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Why I won’t work for Google

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Re: Why I won’t work for Google

#91
post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Cloudflare is not having any issue, it's just used here as a proxy to help with caching and static files. The real server hosting the application is down. However this comment was a bit useless.

Cached version: https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache%3Ahttp... (Ironically by Google)

This is a funny coincidence.

Re: Why I won’t work for Google

#92
post #18

"Nicklas, a simple no thank you I am not interested would have sufficed -Patrick"

Nah, it probably went down like this:

"Niklas thank you for kindly sharing your worldview with me. I'm always trying to fill the void of my poor intellect's inability to create its own opinions. Is there any feed I can subscribe to? I'm sure I'm going to need more opinions going forward as I waddle through life."

Re: Why I won’t work for Google

#95

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.

email -> geo-location -> metadata -> adwords -> clicked or not -> data mining, stored as data for every email ever.

dictionary -> fuzzy search -> spelling correction, corrected for every word ever.

Re: Why I won’t work for Google

#96
post #90
post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

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

That's the main reason I'll never apply to Google. Not that I won't get in, but that I won't have the political klout to actually get to work on some of the fun stuff.

They're employing tens of thousands of very bright people; yet the truly interesting stuff will have been done by a few hundred / thousand of those.

What reason do I have for believing that I'll be in that small percentage rather than the other 90+% doing boring grunt work...

Re: Why I won’t work for Google

#97

I think this unduly conflates his displeasure at the automated scanning of emails to target advertising and the NSA etc. bulk access to data. The former doesn't make the latter any more likely. All webmail services must hold their customers' emails, and they are therefore open to being read by a government or third party. Users could encrypt their emails, but it's very hard to do this while also making logging in and…

There you go: webmails, while extremely usable, help government snooping by their very nature. If e-mail was decentralized like it was meant to be, spying would be that much harder. (Yes, everyone could host their mail at home. Yes, it can be plug&play useable. No, no one bothered to sell the damn stuff, probably because webmails were more profitable —or believed to be.)

But when you think of it for like 2 seconds, automated scanning does help the NSA. Such software is easy to re-purpose. With the right subpoena, I give Google a week before it gives away a nice social graph of US dissidence to the NSA.

Re: Why I won’t work for Google

#98
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!

> The primary reason I won't work for Google is because I'm nowhere near smart enough I think plenty of people tend to vastly overestimate Google's (or Facebook's, ...) hiring bar. I know quite a few people who would be happy to work there and (I believe) can easily beat the hiring process, but they self-eliminate themselves from the game, so I definitely recommend to folks not to make a prejudice about whether they…

Honestly, I used to think the same way. I am a college dropout that has about 3 years professional experience (thoigh I have been programming since I was a kid) and I suddenly have a Google recruiter coming after me and trying to get me to interview. I have worked with a guy who now works at Google and some people who interviewed at one time or another. They say the same thing as the parent post; Google hires good programmers, and they happen to have some geniuses. Don't quit the race before you even start it.

Re: Why I won’t work for Google

#99

Pretty well-written sentiment, only thing is that recruiters cast a pretty wide net and certainly wouldn't read through anyone's life story if presented with the opportunity. However, I'm sure that if every person who gets contacted by a Google recruiter responds with a similar diatribe about their disillusionment with Google's ways, they just might take notice.

Since it's made the top spot on HN, the recruiter himself no longer matters. Hundreds of Google employees will read it today.

Re: Why I won’t work for Google

#100
post #90
post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I'm also in London. Last time (5-6 different Google recruiters over the last 6-7 years) I went through phone screening with the recruiter after she was very convincing when telling me why this time would be different (after I'd given her my "standard" paragraph by e-mail about why I generally think talking to Google is a waste of my time). This was for a management position, and she then got me set up for technical interview.

The guy in question gave me a bunch of totally idiotic questions about details about filesystem implementations, and clearly didn't like it when I pointed out to him that there wasn't one single answer to the questions he raised the way he'd asked them, and proceeded to give him an outline of the various solutions that applied for a few different filesystems. He wanted specific textbook details about a filesystem that was entirely irrelevant for the position.

My impression was that he was "textbook smart", and would answer questions about the specific stuff he'd studied very well - the questions he asked fit very well with that -, and would probably excel at brainteasers, but his interpersonal skills and broader understanding of the subjects he asked me about appeared to be so weak that had I been on the other side of the table, I'd never have considered hiring him.

I "failed" that interview, only to have the recruiter bring it up in some recruitment committee or something and get it set aside and get me through to the next step on the basis of the notes I sent her of all the issues I saw with the questions. But only after she spent a lot of time lamenting the process (this is a common team with Google recruiters - every one I've spoken to has been incredibly frustrated at their own processes).

But by then I'd lost interest - the guy in question was in the group I'd have managed, and I really did not like the thought of having to deal with him on a daily basis. Or the thought of a team staffed with similar people... Or the thought of working somewhere where the HR processes are so messed up that their recruiters spends half the time they talk to me apologising about how their recruitment works.

I know there are lots of great people at Google, but every interaction I've had with their recruitment process makes me less inclined to want to work there.

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