Google illegally underpaid thousands of workers • Hacker News Board

Re: Google illegally underpaid thousands of workers

#151

Post by dannyobrien » Sat, Sep 11, 2021, 3:20 AM UTC

stephenhuey wrote: post #143

abdabab wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe you were talking about other companies. Google is still wildly profitable. > the company just set an all-time record revenue of $61.9 billion this quarter, and record profits for the fourth quarter in a row at $18.5 billion. From https://www.theverge.com/2021/7/27/22596592/google-q2-2021-r...

Wow, at what point do their profits balloon enough that Google's moat is no longer intimidating enough to fend off a gold rush of people willing to pour heaps of money and ingenuity into outdoing their search product? I've been searching with Google since the beginning and it definitely feels worse than in the days of yore, yet they make more money than ever...

They don't make money at search, they make money on advertising.

Re: Google illegally underpaid thousands of workers

#152

Post by tomrod » Sat, Sep 11, 2021, 3:25 AM UTC

labster wrote: post #149

tomrod wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To continue the spirit of the many nested comments now going back and forth: Metaphorically.

People who ignore semantic drift are literally gay.

I appreciate the compliment.

Re: Google illegally underpaid thousands of workers

#153

Post by [deleted] » Sat, Sep 11, 2021, 3:25 AM UTC

rcpt wrote: post #103

ffggvv wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

sometimes you just need someone who can write super simple scripts to help process/clean some data or do grunt work that none of the devs want to do. And sometimes this need is just temporary for 4 months etc. I wouldn't waste a google dev's on grunt work that any coder could do.

> who can write super simple scripts to help process/clean some data If you can figure how to make that process "super simple" you can make staff engineer. Source: am L5 SWE at Google spending most of time wrangling unclean data

[deleted]

Re: Google illegally underpaid thousands of workers

#154

Post by [deleted] » Sat, Sep 11, 2021, 3:40 AM UTC

joe_the_user wrote: post #74

AlbertCory wrote: post #37

Personal Googler story: In Ads and in Search, at least as of 2010 or so, Google employed independent companies who hired "raters" to provide "ground truth" for the ML systems. For example, they would rate proposed ads for a given query, so that the ML system could learn from their "truth". For Search, they'd rate proposed search results for a given query. There was a whole pipeline to bring in the raters' results and…

I can't make any general statements about what happens to everyone, but in this particular case, I can't complain at all about HR's handling. That's kind of the exception that proves the rule , you think? That is, your outlining of the situation gives a strong suggestion that this sort of thing is common and unless the contractor has pull (say, a relative that works at Google), they can't do anything.

[deleted]

Re: Google illegally underpaid thousands of workers

#155

Post by sabellito » Sat, Sep 11, 2021, 3:46 AM UTC

AlbertCory wrote: post #37

Personal Googler story: In Ads and in Search, at least as of 2010 or so, Google employed independent companies who hired "raters" to provide "ground truth" for the ML systems. For example, they would rate proposed ads for a given query, so that the ML system could learn from their "truth". For Search, they'd rate proposed search results for a given query. There was a whole pipeline to bring in the raters' results and…

I find it a little strange that this anecdote that paints google in a good light is the most upvoted comment in this story, instead of the comment that highlights the fact that there are emails showing that google knew for certain that this was happening and decided against fixing it to "not increase costs" - knowingly stealing that money from employees.

Re: Google illegally underpaid thousands of workers

#156

Post by Dylan16807 » Sat, Sep 11, 2021, 3:49 AM UTC

AlbertCory wrote: post #107

zamfi wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the intent behind the modern usage of "the exception that proves the rule" is that: a) the rule is a heuristic, not a hard-and-fast rule, and b) the notability of exceptions suggests that the heuristic is pretty good. In other words, if the exception is, in fact, exceptional, it reinforces that the heuristic is reasonably valid for non-exceptional cases. In this case, the fact that it took the intervention of…

Another commonly misused phrase is "begging the question" which you have done here. It means "assuming that which you need to prove." You have no proof that it was exceptional. All you have is one case . You have no idea what other people in pay disputes end up doing.

