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What I learned getting acquired by Google

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Re: What I learned getting acquired by Google

#361

Post by melbournegrad »

firecall wrote: post #319
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…

It sounds truly awful. In Australia we have laws protecting de facto FTEs. We even have laws mandating that co tractors must add extra to invoices to cover their Pension fund contributions! They have to charge this by law!

Do we? Could you describe the law?

I don't think we have much protection for these types of labour hirec(as we'd call them in Aus) arrangements

Re: What I learned getting acquired by Google

#362

Post by rurp »

oconnor663 wrote: post #233
thomasahle wrote: post #195

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> One required by federal policy. Federal policy just says that if you don't distinguish between regular employees and contractors, the contractors are considered regular employees. It doesn't say you are not allowed to hire those people as regular employees and treat them like regular employees.

If the feds said you had to insult someone every time you bought printer ink, and then lots of people started getting insulted, I would lean towards blaming the feds for that outcome rather than blaming the people who buy printer ink. Of course, it could separately be the case that people buy too much printer ink, and that we have good reasons for asking them to buy less. In which case our feelings about these new in…

This is 100% on the companies who are working loopholes to avoid providing the same benefits and protections to some of their employees. The government would have zero issue with Google hiring everyone as an employee, but Google is choosing to twist the system to their own selfish benefit.

Re: What I learned getting acquired by Google

#363

Post by jhallenworld »

asdfman123 wrote: post #40
leidenfrost wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's the office near the port, right? Beautiful neighborhood and the commercial part is very tourist friendly.

Yep. Another perk is that Google always seems to lease the best/coolest office real estate anywhere. Most of my time here I feel vaguely gross about how nice everything is.

The Dublin office was nice (we were a contracting firm for them, had a meeting there).

https://www.google.com/search?q=google+dublin&oq=google+dubl...

Re: What I learned getting acquired by Google

#364

Post by sumeno »

bornfreddy wrote: post #308
ido wrote: post #214

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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)_/¯ Do we ignore the most obvious upside, that this guy (and possibly/probably everyone in that startup) got paid…

And can now watch his dream of so many years languish in the app store. Money is only a part of the equation.

If you don't want to face the possibility of your product being shut down don't sell it to Google of all companies. Really, don't sell it to any megacorp, but they had to know Google's rep before they agreed to the deal.

Re: What I learned getting acquired by Google

#365

Post by hobofan »

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…

> 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."

While extending it to things as small as a team lunch is going a bit far, it's understandable that they don't want to open up a slippery slope of it looking too much like an employment relationship. In many European countries that can result in false self-employment and get both the company and the contractor in legal trouble.

Re: What I learned getting acquired by Google

#366

Post by jhallenworld »

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,…

Wow crazy, so basically it's an underhanded layoff.

Re: What I learned getting acquired by Google

#367

Post by sumeno »

bradley13 wrote: post #260

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.

Getting acquired is the end goal of a huge portion of startups and the vcs funding them. If that option goes away there will probably be a lot fewer startups, which may or may not be a good thing.

Re: What I learned getting acquired by Google

#368

Post by GuB-42 »

zopa wrote: post #271
ponector wrote: post #204

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Every US company. European companies somehow have contractors without caste system. Obviously there are different policies for internals and contractors, but fruits and pizza are for everyone in the office.

This is in Europe: https://arstechnica.com/space/2023/11/contractors-accuse-eur... A very similar-sounding caste-system. Europe’s great and all but it isn’t Utopia.

I know from reliable sources that Airbus has the same problem.

Re: What I learned getting acquired by Google

#369

Post by bcrosby95 »

shadowgovt wrote: post #285
thomasahle wrote: post #195

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> One required by federal policy. Federal policy just says that if you don't distinguish between regular employees and contractors, the contractors are considered regular employees. It doesn't say you are not allowed to hire those people as regular employees and treat them like regular employees.

Not unlike how the GDPR resulted in banners everywhere, because the law stops short of banning contracting, companies have, of course, sought the optimal just-up-to-the-edge balance. The biggest two reasons it matters (i.e. two biggest disincentives from just hiring contractors) are healthcare and quarterly reports. Healthcare provision is very expensive, even amortized across the employees in a company, and TVCs get…

It's weird that we look down on people acting like massive pricks to save money in their personal lives. But once you wrap a business around them then most people don't seem to care.

As I grow older it bothers me more. Some classes of people have a facade where it's socially acceptable to be assholes, but other people, well, that's a moral failing. The US has a new religion, and it's worse than the last one.

Re: What I learned getting acquired by Google

#370

Post by [deleted] »

esafak wrote: post #314
hughesjj wrote: post #197

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yup, these companies could always just hire outright

So if they want to trim costs and not do that it would be better if they hired no-one? It is the same with undocumented workers. Would it better if they were deported than to be denied benefits afforded to citizens?

[deleted]
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