Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Leaving Google

tbray.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

171–180 of 229 posts

Re: Leaving Google

#171

Post by MichaelGG »

outside1234 wrote: post #57
drawkbox wrote: post #32

Google not able to get remote working working? Seems flawed that a system requires everyone to move to one location to work, and a broken system that lives on from the past (why take hours of employees days commuting?). There are times when that is needed, there are other times when that is bad and external insight is easier remotely. Yahoo and possibly Google doing this, leading to more congestion in the Bay Area, a…

Google has no problems recruiting. They will have 100 resumes to fill his shoes in hours. So they get to set the rules still. It won't always be like this for them but it is right now.

So within a day, they'll have 100 resumes of people as qualified as Tim Bray? That seems sort of like a stretch. At that level, those people can work where they want to, no?

Re: Leaving Google

#172

Post by taopao »

sharkweek wrote: post #88
eevilspock wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Vancouver is a real city. Seattle is provincial, passive-aggressive, unfriendly to outsiders, and segregated. A hick town with skyscrapers as I've often called it. Californians who've moved there almost unanimously agree with my first sentence, and crack up at the latter. (Sadly, I lived in Seattle for 17 years. The Bay Area before that, and New York now.)

Seattle is my favorite place in the entire world. People always complain about the "freeze" but I call bullshit. Seattle is the perfect place for people who enjoy a small social circle (Larry David style - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MG_M73MoxJE ) The one thing I always tell outsiders when they ask about finding friends when they move here is to pick an interest and go from there. For example, I love hiking/climbi…

"the perfect place for people who enjoy a small social circle"

I think this is absolutely spot on. I'm pretty surprised about this line criticism from this forum. Nerds (or "hackers" in this case) are a generally introverted crowd, no?

It's not a good city if you're a brogrammer who wants to party like a rock star every night. That's totally fine by me. :)

Re: Leaving Google

#173

Post by eevilspock »

BlackDeath3 wrote: post #140
eevilspock wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I grew up in a farm town.

You'll forgive me if I have trouble believing that, given that you consider Seattle to be "hick".

Dude, I'm obviously speaking hyperbolically, i.e. rhetorically. Relative to any big city with cosmopolitan aspirations, it is a hick town. The number of coworkers I had there who owned rifles and hunted, who drove pickup trucks, who brewed their own beer, who had difficulty with non-Americanized ethnic food puts it a lot closer to a small town than to cities like San Francisco, Chicago or New York.

Re: Leaving Google

#174

Post by jbarham »

cpncrunch wrote: post #154
mahyarm wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I grew up in Victoria, and lived in Seattle for several months. Seattle was literally half the price and twice the wage in all aspects, you'd be stupid as a new grad not to go to Seattle if you grew up in Vancouver or Victoria. I also found the people of Seattle pretty much identical to people in Vancouver. If you switched out a few street signs you wouldn't be able to tell much of a difference between the places.

Victoria beats the pants off Vancouver, in terms of being a nice place to live (if you can afford it) or visit. I always find Vancouver to be pretentious, crowded, overdeveloped and generally lacking in any sort of charm.

As an ex-Vancouverite, I think it's more accurate to say that Victoria is a nice place to retire rather than a place to live (i.e., make a living).

Re: Leaving Google

#175

Post by cpncrunch »

jbarham wrote: post #174
cpncrunch wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Victoria beats the pants off Vancouver, in terms of being a nice place to live (if you can afford it) or visit. I always find Vancouver to be pretentious, crowded, overdeveloped and generally lacking in any sort of charm.

As an ex-Vancouverite, I think it's more accurate to say that Victoria is a nice place to retire rather than a place to live (i.e., make a living).

Agreed. I live mid-island, which is much nicer than Victoria. However I wouldn't be able to live here if I didn't run my own business.

Re: Leaving Google

#176

Post by bcantrill »

psbp wrote: post #5

"Plus I find the Bay Area congested, racist, incestuous, and overpriced." I like this guy.

I know Tim (he and I worked together at Sun) and like him a great deal -- but I take exception to his labeling of the Bay Area as "racist", especially from a Canadian. Indeed, the only time in my life that I have heard the n-word used in earnest by a white person was while I was living in Canada (Ottawa, 1995). Not only was I gobsmacked to hear it, I seemed to be the only person who was horrified. (This was at a corporate retreat, and there were about 15 people gathered in a circle casually drinking beers.) As bad as that was, I found the attitudes toward indigenous Canadians to be worse: the racism there was broad -- and seemingly accepted in polite society. So while there may be many reasons to prefer living in Canada over the US (and Vancouver over the Bay Area), in my experience the lack of racism in Canada shouldn't be among them...

Re: Leaving Google

#177

Post by eevilspock »

seanmcdirmid wrote: post #158
zem wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

anecdata: my sister lives in los angeles, and her company once posted her to their seattle office for a few months. her impression was that it was an extremely white city; that might not be the sort of thing that strikes you if you're white yourself, but coming from california it would definitely reinforce the provincial impression.

Seattle is 16+% Asian and 70-% white, 8.4% black and 1% native. How is that very white? In contrast, LA is 50% white, 10% asian, 10% black, with a 50% Hispanic (many co-identifying as white or black). http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_Seattle

That 16% asian population mostly arrived in the last 20 years from SE asia. They and the black population is highly segregated compared to New York or the Bay Area. No one here is holding L.A. as a great example. Try Vancouver (from the OP), San Francisco, or New York.

http://www.metafilter.com/65711/Segregated-Seattle

https://depts.washington.edu/civilr/maps_2010.htm

Re: Leaving Google

#178

Post by eik3_de »

habosa wrote: post #22

For those who don't know, Tim Bray was one of the original inventors of the XML spec and has been a Developer Advocate at Google for a while. Shame to see him go, I am joining DevRel at Google in the fall and I thought it was awesome to have someone as experience as Tim working kinda-sorta-near me. Hopefully he goes on to do something great.

that is asking for

  XML - It Seemed Like a Good Idea at the Time

Re: Leaving Google

#179

Post by BlackDeath3 »

eevilspock wrote: post #173
BlackDeath3 wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You'll forgive me if I have trouble believing that, given that you consider Seattle to be "hick".

Dude, I'm obviously speaking hyperbolically, i.e. rhetorically. Relative to any big city with cosmopolitan aspirations, it is a hick town. The number of coworkers I had there who owned rifles and hunted, who drove pickup trucks, who brewed their own beer, who had difficulty with non-Americanized ethnic food puts it a lot closer to a small town than to cities like San Francisco, Chicago or New York.

Sure, from a very sheltered perspective, it's quite "hick". I'll accept that.
Post reply on HN