People are allowed to use a phrase for its literal meaning instead of the traditional idiomatic meaning.

Re: Google illegally underpaid thousands of workers

#157

Post by darthvoldemort » Sat, Sep 11, 2021, 3:52 AM UTC

I find it odd that Google is so proud of the fact that it plans on recycling all its power and is spending so much on being carbon neutral, but can't have the common decency to pay people for the work they did. They have a misplaced sense of morality.

Re: Google illegally underpaid thousands of workers

#158

Post by Dylan16807 » Sat, Sep 11, 2021, 3:54 AM UTC

timoth3y wrote: post #110

AlbertCory wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've always thought the phrase "the exception that proves the rule" is nonsense, btw. There's no such "proof."

The word "prove" used to also encompass the meaning of "challenge" or "put to the test". It still retains that archaic meaning in the phrase you mentioned and terms like "proving grounds". Edit: And like so many other proverbs like "A few bad apples", "Blood is thicker than water", "Carpe diem", "The exception proves the rule" means exactly the opposite of what most people think it does.

> The word "prove" used to also encompass the meaning of "challenge" or "put to the test".

Yes but "There is little evidence of the phrase being used in this second way.", citations located at wikipedia.

So I think it makes more sense to go with the interpretation of "if someone lists an exception, then that's proof of a more general rule that it's an exception from". But with that use, something specifically has to be an exception. Anyone applying "exception proves the rule" to an anecdote is using it wrong.

Re: Google illegally underpaid thousands of workers

#159

Post by zamfi » Sat, Sep 11, 2021, 4:02 AM UTC

AlbertCory wrote: post #107

zamfi wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the intent behind the modern usage of "the exception that proves the rule" is that: a) the rule is a heuristic, not a hard-and-fast rule, and b) the notability of exceptions suggests that the heuristic is pretty good. In other words, if the exception is, in fact, exceptional, it reinforces that the heuristic is reasonably valid for non-exceptional cases. In this case, the fact that it took the intervention of…

Another commonly misused phrase is "begging the question" which you have done here. It means "assuming that which you need to prove." You have no proof that it was exceptional. All you have is one case . You have no idea what other people in pay disputes end up doing.

First off, I was just framing the parent’s post in the modern usage of “exception that proves the rule” and not making any claims myself, so perhaps reconsider who’s making unfounded assumptions here.

> You have no idea what other people in pay disputes end up doing.

But also this is a super weak argument. I don’t have “no idea”—I have an educated guess that most people don’t have family friends who work at Google. Most people don’t have the resources to sue an employer over a few hours of unpaid labor. Wage theft is one of the most extensive unprosecuted crimes, that’s been studied and shown many times.

Are you suggesting that one should assume that most low-level employees in pay disputes get happy outcomes? That seems…naive.

Re: Google illegally underpaid thousands of workers

#160

Post by com2kid » Sat, Sep 11, 2021, 4:06 AM UTC

pembrook wrote: post #80

epc wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There’s a perverse distaste for hiring FTE for bland, routine work or to fill roles that have year to year volatility. Microsoft was notorious for this in the 1980s and early 1990s. If you were a superstar programmer you got offered a full time job as an employee. If you were “just” a technical writer you’d go through the same recruiting process but get offered a contract through a third party. From 1994-1999 I ran i…

I guess it could be a practice that started when companies still gave out pensions. Pensions were a massive burden (just look at the auto companies who still have massive pension liabilities), so it probably made a lot of sense back then. But now that corporate America has eliminated pensions in favor of 401ks, the contractor/employee juggling just seems wildly inefficient for anybody who's not a janitor. It feels li…

It is so companies can lay off entire teams at a whim.

When I was at MSFT, one of the orgs I was in was infamous for having over 50% vendors. On more than one occasion entire teams would be laid off when budget cuts happened.

It is bad for FTE morale to regularly lay off 100 FTEs, less bad to lay off 100 vendors.