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What I learned getting acquired by Google

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Re: What I learned getting acquired by Google

#251

Post by kelnos »

no_wizard wrote: post #155
JSavageOne wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Not in practice, because they use a hiring entity to dictate the terms. You're expected to show up on a schedule, do the work etc. much like a FTE, but you're not an FTE. I think some folks have this illusion of software contractors that this is somehow common, it really isn't. The norm is you-are-almost-but-not-quite an employee type work environment, and thats at the better places. I've worked at a place where cont…

I think the GP's point was that's how it should be. If a company is going to -- for "legal reasons" -- not treat contractors the same way they treat employees, then they should be doing so not only in bad, exclusionary ways, but also in good ways, with the expected perks of being a contractor that FTEs don't get: freedom to set their own hours, work where they want, and subcontract out their work.

But no, companies like Google want to have their cake and eat it too: they want a class of workers where they can require of them more or less the exact same things that they require of their employees (and much more easily fire them), but can give them a lot less, and treat them like a second class.

That's entirely Google's choice. It does not have to be that way. But they've decided to create this two-class system for their own benefit, not for anyone else's.

Also consider that these people are probably often not contractors in the legal sense. They're likely W-2 employees of some sort of staffing agency, who are then placed at Google. Google pays the staffing agency, the staffing agency pays the "contractor" a salary (significantly less than what Google pays the staffing agency), and all is fine... legally, anyway.

Re: What I learned getting acquired by Google

#252

Post by [deleted] »

cmrdporcupine wrote: post #114
otalp wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do they have a dev office in Toronto? Thought it was in waterloo

In the past it was sales&marketing only with smattering of a few "guest desks" for visiting engineers. And the site leads at Waterloo (at least) lobbied hard to prevent Toronto from ever really having engineering for real. Probably out of worry about centre of gravity being sucked away, etc. IMHO it limited Google's hiring ability in Ontario. And it made me (and others) have to sell my house in Toronto and move when…

[deleted]

Re: What I learned getting acquired by Google

#253

Post by sangnoir »

ponector wrote: post #221
sangnoir wrote: post #168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Cisco has/had an outrageously large contractor contingent (this may be different between Business Units). That's a huge cultural difference between Cisco the tech giant sets

According to some reports, only half of the people in Google are full time employee. Isn't it a large contingent of second-class workers?

Whatever fraction it is at Google, I'm willing to bet Cisco's is significantly larger, especially on "core-business" teams whose work is mentioned in analyst calls

Re: What I learned getting acquired by Google

#254

Post by drewg123 »

tester756 wrote: post #234
drewg123 wrote: post #203

What I learned getting acquired by Google is that if your company is below a certain size, everyone will need to do a technical interview to be hired and leveled. They tell your management to lie to you, and tell you its just a meet and greet, with questions about projects you worked on, general background stuff etc. But its actually a full on surprise technical interview. (NOTE: This was true in the early-ish 2010s,…

>Imagine walking into a technical interview 20+ years out of grad school. So just like when changing jobs?

I could have worded it better.. I should probably have said: "Imagine walking into a surprise technical interview 20+ years out of grad school."

Re: What I learned getting acquired by Google

#255

Post by BMorearty »

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…

I've worked as an employee and as a contractor in Silicon Valley (never at Google). While it was nice to be treated like an employee by some companies, my attitude was that it's just understood that as a contractor I'm not as much a member of the team as the employees are, and I'm the first to be let go if the money gets tight. Those were the tradeoffs of the flexibility I got. If contractors are the same as employees, why even have a distinction?

Re: What I learned getting acquired by Google

#256

Post by orochimaaru »

ponector wrote: post #217
orochimaaru wrote: post #201

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a case with contractors in all big companies. You are not a company employee. The expectation is that your employer will compensate you and take you out to lunch, etc, etc. But otoh you don’t need to deal with performance appraisals, office politics and all the other bullshit. Do your work, take the money.

In such companies you are not truly a contractor, but employee of the bodyshop company which lease you to the client. As the result you deal with politics in both companies: your employer and their client. And bodyshop has performance reviews as well.

Not really. A staffing co like randstadt won’t give you perf reviews etc. You just work through them for tax reason. You hardly even interact with your account manager.

Re: What I learned getting acquired by Google

#257

Post by gen220 »

next_xibalba wrote: post #88

> What beat them down were the gauntlet of reviews, the frequent re-orgs, the institutional scar tissue from past failures, and the complexity of doing even simple things on the world stage. Startups can afford to ignore many concerns, Googlers rarely can. I wonder if this helps explain why Google is getting smoked in the LLM space right now.

Eh, as outsiders we're all quick to judge.

OpenAI and friends are able to move quickly, but (so far) they're not able to translate their LLM innovations into high-margin revenue with any significant moat.

Give it a couple years to see where all the cards settle and who's actually making money "with" LLMs.

Re: What I learned getting acquired by Google

#258

Post by JSavageOne »

ethbr1 wrote: post #170
no_wizard wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not in practice, because they use a hiring entity to dictate the terms. You're expected to show up on a schedule, do the work etc. much like a FTE, but you're not an FTE. I think some folks have this illusion of software contractors that this is somehow common, it really isn't. The norm is you-are-almost-but-not-quite an employee type work environment, and thats at the better places. I've worked at a place where cont…

As a contractor, you are an FTE... just for a different (almost always much worse) company. And that arrangement exists solely so that the company whose work you're actually doing can fire you more easily or avoid legal liability.

I'm surprised this even legally flies. Seems like the legal equivalent of creating a shell company.

Re: What I learned getting acquired by Google

#259

Post by didip »

I don't understand authors who criticized the acquirer post acquisition.

There is only one reason why you would sell: lots of money. You understand this going into the transaction. Once the company is acquired, it's no longer yours.

And you understand very well why you sold to Google: Because they are so big that they can give you a lot of money. Unfortunately, a large company always has a lot of bureaucracy. Surely the author knows this.

That's it. No need to criticize, you got the money, you got to the finished line.

Re: What I learned getting acquired by Google

#260

Post by bradley13 »

Just to toss this out: I really wish huge companies like Google were completely prohibited from any sort of M&A activity. Buy up startups that might, someday, be competition. Absorb them and destroy their product.

Sure, it's great for the people who sell their startup, but it's bad for the rest of the world, which might have benefited from the product that was assimilated into the Borg.

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