So... now I've heard of someone who actually watched The Internship.
Why I loved working at Google
41–50 of 54 posts
Re: Why I loved working at Google
#42Earlier quoted context omitted.
Lovely. >I stand by my comment that Google's approach to transparency (at least internally) is headed in the right direction. So you admit that your entry omitted any discussion of where Google is headed in the wrong direction? That it was completely one-sided? >>Dare I call the Google the "holy grail" for many aspiring software developers? What you are doing, what you have done, is easily termed "gushing." You are s…
I don't see your point - in more ways than one. I'm not sure why you feel it necessary to be a cynic. I don't see why there is a reason to etch the flaws out in everything. I could caveat everything I say but what would be the point of that? Especially in a section labelled: "What I liked about working at Google". I also don't see the point in you playing fortune teller - so what if my blog has 1 post? Why does it ma…
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Re: Why I loved working at Google
#43Earlier quoted context omitted.
Lovely. >I stand by my comment that Google's approach to transparency (at least internally) is headed in the right direction. So you admit that your entry omitted any discussion of where Google is headed in the wrong direction? That it was completely one-sided? >>Dare I call the Google the "holy grail" for many aspiring software developers? What you are doing, what you have done, is easily termed "gushing." You are s…
I don't see your point - in more ways than one. I'm not sure why you feel it necessary to be a cynic. I don't see why there is a reason to etch the flaws out in everything. I could caveat everything I say but what would be the point of that? Especially in a section labelled: "What I liked about working at Google". I also don't see the point in you playing fortune teller - so what if my blog has 1 post? Why does it ma…
>I don't see why there is a reason to etch the flaws out in everything.
Then you will forever be a terrible engineer. We seek out flaws!
And I want you to consider that your internship has been a product as much as it is an opportunity for you.
Your employer is not your friend.
Re: Why I loved working at Google
#44Earlier quoted context omitted.
Lovely. >I stand by my comment that Google's approach to transparency (at least internally) is headed in the right direction. So you admit that your entry omitted any discussion of where Google is headed in the wrong direction? That it was completely one-sided? >>Dare I call the Google the "holy grail" for many aspiring software developers? What you are doing, what you have done, is easily termed "gushing." You are s…
What are you doing, what you have done, is proved that you're just here to spew acid.
Well said.
Re: Why I loved working at Google
#45Even though he's an intern, it's a fairly accurate impression, although there are gray areas.
The two biggest points I think are fairly true:
1) Google engineers are very passionate about transparency, and collaboration.
There are way way less engineering prima-donna hot-heads at Google than other companies. The kind of Linus Torvald-style rants and flame wars are extremely rare internally, and many people are happy to help and mentor. I've worked at IBM and Oracle and there were plenty of shouting matches between alpha-male hackers battling egos.
Secondly, secrecy pisses people off. To give you an example, there was a high-profile flop that started life as a secret project until it was almost ready for release, and it drove a lot of internal disharmony. In fact, one of the reasons listed in the post-mortem for the product flopping was the fact that it was developed in secret. Googlers don't like secrecy.
2) The engineers are world class, period. Jeff Dean. Rob Pike. Etc. 'Nuff Said. It's possible in a smaller company to be a big fish in a small pond. It's part of what drives the big, hot-headed egos of engineering prima donnas. They're the shit, because they might have 10 other junior engineers around them who are far less knowledgeable. You can't really get away with those kinds of attitudes at Google, and that may be part of the reason for the more relaxed, cooperative humility ('googliness'), because many of your peers are just as good, if not better, than you.
The grey areas are this. As Google becomes larger, the probability of a shitty employee being immature and leaking to the press goes up. As a result, Google is not as wide-open internally as it used to be. Some of the bad employees have spoiled it for the majority. Moreover, to my dismay, many of Google's attempts at federated, open protocols have failed in the marketplace. Open doesn't always win, or, takes a long time, and the success of closed silos of competitors I think has taught some Google product teams the wrong lesson, and forced it to compete on the same grounds of its competitors. Hopefully, eventually when things reach saturation and commodification, they'll be a return to setting standards, but I'm cynical. Apple has the whole industry thinking open specifications are bad because you can't make arbitrary changes to them to vertically integrate and suit your needs. And Google's years of supporting XMPP federation did nothing to get AOL, Yahoo, Microsoft, Apple, et al on board. You can't say Google didn't try, they ran GTalk for years, but none of the big players with 10s or 100s of millions of users played along.
