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What I learned getting acquired by Google

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Re: What I learned getting acquired by Google

#471

Post by nik_0_0 »

otalp wrote: post #91
parthdesai wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not a googler, but their office in Toronto is in pretty meh area tbh

Do they have a dev office in Toronto? Thought it was in waterloo

Don't work for Google, but been to the Toronto office (it is on the smaller side).

It is in the heart of the Toronto downtown, near Richmond & Spadina, next to the old & new City Hall. Definitely disagree with GP, I'm not sure what better area you would pick (but I love downtown). Similarly in Taipei, the Google office is right in Taipei 101 (like having an office in CN Tower - very cool.)

To be fair, Amazon's office in Toronto is next to the CN Tower and has a great view of it - so maybe Amazon takes the cake here. You have to pay for the cake though.

Re: What I learned getting acquired by Google

#473

Post by mianos »

melbournegrad wrote: post #361
firecall wrote: post #319

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Correct, we don't.

There have been some recent court cases, sponsored by the unions, seeking to include full time benefits to subbies, but it's all a bit hand-wavy and, on the whole, people working with an ABN are not yet equivalent to full time employees.

Re: What I learned getting acquired by Google

#474

Post by mianos »

dhx wrote: post #414
melbournegrad wrote: post #361

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Refer to the Casual Employment Information Statement (CEIS)[1] and due-to-be-released-on-6-December-2023 Fixed Term Contract Information Statement (FTCIS)[2]. [1] https://www.fairwork.gov.au/sites/default/files/migration/72... [2] https://www.fairwork.gov.au/employment-conditions/national-e...

Refer to the actual relevant pages: https://www.fairwork.gov.au/find-help-for/independent-contra...

This said, referring to the section 'sham contracting', actually covers, by far, the majority of contractors, which are effectively full time staff.

Re: What I learned getting acquired by Google

#475

Post by NetOpWibby »

orochimaaru wrote: post #201
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…

This is a case with contractors in all big companies. You are not a company employee. The expectation is that your employer will compensate you and take you out to lunch, etc, etc. But otoh you don’t need to deal with performance appraisals, office politics and all the other bullshit. Do your work, take the money.

Just a lil' nitpick, you absolutely do have to deal with office politics. Everything else you said was accurate though.

Re: What I learned getting acquired by Google

#476

Post by throwaway2037 »

refurb wrote: post #388
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…

No. Just look at taxes as a percentage of GDP and you can see EU taxes are 50%+ higher than even CA. Then add on top the lower wages.

Do you include that housing prices, health care, and university fees are all much lower in continental Europe?

Re: What I learned getting acquired by Google

#477

Post by teaearlgraycold »

matheusmoreira wrote: post #467
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 wo…

Where did you work?

Re: What I learned getting acquired by Google

#478

Post by sinuhe69 »

pseg134 wrote: post #332
crazygringo wrote: post #267

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I used Google Bard today. Is that somehow not operationalized?

Ahh so you were our user today. How was the experience?

Bard is terrible at coding. It makes a lot of mistakes but is too insistent it got it right. My feeling is Bard confabulates more often than the recent version of ChatGPT.

The good thing is one can verify the output of Bard easily with the Google button and when asking for links it will give you reference (real or not). Other plus is the ability to access internet, so you can give Bard directly your own document for processing.

ChatGPT also seems to understand the intention of the user better while the filtering (clam down) of bard is very strict.

Re: What I learned getting acquired by Google

#479

Post by throwaway2037 »

philsnow wrote: post #466
voiceblue wrote: post #461

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Hat tip there. I only learned about their "spin-in" (not "spin-out") start-up culture recently. If anything, it seems like management genius to realise they will miss many of the best ideas if they lock their best talent into mediocre roles.

Re: What I learned getting acquired by Google

#480

Post by the46a »

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,…

The company I worked for was acquired with no interviews for approx 100 people. Lots of people were surprised about that when we tell them.
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