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Hi, It’s Google Corporate Development

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Re: Hi, It’s Google Corporate Development

#271

Post by josephlord »

SEMW wrote: post #159
Guillaume86 wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe add beeps and use them like a sonar to refine distance measurement?

5m room size / speed of sound in air = around 15ms. Unless the amount of variation in latency in the phone's speaker + microphones is much less than that -- which I suspect it isn't -- that wouldn't be particularly accurate either. (Even that aside, it's going to be rather non-trivial to get anything useful at all with a non-directional speaker in an enclosed room with several other walls, ceiling, floor, and other o…

If you can record and identify the sound as you emit it and can identify the echo you shouldn't need to worry about jitter in output just the sampling frequency and any jitter there.

I think you are right about the likely cluttered response in a realistic room being hard to analyse into something useful.

Re: Hi, It’s Google Corporate Development

#272

Post by utunga »

gamblor956 wrote: post #252
markdown wrote: post #225

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

You've got that backwards. America and Canada are the only country in which truth is a defense to defamation. Remember the British guy with the Nazi fetish? The tabloid that published that story lost even though it was true. In other countries (notoriously India), criticizing a government employee's performance is defamation (even if true). Edit: Looks like Canada also allows for truth as a complete defense to defama…

Being a Kiwi, decided I better confirm what the story was here in New Zealand.

As with US and Canada 'truth' is a defence against defamation here also: http://www.medialawjournal.co.nz/?page_id=273

"The publisher will succeed with a defence of truth if it can prove, on the balance of probabilities, that the story was true. Minor errors may be excused, but not those that go to the heart of the defamatory sting or stings."

So guess you can add NZ to the list, but there are no doubt others - how about France, Australia, Austria.. Senegal?

Perhaps it is actually the UK that is the outlier in this regard?

Re: Hi, It’s Google Corporate Development

#273

Post by walterbell »

enraged_camel wrote: post #269
walterbell wrote: post #263

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why hasn't anyone sued glassdoor?

Glassdoor heavily cooperates with companies to take down reviews that are too negative or specific. Also, anyone can post reviews, which the companies take advantage of. We had an HR person at my previous company whose job responsibilities included posting one positive (4-5 star) review of the company per week on Glassdoor and similar sites. As you can imagine, doing so is a much cheaper way of dealing with negative…

Good to know, thanks for the insight.

Re: Hi, It’s Google Corporate Development

#274

Post by tmuir »

read wrote: post #254
jseliger wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

manages via the fame of its name [. . .] What I experienced was less heinous but had the same elements- misrepresentation, name dropping I think the original author should name everyone involved. I understand why he didn't, but people can only get away with this shit because they do it anonymously and no one talks to each other. This is a much less extreme example, but years ago my former landlord threatened to kill…

This tangent might sound mean but I often wished there was some glassdoor-like site or startup for shaming bad behavior, especially lying. Starting with rental agents. If you stuck to reporting facts, how would that put you in danger?

To some extent, Yelp and similar sites fill this role. There are a couple of problems with this.

1. It's fairly simple to post a fake review.

2. Yelp has been accused of what amounts to blackmail by offering to hide bad reviews if businesses buy advertising on Yelp.

3. It's not rocket science to see how 1 & 2 could team up

4. There is no objective standard for a good or bad review, so how do you accurately quantify the aggregate? If the restaurant was out of the dish the reviewer wanted because it was a half hour before closing on a busy night, that one star review carries the same weight as someone who legitimately had terrible service, cold food, and got food poisoning.

This amounts to Yelp being nothing more than the yellow pages, in my opinion. I don't see how this would change for other services.

Re: Hi, It’s Google Corporate Development

#275

Post by logicallee »

vinceguidry wrote: post #267
logicallee wrote: post #256

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hi. we're working on this. can you imagine what, if any, part of this could be done purely online? what would your top three features be? (in an actual, online agent, actually on your side.)

I can think of a few things. I've recently been on both sides of the table here. Found my job a year and a half ago, interviewing candidates for a junior now. First off, I can see how you might miss out on a lot of potential clients because you don't know just how good they are. You could reduce this miss rate by getting good at fishing out details from people you approach or who approach you. Even be prepared to wri…

Thank you for this. (We are very technical, and building an online application, which is what I meant by "purely online", though. i.e. features we could bring online via an online/web agent that is on your side rather than the side of companies.)

