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What I learned getting acquired by Google

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Re: What I learned getting acquired by Google

#131

Post by resolutebat »

slater- wrote: post #96
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…

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 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.

Google goes out of its way to emphasize that TVC "conversion" does not exist. You can interview, but you'll go through the same process as anybody else, they'll make sure you don't interview with anybody you know, and your achievements as TVC are discounted completely.

Re: What I learned getting acquired by Google

#132

Post by SilverBirch »

izacus wrote: post #34
moritonal wrote: post #8

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…

I mean... it's both? It reads like real life - good things and bad. Which is why the insight is interesting.

To me it reads more like someone with a positive disposition (or someone who has founded a start up and doesn't want to burn bridges) laying out the problems without saying they are problems. I mean come on - the upsides: we "merged cultures", "our app lives on", "careers have bloomed" versus downsides "we quit", and "we don't think we actually delivered what we wanted to". But it's ok because after everyone who cared about the product quit, maybe someone else will might make it happen ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

You could change none of the facts of this blog and write it as an aggressive rant about how Google murdered their startup, forced them to re-write the entire thing, stopped them shipping by being a bureaucratic nightmare, and the big take away is you can succeed at google if you "play the right game" if you know what I mean. It's ... not positive.

Re: What I learned getting acquired by Google

#133

Post by gumby »

orangecat wrote: post #121
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…

a company that behaves this way should be run out of town It's literally illegal to treat contractors too well.

But remember that is because these companies were exploiting the use of contractors to deny them employee protections.

True contractors won’t care: they work for themselves and have multiple clients anyway. But these "red" people are employees in all but name, so that the companies can save money and other protections. A small slip up by Google (Apple/FB/MS/tons of others) and these folks get the protection they deserve.

Re: What I learned getting acquired by Google

#134

Post by castlecrasher2 »

slater- wrote: post #96
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…

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…

>it's a caste system

One required by federal policy. Companies are legally bound, or at least incentivized to not risk lawsuits, to degrading temporary staff so as to distinguish between regular employees and contractors.

Re: What I learned getting acquired by Google

#135

Post by itronitron »

fredsmith219 wrote: post #104
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…

Not at Google but I was a contractor at a hospital. All the employees got active shooter training. I guess the contractors were meant to be fodder.

No doubt there are some HR/legal folks wanting to avoid the liability of 'training' someone on something that goes badly. The workaround to that is to have the training in an auditorium and not keep attendance on who is in the room.

Re: What I learned getting acquired by Google

#136

Post by gumby »

ajross wrote: post #118
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 empl…

> Blame the courts, basically.

No, blame these companies for trying hard to avoid workplace protection.

Re: What I learned getting acquired by Google

#137

Post by allenu »

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.

Yup, when I read the blog post, my immediate thought was, "Hey, this sounds just like Microsoft when I was there." There it was blue badge vs. non-blue badge.

All the other stuff, too –– wanting to innovate but finding everything so slow, lots of process, feeling very pampered, etc.

Re: What I learned getting acquired by Google

#138

Post by hbn »

okdood64 wrote: post #85
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

Brand yourself as a software engineer instead of fullstack developer, network to find a referral, LeetCode hard.

This is maybe getting offtopic but I still have no idea why the term "full stack developer" exists or why it's so widespread. Sure, if you specialize in JavaScript and you mainly work writing web UI libraries, you might mainly consider yourself a "frontend developer." Same thing for working on server frameworks that would, I guess, make you a "backend developer"? (I'd think in that case you'd probably just be into general programming, and not call yourself that)

Does a person that wires up a backend to do some business logic, hit some APIs, etc. and then send it to a frontend to be displayed really need a name like "full stack"? It almost implies your doing both of the jobs of a frontend and backend developer, but if you go by the example work I mentioned previously, you're not doing that. That's what I do for my job and it feels like I'm doing the Sesame Street of programming jobs compared to other areas of the industry.

I don't like how the term "software engineer" is overused either. Maybe just cause most of what comes out of the software industry really shouldn't be compared to what comes out of industries that build bridges and large machinery. I don't feel like people who regularly joke about copy-pasting code snippets from Stack Overflow are really implementing proper engineering practices.

Re: What I learned getting acquired by Google

#139

Post by seanmcdirmid »

asdfman123 wrote: post #33

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.

Doesn't work in China (I've heard).

Re: What I learned getting acquired by Google

#140

Post by JSavageOne »

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.

Ok but then contractors have the freedom to work whatever hours they want, not show up to the office, and subcontract out their work - right? If so that might be more appealing than being an employee
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