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Why I won’t work for Google

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Re: Why I won’t work for Google

#81

Post by rikacomet »

etfb wrote: post #30

The primary reason I won't work for Google is because I'm nowhere near smart enough. But I like to tell myself that the ethical shortcuts they've taken in pursuit of the almighty dollar are a good secondary reason. It's just that I don't need a secondary reason, so yay, consequence-free ethics!

Just want to note that, ethics are not just simply things people have been doing for years, but in fact human progress/efficiency measures built into social behavior.

Such a ignorance towards ethics is like debt: initially you grow, keep doing it, and soon enough you take a nosedive.

Re: Why I won’t work for Google

#82

Post by jrockway »

Just out of curiosity, what do you folks see as the difference between looking at text with the intent to correct spelling (like this text box does) versus looking at text to put an advertisement next to it?

(If I wanted to go reductio ad absurdum, what about looking at text to change foo into a link?)

To be clear: I'm honestly curious, not trying to defend or advocate for one interpretation over another.

Re: Why I won’t work for Google

#83

Post by raphaelj »

It's not so hard to get in touch with Google recruiters. You just need to get a not so bad score at their Codejam contest.

As a side note, about a year ago, a girl from Google called me from London for a job opportunity (in French, my mother tongue, it nicely surprised me). Anyway, I put the girl call down as I was waiting a call from my then girlfriend to meet up for our first date. We all seem to have different reasons to refuse a job opportunity from Google !

Re: Why I won’t work for Google

#84

Post by Donzo »

Aldo_MX wrote: post #48
clips wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How ironic that one would be using Google's cached version to read this

More ironic that Google has a cached copy and CloudFlare not.

Not really ironic because nobody expects that CloudFlare Always On cached copies will actually work.

Re: Why I won’t work for Google

#85

Post by jaseg »

jrockway wrote: post #82

Just out of curiosity, what do you folks see as the difference between looking at text with the intent to correct spelling (like this text box does) versus looking at text to put an advertisement next to it? (If I wanted to go reductio ad absurdum, what about looking at text to change foo into a link?) To be clear: I'm honestly curious, not trying to defend or advocate for one interpretation over another.

During spelling correction, there is not any need for any data to leave your computer. In fact, the spelling correction on this text box is a feature of your browser, not of news.ycombinator.com.

The whole point about serving targeted ads is aggregating multiple sources of data to build an extensive "customer" profile.

Re: Why I won’t work for Google

#86

Post by prolde »

jrockway wrote: post #82

Just out of curiosity, what do you folks see as the difference between looking at text with the intent to correct spelling (like this text box does) versus looking at text to put an advertisement next to it? (If I wanted to go reductio ad absurdum, what about looking at text to change foo into a link?) To be clear: I'm honestly curious, not trying to defend or advocate for one interpretation over another.

In my opinion, Google's activities are "evil" because they intentionally profile their consumers through parsing all their personal data (email, shopping history, etc). Furthermore, Google chooses to spy on their users through a matter that allows the NSA to collect entire profiles for Google's users. Google does this mainly for the money involved.

Re: Why I won’t work for Google

#87

Post by leoc »

quaunaut wrote: post #19

I'm still waiting on proof from Snowden as to Apple/Google/Facebook's direct, illegal cooperation with the NSA. So far, all I've seen proof of is compliance with warrants(which admittedly are questionable, but Google has a direct financial gain in fighting them, not helping them), claims that they've fought them, and evidence that the NSA is both tapping the trunk as well as decrypting SSL'd communications.

Snowden never made a claim of illegal cooperation. Glen Greenwald more or less did, but he was wrong.

Re: Why I won’t work for Google

#88

Post by prolde »

Apachez wrote: post #27
harshreality wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agreed. The response seems to conflate a bunch of different things and pretend it's all Google's fault. Snowden didn't blow the whistle on Google. Google can't control what the NSA is tapping or what court orders it gets. Maybe some people inside Google knew about inter-datacenter taps and didn't do anything about it, but once all of Google became aware, they started encrypting those links. Automatic indexing of emai…

Encryption is worthless if you have handed over the cipherkeys... but I guess this might fool some of the public at least.

Encryption can be done in a matter where the private keys are stored in the user's end, making it far harder for the likes of the NSA to break the encryption.

One example of this is Jitsi's implementation of Off The Recording chatting. When using an XMPP server through Jitsi, the NSA may be able to read the cipher text sent but not the plaintext because the keys are stored on the chat participants computers. Not even the chat server owners know the chat plaintext.

Re: Why I won’t work for Google

#90

Post by twic »

davidw wrote: post #51
joeblau wrote: post #5

This is a lot longer than my response I gave the Google recruiter: I appreciate you contacting me, but I'm currently in the process of raising a funding round for my startup which precludes me from looking at other opportunities right now. However; if you know any investors in the IoT space, I would love to chat. Funny thing is that in about 6 months, they are going to probably contact Him, and Me again.

Here's what I wrote them last time, more or less: > Thank you for your interest and taking the time to discuss employment opportunities, but at this time I have decided not to pursue a further relationship with Google as an employer. I wish you the best in your future endeavors.

Mine was:

"Unfortunately, Google is not a company i have any interest in working for. Thanks for getting in touch, though, and good luck with your hunt."

The impression i've formed is that Google is full of people who are quite smart, but think they're really smart, and have decided to build themselves a technical ecosystem that has no interaction with the rest of the world. That doesn't sound like fertile ground for personal growth.

Also, given that i am in London, it would have meant working on AdWords, which sounds dull.

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