Re: Hi, It’s Google Corporate Development

#276

Post by vinceguidry »

logicallee wrote: post #275
vinceguidry wrote: post #267

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can think of a few things. I've recently been on both sides of the table here. Found my job a year and a half ago, interviewing candidates for a junior now. First off, I can see how you might miss out on a lot of potential clients because you don't know just how good they are. You could reduce this miss rate by getting good at fishing out details from people you approach or who approach you. Even be prepared to wri…

Thank you for this. (We are very technical, and building an online application, which is what I meant by "purely online", though. i.e. features we could bring online via an online /web agent that is on your side rather than the side of companies.)

Oof. I foresee a hard road ahead of you if can't bring on someone knowledgeable with the actual interpersonal dynamics of hiring. Reason is this isn't a technical problem, it's a social one.

One of the things that the recruiter who found me my job did for me was to interact with the company for me. I told him my concerns, and he either talked me through them or relayed them, through the filter of someone whose seen this all before, to the company. Had I had to do this directly with the company, I wouldn't have done so well, and I might have gotten passed over.

When my company wanted to keep me on a contract basis three months after his job was technically over, and I was prepared to walk, I called him, and he calmed everyone down and got the company to bring me on full time. Had I had to negotiate it myself, I might have said something unwise and a bad decision would have been made.

Now that I'm on the other side of the table, I find myself playing the same role my recruiter played for me as far as the interpersonal dynamics is concerned. I talk through his concerns, I discuss the money aspect with him, advocate his case, and protect him from HR bullshit.

I don't see a purely online web agent as bringing any more value to the table than (just another) job board.

Re: Hi, It’s Google Corporate Development

#277

Post by andrewfong »

tmuir wrote: post #274
read wrote: post #254

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This tangent might sound mean but I often wished there was some glassdoor-like site or startup for shaming bad behavior, especially lying. Starting with rental agents. If you stuck to reporting facts, how would that put you in danger?

To some extent, Yelp and similar sites fill this role. There are a couple of problems with this. 1. It's fairly simple to post a fake review. 2. Yelp has been accused of what amounts to blackmail by offering to hide bad reviews if businesses buy advertising on Yelp. 3. It's not rocket science to see how 1 & 2 could team up 4. There is no objective standard for a good or bad review, so how do you accurately quantify t…

(1) is mostly solved by valuing long, well written reviews over star ratings and allowing users to upvote / downvote. You can also allow up voting / down voting of user-posted reviews to create a reputational penalty for non-useful reviews.

(4) is addressed by volume. That's easier for something like restaurants than apartments or recruiters though.

Re: Hi, It’s Google Corporate Development

#278

Post by tmuir »

patio11 wrote: post #217
imacomputer2 wrote: post #180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Seriously? You've heard of engineers being hired for 2M? I want that job! This is a serious question. 2M is just unthinkable for me.

Know that this is a thing that exists in the world. At least one HNer could get it approximately tomorrow if they wanted it. Typical form is a large equity grant which, for a publicly traded company, is indistinguishable from cash with a vesting schedule.

pg is an HNer. It's safe to assume that several other HNers have reputations that would allow them to write such a ticket. Do you assert that someone whose only marketable skills revolved around software development could achieve such a thing?

Re: Hi, It’s Google Corporate Development

#279

Post by SomeCallMeTim »

chii wrote: post #266
SomeCallMeTim wrote: post #172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

$2M as part of a signing bonus seems like an "acqui" to me. It just wasn't enough for the author. Which is fine, but not exactly as much of a scam as he implied. This article just seems to be a real world example of PG's essay this month about "don't talk to corp dev." [1] [1] http://paulgraham.com/corpdev.html

it's not a scam in the sense of an illegal scam, but it certainly is trying to prey on someone who might not know better. If you are a lone engineer, but is capable of making a successful app, you have a certain aptitude for programming. This is useful to google. The recruiter is making a bet that this lone engineer is not business savvy enough to know how much their true worth is, and if the bet worked, google would…

$2M is a reasonable definition of "success" as far as I am concerned.

And the $300-$500k+ salaries that Google is frequently throwing at engineers these days are worth more than the marginal chance you'll make a multi-million dollar exit event.

So I'd hesitate to call anyone hired by Google a "victim."

Re: Hi, It’s Google Corporate Development

#280

Post by welly »

bambax wrote: post #230
enneff wrote: post #229

Earlier quoted context omitted.

FWIW, you're wrong.

You missed the part about why not.

> Companies are only interested in candidates that won't work for them and people would prefer to work for firms that won't hire them.

This bit. Might be applicable for recruiting but not for dating. Perhaps in some cases but by no means all or even close to all. And for someone who claims not to date, I'm not sure you're even qualified to make such a bold statement.

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