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What I learned getting acquired by Google

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Re: What I learned getting acquired by Google

#441

Post by ragall »

julienb_sea wrote: post #355
ponector wrote: post #320

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is great for living, for raising kids. For life. Taxes in Europe are huge, but comparable with taxes in California. Just sum all federal, state, local taxes on the salary, property taxes, sales taxes, health insurance fee, college tuition fee. Don't forget to add 25% tips to that. Count also small vacation, maternity leave and sick leave. And then compare for example with France. And not to mention you wouldn't fi…

I'm sorry, I don't think you have sufficient perspective on what middle class life is like in France to make this comment with any justification. French taxation is incredibly complex and heavy on the middle class. It is financially unfeasible for most middle class households to pass down their homes to their children due to the estate tax kicking on assets over 100,000 eur. There are many unhoused people spread acro…

  It is financially unfeasible for most middle class households to pass down their homes to their children due to the estate tax kicking on assets over 100,000 eur.
Inheritance tax for children caps at 20%. That's hardly "unfeasible".

  Social mobility is significantly constrained
Social mobility is worse in the US that in the EU, e.g. see https://www.strategie.gouv.fr/english-articles/social-mobili...

Re: What I learned getting acquired by Google

#442

Post by ethbr1 »

Galacta7 wrote: post #305
ssharp wrote: post #278

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> 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. The staffing agency vig is so high it is practically the same as an FTE.

I used to work for a temp agency (clerical, not in tech) and I remember once seeing what my agency was getting paid for me on an hourly basis. Iirc, it was something like 3-4x what I was getting paid hourly. It was kind of sickening tbh. Plus many agencies forbid temps from being hired away without paying an outrageously hire fee to do so. It felt like being an indentured servant in many ways. The only upside was tha…

Afaicr, 3x was pretty standard in consultant salary vs billable rate.

The idea is that covers 70-80% utilization, unprofitable engagements, HR, benefits, etc. Plus profit to the company.

Re: What I learned getting acquired by Google

#443

Post by josephg »

xyzelement wrote: post #396
nitwit005 wrote: post #334

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Buying something, rewriting it, and abandoning it, is just squandering money. You can't change that reality by praising Google's way of doing things.

// Buying something, rewriting it, and abandoning it, is just squandering money. I don't see it that way at all. Everything we do with business carries risk. It's really all experimental. Nothing is a sure thing. When you acquire something, you obviously incur the risk of that thing not scaling as well as you think, or over-estimate the fit into your org. You obviously want to make good decisions when you can, but th…

> but you have to respect the machine that this is a part of.

I don't respect the machine. I think it reduces innovation across our industry.

The story of google acquisitions so often go this way. They start with a lot of promises - "Your product dreams will be so much bigger at Google! All the resources you need! We believe in you!". When they start at google, everyone eventually realises they need to rebuild their entire product on top of google's infrastructure, "the google way". Inevitably, the remade google version of the product doesn't have "google scale" numbers of users. Or its crushed by some other team within google. Or they're shoved within a product group who see the newcomers as an irrelevant distraction at best, or a threat to their own product at worst. The good people from the acquired team move on within google and the acquired product dies. It happens so often its become a meme.

There have been some notable exceptions: Youtube. Android. Docs (Writely). In each of these cases, google didn't have a similar product at the time of the acquisition and the acquired product team was largely left alone afterwards. As I understand it, Youtube and Android are (still?) kept at arms length in some ways from the rest of the company.

This is a machine of destruction. It destroys innovative ideas and innovative products. I get that they can't all be winners. But google's success rate amongst acquisitions surviving - let alone thriving - is ridiculously low. And I don't think the teams & products that survive do so because of the strength of their work. I think they survive because of luck and politics.

Other companies do this so much better. Instagram, WhatsApp and Oculus are very strong products and brands years after being acquired by Facebook. Adobe seems to be taking good care of Figma. And so on.

