An interesting look into the reality of working at Google. Thanks for sharing!
Leaving Google
451–460 of 464 posts
Re: Leaving Google
#452Earlier quoted context omitted.
I don't see how employee motivation, loss of talent, erosion of customer services are related to the need for unyielding year on year growth. There are companies out there, private ones, where their customers are happy, their employees are happy (most of the time) and their retention is high.
Without growth, the only way to get promoted is to get a spot of some higher-up who left the company (or retired/died). Whereas, in growing companies, there are new senior/management positions created all the time, to account for the growth - so, getting promoted is easier. Ambitious, hard working people like promotions, so they gravitate towards growing companies and not stale companies.
Ambition and hard work are hardly the same thing. Many people work hard at their job, are paid a good wage, and are satisfied with their job, rather than constantly seeking a promotion. Constant promotion seeking isn’t admirable, it’s just greed.
Re: Leaving Google
#453Earlier quoted context omitted.
I don't see how employee motivation, loss of talent, erosion of customer services are related to the need for unyielding year on year growth. There are companies out there, private ones, where their customers are happy, their employees are happy (most of the time) and their retention is high.
Without growth, the only way to get promoted is to get a spot of some higher-up who left the company (or retired/died). Whereas, in growing companies, there are new senior/management positions created all the time, to account for the growth - so, getting promoted is easier. Ambitious, hard working people like promotions, so they gravitate towards growing companies and not stale companies.
Am I the only one who thinks this sounds a lot like how pyramid schemes work?
Re: Leaving Google
#454Re: Leaving Google
#455Earlier quoted context omitted.
> This is basically mainstream teaching now (see critical race theory). It's like witch burning… >> She attributed every difference to her paper or claim to racism or white supremacy or oppression or any combination out of the three. Critical race theory is not yelling to claim every problem is due to racism or oppression. While I don’t agree with all tenants of the recent evolution of critical race theory, I do with…
> Critical race theory is not yelling to claim every problem is due to racism or oppression. It largely is these days. > While I don’t agree with all tenants of the recent evolution of critical race theory, I do with the historical purpose of it. I don't. It's divisive hateful racist pseudoscientific nonsense that relies on bullying and threats to shut down its critics. > Fast forward to today and you have a more bro…
> It largely is these days.
Only for the "right" races. And for white women as well, who are somehow a protected group.
> It's always funny when they talk about systemic discrimination while also being the ones trying to institute segregation, keep too many "undesirable" races out of colleges, and generally agitate for institutional racism.
Also they ignore when race actually is an issue, like the totally disproportionate amount of crime and rape committed by black people. They have no problem stereotyping and being racist against Asian and Indian men though.
Re: Leaving Google
#456Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Try to explain to a non techie how a car moves I always love a classic hacker news take where software engineers are the only people who can understand how things work. It's not like high school dropouts are ever car mechanics.
He’s talking about generally technical people, not software engineers.
I’m pretty sure they were talking about (software) engineers as the comment brings them up directly in the comparison:
> Now try to explain to an engineer how a bond works, or how industrial strategy works.
Re: Leaving Google
#457Earlier quoted context omitted.
I mean we might as well shut down electricity to all of our homes if we want to make this argument. And we could argue with each other over snail mail. But I suspect that will actually be worse from CO2 emissions perspective.
That's strawman, some electricity use is needed because we depend on it for survival and the rest is various levels of nice to have. But its use has environmental costs and we are in big trouble with climate change. As long as there is fossil made electricity flowing in the grid, marginal changes in demand can be viewed as contributing to its production, because electricity is fungible (modulo transmission considerat…
That's a fat big POV that very few will take seriously. Being carbon neutral absolutely incentivizes green energy. Making up a wall of insurmountable demands that very few people in this world, except hunter gatherers, can possibly meet does not help but hurts efforts towards CO2 reduction.
Carbon neutrality works by subsidizing the costs of reducing carbon emissions at source. Trying to shit on that makes you regressive, not progressive.
Re: Leaving Google
#458Earlier quoted context omitted.
That's strawman, some electricity use is needed because we depend on it for survival and the rest is various levels of nice to have. But its use has environmental costs and we are in big trouble with climate change. As long as there is fossil made electricity flowing in the grid, marginal changes in demand can be viewed as contributing to its production, because electricity is fungible (modulo transmission considerat…
That's a fat big POV that very few will take seriously. Being carbon neutral absolutely incentivizes green energy. Making up a wall of insurmountable demands that very few people in this world, except hunter gatherers, can possibly meet does not help but hurts efforts towards CO2 reduction. Carbon neutrality works by subsidizing the costs of reducing carbon emissions at source. Trying to shit on that makes you regres…
Let's not get too emotional about things and keep to the HN guidelines.
I do understand and somewhat agree with the "perfect is the enemy of good" thinking, but it's still good to be aware and keep outselves honest about the difference between them.
The marginal CO2 perspective is in fact an establilished thing in the industry, see eg [1] [2].
Regarding "insurmountable demands", not sure what you're referring to here, the discussion was about whether there are significant indirect co2 & environmental costs to "carbon neutral" electricity as defined by Google, which I argued there are.
[1] https://www.nwcouncil.org/energy/marginal-carbon-dioxide-pro...
[2] https://www.tmrow.com/blog/marginal-carbon-intensity-of-elec...
Re: Leaving Google
#459Earlier quoted context omitted.
This is what people seem to forget. A company that doesn't grow for all intents and purposes is a dead company. Or in the M&A world we call it "distressed". It doesn't matter how profitable you are if you don't get grow there are serious implications - employee motivation, loss of talent, erosion of customer services, etc.
I don't see how employee motivation, loss of talent, erosion of customer services are related to the need for unyielding year on year growth. There are companies out there, private ones, where their customers are happy, their employees are happy (most of the time) and their retention is high.
I hate how hn top threads usually degenerate into something totally unrelated to the original posts.
Re: Leaving Google
#460Earlier quoted context omitted.
This is the best time to be alive, because we can leverage their platforms (ex. google search, YT) to learn anything and everything to ultimately destroy them by building something different. Just excited to live in a time where we (anyone with basic internet access pretty much) can execute runtime hacks on capitalism by changing the inputs a bit while still creating value where it matters to us.
Given the history of Facebook's acquisitions, I think this is a little optimistic. The sheer disgusting amount of money that FAANGs have allows them to buy or undercut any competitor that looks to gain steam.
How about Tik Tok, Signal, telegram?