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Google Internal Comics

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Re: Google Internal Comics

#121

Post by tolbish »

gonehome wrote: post #120
tolbish wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well that doesn't sound very Google-y.

Hard to know without being there - but honest/nuanced answers require in-good-faith questions and not political posturing or using the opportunity to attack/leak. Though I think Zuckerberg has done a good job continuing this despite the leaks (at least that's what it seems like externally). It might not be just the company that changed, but the employees too (which may have forced Google to change policy as a result)…

There once was a day, long ago in the before time, when the leadership at Google was held to a higher ethical standard than Mark Zuckerberg.

Re: Google Internal Comics

#122

Post by gonehome »

tolbish wrote: post #121
gonehome wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hard to know without being there - but honest/nuanced answers require in-good-faith questions and not political posturing or using the opportunity to attack/leak. Though I think Zuckerberg has done a good job continuing this despite the leaks (at least that's what it seems like externally). It might not be just the company that changed, but the employees too (which may have forced Google to change policy as a result)…

There once was a day, long ago in the before time, when the leadership at Google was held to a higher ethical standard than Mark Zuckerberg.

They're in the same business - not sure why you'd expect them to have different incentives.

Both are trying to do things at massive scale and dealing with the problems associated with that.

I think both do things I don't agree with, but are generally unfairly vilified most of the time by their failing competition (the press mostly) and weirdly some of their employees. The sense I get from this is it's mostly political tribalism (affects both far left and far right with different grievances for each).

I don't personally like the ad-driven model, so with the exception of YouTube I avoid their products where possible.

Re: Google Internal Comics

#123

Post by lrem »

gonehome wrote: post #110
deanCommie wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Counterpoint: At a top company like Google, full of some of the most talented people in the world, there simply won't be enough promotions to go around. And yet, an "average" performer who is happy to build, scale, maintain, and not re-launch a new chat product every 5 years should be rewarded and encouraged to stay and not leave to a competitor. How do you do it? You have to create intrinsic motivation. Twist: You c…

IIRC (don't work at Google myself, but friends do) - you start out of college as an L3 and are expected to make promo twice to L4 and then L5. Once at L5 it's okay to just stay there and do good work, the pay is still really good and you're not expected to go beyond that unless you want to (and you're capable of it). The main issue I've heard is that to go from L3 -> L5 there are incentives around 'impact' and launch…

I work with many brilliant engineers who have been in Google for 5-10 years and are at L4. The pay is good enough if you don't have a large family to support and they simply can't be arsed to play that game.

Re: Google Internal Comics

#124

Post by lrem »

briefcomment wrote: post #43
re wrote: post #4

Related: Google's “court jester” quits, releases 14 years of previously-internal comics https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27773253

Ah, I now understand the latest comic.

That comic can be read as Sundar finally getting rid of the pain in his shoe. This is not what happened. Manu described in his goodbye the reasons he left (mostly being tired by all the things he's complaining about in his comics and wanting to go somewhere that is remote-friendly) and I have not noticed being pressured out among them.

Re: Google Internal Comics

#125

Post by wombatmobile »

asdfasgasdgasdg wrote: post #82
bscphil wrote: post #13

I'm not saying this with the intent of harshly criticizing the author, but I admit it's surprising to me that someone (who had other options) would work for 14 years at a company they clearly came to believe was making the world a worse place.

I had an initial reaction when reading this comics of, "Man, this guy has become very cynical about the company!" I remember reading some of the earliest comics and having a little laugh, but I kind of lost track of it and hadn't checked up on his stuff for a while. But then I looked back to the earliest comics and even most of those come off as fairly critical of the company. There doesn't seem to be so much of an a…

This isn't the only possibility, but bald cynicism might just be the only creative tool he's got in his quiver.

Makes you appreciate the likes of Scott Adams, XKCD and Norman Rockwell, who use parody, irony, and soul respectively, each with skilled nuance that shifts the viewer from their same old place to open the possibilities for some new take.

Re: Google Internal Comics

#126

Post by xtc303sqrt »

marricks wrote: post #99
gorgoiler wrote: post #73

Some fun here but wow do these get negative. I can relate to a lot of this stuff and I hope the artist is ok. If a relationship is bringing you sadness and negativity all the time then it either needs some nurturing or a nuclear option. The nice thing with employer relationships is you can literally walk away. Relationships with people are worth fixing but no job is worth the sadness, even if it’s with someone as pre…

US’s culture has a lot of focus on one’s self and the steps one should take to get themselves better. Little focus on how awful systems or companies cough like Google cough are the one’s with the issues, not us.