Sometimes I wonder what would happen if google went bankrupt, and all the smart engineers within their walls were suddenly forced onto the street, where they need to make interesting products people actually care about to justify their salaries. I bet there's all sorts of great product ideas that googlers dream of building - but never will, because of how cushy and comfortable it is there. Google does some great stuff. But I think their employees are capable of so much more.

Re: What I learned getting acquired by Google

#444

Post by lazide »

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…

Blame the IRS and Microsoft. [https://www.reuters.com/article/businesspropicks-us-findlaw-...]

Re: What I learned getting acquired by Google

#445

Post by mtnGoat »

bradleyjg wrote: post #410
jasode wrote: post #210

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>That’s not legally a contractor then. [...] If you are setting their hours, bossing them around and/or providing equipment they are not a contractor they are an employee. There are 2 different uses of "contractor" : (1) contractor : official IRS tax classification of 1099 independent contractor (2) "contractor" : a W-2 employee of a "temp agency" or "staffing agency" or "bodyshop" that is sent to a client company (s…

Why is it that w-2 employees of a different company can’t be invited to a lunch or given a tchotchke? I get why 1099s can’t but what’s the deal with the other, now more common situation?

They could be, but that creates taxable events and other issues/complications/liabilities. Easier to just avoid and be clear of it.

Re: What I learned getting acquired by Google

#446

Post by lazide »

ClumsyPilot wrote: post #419
tick_tock_tick wrote: post #389

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mean classic example are contracting out food service in the corporate cafeteria. You contract the work to some random other company who hire people to do food service or do you want Google or whoever to start hiring cooks themselves? Janitorial staff is also a classic role for this style of employment.

> or do you want Google or whoever to start hiring cooks themselves? Yes? Whats wrong with hiring a cook if you need to cook?

Because Google has no idea how to manage or hire cooks?

Re: What I learned getting acquired by Google

#447

Post by lazide »

bradleyjg wrote: post #410
jasode wrote: post #210

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>That’s not legally a contractor then. [...] If you are setting their hours, bossing them around and/or providing equipment they are not a contractor they are an employee. There are 2 different uses of "contractor" : (1) contractor : official IRS tax classification of 1099 independent contractor (2) "contractor" : a W-2 employee of a "temp agency" or "staffing agency" or "bodyshop" that is sent to a client company (s…

Why is it that w-2 employees of a different company can’t be invited to a lunch or given a tchotchke? I get why 1099s can’t but what’s the deal with the other, now more common situation?

Because this [https://www.reuters.com/article/businesspropicks-us-findlaw-...]

Re: What I learned getting acquired by Google

#448

Post by Centigonal »

moritonal wrote: post #8

Is this a happy story? Having read it my takeaways are that they were immediately asked to rewrite their app in Google's way, then a separate research team went off and wrote them a new API for their core functionality. And now given Socratic by Google on the Play Store was last updated on Oct 21, 2020, and is not available for my Android 13 device, so seems to have just died? Kind of seems like Google bought the com…

It sounds like some of the signals Socratic was detecting got rolled into Google's knowledge graph

Re: What I learned getting acquired by Google

#449

Post by [deleted] »

dmitrygr wrote: post #335
guessmyname wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Definitely DO NOT work remotely as a junior developer. Achieving the appropriate career progression requires meaningful interactions with your more experienced colleagues, which may be limited in a remote work environment. That said, here is a small list of things you’ll need to get a job at Google or any of the other Big Tech companies: • Educational Background: it seems that you’re a student at https://www.dhbw.de/…

> which may be limited in a remote work environment. That "may" is carrying a lot of weight there. Almost makes it sound like a fact, while in fact being merely an unsupported opinion.

[deleted]

Re: What I learned getting acquired by Google

#450

Post by lazide »

OJFord wrote: post #347
bhelkey wrote: post #344

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This conversation isn't about the difference between intern and full time employee but rather the difference between contractor and full time employee.

It's about 'demeaning' different badges, and an intern is inherently temporary, which is the T in 'TVC'.

Interns always got the FTE type experience (able to eat at celebrations, got Schwag, etc!).

They weren’t temp in the same sense as T temps - which are temporary workers hired from temp agencies.

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