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What I learned getting acquired by Google

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Re: What I learned getting acquired by Google

#111

Post by joecool1029 »

Crew 'we're building a ship to go somewhere but we need money lol'

Google 'we'll buy your ship and crew'

Crew 'cool what do we have to do'

Google 'Well we need you up to code for sailing on our ocean, so you need to rebuild a lot of your ship to look like our other ships'

Crew 'ok we're done, now what'

Google 'drift between our many beautiful ports'

Crew 'whats the end goal'

Google 'we'll forget about you, stop maintaining your ship, and you'll drift aimlessly on our ocean for some years until one of the directors scuttles your ship on a whim'

Re: What I learned getting acquired by Google

#112

Post by coldtrait »

peddling-brink wrote: post #103
slater- wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

This isn't just google, it's every company with contractors and employees. 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.

Yea I've experienced this in capital one. Some smaller non tech companies are chill, where there is really no difference in how they treat contractors and employees.

Re: What I learned getting acquired by Google

#113

Post by peddling-brink »

coldtrait wrote: post #112
peddling-brink wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This isn't just google, it's every company with contractors and employees. 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.

Yea I've experienced this in capital one. Some smaller non tech companies are chill, where there is really no difference in how they treat contractors and employees.

I worked at a big insurance company for a while. Contractors could have their birthday celebrated, but cake was not permitted.

Re: What I learned getting acquired by Google

#114

Post by cmrdporcupine »

otalp wrote: post #91
parthdesai wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not a googler, but their office in Toronto is in pretty meh area tbh

Do they have a dev office in Toronto? Thought it was in waterloo

In the past it was sales&marketing only with smattering of a few "guest desks" for visiting engineers. And the site leads at Waterloo (at least) lobbied hard to prevent Toronto from ever really having engineering for real. Probably out of worry about centre of gravity being sucked away, etc.

IMHO it limited Google's hiring ability in Ontario. And it made me (and others) have to sell my house in Toronto and move when my employer was acquired. I tried the van/bus commute for 6 months and it was too hard.

Then the Geoffrey Hinton folks moved in there I believe. And I think some AI R&D was happening there?

And then COVID happened, and everyone was WFH but when you did go into the office and book a desk, it became possible to go into the Toronto office instead.

I left after that so can't say how it is now. Google goes through waves of "defrags" where small groups and teams in peripheral offices are... purged and merged because there's a feeling that "strength in numbers" for a particular project pays off. I wouldn't be surprised to see what happen post-layoffs.

The Toronto office, when I visited it, was small. Food was good though.

Re: What I learned getting acquired by Google

#115

Post by JCharante »

laidoffamazon wrote: post #71
JCharante wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To the average person working at NASA feels the same. Most professional achievements are being a part of a cog and society functions by people working together as cogs to make a system function.

This sounds so old school - people today don’t think NASA is an impressive or prestigious job.

I think you're very disconnected from the average american if you believe that.

Re: What I learned getting acquired by Google

#116

Post by laidoffamazon »

wbl wrote: post #94
laidoffamazon wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This sounds so old school - people today don’t think NASA is an impressive or prestigious job.

Where else does your stuff go to space and make headlines regularly?

SpaceX, BlueOrigin fits the bill

Re: What I learned getting acquired by Google

#117

Post by pcl »

CobrastanJorji wrote: post #79

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…

In my time at Cisco, I was impressed with how well they integrated contractors. Wasn’t like this at all.

Re: What I learned getting acquired by Google

#118

Post by ajross »

CobrastanJorji wrote: post #79

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…

For those unaware, these rules are pervasive in the US corporate world, and stem directly from Vizcaino v. Microsoft in 1996. See:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Permatemp

Effectively the fact that an employer treats a temporary employee "the same" as a regular one (i.e. by granting them the same perks) is construed by courts as evidence that they are not temporary.

So, if a company wants to hire temp/contractor employees, they just can't do this. It's not a "caste" thing, it's not about deliberate discrimination, it's not about keeping wages low or reducing overhead, and it's absolutely not unique to Google.

Blame the courts, basically. It was a terrible decision, for exactly this reason. Its effect is directly contra to its intent.

> If you worked with a TVC, you'd get training that felt like you were learning how to own a House Elf: "Remember, never give them clothing or they'll be free! And report them if they ever claim to work for Google."

Yes! That's exactly what happens. And it did, to Microsoft, and it was extremely expensive. So no one wants to see the same thing happen to them.

Re: What I learned getting acquired by Google

#119

Post by hbn »

avidiax wrote: post #11
olivierduval wrote: post #2

> "At Google's scale, the external world ceases to exist and is only rarely and carefully allowed to enter their walls" OK Google... now I get why you behave that way with your users (no support, product graveyard...) ! ;-)

The insularity isn't behind that, in my opinion. It's more that almost all of Google's features are ad-funded, and the company has chosen to make lots of (apparently) free, but poorly supported and uncertain products, rather than a smaller set of well supported products. It's a tradeoff, and Google has made a good tradeoff for both themselves (who collect more data and have more ad supply) and the majority of their u…

Maybe it /was/ a good tradeoff for users but the past few years I think people have become very disillusioned with Google. If anyone still gets excited about a new Google service being announced it's either because they're new to the Google ecosystem and haven't yet experienced year-after-year of having products and services you rely on repeatedly cancelled out from under you and replaced with something noticeably worse, or they're a masochist.

Re: What I learned getting acquired by Google

#120

Post by compiler-guy »

xnacly wrote: post #67

How would one go about working at google as a junior fullstack developer? I wanted to work remote or onsite in germany but there seem to be no open positions

Google isn't hiring much right now, so the options are pretty limited. I expect it will loosen, but have no inside info.
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