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Why I won’t work for Google

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Re: Why I won’t work for Google

#171

Post by joesmo »

brown9-2 wrote: post #153
mehrdada wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

The other half of this is that the skills required to get past the interview bar are not quite the same skills that would make you a great developer. There is some overlap, but the interview process at Google is a game in itself.

This is the case at most companies. It's rather ironic that the interview can be a brain-wracking exercise in futility and problems that will never be encountered or dealt with on the job. The fact that the two are generally unrelated does lead to both bad candidates being hired and good ones pass up. I assume this is what people mean when they say they are not "smart enough" to pass an interview with Google or another company (unless they really do think they're not smart enough and somehow their job is incredibly tougher at Google than somewhere else). They don't want to play the interview game and may not actually know a lot of the answers and tricks of the game which leads them to think they are not smart enough to work at Google when they're just not experienced in the interview game.

Re: Why I won’t work for Google

#173

Post by bstar77 »

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!

Being smart enough for google is a fucking myth. If it takes a genius to engineer google analytics or google ads, then thank god I'm a mere mortal.

Re: Why I won’t work for Google

#174

Post by javert »

hitchhiker999 wrote: post #40

Perhaps a few people don't understand why OP takes this so seriously. This is the 'long game', the game for the betterment of human existence. (Cliche? yes, true enough? - probably) If you still feel these huge corporations have our best interests at heart, you are being a touch naive. They are not 'evil' ofc, but they're probably not the best idea for the future.

> This is the 'long game', the game for the betterment of human existence.

There is no rational moral justification for this ethic. It's arbitrary. Don't devote your life to something morally arbitrary.

Re: Why I won’t work for Google

#175

Post by rwl »

microtonal wrote: post #147
ntakasaki wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I won't work for them because they're increasingly becoming more and more evil. As an example, they've been secretly building ad profiles of Google Apps for Education student users even if ads were turned off by the administrator to show them ads on other Google sites. They give schools free Chromebooks and all, but they should atleast declare what kind of profiling they're doing to the students who are forced to use…

You might be interested to hear that e-mail scanning for the creating profiles for advertisements was killed a few days ago for Google Apps for Education. They are also ending it for Google Apps for Business and the grandfathered free accounts: http://googleenterprise.blogspot.de/2014/04/protecting-stude...

Thanks for pointing to this. I am a grad student. My institution recently moved to Apps for Education and away from an in-house system, which I was not very happy about. Privacy for my data (including communications with the undergrads I teach) was, and remains, one of my concerns.

There's an awful lot of very slippery language in this post:

"So, if you’re a student logging in to your Apps for Education account at school or at home, when you navigate to Google.com, you will not see ads." Great -- but does anyone see ads on the google.com homepage? Seeing ads is not the issue; the issue is how Google is collecting and processing data. So:

"We’ve permanently removed all ads scanning in Gmail for Apps for Education, which means Google cannot collect or use student data in Apps for Education services for advertising purposes." I was with you until that last qualifier, "for advertising purposes." That just makes me wonder what sort of "collection" and "use" purposes Google is reserving for itself. What's really off the table here? Even if "ads scanning" is turned off, what protections are in place to make sure that no one, including Google itself, has the ability to use the data associated with Apps for Education accounts in privacy-violating or nefarious ways? The technology the post actually mentions, like HTTPS, is all about the channel between users' computers and Google's servers. But are there any protections to keep student data from being abused by Google employees?

This last possibility is an important one, as many of my students may one day be applying for jobs at Google. What assurance do they have that the person who hires them or their future manager will not, in a moment of weakness, troll through their email from their undergrad days? see the photos they sent to friends? read the papers they wrote and stored on Google Drive?

I understand that much of the language here is probably slippery for legal reasons, and to keep the explanations simple, not because it is hiding some bad intent on Google's part. But good intentions are not enough when you are asking to be trusted with other people's data, especially student data.

Re: Why I won’t work for Google

#176

Post by gress »

microtonal wrote: post #147
ntakasaki wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I won't work for them because they're increasingly becoming more and more evil. As an example, they've been secretly building ad profiles of Google Apps for Education student users even if ads were turned off by the administrator to show them ads on other Google sites. They give schools free Chromebooks and all, but they should atleast declare what kind of profiling they're doing to the students who are forced to use…

You might be interested to hear that e-mail scanning for the creating profiles for advertisements was killed a few days ago for Google Apps for Education. They are also ending it for Google Apps for Business and the grandfathered free accounts: http://googleenterprise.blogspot.de/2014/04/protecting-stude...

So that's ok then. And their deceptive lawyering means nothing since it's not an issue anymore.

Re: Why I won’t work for Google

#178

Post by raverbashing »

skj wrote: post #157
raverbashing wrote: post #125

I won't work for Google for a very simple reason After you went through an unsuccessful interview with them (even if it's more than 5 years ago), if you send them your CV again, it goes to /dev/null Really So, yeah, other companies are hiring... And there are good possibilities outside of the big companies, it may even be more fun and less red tape

This is untrue. For one, I am a counterexample. Also, I know members of hiring committees, and they tell me that if you have a failed interview one year, and a pretty good interview the next, that is a stronger hire signal than a pretty good interview without the previous failed one. That is, it shows growth.

Hard when you don't even get an interview anymore and recruiters leave you hanging without an answer.

Your experience doesn't match mine, I'm not saying you're being untrue, I'm saying YMMV

Re: Why I won’t work for Google

#179

Post by john61 »

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.

It does not matter for the OP if Google's behavior is illegal or not. Ethic is independent from law.

Re: Why I won’t work for Google

#180

Post by quaunaut »

leoc wrote: post #87
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.

Yes he has.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rB9L1PD7Cpo

Go to 4 minutes into that video. It's his first interview post-reveal, in Hong Kong.

"Beyond that we've got Prism, which is a demonstration of how the US Government co-opts US corporate power to its own ends. Companies like Google, Facebook, Apple, Microsoft, they all get together with the NSA, and provide the NSA with direct access to the back ends of all of the systems you use to communicate, to store data, to put things in the cloud. And even just to send birthday wishes and keep a record of your life. And they give the NSA direct access that they don't need to oversee so they can't be held liable for it. I think that's a dangerous capability for anyone to have, but particularly for an organization that's demonstrated time and time again that they'll work to shield themselves from oversight."

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