I doubt Aaron meant folks approaching 30 with kids on the horizon when he was talking about people just out of college. Pe…

I'm personally aware of a very incapable 22 year old, fresh graduate, who has been hired for north of $200k. I'm also aware of a whole bunch of other folks who have been variously hired within months of graduation, so I'd wager there's some selection bias from your corner too.

freudian slip ?

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

#147

Post by git-pull »

dekhn wrote: post #129
git-pull wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Prodigies tend to receive a lot of encouragement and enabling. Ying and yang, Too much nurturing can be toxic.

What makes you think Aaron was a prodigy? Please cite specific facts or details; be careful because the press makes claims about his achievements which aren't completely accurate. He seemed intelligent perhaps a bit more than the typical person, but profoundly unwise in many ways (if you want to achieve a goal, do so in a way that achieves the goal, rather than the spectacularly inefficient, risky, and ultimately unp…

  Please cite specific facts or details; be careful because
  the press makes claims about his [Aaron Swartz] achievements which aren't
  completely accurate
Curiosity stoked. What are some misconceptions about Swartz?

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

#148

Post by raldi »

git-pull wrote: post #147
dekhn wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What makes you think Aaron was a prodigy? Please cite specific facts or details; be careful because the press makes claims about his achievements which aren't completely accurate. He seemed intelligent perhaps a bit more than the typical person, but profoundly unwise in many ways (if you want to achieve a goal, do so in a way that achieves the goal, rather than the spectacularly inefficient, risky, and ultimately unp…

Please cite specific facts or details; be careful because the press makes claims about his [Aaron Swartz] achievements which aren't completely accurate Curiosity stoked. What are some misconceptions about Swartz?

A lot of people interpret "Aaron worked on RSS 1.0" as "Aaron was involved in creating RSS", but in fact, he had almost nothing to do with that. There were many versions of RSS prior to v1.0, and it was already pretty established by the time he got involved. And actually, the standard had already forked before that point, and the one that ended up being called "RSS 1.0" was the less-popular fork that never really went anywhere. You'll notice that biographies of Aaron never really mention what part of RSS he supposedly played a role in creating.

He also tends to get a lot of credit for founding reddit, but that's like saying Steve Case was a founder of Warner Brothers.

And he gets credit for helping stop SOPA, but again, it's usually expressed as a vague statement that doesn't actually cite any kind of specific examples of how he made a contribution. I'm not aware of any politician mentioning Aaron or Demand Progress as being a part of their decisionmaking process, or any of the corporations that held anti-SOPA campaigns mentioning that DP was in any way a leader in that movement.

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

#149

Post by judk »

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.

Aaron was courageous to post his inner monologue for all the world to dissect, but his judgemental opinions carry the scent of a teenager trying to act jaded so he can fit in with adults.

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

#150

Post by judk »

raldi wrote: post #148
git-pull wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Please cite specific facts or details; be careful because the press makes claims about his [Aaron Swartz] achievements which aren't completely accurate Curiosity stoked. What are some misconceptions about Swartz?

A lot of people interpret "Aaron worked on RSS 1.0" as "Aaron was involved in creating RSS", but in fact, he had almost nothing to do with that. There were many versions of RSS prior to v1.0, and it was already pretty established by the time he got involved. And actually, the standard had already forked before that point, and the one that ended up being called "RSS 1.0" was the less-popular fork that never really wen…

Yeah and Larry Page's Google engine was a toy demo until Jeff Dean rebuilt it. We can knock the wind out of almost anyone with the cutting insight that they were part of a team and not Godlike ubermensch.
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