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Google Tried to Patent My Work After a Job Interview

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Re: Google Tried to Patent My Work After a Job Interview

#11

Post by Twisol »

thaumasiotes wrote: post #10
Twisol wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What makes this terrible advice? Is there something in particular about landing a job at Google that makes it objectively better in every value system than continuing with a PhD that one is already seeking? I left a very good position on the table after my undergrad, in favor of pursuing a graduate degree. I weighed my options and decided that I would rather spend some years in my youth learning how to conduct resear…

> I picked up an excellent job after my Master's (at the same place I had left behind previously!) It sounds like you would agree that joining a PhD program is not a good idea.

It sounds like you have read far, far too much into my message.

Re: Google Tried to Patent My Work After a Job Interview

#12

Post by eksemplar »

thaumasiotes wrote: post #2

> I was even invited to share my work directly with Regina Dugan, the director of ATAP at that time! I was excited, thinking perhaps I would be invited for a summer internship. It turned out they found my work so relevant that they offered me a job on the spot. > It was a tough choice: I had just started the first year of my PhD and would’ve had to take a leave from the program to pursue this project. After asking ma…

It’s almost always better to achieve for yourself instead of others. A PhD. is infinitely more valuable than a couple of years working for any company, especially if your subject is interesting enough to on-spot hire you before you finish.

And I say that as a manager who’s hired a lot of people before they earned X because their work was interesting. I don’t do it anymore, as a rule, because it crushed a lot of those people with regret later and I have to live with that.

Re: Google Tried to Patent My Work After a Job Interview

#13

Post by neilwilson »

thaumasiotes wrote: post #2

> I was even invited to share my work directly with Regina Dugan, the director of ATAP at that time! I was excited, thinking perhaps I would be invited for a summer internship. It turned out they found my work so relevant that they offered me a job on the spot. > It was a tough choice: I had just started the first year of my PhD and would’ve had to take a leave from the program to pursue this project. After asking ma…

An MIT Phd opens many doors in many areas and will do throughout your life. Trust me, you won’t always be young and you won’t always be interested in the same thing.

It shouldn’t be, but it is way more difficult to get high level professional qualifications when you’re older. The expectation that reaearch students are young is quite embedded.

Re: Google Tried to Patent My Work After a Job Interview

#18

Post by ahoka »

thaumasiotes wrote: post #2

> I was even invited to share my work directly with Regina Dugan, the director of ATAP at that time! I was excited, thinking perhaps I would be invited for a summer internship. It turned out they found my work so relevant that they offered me a job on the spot. > It was a tough choice: I had just started the first year of my PhD and would’ve had to take a leave from the program to pursue this project. After asking ma…

Maybe they wanted to hire so they can patent it because some of the work was done during their employment?

Re: Google Tried to Patent My Work After a Job Interview

#20

Post by CryoLogic »

Something very similar happened to me.

When I was at university studying CS I was running a Arduino fansite and a fansite for a videogame - both of whom made most of their money from affiliate revenue (a couple hundred bucks per month).

I thought it would be cool to work at Reddit (was close to graduating), and I had read blog posts from here and various other sites and IRC about how hiring managers liked projects.

I took to it to build a JS library that converted links to affiliate links, for example amazon and some other small retailers I had used.

Basically you just parse any URL you embed in the page with this library and it would convert the existing (non-affiliate) links to affiliate links with your signature attached so you got a revenue share.

In addition to this, I had done research on Reddit's traffics and crawled reddit to see how many affiliate-capable links existed. I talked about this in the interview and suggested they could make around 2 million per month if they hired me and used my script.

--> I was rejected after the interview, but a couple months later Reddit announced it was experimenting with a new feature that would re-write links as affiliate. They ended up implementing this feature that I am 95% sure I came up with and someone else stole.

It was one of the shittiest experiences I have ever had interviewing, especially since I didn't get a job out of it but I believe they have made millions off of this idea so far.

I huge put off, but I've learned since then backstabbing and stealing ideas is a big part of politics in most corporations. What a bummer.

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