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What I learned getting acquired by Google

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Re: What I learned getting acquired by Google

#521

Post by vasco »

ragall wrote: post #432
jalapenos wrote: post #339

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Someone should read the fine article: ESA is one of the world’s leading space exploration organizations and one of the few that is international in scope, representing 22 member states. Contrary to a common misconception, ESA is not part of the European Union and not bound by European law. In fact, ESA is not bound by any real-world law, either local or national—it’s governed only by its 130-page Convention and a set…

They also pay lower taxes than everyone else and so on. The best thing about ESA is that it sucks and doesn't actually accomplish much, so hopefully they stop this scam.

Re: What I learned getting acquired by Google

#523

Post by vasco »

throwaway2037 wrote: post #427
julienb_sea wrote: post #355

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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. That seems OK to me. Why should children who are lucky to be born into a stable middle class family have a large financial advantage over other children? To be clear, passing down an entire home tax free in a highly developed nation is a huge financial adva…

> Why should children who are lucky to be born into a stable middle class family have a large financial advantage over other children

The reason why we have inheritances is people in power convinced each other that regular people will work harder throughout all their lives if they know they can give their children a better life. Meaning the economy is way better with some inheritance present than without inheritance.

Love is a powerful thing and while most people would agree with you that in theory they'd like all children to have the same opportunities, once their babies are born they will fight forever to give them the best conditions they can.

I agree with inheritance taxes, probably not 100%, but wanted to explain the perspective of people that want full untaxed inheritances.

Re: What I learned getting acquired by Google

#524

Post by camillomiller »

> Working at Google is like having a second passport. Go to any major city in the world and your badge2 unlocks a beautiful office with great food, desks, and a high speed link to every person in Google’s 200,000+ person network.

How can the elitist and divisive aspect of this be so lost on everyone?

Re: What I learned getting acquired by Google

#525

Post by [deleted] »

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…

[deleted]

Re: What I learned getting acquired by Google

#526

Post by hef19898 »

whatshisface wrote: post #391
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.

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.

Two different kind of outsourcing contracts. And red badgers, unless they are freelancers, have employee protection. Just not from Google, or any other company using subcontracting agencies for that matter.

Re: What I learned getting acquired by Google

#527

Post by sublimefire »

esafak wrote: post #21
avidiax wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The insularity isn't behind that, in my opinion. It's more that almost all of Google's features are ad-funded, and the company has chosen to make lots of (apparently) free, but poorly supported and uncertain products, rather than a smaller set of well supported products. It's a tradeoff, and Google has made a good tradeoff for both themselves (who collect more data and have more ad supply) and the majority of their u…

But other big companies are the same. Engineers just don't communicate with users; that's reserved for product managers. The most you will get is a bug report.

I have a different experience in Microsoft where engineers would communicate with their customers if there are issues. There is always a first line of support but otherwise it will be escalated by the support staff and the engineer will jump in. Google is a bit weird because they do not target enterprises that much, their revenue is from ads sold to ordinary people.

Re: What I learned getting acquired by Google

#528

Post by JW_00000 »

bornfreddy wrote: post #308
ido wrote: post #214

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I mean come on - the upsides: we "merged cultures", "our app lives on", "careers have bloomed" versus downsides "we quit", and "we don't think we actually delivered what we wanted to". But it's ok because after everyone who cared about the product quit, maybe someone else will might make it happen ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ Do we ignore the most obvious upside, that this guy (and possibly/probably everyone in that startup) got paid…

And can now watch his dream of so many years languish in the app store. Money is only a part of the equation.

But maybe he now has other dreams he can work on.

Re: What I learned getting acquired by Google

#529

Post by hef19898 »

vasco wrote: post #521
ragall wrote: post #432

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Someone should read the fine article: ESA is one of the world’s leading space exploration organizations and one of the few that is international in scope, representing 22 member states. Contrary to a common misconception, ESA is not part of the European Union and not bound by European law. In fact, ESA is not bound by any real-world law, either local or national—it’s governed only by its 130-page Convention and a set…

They also pay lower taxes than everyone else and so on. The best thing about ESA is that it sucks and doesn't actually accomplish much, so hopefully they stop this scam.

Euclid isn't an achievement?

Re: What I learned getting acquired by Google

#530

Post by barrkel »

pessimizer wrote: post #270
oconnor663 wrote: post #233

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If the feds said you had to insult someone every time you bought printer ink, and then lots of people started getting insulted, I would lean towards blaming the feds for that outcome rather than blaming the people who buy printer ink. Of course, it could separately be the case that people buy too much printer ink, and that we have good reasons for asking them to buy less. In which case our feelings about these new in…

This isn't printer ink, this is somebody working for you full time who you don't want to call an employee because it's cheaper not to. The idea is that if you treat somebody like an employee, they're an employee, and that idea was allowed to be hollowed out. If companies participate in certain shunning rituals they're allowed to keep those same cheap employees. The purpose of the ruling wasn't to allow companies to o…

Contractors are not normally cheaper than employees. All the overheads of an employee need to be paid for in the contract, plus profit, so if it comes out less than an employee, something isn't right.

Contractors offer flexibility. Contractors can be engaged and disengaged without labour law complications.

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