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Google Internal Comics

goomics.net

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Re: Google Internal Comics

#131

Post by ma2rten »

gonehome wrote: post #117
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 think Google has a culture problem (they're massive, doesn't apply everywhere, etc. etc.). There's a weird sense of internal entitlement where some (likely a small, but still substantial) number of people work there, are well paid, and yet act internally as if it's some terrible place doing terrible things (yet stay working there). Whatever way they rationalize this to themselves - it's odd. I don't have first hand…

I think what Thiel is referring to is that advances in computer vision which are published in scientific papers enable others to build better surveillance systems.

This criticism doesn't just apply to DeepMind. The reason that he is mentioning them specifically is because was an early investor so he has access to their team.

Re: Google Internal Comics

#132

Post by lrem »

gonehome wrote: post #117
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 think Google has a culture problem (they're massive, doesn't apply everywhere, etc. etc.). There's a weird sense of internal entitlement where some (likely a small, but still substantial) number of people work there, are well paid, and yet act internally as if it's some terrible place doing terrible things (yet stay working there). Whatever way they rationalize this to themselves - it's odd. I don't have first hand…

You make it sound as if Joe wants Google to stop working with the US and start working with China. The truth is that it's Frank who doesn't want to work with USG, Henry that organizes against Jedi and Sarah that tries to get back into the Chinese market. The three likely never met.

Re: Google Internal Comics

#133

Post by random314 »

marcosdumay wrote: post #24
gravypod wrote: post #14

"Don't focus too much on promotion" - A Billionaire Google Exec https://goomics.net/228/

"Exercise sheets to practice quickly spotting other contributor names and easing them" If the place looks like a Paranoia game, is it evidence that an AI has already took over the place?

This is more or less the norm at every FAANG. New hires are trained by their managers to pee and mark their territory.

This is how you pee

1. Don't verbally discuss project ideas with peers

2. Write up a nice beefy document even if the core idea can be expressed in 2 paragraphs

3. Do some vaguely relevant data analysis etc.

4. Circulate among leadership

Doing the above only protects you from theft within your team. Even if you do all of the above your ideas are liable to be stolen, by someone from other teams. Typically, some one else will prepare a document with a very different title that for the first 2 paragraphs might look like something different. The details will be virtually identical except for some subsections where some arbitrary changes will be made. They will be very eager to not discuss the timelines of when each document was prepared.

Why do they do this? Aren't they paid enough to do the decent thing? The problem is that most FAANG hires are career climber high GPA folks who can't accept the idea that they got into FAANG by grinding on leetcode, not because of any depth in CS knowledge and understanding. Their brain is programmed to ladder climb at all costs. For the untalented hacks that end up at a FAANG, eventually stealing becomes the only option.

Re: Google Internal Comics

#134

Post by decker »

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.

Money.

Re: Google Internal Comics

#137

Post by Clewza313 »

gonehome wrote: post #117
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 think Google has a culture problem (they're massive, doesn't apply everywhere, etc. etc.). There's a weird sense of internal entitlement where some (likely a small, but still substantial) number of people work there, are well paid, and yet act internally as if it's some terrible place doing terrible things (yet stay working there). Whatever way they rationalize this to themselves - it's odd. I don't have first hand…

The blog you link to was written by Noam Bardin, the CEO of Waze, a billion-dollar acquisition. His experience and incentives will be quite different from the average Googler.

Re: Google Internal Comics

#138

Post by gonehome »

Clewza313 wrote: post #137
gonehome wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think Google has a culture problem (they're massive, doesn't apply everywhere, etc. etc.). There's a weird sense of internal entitlement where some (likely a small, but still substantial) number of people work there, are well paid, and yet act internally as if it's some terrible place doing terrible things (yet stay working there). Whatever way they rationalize this to themselves - it's odd. I don't have first hand…

The blog you link to was written by Noam Bardin, the CEO of Waze, a billion-dollar acquisition. His experience and incentives will be quite different from the average Googler.

He talks about the average Googler and the culture, which was the relevant bit.

Re: Google Internal Comics

#139

Post by ganafagol »

lrem wrote: post #123
gonehome wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Complaining at a high level. People with 3 kids make do with jobs at Walmart and McD.

"Pay is good enough" yeah sure.

Re: Google Internal Comics

#140

Post by q3k »

Donckele wrote: post #136

Good one: https://goomics.net/361/

I know it's poking fun at the amount of SCREAMING_SNAKE annotations and checkers and overhead to submit a simple CL... but man oh man do I miss Critique.
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