This is not my experience working for Bay Area tech companies at all. A significant number of employees seem to think criticizing their employer is their primary job function.

If there’s nothing to complain about at the moment, they’ll manufacture it. They need a constant outlet to express how awful and oppressive their employer is, and if they don’t get enough attention internally, they’ll turn to Twitter and try to drum up outrage externally.

If a company has crossed an ethical (not political) line, I’m all for taking a stand. But this goes far beyond that.

Re: Google Internal Comics

#127

Post by ocdtrekkie »

Xorlev wrote: post #78
pabs3 wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Doesn't the hardware produced by Google direct users towards Google services that contain advertising? Or are they producing non-consumer hardware?

My Nest devices don't have even tenuous links to advertising.

This is incorrect. You were correct with Google Cloud: While it's a market follower that can't even break the top three, it's definitely a non-ad-based business unit.

But Nest is, when viewed in a context that understands why most Google products exist. It should be obvious that Search exists to serve Ads. The first result of every search is generally an ad. That one's easy. Android and Chrome both exist to protect Google Search: They ensure that most people's default experience is to search Google for everything, so they get ads.

Nest is about ads, but you have to look at the competitive context. Apple, Microsoft, Google, are all shipping ecosystems. Large catalogs of products which interoperate best with each other. It's absolutely anticompetitive and most likely illegal, but that's a digression: The issue is that for Android and Chrome to protect Search to serve Ads is that people have to pick Google's ecosystem over other ecosystems. Sure, you can pick Apple's, and Google has paid Apple eleventy-billion dollars to still send you to Google Search, but they can change their minds at any time, and it's more beneficial for Google if they don't have to pay another company for your attention. Also sometimes Apple gets on a privacy kick and makes tracking users harder, which Google wants to do to sell ads better, so they gotta fight that too.

So the issue here is that Apple has iOS and then it has Siri, and then it has HomeKit, which all works very well together and provides a very clean unified experience. If Google didn't have an experience comparable to Apple's experience, people might leave Android for Apple, and that's bad. So products like Nest are entirely there to provide a Google ecosystem that is competitive to other tech companies' ecosystems, so that you view ads.

Re: Google Internal Comics

#128

Post by GoatOfAplomb »

gonehome wrote: post #110
deanCommie wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Counterpoint: At a top company like Google, full of some of the most talented people in the world, there simply won't be enough promotions to go around. And yet, an "average" performer who is happy to build, scale, maintain, and not re-launch a new chat product every 5 years should be rewarded and encouraged to stay and not leave to a competitor. How do you do it? You have to create intrinsic motivation. Twist: You c…

IIRC (don't work at Google myself, but friends do) - you start out of college as an L3 and are expected to make promo twice to L4 and then L5. Once at L5 it's okay to just stay there and do good work, the pay is still really good and you're not expected to go beyond that unless you want to (and you're capable of it). The main issue I've heard is that to go from L3 -> L5 there are incentives around 'impact' and launch…

Some years ago, the official ladder descriptions changed to reflect what was already unofficially the case in (most of?) the company. Roughly: you can hang at L4 pretty much forever, as long as you're willing to keep learning new things as required for your role.

That leaves the pressure of getting from L3 to L4, which, admittedly, people do feel. But L3->L4 is also a much more straightforward promotion. It's not nearly as sensitive to finding the right project/right team/right boss, and the promo comes more from your impact on the project than your project's impact on the product/company.

Re: Google Internal Comics

#129

Post by skinkestek »

Xorlev wrote: post #78
pabs3 wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Doesn't the hardware produced by Google direct users towards Google services that contain advertising? Or are they producing non-consumer hardware?

My Nest devices don't have even tenuous links to advertising.

Do you work for Google?

If not, how do you know that data from Nest isn't used to enhance your profile?

I mean: knowing the sounds or patterns of sounds (I'm trying to be generous here and not accuse them of actually using every word spoken near a listening device as input) or just the general pattern of temperature etc could be useful in figuring out what ads to show.

... on a less generous note they mostly don't need that data: their AI has already calculated that if you are a male at least you need to see even more ads for scammy dating sites or - lately - ads for pay-to-win games - possibly with female narrators that could also have been in the aforementioned ads.

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