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What I learned getting acquired by Google

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Re: What I learned getting acquired by Google

#461

Post by voiceblue »

ren_engineer wrote: post #250

>Amazing things are possible at Google, if the right people care about them. A VP that gets it, a research team with a related charter, or compatibility with an org’s goals. Navigating this mess of interests is half of a PM’s job. And then you need the blessing of approvers like privacy, trust and safety, and infra capacity. It takes dozens of conversations to know if an idea is viable, and hundreds more to make it a…

I work at Google and just today I had a conversation with a director that made me realize even he cannot force anything that doesn’t make “promo” happen: the culture is rotten to the core in terms of incentives. If you want to get anything done fast “at” Google, you pretty much have to quit and do it and then get re-acquired.

Re: What I learned getting acquired by Google

#463

Post by misantroop »

whydoyoucare wrote: post #288
zopa wrote: post #271

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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'd like to as in what ways is Europe great? From my narrow point of view, most if not all successful startups were founded outside Europe, most countries in Western Europe tend to be monolithic cultures where outsiders are made to feel like outsiders, and many European nations are socialist utopias (which means they take away a HUGE chunk of salary as tax). (And I am asking this in a friendly tone, as a genuinely cu…

Startups operating in Americas are founded in US. Rest of the world is different. For example, Lazada is huge in SEA and was created by Rocket Internet (DE). Delivery Hero (again, DE) is massive in SEA as well, the US ones like DoorDash have absolutely no presence. Uber isn't a thing anymore either. In fact I see far more European and Asian companies operating globally nowadays, US startups are quite isolationist.

Re: What I learned getting acquired by Google

#464

Post by dchftcs »

intended wrote: post #455
Galacta7 wrote: post #305

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I’m assuming Profit margins are about 14-25%, so a 4x multiplier would be what it takes. 3 would mean your firm had sources of revenue other than services/consulting.

The most profitable consulting-type businesses have profit margins >=50%, before distributing profits to equity holders. But either way I'm not sure about your implicit assumption here that the profits should be comparable to the pay of the employees.

Re: What I learned getting acquired by Google

#465

Post by whatshisface »

chii wrote: post #433
whatshisface wrote: post #391

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's quite different - Google contracts for a service to be provided and takes no interest in managing janitors and cooks individually. The red badgers sound like they're being given individual instructions but denied employee protection.

but looking at it from a top down perspective, it does seem like google treats these contractors no better than the janitors and cooks. So i dont think you can say it's different merely because the nature of the work is not the same.

Google doesn't treat janitors any way. They treat the building services company. They do treat the contract programmers a certain way.

Re: What I learned getting acquired by Google

#466

Post by philsnow »

voiceblue wrote: post #461
ren_engineer wrote: post #250

>Amazing things are possible at Google, if the right people care about them. A VP that gets it, a research team with a related charter, or compatibility with an org’s goals. Navigating this mess of interests is half of a PM’s job. And then you need the blessing of approvers like privacy, trust and safety, and infra capacity. It takes dozens of conversations to know if an idea is viable, and hundreds more to make it a…

I work at Google and just today I had a conversation with a director that made me realize even he cannot force anything that doesn’t make “promo” happen: the culture is rotten to the core in terms of incentives. If you want to get anything done fast “at” Google, you pretty much have to quit and do it and then get re-acquired.

aka, The Cisco Way

Re: What I learned getting acquired by Google

#467

Post by matheusmoreira »

teaearlgraycold wrote: post #43

> Googlers wanted to ship great work, but often couldn’t. While there were undoubtedly people who came in for the food, worked 3 hours a day, and enjoyed their early retirements, all the people I met were earnest, hard-working, and wanted to do great work. > What beat them down were the gauntlet of reviews, the frequent re-orgs, the institutional scar tissue from past failures, and the complexity of doing even simple…

> The extra pay of Google doesn't matter to me.

> I never want to work at a big organization again and would rather die poor and accomplished than rich and depressed.

> I came to Silicon Valley to learn as much as possible.

> If I work on a high-scale system I need to have earned that by building, launching, and supporting that system from step 0.

Big respect for you. I quit programming as a whole because I felt I would never find people with your mindset in this field. The thought depressed me enough to choose another career.

Re: What I learned getting acquired by Google

#468

Post by lmm »

mtnGoat wrote: post #459
lmm wrote: post #374

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Working alongside someone with significantly better employment conditions than you is disproportionately unpleasant, to the point that working under objectively worse conditions feels better.

So what about when two people have the same title, and tenure but one makes $50k more per year? This is a similar situation and is happening at many companies. I know I make more than some peers that have higher job levels(and tenure in company) then I do.

> So what about when two people have the same title, and tenure but one makes $50k more per year?

Strangely enough that's a lot less viscerally unpleasant - perhaps because money is quite abstract (and you never actually see person A get a bigger pile than person B, whereas you notice immediately if there's a team pizza that person B isn't allowed to eat), perhaps because it's understandable that companies want to pay some people more and others less, whereas limiting who gets cheap perks feels like it's just nastiness.

Re: What I learned getting acquired by Google

#469

Post by 77pt77 »

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…

> it's a caste system

All social institutions eventually become that.

It's inescapable.

Re: What I learned getting acquired by Google

#470

Post by 77pt77 »

BurningFrog wrote: post #382
jalapenos wrote: post #339

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When people here say "Europe is great", which part are they referring to?

They're typically Americans who think all 50+ European countries have very similar legal systems and cultures.

Louisiana doesn't even use common law.
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