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Hi, It’s Google Corporate Development

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Re: Hi, It’s Google Corporate Development

#241

Post by hawkice »

ajarmst wrote: post #232
ovulator wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"What's wrong with this country? Can't a man walk down the street without being offered a job!?"

I think it's more "What's wrong with this country? Can't a man walk down the street without someone trying to get him to give up something of value for less than it's worth?" The issue's not with being offered a job, it's the "here's a smart person making money for themselves, let's see if we can get them to make money for us instead!" attitude.

This attitude isn't even really a problem (why hire anyone who can't run a surplus in their personal life, if you want them to run a surplus for your business?), the problem is, "let's try to trick this person down a garden path of making money for us" and "I get to decide who this person is, and if I say they're an engineer, that's their identity", both of which are absurd and essentially doomed to be wastes of time for everyone involved.

Re: Hi, It’s Google Corporate Development

#242

Post by antidamage »

markdown wrote: post #225
bsder wrote: post #200

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I wrote a post about what happened using his real name. Be careful giving this advice. This only worked because A) (minor) you filed a police report and B) (major) he didn't have enough money to drag you through a serious defamation lawsuit. If he decided to drag you through a defamation lawsuit, you would likely have lost because you wouldn't have had enough resources to defend aggressively. It's good to out bad a…

As long as one speaks/writes the truth and can back it up with evidence, one should not fear defamation/slander suits. Unless you're in America, land of the dysfunctional legal system, home of the brave.

Or, as the author is, in the UK where defamation litigation is seen as a potent weapon: http://www.theguardian.com/science/blog/2012/feb/22/simon-si...

Re: Hi, It’s Google Corporate Development

#243

Post by prawn »

ovulator wrote: post #82
MCRed wrote: post #41

For a period I was heavily recruited by google. Their recruiters tried a great many variations of attempts to trick me into interviewing for a job. It seems weird that they would do this, because pretty soon, it would become obvious that it was a job interview and nothing more. Maybe there are a lot of talented engineers out there who are doing startups but aren't really committed to them and google manages via the f…

"What's wrong with this country? Can't a man walk down the street without being offered a job!?"

See Paul Graham's recent article about how even talking to someone about an acquisition can be a huge distraction for someone running a small business.

Re: Hi, It’s Google Corporate Development

#244

Post by magicalist »

ForHackernews wrote: post #211
driverdan wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They would be facing hefty lawsuits if they did that.

Are you a lawyer? Their terms of service[0] and privacy policy[1] appear to give them pretty broad leeway: "When you upload, submit, store, send or receive content to or through our Services, you give Google (and those we work with) a worldwide license to use, host, store, reproduce, modify, create derivative works (such as those resulting from translations, adaptations or other changes we make so that your content w…

> I could easily argue that spying on your email in order to gain advantages in acquisitions or hiring could be justified for "improving [their] Services" or "to develop new ones".

You would lose in front of virtually any judge if you argued that.

Re: Hi, It’s Google Corporate Development

#245

Post by [deleted] »

markdown wrote: post #225
bsder wrote: post #200

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I wrote a post about what happened using his real name. Be careful giving this advice. This only worked because A) (minor) you filed a police report and B) (major) he didn't have enough money to drag you through a serious defamation lawsuit. If he decided to drag you through a defamation lawsuit, you would likely have lost because you wouldn't have had enough resources to defend aggressively. It's good to out bad a…

As long as one speaks/writes the truth and can back it up with evidence, one should not fear defamation/slander suits. Unless you're in America, land of the dysfunctional legal system, home of the brave.

[deleted]

Re: Hi, It’s Google Corporate Development

#246

Post by [deleted] »

markdown wrote: post #225
bsder wrote: post #200

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I wrote a post about what happened using his real name. Be careful giving this advice. This only worked because A) (minor) you filed a police report and B) (major) he didn't have enough money to drag you through a serious defamation lawsuit. If he decided to drag you through a defamation lawsuit, you would likely have lost because you wouldn't have had enough resources to defend aggressively. It's good to out bad a…

As long as one speaks/writes the truth and can back it up with evidence, one should not fear defamation/slander suits. Unless you're in America, land of the dysfunctional legal system, home of the brave.

[deleted]

Re: Hi, It’s Google Corporate Development

#247

Post by hkmurakami »

lugg wrote: post #210
delucain wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure, it's a VERY extreme example of "First World Problems" or whatever the meme is, but do you want a job when the offer is a con from the start? What kind of relationship with your employer does that create?

I've been feeling for a while now, software developers need agents. I only talk to one recruiter. If I want a particular job I know is going I will direct him to it and he will handle any side lining from other recruiters. Works a treat.

An acquaintance of mine (she used to be a den herself) wrote here about why engineers today don't have agents.

http://blog.alinelerner.com/why-talent-agents-for-engineers-...

Re: Hi, It’s Google Corporate Development

#248

Post by afro88 »

declan wrote: post #104
cromwellian wrote: post #74

I think there's an either-or fallacy here, it could have been an attempt at an acqui-hire, but when the people talking to him tried to push it through, other people reviewed the situation and decided just to offer a generous employment package. Consider, a single-engineer company with an interesting app and talented engineer, just how much do you expect to be acquired for? Recognize that a $1M-2M offer is about what…

Well put. Also as suggested nearby, the author of the linked article, Max Christian, fumbled the exchange and instead of a million-dollar exit ended up with... what? Instead of the claim of "I can easily get to twice £X million" -- in revenue? profit? valuation? -- it looks like the author's RoomScan app is near-moribund. RoomScan Pro, which sells for $4.99, hasn't been updated in over half a year and is listed as "o…

> Instead of the claim of "I can easily get to twice £X million" -- in revenue? profit? valuation? -- it looks like the author's RoomScan app is near-moribund. RoomScan Pro, which sells for $4.99, hasn't been updated in over half a year and is listed as "optimized for iPhone 5." It's been mentioned in only two articles indexed by Google News in the last eight months. The Roomscan Twitter account hasn't been updated since November. The free version of the app has been updated more recently, but free in this context isn't exactly going to pay the bills.

> These are not the signs of an app that is getting to "twice £X million" anytime soon.

Easy to say nearly 10 months on from when this happened. From the article: "By this time, the app is topping both the free and paid charts in its category in many countries, and into the overall top 10 in some." Sounds quite healthy to me. Remember only a short time prior the guy had only 30 sales per day. There may be other metrics that would indicate that this app wasn't going to be a screaming success like his previous one, but his sales and media coverage at the time Google / recruiters got in touch aren't it.

> As for Google, I don't know how their corpdev team works, but my rule of thumb after working at some very large companies is: don't attribute to malice what can be explained by bureaucracy. It's not unusual for different teams not to know what the other is doing, even when they should. I don't see anything that justifies speculating about nonexistent employees named Maxine, and that kind of bizarre speculation likely poisoned the discussion.

For sure. I found it hard to follow his logic here.

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