Google cancels TGIF weekly all-hands meetings • Hacker News Board

Re: Google cancels TGIF weekly all-hands meetings

#531

Post by hgytr » Sat, Nov 16, 2019, 6:00 PM UTC

kerng wrote: post #476

hgytr wrote: post #305

First. Thanks to HN for not demanding phone numbers: anonymity allows to say things that cannot be said. Second. Many googlers read HN. In some sense, HN is the extension of the internal forums. CNBC made a good summary and I can comment on each bullet point. Larry and Brin probably stopped attending because nothing important is said on TGIFs. More people -> more leaks -> less interesting information -> less attenden…

>> Don't get me wrong. Google is still the best workplace with top notch pay, but as it's got big, it's also morphed into a typical big corporation with typical corporate politics. Such comments is what changed at Google. There are other excellent places to work at these days, like Microsoft (also Amazon) if you are interested in large scale cloud services and not advertisement.

Microsoft is pretty good, indeed, but they don't match the Google pay. A senior at Google pulls 350 (add free food and gym to that), while a principal at Microsoft will be lucky to cross 250 (no free food and no gym on site). Sample size: a few tens of people. And the limited housing supply means that prices are tuned to the more successful folks.

Amazon seems to be very focused on squeezing out most out of its employees. The curious vesting schedule means you instantly lose 10% of your stock grant value. The company expects you to pull more hours and do some real oncall duties: this means less free time for you and less pay/hour rate. Good and gym are out if question. And don't forget to pay for your parking spot. IMHO, if you aren't big enough to demand a custom contract, you don't go to Amazon unless you have no better choices.

My question is still open: what are those better places?

Re: Google cancels TGIF weekly all-hands meetings

#532

Post by vonmoltke » Sat, Nov 16, 2019, 6:04 PM UTC

perl4ever wrote: post #474

buzzkillington wrote: post #422

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It is maybe the best place to work if you have no sense of ethics, want to take it easy, work 9 to 5 and maximize your money. Hey, that's me to a t. Google is not actually that great for that. The pay is average and they make too much of a song and dance about helping people, even if you're working on ML used to ferret out dissidents in China. The good companies for 9 to 5 casual evil are small >50 man shops which…

There are also huge federal contractors (defense, etc.) that the average consumer can't name because they aren't on anything the public comes in contact with.

Yeah, but their total comp is shit compared to the tech industry.

Re: Google cancels TGIF weekly all-hands meetings

#533

Post by kerng » Sat, Nov 16, 2019, 6:13 PM UTC

hgytr wrote: post #531

kerng wrote: post #476

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> Don't get me wrong. Google is still the best workplace with top notch pay, but as it's got big, it's also morphed into a typical big corporation with typical corporate politics. Such comments is what changed at Google. There are other excellent places to work at these days, like Microsoft (also Amazon) if you are interested in large scale cloud services and not advertisement.

Microsoft is pretty good, indeed, but they don't match the Google pay. A senior at Google pulls 350 (add free food and gym to that), while a principal at Microsoft will be lucky to cross 250 (no free food and no gym on site). Sample size: a few tens of people. And the limited housing supply means that prices are tuned to the more successful folks. Amazon seems to be very focused on squeezing out most out of its emplo…

You seem to confuse pay with "best place". Principal at Microsoft can make way more though (not working there, but know from Partner level folks there) - it's a very wide range, spawning 3 job levels.

Re: Google cancels TGIF weekly all-hands meetings

#534

Post by whymauri » Sat, Nov 16, 2019, 6:23 PM UTC

djohnston wrote: post #527

CydeWeys wrote: post #523

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's not what cafe badging is about. It wouldn't catch that anyway; you're just badging into the cafe. There's no way to know how much you actually ate.

I think it's more about the 22 y.o hire who decides he and his 5 mates should all get dinner at the new office

This is generally fine, at least in Google Cambridge.

It's just for tax purposes, as has been made abundantly clear in this thread.

Re: Google cancels TGIF weekly all-hands meetings

#535

Post by x0x0 » Sat, Nov 16, 2019, 6:26 PM UTC

notatoad wrote: post #528

ColanR wrote: post #436

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Google is an ad company with delusions of grandure. It's nothing more, until it finds a way to turn a profit on its other ventures. (Just like those startups - realistically, until they turn a profit, they're just in the exploratory stage.)

I was under the impression that Youtube, G-suite, Cloud Platform, and hardware were all quite profitable. Not to the same degree as ads maybe, but they would all be considered successful if they were standalone businesses. Calling google just an ad company is ignoring a large amount of reality.

Youtube is an ads delivery channel.

afaik, hardware is nowhere near close to profitable once you add the costs of Android. Android is an ads delivery channel and a defense against ios usurping an ads delivery channel.

You have a point about gsuite and gcp.