Re: Why I loved working at Google
#46Note that this was written by someone who spent three months at Google as an intern, so it's probably not very representative of what it's really like to work there. After three months you can't really understand much about a complex corporate culture or become familiar with more than a tiny corner of a huge company. And interns aren't involved in corporate politics, performance reviews, etc.
Yes, you certainly can't form an opinion in three months. Sorry OP, your opinion is almost certainly wrong.
You formed an opinion about my post and my experience in around 5 minutes.
Does this mean your opinion about my opinion is almost certainly wrong as well?
Snide comments aside, thanks for reading!
Re: Why I loved working at Google
#47So... now I've heard of someone who actually watched The Internship .
For the record I thought it was a terrible movie and ripe with inconsistency compared to the real thing, but I can only assume the director and writers took to creative license in an attempt to appeal to a larger audience.
Re: Why I loved working at Google
#48"Google is the home to world-class engineers working on the world’s hardest problems". World-class engineers: true. World's hardest problems: false. Unless google has a secret space program, cold-fusion reactor, cure for cancer, desalination, etc... Perhaps I am naive but monetizing searches, email and other things doesn't count as any of the world's hardest problems.
Even boring problems at Google are done at mind boggling scale, but the work that Google is doing on machine learning alone, what Ray Kurzweil is trying to do, is one of the hardest problems in history.
The everyday things you use, like Google Maps, have incredibly sophisticated pipelines behind them. I'm not talking about serving up image tiles, I'm talking about the software that processes satellite, aerial, and street view imagery and stitches everything together into a coherent whole, while doing things like using machine learning to recognize signs, text, objects, building outlines, etc.
It all works so smoothly and so well most of the time that people don't even know all of the work that goes into it. Just parsing a question for meaning in search is a very very hard problem. What Siri does is kind of a joke compared to what's really required to make things work as they should.
Re: Why I loved working at Google
#49Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yes, you certainly can't form an opinion in three months. Sorry OP, your opinion is almost certainly wrong.
You formed an opinion about my post and my experience in around 5 minutes. Does this mean your opinion about my opinion is almost certainly wrong as well? Snide comments aside, thanks for reading!
You're getting kinda ugly about this. Are you really that disingenuous?
In this parent, you just fought almost as dirty as it is possible to fight within proper, polite terms, and you made a point of doing it.
And then you want to discard that with "Snide comments aside, thanks for reading!"
Re: Why I loved working at Google
#50Earlier quoted context omitted.
I don't see your point - in more ways than one. I'm not sure why you feel it necessary to be a cynic. I don't see why there is a reason to etch the flaws out in everything. I could caveat everything I say but what would be the point of that? Especially in a section labelled: "What I liked about working at Google". I also don't see the point in you playing fortune teller - so what if my blog has 1 post? Why does it ma…
>I don't see why there is a reason to etch the flaws out in everything. Then you will forever be a terrible engineer. We seek out flaws! And I want you to consider that your internship has been a product as much as it is an opportunity for you. Your employer is not your friend.
Thank you for dropping the bitter tone.
>I don't see why there is a reason to etch the flaws out in everything.
>> Then you will forever be a terrible engineer. We seek out flaws!
I understand and fully embrace this! As hard as it is to believe, I choose when to and not to be a cynic. However, I've found that I often focus too much on the negatives at times and need to brighten up.
> And I want you to consider that your internship has been a product as much as it is an opportunity for you.
I ABSOLUTELY agree with this. In my mind Google did a damn good job of it. But why point this out specifically?
An employee's experience at any company is manufactured regardless of position or industry - pay, hours, office environment, management structure... These are all factors of the job. What I'm saying is that Google does a better job of manufacturing this than many others do.
> Your employer is not your friend. I don't believe in this. What about the startup CEOs that literally recruit (and hire) their friends? What about the small businesses of the world that closely maintain relationships with their employees?
I think the point you are trying to hint at is more in line with "HEY. This Big Tech Company created an experience for you just to make you think one way about them but really doesn't care about you at the end of the day. WAKE UP SHEEPLE!"
And I totally understand that. But you also understand that it is an opportunity - you said so yourself! All I'm trying to do with this post is encourage others to consider this opportunity for themselves as well.