101–110 of 645 posts
I'm still not convinced that the best strategy isn't just to take the acquisition money and bail. Any sort of large corporate acquisition is going to lead directly into a few years of spending an outsized amount of time just converting code, tools, security rules, and processes into the parent company's preferences.
Is this a happy story? Having read it my takeaways are that they were immediately asked to rewrite their app in Google's way, then a separate research team went off and wrote them a new API for their core functionality. And now given Socratic by Google on the Play Store was last updated on Oct 21, 2020, and is not available for my Android 13 device, so seems to have just died? Kind of seems like Google bought the com…
Was it an aquihire?
The "red badge" thing was very real. It was really weird having TVCs on your team. You'd all work hard together to launch a thing, and then everybody except the red badge would get a celebratory team tchotchke or a team lunch or something. If you asked about it, the manager would say "we can't give Jim things directly because that might be like compensation and they'd be like an employee." There'd be all-hands meetin…
thank you for mentioning this. i was a red badge. it was fucking demeaning. i have a lot of stories, but my favorite was when everyone on my floor got an earthquake safety kit except me. literally google didn't care if i lived or died. the expectation was that if i sucked up enough ("demonstrated my value") they MIGHT make me a real boy, like some bizarre Velveteen Rabbit fetish game. i loved watching how Google woul…
Microsoft learned the hard way to not treat contractors like employees. https://www.reuters.com/article/businesspropicks-us-findlaw-...
Nobody else wants to learn that same lesson.
The "red badge" thing was very real. It was really weird having TVCs on your team. You'd all work hard together to launch a thing, and then everybody except the red badge would get a celebratory team tchotchke or a team lunch or something. If you asked about it, the manager would say "we can't give Jim things directly because that might be like compensation and they'd be like an employee." There'd be all-hands meetin…
thank you for mentioning this. i was a red badge. it was fucking demeaning. i have a lot of stories, but my favorite was when everyone on my floor got an earthquake safety kit except me. literally google didn't care if i lived or died. the expectation was that if i sucked up enough ("demonstrated my value") they MIGHT make me a real boy, like some bizarre Velveteen Rabbit fetish game. i loved watching how Google woul…
The second passport thing is definitely true. When I'm abroad--even, recently, Buenos Aires--I have access to office space, free food, a gym, and even a music room where I can practice guitar and piano.
I'm still not convinced that the best strategy isn't just to take the acquisition money and bail. Any sort of large corporate acquisition is going to lead directly into a few years of spending an outsized amount of time just converting code, tools, security rules, and processes into the parent company's preferences.
The second passport thing is definitely true. When I'm abroad--even, recently, Buenos Aires--I have access to office space, free food, a gym, and even a music room where I can practice guitar and piano.
TIL google has an office in Buenos Aires, wonder how that works with the current inflation, do engineers get paid in pesos? do they have to re-adjust their salaries every few weeks?
The "red badge" thing was very real. It was really weird having TVCs on your team. You'd all work hard together to launch a thing, and then everybody except the red badge would get a celebratory team tchotchke or a team lunch or something. If you asked about it, the manager would say "we can't give Jim things directly because that might be like compensation and they'd be like an employee." There'd be all-hands meetin…
That's how it works with contractors in most large organisations. The other side of the coin is that they're usually rewarded better than employees are, on the basis that they can be fired at any time with no notice. In practice that rarely happens, as higher-pay => better-retention => becomes-most-knowledgeable-person-over-time.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
That's the office near the port, right? Beautiful neighborhood and the commercial part is very tourist friendly.
Yep. Another perk is that Google always seems to lease the best/coolest office real estate anywhere. Most of my time here I feel vaguely gross about how nice everything is.
Always felt kind of gross to me.