Re: Google cancels TGIF weekly all-hands meetings

#536

Post by CydeWeys » Sat, Nov 16, 2019, 6:26 PM UTC

djohnston wrote: post #527

CydeWeys wrote: post #523

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's not what cafe badging is about. It wouldn't catch that anyway; you're just badging into the cafe. There's no way to know how much you actually ate.

I think it's more about the 22 y.o hire who decides he and his 5 mates should all get dinner at the new office

Cafe badging does nothing to address this, as guests don't even have badges to badge with! There's no gate that you need to badge into the cafe to enter, if that's what you're thinking about.

The way to address that is to see who is consistently registering to bring in way more guests to the office than anyone else.

Re: Google cancels TGIF weekly all-hands meetings

#537

Post by CydeWeys » Sat, Nov 16, 2019, 6:30 PM UTC

manigandham wrote: post #103

CydeWeys wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Google is currently fighting unionization efforts. That's not leftist.

What Google as a profit-seeking corporation does is not the same as the majority internal political culture amongst its employees.

And what Google does, as one of the largest profit-seeking corporations in the world, matters a lot more than the views of its employees, and is not particularly affected by them.

Re: Google cancels TGIF weekly all-hands meetings

#538

Post by SpicyLemonZest » Sat, Nov 16, 2019, 6:36 PM UTC

joshuamorton wrote: post #416

SpicyLemonZest wrote: post #409

Earlier quoted context omitted.

(Agreed! I'm glad we're having it.) I don't think forced political expression is entirely a boogeyman. There was an article a couple months back[1] where a guy was publicly offended that (admittedly among other complaints) his coworkers weren't talking enough about police brutality. Anecdotally I have a lot of stories; for Hispanic Heritage Month, for example, we had Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez posters all around the of…

> I don't think forced political expression is entirely a boogeyman. Sure, someone complained that people weren't knowledgable and up for debating an issue that was important to him. But notably, no one was forced to express anything, he was simply disappointed that they weren't willing to discuss the issue. Actually it wasn't even that, he was disappointed that, instead of expressing concern over the death of a blac…

Maybe I'm misreading the argument. It sounds like the petition claims merely hearing her out is wrong; that because she disagrees on some hot-button political issues, nothing she says can possibly be valuable, and listening to her thoughts on AI ethics would constitute pandering to her side on those political issues. If so, that's a core example of the kind of toxic political wrangling that I'm opposed to in the workplace.

Re: Google cancels TGIF weekly all-hands meetings

#539

Post by hgytr » Sat, Nov 16, 2019, 6:38 PM UTC

kerng wrote: post #533

hgytr wrote: post #531

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Microsoft is pretty good, indeed, but they don't match the Google pay. A senior at Google pulls 350 (add free food and gym to that), while a principal at Microsoft will be lucky to cross 250 (no free food and no gym on site). Sample size: a few tens of people. And the limited housing supply means that prices are tuned to the more successful folks. Amazon seems to be very focused on squeezing out most out of its emplo…

You seem to confuse pay with "best place". Principal at Microsoft can make way more though (not working there, but know from Partner level folks there) - it's a very wide range, spawning 3 job levels.

I know SDE IIs at MS who made 350+. However 90% of those SDE IIs don't even approach the entry level Google pay. My info about the principal salaries comes from those principals themselves.

By the best place I just meant best in terms of getting knowledge, status and pay with the least effort in the least stressful conditions.

Re: Google cancels TGIF weekly all-hands meetings

#540

Post by pm90 » Sat, Nov 16, 2019, 7:32 PM UTC

djsumdog wrote: post #437

pm90 wrote: post #379

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They could try to split up. The separation into Alphabet seems almost a dream for regulators who can just separate them. I mean, just think about it. Standard Oil had the same monopoly over a valuable resource (oil then, Software and Data today) that Google has today (fine, Facebook etc too... but there is no Facebook search; also they are monopolies over different kinds of digital products). They need to be broken u…

Facebook could easily be told to shed Instagram, WhatsApp and everything else they bought up to dominate the social network space. Individually those companies might not survive, but they could spin them off, as a whole, if the FTC tired to step in. Google could be asked to do the same with some of their product lines/companies. It's very unlikely though. These companies have a lot of influence and a lot of power ..…

> It's very unlikely though. These companies have a lot of influence and a lot of power

While that's true, just money and influence aren't sufficient for this. Congress passes laws, but its upto the Executive to interpret it. The lack of breaking up of larger corporations has indeed been due to their significant influence, but I'm interested to see how e.g. a left-learning President like Sanders or Warren would use the powers of the Federal Executive (specifically the Justice Dept) to enforce existing anti-trust laws. Probably the only thorn in their plan would be SCOTUS, and its possible that its current makeup might make it amenable to the influence of corporations (its not clear to me if it will).